lighting her incense stick, my sister suddenly crouched down, her head bowed.
“Kise, is something wrong?”
“Seems she got a bit carsick on the way.”
“Oh dear. That mountain road again.”
The aunts laughed. One or two of my cousins also joined in, covering their mouths with their hands as they shook with laughter. I had more than ten cousins just on my dad’s side. I couldn’t remember all their faces. Nobody would notice if an alien slipped in among them.
“Kise, are you okay?” Mom asked as my sister suddenly brought her hand to cover her mouth.
“Dear, dear. You’ll feel better once you’ve thrown up,” an aunt said.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said, bowing her head in apology, and headed for the toilet hugging my sister close.
“Is that mountain road really all that bad?” asked another aunt. “I mean, how feeble can you get? She could always just walk up if she doesn’t like riding in the car.”
I felt sorry for my sister. She doesn’t have Piyyut like I do. “Don’t you think you should go too?” I asked Dad.
“No, she’ll be all right,” he said, but when he heard her crying he hurried off to help.
I felt better now that she had both Mom and Dad with her.
The phrase “close-knit family,” which I’d come across in a school library book and had stuck in my mind, always came back to me whenever I saw my parents and sister together. If I wasn’t here, the three of them would make a perfect unit. So I wanted them to spend time together as a close-knit family without me now and then.
Piyyut had taught me the magical power of invisibility. I didn’t actually become invisible. I just held my breath and could make myself go unnoticed. When I did this, they became a cozy family of three, all snuggled up together. I sometimes made use of the power for their sake.
“You really like Granny’s house, don’t you Natsuki?” Mom often said to me. “Kise’s like me. She likes the seaside better than the mountains.”
Mom didn’t like Granny much and wasn’t at all pleased by how excited I always got about going to Akishina. My sister always complained about coming to Granny’s and clung to Mom at home. So of course she was Mom’s favorite.
I picked up my things and headed for the stairs. I felt nervous at the thought that Yuu was up there.
“Are you okay on your own, Natsuki?”
“Sure,” I said, hoisting my backpack onto my back as I went up.
The stairs in Granny’s house were much steeper than the ones in our house in Chiba. They were practically a ladder, and you had to use your hands to climb them. I always felt like a cat when I went up them.
“Take care!” I heard someone say, an aunt or maybe a cousin. “I will!” I answered without turning around.
Upstairs there was a strong smell of tatami and dust. I went through to the far room and put down my things.
Uncle Teruyoshi told me that long ago this used to be the room where they kept silkworms. Apparently there used to be lots of bamboo baskets packed with eggs, which hatched into larvae that grew rapidly and spread throughout the second floor. By the time they spun their cocoons the whole house was full of them.
I’d seen pictures of silkworms in school library books. As an adult, the worm transformed into a big, white moth, much prettier than any butterfly I’d seen. I’d heard that silk thread was harvested from the worms, but I’d never gotten around to asking how they got the thread and what happened to the silkworms afterward. How magical it must have been to have all those pure-white wings fluttering around the house! It was like something out of a fairy tale, and I loved this room where the baby silkworms had been laid out in rows.
As I slid open the door to leave, I heard the floor creak faintly.
Someone else was up here.
I moved toward the room that everyone called the attic, although it was still on the same level as the rest of the second floor, and slid open the door into the large, pitch-black space. This is where Granny stored all the old toys Dad and my uncles and aunts once played with, along with a large number of books that someone or other had collected. We children always came here to look for treasure.
“Yuu?” I called into the darkness.
Our feet got really dirty when we went into the attic, so we were always being told to make sure to wear the sandals we use to go out onto the veranda, but I was too impatient to fetch them. I just took off my socks before stepping into the darkness.
“Yuu, are you there?”
I headed for a small point of light emanating from a tiny lamp, the only light in the dark room even at midday. There was a rustling, and I almost screamed.
“Who’s that?” came a small voice.
“Yuu! It’s Natsuki!”
A small white figure appeared indistinctly from the depths.
“Natsuki! Finally!” Yuu was standing there in the faint glow.
I ran over to him. “Yuu! I missed you!”
“Shhh!” he said, hastily putting a hand over my mouth. “We’ll be in trouble if Granny or Yota hear us.”
“Yeah, true. Our love’s still a secret, isn’t it?”
Yuu looked at me shyly. He hadn’t changed at all in the past year. Maybe it was because he was an alien that he didn’t grow. But even in the dark, I could tell it was him from his light brown eyes and thin neck.
“At last we’re together again!”
“It’s been a whole year, hasn’t it, Natsuki. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you too. Uncle Teruyoshi told me you’d be coming today, so I got up early to wait for you. But he said you’d be late.”
“Is that why you’re up here playing on your own?”
“Yeah. I got bored.”
Yuu hadn’t just stopped growing, I had the feeling that he’d even shrunk. Cousin Yota had filled out since last year, but Yuu’s neck and wrists looked like they’d gotten even skinnier. Maybe it was just because I’d grown, but he looked so fragile that I couldn’t help feeling worried.
I grabbed the edges of his white T-shirt and felt the faint warmth of his body as my fingertips brushed his skin. Maybe it was because he was an alien that his body temperature was low. His hands felt cool as they connected with mine.
“Yuu, are you going to be here for the whole of Obon this year?” I asked, gripping his hands as hard as I could.
Yuu nodded. “Yeah, I will. Mitsuko took a long vacation this year, so she said we could stay.”
“Great!”
