It was the evening of the next day.
I put the bundle of letter paper at the bottom of my bag, wrapped twice in the cloth handkerchief. I climbed the slope from the station to the hospital at my usual pace. The slanting December sun caught thinly on the tips of the roadside trees.
I opened the door to the room. Toru lay in his usual place. His color hadn't changed, and the sounds of the monitors were set down at regular intervals. I didn't turn on the light. Through the gaps in the blinds, the western sun reached as far as the foot of the bed. I drew the chair close to the bed and sat. I took the bundle of paper from my bag and laid it on my knees.
I opened the first sheet with both hands. I held the words on the cover, "To Shiori Sakurai," above his sleeping face, turned toward him, just once. Then I let my voice out, low.
"To Shiori Sakurai."
My own name, in my own voice, was set down in this room. The sounds of the monitors went on at regular intervals. His eyelashes didn't move.
"I'll read it to you," I said quietly, leaving the words by his pillow. His eyelashes didn't move. I opened the second sheet.
"By the time you read this, I may no longer love you.
I'm sorry to begin this way. To tell you properly what I am about to write, I felt I had to write this first."
Between "may" and "no longer," my voice dried slightly. The knuckle of the thumb supporting the edge of the paper stood out white. He could not read for himself where his own feelings were. And he had written that he couldn't, just as it was. I steadied my breath once and lowered my eyes to what followed.
The events were set down almost like a list. The evening of Christmas Eve, the intersection in front of the station, a child darting into the road, me pushing the child back, a truck ignoring the red light, him hearing only the sound from in front of the restaurant, the ambulance, the hospital corridor. According to the letter, I had gone on laughing beside him, knowing nothing.
There were parts I read aloud and parts I followed only with my eyes and skipped. My throat could not produce a voice that would trace, one by one at his bedside, what had happened to my body as it died again and again in different ways. The silence on his side took over that share of the volume.
I turned the page. In the middle of the third sheet, the ink grew slightly darker. I stopped my finger at the quotation and let my voice drop low.
"To take back the one you love from fate, there is no way but to erase their image from two hearts."
The words I had told him on the shrine grounds in the rain, I now read at his bedside. Below the quotation, his own words continued.
"Read as it is written, 'two hearts' can be taken as two hearts within one person—in other words, a divided heart. Within one person, the feeling that cannot bear to lose the other, and the resolve to let them go. To erase the other's image from both of those—that was my reading, made with a dictionary in hand."
I went on turning the writing into voice. After that, the reading you gave me at the shrine was a different one; it was not something I could choose; all I can offer is my feelings for you inside me. Partway through, my voice went dry; partway through, it took on water; still I didn't stop.
Between the lines, just once, a remark that hadn't been struck out had fallen.
"Only, the voice that said the reading you gave me might in truth be closer would not go away."
Beneath it remained the faint line of words he had started to write and then stopped. It read, "You, my unrequited love,". The rest had never made it onto the paper; only the line was left. I traced it once with my fingertip. My throat took up the hesitation I had traced. Deep in my throat, something rose and fell once.
I turned the page. At the top of the fourth sheet, he had set the two readings side by side with the sentences that told me goodbye.
"If it means two people's hearts, then right now you won't be thinking of me.
But if it means a divided heart, you alone will be left behind.
It was that fear that made me write this letter."
At the line "you alone will be left behind," the fingers supporting the paper stopped for half a beat. My voice slid once over those words, and where the sliding ended, my throat made a shallow sound. Who stood on the side he feared for, he did not write here. My throat took up what he hadn't written.
"Please forget about me now. Be happy, as yourself."
Next came: when I finish writing this, I will go to you; I will erase you, the one I love, and save you. I tried many times, failed many times, and in the end arrived at this way, it went on. The meaning of "many times" may not reach you, and that is all right, he had set down, and beneath that he had added: there were several times I wanted to write not "times" or "occasions" but "rounds," one round, two rounds. On the words "one round, two rounds," my finger stopped. Somewhere I didn't know, a me I didn't know had died different deaths, again and again.
The fifth sheet. The neatness of the handwriting had loosened. The flow of the sentences was closer to his usual breathing.
"The day our fingers first touched in front of the library shelves.
The days under the umbrella in the rain, when your shoulder was always a little ahead of my right side.
Your profile at the planetarium by the river, as you looked up at the indigo dome.
Your voice at the shrine, as you told me the legend.
Your sleeping profile on the sofa, the day before Christmas Eve."
From the top, one at a time, I gave them voice. The day our fingers touched, he had written. He didn't write that I had been the one to touch first. At the line about the planetarium by the river, my voice went hoarse once. Before I moved on to the next line, my breath stopped once, somewhere shallow. What I had been looking up at was the north rim of the dome, around where they had been talking about stars whose light no longer reached us. On his side, only that profile had remained. The voice at the shrine, the profile the day before Christmas Eve. The night I handed him the book had been placed in the last line on his side. The me that only he could have seen, I set down, in the color of his voice, on the bed, at the height of his ear.
The temperature of my cheek shifted by the width of a single drop. I watched it run along the line of my jaw and fall onto my neck, without moving my fingers from the edge of the paper. I brought my eyes back to the writing.
"I remember all of it. The days I spent with you were happy. I am grateful for a life in which I met you. While I am writing this, I still love you. How the me who has finished writing will come to hold all of this, I don't know yet."
Beneath that, a single line had been placed, set a little apart from the others.
"I'm sorry I couldn't hold your hand so we wouldn't lose each other."
I put my finger on the words "I'm sorry" and said them aloud. The half line just before had sunk their weight to a place one level deeper than an ordinary apology. The entryway on the day I lent him the book came down to me. The curve of his fingers as he took the book with both hands.
At the very bottom of the sheet, his name was written, a shade thinner than usual.
Here Toru's letter had ended, once. But beneath it were words added in a different hand. The same fountain pen, the same handwriting, and yet the stop at the end of each stroke was too neat. Being too neat, it lacked something.
I opened the last page. The six added lines, I read aloud one breath at a time.
"With this, I've saved her.
I tried many times, failed many times, and in the end, I offered up the her within me.
Just as the legend says.
She is alive.
That's enough.
That should be enough."
Once, between the words, I took a breath. I went on.
"But I no longer know whether I love her.
When I look at her, I feel nothing. I have every memory. Her face, her voice, the way she laughs—I remember all of it.
And yet my heart is too quiet."
At the very last line in the margin, my voice stopped.
—Why won't this unease go away?
That part, I didn't read. Without voicing it, I traced it twice with only my eyes. Until I finished tracing it the second time, my breath stayed stopped. The last words he had written down, I now took up on my side. Toward the same place where something had been held back because it felt not yet put in order, hands were reaching from both our sides.
I squared the sheets on my knees and closed them.
From the edge of the sheet, the fingertips of his left hand showed just slightly. I reached out and laid the pad of my finger, very lightly, at the base of his index finger. The shape of the nail, the faint curve of the joint. It was the finger that had left that fountain-pen writing. There was warmth. There was only that, and no answer.
—You couldn't choose, could you.
I told him so in my heart. I didn't put it into voice.
I brought my gaze back to his face. His eyelashes, his eyelids, the faint veins at his temples. None of them moved. Before that unmoving face, the words I had just finished reading came down to me once more, from somewhere else.
—He is here. Holding every memory, he is here. And yet he won't open his eyes.
Read as it was written, a divided heart was enough. What he erased was his feelings for me inside himself, one person's share. With that, my death was reversed, and my feelings for him are still here.
If a divided heart had been enough, he should already have opened his eyes and nodded to me, glad that I was alive.
And yet, he did not open his eyes.