There were two sheets of letter paper. There was nothing written on the outside. There was no addressee either. It was not a letter meant for anyone. It looked like something she had simply written and laid face down in the paulownia box.
The legend of that shrine was true.
In my youth there was a gentleman with whom I had exchanged my heart. From a certain time, the warmth in him toward me went, quite suddenly, flat. He remembered everything. My face, my voice, even the names of the roads we had walked together. He remembered, and yet it was too quiet inside him.
A slight waver ran through the sweeping strokes. My eyes stopped at the words "too quiet." I pressed lightly on them once with my finger.
And then, some while later, he fell ill. Even the doctors could not tell the cause.
My fingers, about to turn the page, stopped. A sleep with no known cause. An illness with no known cause.
With the cause still unknown, the days only piled up. One day I climbed the approach to that shrine alone. I suppose I wished to cling to something. I simply stood before the offering box. As I stood with my hands together and my head bowed, a voice I ought to have long forgotten came back, quite suddenly, deep within my ears.
—That legend, see, there's more to it. A piece that ain't in any book, that only the old folks've passed along by mouth.
It was a passage my grandmother had told me several times in a low voice, as a bedtime story, when I was small. As a child I did not understand its meaning, and somewhere along the way I had forgotten it.
That voice, on that night alone, came back to me exactly, deep within my ears.
—Them two hearts, truth is, it's two people's worth. Pray alone, and the one person's worth that's missing stays on in the one who prayed, as a sickness. That leftover half, now—you pray for 'em right beside the sick one, and only then does it all come out whole.
The pad of my finger traced that line on the paper twice. My other hand took a fresh grip on the edge of the letter resting on my knee.
When I raised my head, before the offering box there were only my own hands, pressed together.
I traced those few short lines with the shape of my lips alone. I did not voice them. My great-grandmother's voice, handed down as a bedtime story, had crossed half a century of silence and come back, in another woman's voice, over the sweeping strokes of my grandmother's hand. The reading "a divided heart" had never been passed down anywhere, not from the very beginning.
To save him, there was nothing left but to follow the passage my grandmother had given me as a bedtime story. The doctors, too, still did not know the cause. That I should pray at his side—that was all that remained.
I let out one long breath. The fingertips of my left hand, resting on the low table, had left the edge of the letter and were slowly coming back to my own lap.
He was so feverish he could scarcely stand on his own feet. I set him in a borrowed wheelchair and, pushing it slowly with my own hands, climbed the gravel approach edged with moss. The slope was gentle, but long, and dark and wet with the damp that comes before rain. The smell of moss rose faintly from the stone walls on either side. Twice along the way I stepped on the wheelchair's brake and rested. His thin breath came down onto my cheek from behind.
Before the offering box, I placed him half a step behind me. I put my hands together and recited in my heart: Please release him. I offer up the foremost of what I hold for him.
My eyes stopped at "gravel approach." It was the same shrine. That gentle slope Toru and I had climbed. My grandmother, too, had climbed that same slope, pushing a wheelchair one push at a time. My eyes stopped again at "half a step behind me." That summer, Toru's shoulder had been a little in front of mine. My grandmother had prayed with it set the opposite way round.
Across half a century's distance, matched even in their direction, two sets of footprints were settling into a single mold. My fingertips tightened their grip on the edge of the paper.
His illness released its hold. Even the doctors tilted their heads in puzzlement. At about the same time, the warmth toward him vanished from me as well.
His face, his voice, the names of the roads we had walked together—I remembered all of it. I remembered, and yet it was too quiet inside me.
My grandmother had left that quietness written on paper.
Thank you, he said to me. Thanks to you, he said. I am glad for you, I answered. The voice in which I answered was flatter than even I could have imagined.
"Oh, Sakurai. How are you?" Toru's voice from that autumn evening in front of the station, when I'd been sent back a step, rang deep in my ears.
He and I simply stopped seeing each other. We did not use the words "we parted." Without using them, we let distance grow between us. I heard from others that he later married someone else. Some years on, I too made a life with someone else.
At "We did not use the words 'we parted,'" I looked once at the margin of the paper. In the characters that wrote did not use, a trace of having chosen remained. What she had not been able to settle, my grandmother carried into her last years and set down on this paper.
I knew that the "someone else" was my grandfather. At his wake, my grandmother had sat a long while on the veranda outside the altar room, blinking several times, and then she had gone to stand in the kitchen and made the soup stock. Deep within the back she showed me then, there had been a man she had spent a long time trying not to forget. I was only learning that now.
I laid the first sheet face down on the desk. I moved my eyes to the second. The sweeping strokes trembled. It was my grandmother's faint, shaking hand from her last years.
Erase their image, the legend did indeed say. But what it truly means to erase someone's image—that was written nowhere. Only the one who has cast it away knows.
The feeling for him that vanished from me, and the feeling for me that vanished from him, are nowhere in this world. Where they went, I never did learn.
Still, erasing the image from the two of us was not a bad thing. I was able, too, to forget him, who no longer thought of me.
If the same thing were ever to happen again—I believe I would surely do the same. I believe I would place him half a step behind me, at my side, and go to make whole the half that was left.
I raised my eyes from the letter. The last thread of incense smoke bent just short of the ceiling and was gone. The paper screen was still covered in the dark of night. Toru had prayed alone. The half that remained would be made whole by praying at his side—my grandmother had written that down on paper, and died.
This time it would be me, pushing Toru in a wheelchair up the same gravel approach.
I thought of my grandmother's book beside the desk. That night, on the page where the letter had been tucked, a line from the third act had been printed. Farewell. The darkness takes me back. Over the sweeping strokes of my grandmother's hand, the same farewell in another language came to lie.
I lowered the letter to my lap. My grandmother had written hers down and left it. Toru had written his down and left it too. I would carry mine without writing it.
In exchange for saving Toru, I would no longer be able to love him. His face, his voice, even the damp of the moss-grown approach—I would remember them all and feel nothing.
—No. I am going to take you back.
The line he had spoken lightly on the sofa one rainy day off, and never picked up again, had been lying at the bottom of me all along. Now, from my side, I set that line facing the other way.
The shadows of the paper screen's lattice were beginning to take on outlines in the dark of night. My cheek grew faintly damp. Just once. I didn't wipe it. My grandmother, too, had most likely chosen, knowing.
Beyond the paper screen, the dark of night was beginning to thin. I folded the letter in two, the way it had been. As I went to return it to the paulownia box, my hand stopped. I would take this home, I decided. I wrapped the letter in my handkerchief and drew it to my side, by my knee. I closed the lid of the now-empty paulownia box. The paulownia joint gave a faint creak. I laid the cloth over it as it had been. I settled again before my grandmother's memorial photo and put my hands together. "Grandma. Thank you for leaving this here," I told her, without voicing it.
I closed the sliding door of the altar room and went back to my own room without a sound. I got into my futon and lay on my back. Beyond the paper screen, the sky was beginning to grow faintly light. To choose, knowing—I repeated it once more, only on the inside of my lips.