Hometown

The river was the first thing Sora heard.

It always was. Before the light, before the stones, before the boy sitting beside her, there was the sound of the Shō River running over its bed, steady and endless, filling the valley from one wall of mountains to the other.

The valley was deep and narrow. Mountains rose on every side, their slopes thick with cedar and beech, so dark a green that they turned almost black where the shadows fell. They had stood there longer than anyone could count. Between them the river ran wide and shallow over a bed of grey stones, coming down out of the high country in the south and running north toward the sea. Further along the bank stood the old farmhouses of the village, their steep thatched roofs rising out of the rice fields like pairs of hands pressed together. Some of those houses were three hundred years old.

The river was older than all of them. It would still be running long after the last of them fell.

Next to all of that, the two children on the bank were very small.

One of them was Sora. She was twelve, bare feet on the warm stones, knees pulled up under her chin. There was a plaster on her left elbow from falling off Ren's bicycle the week before.

The other was Toya.

He was skipping stones. He had grown a little since the last time, the same way she had. That was one of the strange things about these dreams. He was never stuck at ten years old, the age he had been when his family disappeared. He grew up alongside her, as if he were still out there somewhere, getting older in a place she could not reach.

He picked a flat grey stone out of the shallows, weighed it in his hand, and flicked it across the water. It skipped seven times before it sank.

"Show-off," Sora said.

Toya smiled.

It was summer in the dream. It was always summer. Dragonflies hung over the shallows, and the air smelled of wet stone and cut grass. The sun lay hot on the back of her neck. When Sora pressed her palm against the rock beside her, it was cool underneath and rough, with a thin crack running across it that she could have traced with her eyes closed.

Dreams were not supposed to be like this.

Dreams blurred at the edges. Faces changed when you looked away from them. You could not read in a dream, or count, or feel the grit of sand between your toes. All of Sora's other dreams were like that.

These ones never were.

And this was not the first time she had sat on this bank, on this afternoon. It was not the tenth time, either. She had lost count years ago. She knew every stone. She knew where the dragonfly would land.

She knew what she was about to say.

'Here it comes...'

Her twelve-year-old mouth opened. She could not have stopped it if she tried. She had tried.

"Toya."

"Mm?"

"When are you coming back?"

He turned to look at her. The river kept running. A dragonfly came down on the stone between them, rested there for a moment, and flew away again.

Toya smiled at her.

He did not say anything.

Sora waited. The girl on the bank waited, and the older Sora inside her waited too, as if this time might be different. As if he might finally give her a day, or a year, or even a lie.

He didn't.

She reached for his sleeve.

...And woke up.

The ceiling above her was dark wood, stained almost black by a hundred winters of stove smoke.

Sora lay still and listened.

No river. The house was too far from the water to hear it, and the shutters were closed. There was only the tick of the clock in the next room and, somewhere outside, a crow.

'Again...'

She pressed the heel of her hand against her eyes.

The dreams had stopped when she was twelve. All of them, all at once, as if someone had shut a door. For three years there had been nothing at all, except this one. The last one. It came back every few weeks, always the same afternoon, always ending in the same place, with the same smile and the same silence.

'You'd think I'd be used to it by now.'

She was not.

The phone beside her pillow said 6:12. The light at the edges of the shutters was grey. It was the fifth morning since the funeral.

Sora got up, folded the futon and put it away in the cupboard. Her mother had always made her do that before breakfast. There was no one left to make her do it now. She did it anyway.

The house was small and old and cold in the mornings, colder still in March. The floorboards in the hallway creaked in the same three places they always had, and she stepped over them without thinking.

Her mother's things were everywhere.

Her slippers sat by the kitchen step, the left one tipped over on its side. Her apron hung on the hook by the stove, faded blue, with a burn mark near the pocket from a pan she had sworn at two winters ago. Her reading glasses lay folded on the low table, on top of a pile of envelopes Sora had not opened yet. On the wall, the calendar still showed next month's shifts, written in small, neat handwriting.

Sora had not moved any of it. She kept meaning to.

In the corner of the main room, the family altar stood with its little doors open. There was a new photograph inside it now. Hoshino Yukie smiled out of the frame, a little stiffly, the way she always had when someone pointed a camera at her. Last night's incense had burned down to a curl of grey ash.

