|
~~*~~
I have thought many times how to begin this story, and since nothing helps a tale more than time and familiarity, which ages and ripens the words like sweet fruit, I think it’s best to begin in the way which all good tales ought to.
Once upon a time, there was a park. It was a beautiful park, albeit a small one, and very quiet at that. Outside the trees, the world moved and roared with traffic, business, music; things that every world has. But the park was like a haven, time seemed to flow differently there, for those who cared to stop and see it that way. It was calmer, like a lost piece of Eden.
A boy lived by that park, so close that it was more like a part of his backyard than a public place. From the boy’s window, he could see the glassy surface of the koi pond, teeming with orange and white koi fish under the arc of the bridge. The wood was painted light green, peeled and chipped in places with age and moisture, because the bridge curved so low that it appeared to be almost floating on the water. If the koi had swum beneath it, their dorsal fins would have brushed the bottom of the arch. All this the boy could see from his window, framed by the branches of an old cherry tree like a whimsical moving painting.
Spring peppered the surface of the pond with pink sakura petals that the koi would nibble at, as if they looked pretty enough to eat, sending little ripples across the water between them and blurring their orange and white forms into colored shadows beneath the water. Fall brought decorations of gently spinning maple leaves, turned dark red and orange by the cold. They whirled so calmly on the water that one could almost forget that the pond was like liquid ice, instead of a glass stage set with tiny frilled dancers. Each change felt like a special performance put on just for him to see, watching from high up in his window like a private opera-box.
So naturally, one day, when a strange girl was standing on the bridge, he was upset that the beautiful view would be ruined somehow. He didn’t want to share his special place with some stranger who probably wouldn’t appreciate it’s beauty, and watched her untrustingly from his window through the trees, as if the weight of his scathing eyes would drive her off. He waited, expecting the girl to spit or throw rocks in the water, or throw trash on the ground, or do anything to sully the wonderful park just because she thought no one was watching. But she never did. To the boy’s surprise, she pulled a bag of breadcrumbs from a pocket hidden in the folds of her long skirt, and sprinkled a handful of them over the railing of the bridge. The orange and white koi started to gather beneath the floating crumbs, timidly nosing at them until one brave fish made a crumb disappear beneath the water with a plop and a ripple.
She smiled and leaned on the peeled railing as the koi began to eat, reaching into her bag for more crumbs when the surface of the water was cleaned, and sprinkling them out over the hungry koi. She talked to the fish as they ate, like a person coming to confide in an old friend. Even when the breadcrumbs ran out, she spoke to them, folding the bag neatly and tucking it back into her skirt pocket. The koi that had gathered around the side of the old green bridge to eat, hovered with their noses touching the surface of the pond, as still as the water itself. To the boy watching from his window, it seemed the strange girl had put them under a spell with the soft murmured words of her voice.
Suddenly the girl stopped speaking, and glanced at the watch on her left wrist. She sighed a little bit, then smiled down at the small audience of koi and murmured her goodbye. The boy watched her go from his window, as she crossed back to the farthest side of the green bridge and followed the path, until the branches of the cherry tree blotted her out and she was gone.
A ripple went through the pond and time seemed to catch up with him as both the fish and the boy stirred awake from the trance the girl’s gentle voice had put them under. The boy stared dazedly down at the empty bridge, watching the fish drift away to do the things that fish do, and found himself wondering if the girl might come back.
And the girl did return. Every day, in fact. Each time, she greeted her koi friends with a kind smile and produced the bag from her pocket, refilled with breadcrumbs as if by magic. The bright koi gathered around the bridge to eat, darting around until the last of the breadcrumbs vanished below the surface, then fell still, with all their noses pointing toward the enchantress leaning on the chipped green railing, lulling them with her soft voice. The boy would listen too, hypnotized by the calm tone of her inaudible words, watching the way the sunlight played off the pond teeming with fish and reflected waveringly across her face and hair. He watched the way her expression changed slightly as she spoke to the koi, the way her smile never deserted her face entirely, only blended into the sparkle of her eyes, the laughing arch of eyebrows, or gently lowered lashes. The boy became so accustomed to the sound of her voice, that when she had gone, the tranquility of the park that he had treasured before seemed empty and loud, like a deafening silence. He looked forward to the girl’s visits to the park so much that he wondered if he became just like one of the koi fish when she finally came, sitting still as a stone on his windowsill, with his mouth slack as he watched and listened intently to the sound of her voice.
