The Blue Period
A definite change started to take place when my lifespan went below fifty days.
Of course, I had no right to complain. I was the one who made them feel unpleasant in the first place.
One day, at a bar, I got involved with three men. They were loud, sharp-eyed, always taking opportunities to make themselves look tough, and from their numbers and stature I knew I needed to be careful about offending them.
Maybe at one point I would have tried to stand up for myself and say something back, but I just couldn’t devote energy to that anymore, so I waited it out until they got bored.
But they didn’t get bored - upon realizing I wasn’t saying anything back, they took advantage of it to up the attitude even further.
“This is problematic,” Miyagi said with a concerned look.
Just as I was worrying about what to do, I heard a voice from behind say “Huh? Is that you, Mr. Kusunoki?”
“You’re with Ms. Miyagi again today?”
I turned to look. I did indeed know this man.
I seemed to remember his name was Shinbashi.
Shinbashi walked right up to me, turned to one of the guys bothering me, and said “I’m very sorry, but could you give up this seat?”
Miyagi’s face was frozen in shock, but Shinbashi nodded as if she’d made some kind of reply. “Yes, that’s right. I’m honored you remember. We’ve passed by in the apartment many times.”
Maybe this man is just “pretending” he can see Miyagi, I thought.
The men pestering me seemingly gave up with Shinbashi’s appearance and prepared to leave. Once the three were gone, Shinbashi sighed with relief and threw away his polite smile for his usual sullen look.
"I know. You were just helping, huh?”, I said. “Thanks, I’m grateful.”
“Then what is it?”
“You may not admit this, but… at least personally, this is what I think. I see what you’re doing as sort of a performance, attempting to fool as many people as you can into believing this "Miyagi” really exists. You’re attempting to prove through perfect pantomime that people’s common sense can be shaken. …And that attempt has succeeded on me somewhat.“
"You mean you feel Miyagi’s existence to an extent?”
“Miyagi’s right in front of you now. Why do you think that is?”
“She wants a handshake,” I said. “Hold out your right hand, will you?”
He did so, his face half-doubting, half-believing. Miyagi looked at the hand gladly and grabbed it with both of hers.
“Yep. You think you’re moving it yourself, but actually, Miyagi’s shaking it. Seems pretty happy about it.”
“Would you tell Mr. Shinbashi "thank you very much”?“, Miyagi requested.
"I somehow felt she might,” Shinbashi said with wonder. “Don’t mention it.”
With me as an intermediary, Miyagi and Shinbashi exchanged a few more words.
Shinbashi was right.
It was hard to believe, but after that event, people around us started to accept Miyagi’s existence.
Miyagi’s existence didn’t quite reach the level of “supposedly exists,” but still, it was definitely a big change.
While we frequently made appearances as the town’s places of amusement, the high school culture festival, and other local festivals, I became a little bit famous.
“I have some alcohol left at my apartment, and I have to drink it all before I go home. …Mr. Kusunoki, Ms. Miyagi, would you drink it with me?”
We went into the neighboring room and found three of his friends already drinking. One man, two women.
She couldn’t sense anything through touch, but maybe Miyagi’s presence wasn’t completely gone. Miyagi softly held Suzumi’s hand.
A quick-thinking man named Asakura had a few questions for me about Miyagi, trying to catch me on an inconsistency.
“I like that kind of girl,” Asakura said. “It’s probably a good thing I can’t see Ms. Miyagi, or else I’d soon fall for her.”
“Don’t go saying things like that,” Miyagi said, hitting me with a cushion.
Riko, a short girl with a neat face who was the most drunk, looked up at me while lying on the floor.
“I wanna see too,” Suzumi agreed. Shinbashi and Asakura gave me expectant glances.
“Miyagi,” I called.
I kissed Miyagi on her slightly-reddened face. The drunks gave a cheer.
That summer, I was the best clown in town. For better or worse.
The doorbell rang, and I heard Shinbashi’s voice. When I opened the door, he threw something at me. I caught it in my palm and looked - they were car keys.
“I’m going home,” Shinbashi said. “So I won’t need it for a while. You can borrow it if you want. How about going to the beach or mountains with Ms. Miyagi?”
“You know, I just can’t see you as a liar. I really can’t believe that Ms. Miyagi is just a fabrication of some pantomime. …Maybe by some chance there really is a world that only you can see. Maybe the world as the rest of us see it is only a small part of what’s really there, only the things that we’re allowed to see.”
After seeing him get on the bus and leave, I looked up at the sky.
The tsukutsuku-boushi were crying all at once, bringing an end to summer.
At night, I slept in the bed with Miyagi. The border between the sides had at some point vanished.
I picked it up, turned on the light by the sink, and slowly opened to the first page.
There was much more drawn in there than I’d expected.
The waiting room at the train station. The restaurant where I met Naruse. The elementary school where the time capsule was buried. My and Himeno’s secret base. The room flooded with a thousand paper cranes. The old library. The stands at the summer festival. The riverfront we walked down the day before I met Himeno. The viewing platform. The community center we stayed at. The Cub. The candy store. A vending machine. A public phone. Starry Lake. The old bookstore. The swan boat. The Ferris wheel.
And me sleeping.
I turned to a new page and started drawing Miyagi sleeping in return.
Art, which I’d thought was only frustrating.
When I looked at my completed drawing, I was filled with a surprising sense of satisfaction. But I also had a tiny feeling that something was amiss.