Sora knelt, lit a fresh stick, and pressed her hands together.

She did not say anything. She had said everything she could think of on the first night. Most of it had been "sorry", and none of it had helped.

The smoke rose in a thin, straight line.

Then she went to the kitchen to make tea.

She filled the kettle and set it on the stove. She took two cups down from the shelf, the white one with the chip in the rim and the green one her mother liked, and put them side by side on the counter.

Then she stood there, looking at them.

'...Right.'

She put the green cup back on the shelf.

It took her a long time to let go of it.

The kettle started to whistle.

Sora took it off the heat and reached for the tea tin on the shelf. It was an old tin, painted with faded cranes, and her mother had always pressed the lid down far too hard. Every morning for fifteen years, someone in this house had struggled to open it.

Sora twisted the lid.

It did not move.

She twisted a little harder, and the whole tin folded in her hand like a paper cup.

Tea leaves spilled across the counter. One of the painted cranes was now bent neatly in half.

Sora looked at it for a while.

'...Great.'

She did not panic. She had stopped panicking about this a long time ago. She set the kettle down, pressed her thumbs into the dent, and slowly pushed the metal back out until the tin was almost round again. Then she swept the leaves into her palm, dropped them back inside, and put the lid on. Gently, this time.

It was not the first thing she had broken. It was not even the first thing she had broken this week. On the night of the funeral, she had pulled the bathroom door shut a little too fast and the handle had come away in her hand. She had fixed it with a screwdriver before anyone could see.

That was the rule. Break it, fix it, say nothing.

She had been born this way. When she was six, she had bent her mother's wrench into a U without really meaning to, and spent the whole afternoon hiding it under the veranda. Only two people in the world had ever seen what she could do. One of them had disappeared when she was ten. The other had moved to the other side of the world.

Neither of them was here now.

Sora made her tea and carried it into the main room. The house was too quiet, so she switched on the television, mostly for the noise.

It was the morning news. A reporter stood in front of a tall fence topped with wire, somewhere in the south. Behind her, beyond the fence, the ground simply stopped. The hole was so wide that the camera could not fit the far side of it into the picture. Two years ago, there had been a city there. Now there was only the fence, the edge, and the dark.

The reporter said that repairs to the fence were finished. Then the picture changed to a hospital in Takayama. A delivery driver had awakened in the night. Emergency services had reached him within twenty minutes, and his trial period was expected to last three to five days. The public was reminded to report sudden fever, weakness or fainting to the local response office.

Then it was the weather.

Two years ago, a story like that would have been on every channel for a week. Now it came between the fence and the weather, and nobody in the country looked up from their breakfast.

Sora turned the volume down and looked at the pile of envelopes on the table.

She had been avoiding them for five days. There was no point avoiding them any longer.

She sat down and went through them one by one.

The electricity bill. The water bill. A letter from her school in the city about next year's fees. A notice from the landlord, polite but clear, about the rent at the end of the month. And the receipt from the funeral company, for an amount so large that she had to read it twice.

Sora put the receipt on top of the pile and sat back.

So. What were her options?

She could stay here. That was the first thing she had thought of, and the thing she wanted most. But the house was rented, and she was fifteen. No landlord would sign a new agreement with a middle-school graduate. Even if one did, she had nothing to pay him with.

Her mother's savings were gone. There had never been much in the first place. Her mother had worked two jobs for as long as Sora could remember, and every yen of it had gone to rent, food, and Sora's school fees in the city. There was no insurance. Sora had searched the whole house for a policy on the second night and found nothing.

So the funeral had been paid for with the other account.

Her mother had kept it in a separate bankbook, at the back of the drawer under the altar. For eight years, money had gone into it every single month, sent by a man who no longer lived with them. For eight years, her mother had not touched a yen of it.

Sora had emptied a large part of it in one afternoon.

'She'd be furious.'

Maybe. Or maybe she would have understood. There had been no other way to pay. Sora had gone over it again and again, and it always came out the same. But understanding a thing and being happy about it were not the same, and her mother had been a very proud woman.

It did not matter now, anyway. What was done was done.

What else was there?

She could quit school and find work. But no one would hire a fifteen-year-old for anything that paid rent. And her mother had worked herself into the ground so that Sora could study in the city. Throwing that away in the first week after the funeral felt like a second, smaller death.