It went like this for days, then weeks, then months, and finally a whole year long. She had come even in the winter, when the surface of the pond was drifting with thin brittle sheets of ice, and the few koi not sleeping at the very bottom of the pond moved sluggishly and barely ate anything at all in the cold. The boy sat contentedly at his window, listening to the girl speak puffs of steam with the same infinitely gentle voice, while they both shivered in the icy wind that blew across the water and through the open window.
One day, when the weather was warm again and the tree was dressed in its coat of delicate pink blossoms, something happened. Something that changed everything as surely as spring follows winter.
The girl came and stood on the peeling old bridge, leaning on the railing as she sprinkled breadcrumbs, just like all the days before. Even her serene voice as she murmured to the nibbling koi was the same; and then folded the old magic bag, now empty of crumbs, along it’s deep creases and tucked it away in her pocket without change. It was then, for absolutely no reason other than to watch the petals blowing in the wind, that she looked up and saw the boy at his window, staring intently at her as his chin rested on his hand. She started, the words dying on her lips, and her expression of complete surprise on her face made the boy jump up, opening his mouth as if to explain himself. But the girl didn’t wait; her hurried footfalls jolted the koi abruptly out of their reverie as the girl fled the light green bridge with it’s chipped paint and disappeared down the worn path.
The boy spent the rest of the day stricken with worry at the thought that the girl might never come back. And at night, he lay awake for hours on end, staring blearily at the window, as if it could somehow make her appear outside it. When the sun rose, sending shafts of light over the tranquil koi pond, the boy was already there. He didn’t leave the window once, for anything, all day long, only sat there at the sill, overcome with worry that he would never see her again. He waited anxiously until the time when the girl usually came to the park, praying, begging that she would still come, and could hardly believe it when he saw her walking down the path to the bridge again. He was so relieved to see her that he couldn’t keep the smile from his face.
The girl stepped onto the old green bridge cautiously, with slow, deliberate steps, and she kept glancing up at the branches of the sakura tree. The boy didn’t want to frighten her again, and he let her see him sitting in the window, while he pretended to be looking in a different direction. He crossed his fingers and hoped that she wouldn’t run away again.
The girl spotted the gap in the pink blossoms that framed the boy’s window, and caught a glimpse of him as he seemed to be looking at something else. She looked away quickly, remembering the day before, and biting her lower lip to hide a smile. The girl pulled the bag of breadcrumbs from her pocket, and began sprinkling them on the water for the hungry fish, while she thought about how surprised she had been to find someone watching her. She had never been so embarrassed, or so shocked before. But, then again, no one had ever looked at her that way before.
The boy’s eyes had been so intent on her that they had almost penetrated right through her; and she could still recall the way it had sent shivers through her spine when she had seen him. And his face had been so peaceful, now that she thought about it. There seemed to have been a small smile playing about his lips as he was leaning on his windowsill, and it made her wonder just what it was that had put such a smile on the boy’s stoic face.
The girl glanced quickly up at the window again, and bit back another smile, but this time, she couldn’t look away, because he was there in his window looking right back at her.
The delicate pink blossoms framed the boy’s window like lace, and when the wind blew, a light flurry of the petals drifted between them. He was leaning slightly out of the window, so that the breeze rustled his hair, and the sunlight made it shine. She watched him as a smile stretched out across his face. It began at one corner of the boy’s mouth, and pulled up into a one-sided smirk, then, his whole face seemed to soften, and she saw the smile spread wider, until he was beaming and the warmth of it was deep in the boy’s eyes.