I could have ignored it, closed the sketchbook, put it beside the bed near Miyagi, and been able to sleep happily awaiting her reaction in the morning.
But I was sure of something.
I reached for it like a letter floating in a dark, stormy sea, my hand slipping as I tried to grab it.
After a few dozen minutes, as I pulled my hand back in defeat, it landed right in my palm.
I continued for the entire night.
It was a famous local fireworks display, and it was a bigger affair than I expected, with many more carts. There were enough visitors as to make me wonder how the town had room for all these people.
When children saw me walking and holding hangs with Miyagi, they laughed “It’s Mr. Kusunoki!”
“Great, isn’t she? Well you can’t have her,” I said, holding Miyagi’s shoulder, and they guffawed.
That made me happy. Even if they didn’t believe it, everyone enjoyed my “Miyagi’s right there!” nonsense.
Orange light filled the sky, the crowd cheered, and the delayed sound shook the air.
It had been a long time since I’d seen fireworks up close. Compared to my expectations, they were much bigger, much more colorful, and disappeared much quicker.
Suddenly, I wanted to sneak a look at her face, and once I saw her in the moment the sky was lit up, it seemed she was thinking the same, and our eyes met.
“We’re a good match,” I laughed. “That’s happened before. In the bed.”
“Incidentally, that may not be true.”
Maybe my timing could have been better.
“That’s not the problem.”
I lifted myself up and looked down at Miyagi with my hands on the ground.
“When I was in elementary school, there was this guy I hated. He was actually really smart, but he hid it and acted like a fool to get people to like him. …But recently, I’ve come to understand. I couldn’t help being envious of him. I think I wanted to do what he was doing from the start. And thanks to you, Miyagi, I made it happen. I succeeded at making friends with the world.”
“Thanks for everything, I suppose,” I said. “I really don’t know what to say.”
There were seconds of pause.
“Okay. Then I’ll be honest. Miyagi, when I die, forget about me completely. That’s my meager wish.”
She picked up on what I was going to do tomorrow.
“…Um, Mr. Kusunoki. I’m sure you wouldn’t, but please don’t do anything stupid. I’m begging you.”
I shook my head.
“But you never should’ve showed up for me either, Miyagi. So then -”
Without leaving me time to respond, Miyagi pushed me to the ground.
It was the first time I’d heard her speak through tears.
“I’m begging you, stay with me for at least this last month. I can put up with everything else. The fact that you’ll die soon, the fact I can’t see you on my days off, the fact that others can’t see us holding hands, the fact that I’ll have to live alone thirty years more, all of it. So at least for now - at least while you’re with me, don’t throw yourself away. I’m begging you.”
I stroked Miyagi’s head as she wailed.
Her tears didn’t stop to the very end.
We hugged again at the front door, and she parted from me with hints of regret, giving me a lonely smile.
With that, she bowed her head and turned away.
The next morning, I headed to the old building with my replacement observer.
In truth, I was going to sell absolutely all of it. But they wouldn’t let you sell those final three days.
The observer looked at the results and was shocked.
“Yep,” I said.
The thirty-some woman at the counter who audited me looked bewildered.
"Listen carefully. If you leave here without doing this, you’ll have thirty-three days left to fervently paint. In that time, your observer will always be there, giving you courage. She absolutely won’t blame you for your choice. And after death, your name will survive in the history of art forever. You should know all that yourself, shouldn’t you? …Just what about that dissatisfies you? I can’t understand.”
“Just like money is pointless once I die, so is fame.”
“Even if I am eternal in a world without me, that’s nothing to be glad about,” I said.
That’s what my paintings were called, and while they caused a lot of dispute, they ultimately sold for very high prices.
But by selling my lifespan, and most importantly by having Miyagi there, the huge amount of time I originally wasn’t given was shortened to the extreme. Thanks to that, my talent could bloom before my lifespan ended.
I used to be very proficient at art.
At galleries, I could look at a painting and plainly understand, in some place very distant from language, why “something that shouldn’t have been painted so” was “something that had to be painted so.”
Though that would have been considerable success in the eyes of most, to keep my promise with Himeno, I had to be outrageously special. I needed revolution. So I wouldn’t allow myself to just keep drawing on momentum.
That was what I decided.
Maybe that decision in itself wasn’t mistaken. But in the summer when I was 19, I still hadn’t solidified my view of things, so out of haste, I again picked up the brush.
As a result, I lost my ability to draw. I couldn’t even draw a proper apple. As soon as I thought to draw something, I was filled with outrageous confusion. Like I was going to scream.
At some point, I became too desperate to have my art approved of by everyone. I think that was the primary cause of my confusion.
Universality isn’t what’s going to get people’s favor. You get that when you go deep into the well of yourself, toil to bring something back, and produce something that’s wholly individual at a glance.
To notice that required me to be rid of all concerns, and just for pure enjoyment, draw for myself.
The world I wanted to live in, memories that I’d never had, a somewhere I’d never been, a someday that could have been past or future.
Maybe I’d been awaiting that moment. Though it was only just before my death, my talent was finally perfected.
According to the woman who did my evaluation, the paintings I was to create in my last thirty days were “paintings that even de Chirico would consider too sentimental.”
With just thirty days, I came just short of fully repaying Miyagi’s debt. Still, she would be free in three more years of work.
“Thirty days more valuable than thirty years, huh?”, the observer laughed as we parted.
Her prediction was half-wrong.
But her prediction was half-right.