She had no other relatives she could call. None who would take her in, at least.

She could ask the neighbours for help. They had already done so much. Old Mrs. Tanaka next door had cooked for her every evening since the funeral. Sora could not ask her to do it for the next three years.

One option after another, and each one fell apart as soon as she looked at it closely.

Until there was only one left.

Sora picked up her mother's phone from the table. It was an old model, the screen cracked in one corner. She scrolled through the contacts until she found the name she was looking for.

It was not saved as "husband", or "Masato", or even "Sora's father".

It just said: Kirishima.

She stared at it for a long time.

The last time she had spoken to him, she had been ten. It had been her birthday, and the call had lasted about a minute.

'Come on. It's just a phone call.'

She pressed the button before she could change her mind.

It rang. Once. Twice. Four times. Sora was already half sure no one would answer, and half relieved about it, when the ringing stopped.

"Kirishima."

His voice was deeper than she remembered. Calm and flat, like a man answering a work call in a busy office. From the sound of it, he might have been.

Sora's mouth had gone dry.

"...It's Sora."

There was a short silence on the line.

"Sora," he repeated. As if he were checking the name against a list.

"Mum died," she said. It came out more steadily than she expected. "Last week. She was sick for a while. The doctor said it was stress... and overwork. The funeral was on Friday."

She waited.

The silence on the other end lasted for three or four seconds.

"I see," her father said.

That was all. He did not say he was sorry. He did not ask how it had happened, or how she was, or why no one had told him sooner. Sora found herself listening for something in his voice, anything at all, and heard nothing but the faint hum of a large, quiet room.

"Where are you now?" he asked.

"At home. In Shirakawa-go."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

Another pause. Sora could almost hear him deciding.

"I'll send a car tomorrow morning," he said. "Pack what you need. You'll live here from now on."

It was not a question. It was not an offer, either. He said it the way people read out a schedule.

"...Okay," Sora said.

"The driver will call you when he arrives."

And then, before she could think of anything else to say, the line went dead.

Sora lowered the phone slowly.

The weather report was still playing on the television, silent now. Sunny tomorrow, with clouds in the afternoon.

He had not asked a single question about her mother.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a memory surfaced. Her mother, a few years ago, on the phone in the kitchen late at night, speaking in a low voice she had not thought Sora could hear. "He got married again, you know. Some company president's daughter." Then a short, tired laugh with nothing funny in it.

Sora had never met the woman. She did not even know her name.

Tomorrow, she would be living in her house.

'Wonderful. She's going to love me.'

Sora put the phone face down on the table, next to the funeral receipt, and finished her tea.

It had gone cold a long time ago.

Packing took less time than Sora expected.

Fifteen years in the same house, and almost everything she owned fitted into one suitcase and a school bag. Clothes. Textbooks. A phone charger. Her mother's photograph and memorial tablet from the altar, wrapped in a soft cloth. The small wooden box of letters and photographs she had kept since primary school.

She stood in the middle of her room for a while, looking for anything she had missed. There was nothing. The rest belonged to the house, and the house did not belong to them.

It had never really belonged to them. She had just never thought about it before.

Mrs. Tanaka had come over the night before, when Sora told her. The old woman had listened to the whole thing without saying a word, then taken Sora's hands in both of hers and held them for a long time. She had promised to take the family altar into her own house and look after it, and to visit the grave every month.

"Your mother would want you to go," she had said. "She worked so hard so you'd have more than this. Don't feel bad about taking it."

Sora had nodded. It had been easier than answering.

Now, in the grey light of the early morning, she went into the kitchen one last time.

The green cup was still on the shelf where she had put it. Sora took it down, wrapped it in a hand towel, and placed it carefully in the top of her suitcase. Then, after a moment, she picked up the bent tea tin with the faded cranes and put that in too.

'Stealing from the landlord already. Great start.'

She zipped the suitcase shut.

The Hoshino family grave stood on the hillside above the village, in a small cemetery tucked between the cedars.

It was a short walk, but a steep one. The path climbed between rice fields still brown from the winter, with old snow lying grey along the ditches, then wound up through the trees, where the air turned cool and smelled of moss and old stone. Sora had walked it every summer with her mother, carrying a bucket of water and a bunch of flowers to wash the grandparents' stone.

