Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai

Author:Clara Kumagai
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781803288062
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2025-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

I couldn’t stop crying. My breath hitched and I wasn’t able to wipe away my tears fast enough, so I turned my face to the pillow and let it soak up my useless sorrow.

‘Adam-san?’

Junko was standing in the doorway.

‘Sorry.’ I didn’t even try to speak Japanese. ‘Did I wake you?’

She shook her head. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said in Japanese.

Fine then. I answered in Japanese. ‘I read a sad book.’

She didn’t look like she believed me. She left and I lay down again, hoping that was the end of it. But she returned a minute later with what resembled a big white Band-Aid and laid it gently on my damp forehead. She smoothed it, carefully brushing my hair back, and a coolness spread across my skin. I wanted to tell her I was too old for that but didn’t know how.

‘Sato gokoro.’ She gave me a small sympathetic smile.

‘Thank you.’ My voice was hoarse.

She gazed at me for a beat longer, then left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

I reached for my phone and looked up sato gokoro. Homesickness. Written with two kanji: the first meaning village, or a parent’s home; the second kanji meaning heart.

I awoke abruptly in the grey of what could be twilight or dawn. I orientated myself: this bed, this room, this country.

The woman was back. She was by the window. The diary was open on my chest. Above my heart.

I sat up slowly and slowly she looked at me.

‘What do you want?’ I whispered.

Her lips parted and closed. Her eyes intent, probing.

I held out the diary, opened on the last page I had read. She drifted closer. We both looked down and my eyes filled and overflowed onto the yellowed pages.

Writing appeared, stroke by stroke, drawn in my tears as though they were ink.

I cannot rest

where did the story go?

The words dried and disappeared. I gazed up at her and our tears were like dark mirrors.

‘You want me to find it?’ I asked.

A noise, low and mournful. A ship’s horn. The woman was stopped by the sound, and suddenly she was by the window again, staring out. The horn sounded once more and it was as if it tore her apart into nothingness, the air rent by her vanishing scream.

I stayed up until it was time for breakfast, when I slunk down, mortified.

Junko was putting dishes on the table.

‘Thank you for last night,’ I mumbled to her. ‘I’m embarrassed.’

‘Not at all,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s normal.’’

I was interested in how many normal seventeen-year-old guys she knew.

We ate in awkward silence. This time she let me wash the dishes and then I declared I was going for a walk.

Junko said, ‘Air would be good for you.’

It would, no matter how molten it was.

‘Ittekimasu!’ I remembered to say, before I left.

‘Itterasshai!’ Junko replied.

When I was a safe distance from the house, I video-called Sylvia.

‘Adam!’

‘Syl… am I glad to hear your English-speaking voice.’

‘So you still can’t understand the bath?’

‘Some friendships take longer than others!’

She giggled. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m just walking around – I haven’t done any exploring on my own.

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