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company he worked for went bankrupt. I had never seen him read a novel or anything of the sort. The shelves in the study were evidence of that—apart from a handful of papers illuminating the human rights issues of children, they were mostly stuffed with books on finance or taxes, with a few on ancient Japanese history that covered things like the mysteries of the country of Yamatai and Queen Himiko, and acouple of journals on frontier-land travels.
    Of course, that didn’t mean it was impossible for him to have written it. Maybe he’d written it out of some unexpected interest but kept it hidden from the family out of shyness.
    I concentrated on things like that, trying to convince myself they were true. I swallowed, trying to tamp down a swell of anxiety.
    By the time I realized what I was doing, I had already started reading the second notebook.
    I watched the girl and I knew I was staring at her with an unnatural intensity. I called out silently from my heart—
Michiru, Michiru
—and of course they walked straight past, neither the girl nor her brother noticing.
    There was a grouping of vending machines ahead on the path that circled the park, so I wondered if they might be going there to get a drink. I still don’t know if that was the case, as they never made it that far.
    Instinct pulled me to my feet, and I began to follow them.
    How small and frail they all seemed to me, girls the age Michiru and I had been back then.
    Just as I began to follow them the girl stopped abruptly, deciding for some reason to put on the white hat that she had been carrying. As she did this a sudden gust of wind caught the hat as if it had been waiting to do so all along. The hat sailed into the air then fell into a gutter between the park and the road. The gutter had an iron grate covering it, reddish with rust, and it was just a stroke of bad luck that the hat had slipped underneath. The siblings cried out in dismay, as did a young man sitting on a bench nearby.
    “You idiot. Hey, it’s not my fault. Mom’s gonna be mad,” the boy said, stepping over the low fence that bordered the park to peek into the gutter. Despite his spiteful tone, it looked like he wanted to get the hat back for her.
    The young man appeared preoccupied with watching them, so I sat down on an empty bench next to him.
    “Can you reach it?” The girl was nearly in tears.
    “Eww, gross. It’s full of junk. Ah! I see it, it’s caught down there.”
    The boy stuck a hand through the grate and tried rummaging around. He grit his teeth and pushed his arm through to the shoulder, but the hat was still out of reach.
    The young man who had been watching them got to his feet.
    “Hey kid, lemme take a look for you.” He moved the boy aside and peered down but immediately said, “Oh, it looks too far to reach, even for an adult.”
    When he said this, the girl standing by the gutter began to sob aloud. The man, at a complete loss, dragged his fingers through his unkempt hair that hung nearly to his shoulders. After considering for a while he crouched down and gripped the edge of the iron grate, then he tensed, grunting as he lifted it up a good four inches. He lowered it back down and exhaled noisily.
    Though still hazy and shapeless, an idea of what could happen floated into my mind. My interest had shifted from the girl that looked like Michiru; now I was fascinated with the boy. The gaping maw of the dark well in my chest was stretched open, desperate for him.
    “All right, I’ll pull up the grate, you grab the hat as fast as you can, okay? Go round that way—okay, get ready …”
    The man stepped into the gutter and strained, using both hands to pull up one side of the grate while the boy, already waitingon his stomach, lowered his torso through the gap.
    “Can you go a little higher, mister? Just a little … uff … a little further.”
    I could see the man’s back from where I was. His muscles were bunched tight, trembling slightly around his