This time she carried the bucket alone.

The grave was a plain grey stone, older than she was, with the family name cut deep into its face. Below it, a newer line of characters had been added only a few days ago. Mrs. Tanaka's cousin was a stonemason in Takayama, and he had carved it the day after the funeral, without charging, because he had known her mother since school. The cuts were still sharp and pale. They had not had time to weather yet.

Hoshino Yukie.

Sora filled the ladle and poured water over the top of the stone, slowly, the way her mother had taught her. The water ran down the carved name and dripped from the edges. She wiped the stone clean with a cloth, replaced the dead flowers with a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums Mrs. Tanaka had bought for her in town, and lit a stick of incense.

Then she knelt on the wet gravel and pressed her hands together.

For a while, she said nothing. Below the hill, the village was waking up. A dog barked. Somewhere, someone was starting a car engine that did not want to start.

"I used the money," Sora said at last. "His money. I'm sorry. I know you didn't want it touched."

The incense smoke drifted sideways in the breeze.

"And I'm going to live with him. So... I'm sorry about that, too."

She stopped. There were other things she wanted to say, but none of them came out in the right shape. She had spent five nights trying to find them, lying awake in the dark, and she had not found them yet.

'Later, then.'

Sora bowed until her forehead almost touched the gravel.

"I'll come back," she said. "I promise. Every year, at least. More if I can."

She stayed there until the incense had burned halfway down. Then she picked up the empty bucket, and walked back down the hill without looking over her shoulder.

It was easier that way.

The car arrived at eight o'clock exactly.

Sora heard it before she saw it. It was very quiet, much quieter than the small trucks and old family cars that usually came along the village road. Then it turned the corner by the rice fields, and she saw why.

It was long and black and spotless, with dark tinted windows. It rolled slowly down the narrow road between the thatched farmhouses, looking completely out of place. A group of early tourists outside the souvenir shop stopped to stare at it. One of them took a picture.

'Subtle.'

The car stopped in front of the house. The driver got out. He was a neat, grey-haired man in a dark suit and white gloves, and he bowed to her as if she were someone important.

"Miss Hoshino Sora?"

"...Yes."

"Good morning. I have been sent by Mr. Kirishima to take you to Tokyo." He glanced at the suitcase and the school bag by the door. "Is this everything?"

"Yes."

If that surprised him, he did not show it. He lifted the suitcase into the boot as if it weighed nothing at all. It was the first time in years Sora had watched someone else carry her things. It felt strange.

Mrs. Tanaka had come out onto her veranda in her apron. She raised one hand. Sora bowed to her, deeply, and held the bow for a long moment.

Then she turned and looked at the house.

It was small and dark and old. The thatch on the north side needed repairing. The veranda sagged a little in the middle, where it always had. The shutter on her mother's room was still closed.

Sora looked at it for as long as she could bear to.

Then she got into the car.

The inside smelled of leather and something faintly sweet. The seat was so soft that she sank into it. The driver closed the door behind her with a quiet, solid click, and the sound of the village disappeared at once, as if someone had turned it off.

The car pulled away.

They drove slowly back up the village road, past the souvenir shop, past the rice fields, toward the bridge. Sora pressed her forehead against the cool window and watched Shirakawa-go slide past.

Then the road turned, and there was the river.

The Shō River ran wide and shallow below the bridge, glittering in the morning sun. Grey stones lined its banks. It looked exactly the way it did in the dream. The same stones. The same water. The same flat rock, near the far bank, where two children used to sit and skip stones until the sun went down.

Sora did not look away from it.

And on the other side of the bridge, standing alone at the end of an overgrown path, was the Amagiri house.

It had been empty for five years. The shutters were closed. Tall weeds had grown up around the veranda, and moss had crept across the roof. No one had rented it. No one had even tried. Everyone in the village agreed that it was a strange house, though no one could quite explain why.

Sora had stopped walking past it when she was eleven.

She looked at it now.

The house did not look back. It was only a house, empty and quiet, with its shutters closed against the morning.

'What did you expect?'

The car crossed the bridge. The road climbed into the trees, and the house was gone.

Then the valley was gone too.

Sora sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.

Behind her, the river kept running.