The girl felt her own smile break free at the sight of his, and she looked down shyly, tossing another handful of crumbs to the orange and white koi. Every now and then, she would glance up at the boy in his window, seemingly floating in the sakura blossoms, and he would still be there, leaning his chin on his hand as he watched her. The smile still lingered on his face, so that if his eyes had closed, he would have looked like he was having a peaceful dream. And not once did the boy look away from her; he looked until she cast her eyes demurely back to the fish in the pond, and he would still be looking when she glanced up again.
The girl couldn’t bring herself to talk to the koi fish this time; she was too afraid the boy in his window would hear what she was saying to them. The day after was the same, and the day after that, and so on. The boy missed hearing the soft murmur of her voice as she fed the koi, so much that he hid just beyond the windowsill where she couldn’t see, in hopes that she would speak again.
He waited until he heard her footsteps on the worn old bridge, and ducked out of sight at the first glimpse of her through the branches of the cherry tree. She must be looking at his window now, he thought, and seeing it empty, she would finally talk to the koi again.
But a long time went by, and he heard nothing. Could she see him? No, he was completely blocked from view, and he was sure he had seen her on the bridge before he had ducked out of sight. So why didn’t she speak? He peered cautiously around the window frame, down at the koi pond and it’s old green bridge.
The girl was nowhere to be seen.
He strained his eyes, searching for some clue that she had been there, like she always had, and his eyes locked onto something brown and crinkled sitting on the light green boards.
The boy jumped to his feet, and all but ran from his house. He hurried down the sidewalk, along the tall iron fence that protected his park, and through the main gate. Dashing along the paths, he saw the peeling paint and low arch of the koi pond’s bridge ahead of him.
The boy was out of breath as he went to the center of the bridge’s arch, and knelt down to pick up the girl’s crumpled bag of breadcrumbs, once again filled with food for her precious koi to eat. The wrinkled old paper crackled when he touched it, and he saw the girl’s message written lightly in pencil on the bag. Her writing was neat and small, and painfully brief:
My family is moving to America.
I promise I will come back someday, so please feed the koi.
I will miss you.
~ Kana
Kana. So that was her name. It seemed obvious to him now that he knew her name, almost like he had known it all along. But, moving to America? The boy couldn’t believe it. It was so sudden.
He took two numb steps toward the chipped green railing, and leaned heavily over it, staring into the water. The koi stared back at him through the ripples their noses made on the surface. The boy blinked, only just noticing them, than reached into the crinkly old bag and sprinkled a handful of coarse breadcrumbs over the water. As they disappeared one by one under the surface with a little plip, the boy wondered if there were any koi in America, if she would miss them too.
Please feed the koi, she had written. He sprinkled another handful; of course he would feed them. He would watch over her fish even if the world came to an end. But why did she have to go away? America was just so far; what if she forgot about all of this and never came back?
I promise I will come back someday, she had written. He emptied the last crumbs from the bag and stared at her small, neat writing on the worn brown paper. The wind rustled the bag as he stared, reading her words over and over, trying to make himself believe them.
Finally he folded the bag neatly along its old creases, and left the peeling green bridge. The boy walked back along the path and out the main gate, lost in thought about ‘someday’. When was that supposed to be? Months, or even years from now? How old would he be before he saw her again, if she ever did come back, he thought. The boy scuffed his foot on the sidewalk, feeling the old paper bag folded in his hand, and wondered how long he would have to wait for her.
Just then, fate did something that those in love would call cruel, and those in pain would call merciful. I still don’t know which of them to believe. But with the utmost twisted irony, a cat crossed the road. Just as a car came speeding down the street. The cat froze. The car swerved off the road and onto the sidewalk in the time it takes to blink. And just like that, the boy was dead.
Before the wail of sirens reached the accident, before anyone could notice, the wind snagged the folded old paper bag from the boy’s limp hand, and gusted it up over the tall park fence. It flew and tumbled over the cherry trees, their pretty blossoms long since gone, and fluttered through a gap in the railing of the peeling green bridge. It touched down on the surface with a plish and a ripple, startling the koi that still lingered by the bridge’s arch. They nibbled at Kana’s message and darted around as the water began to soak it through, ripping the wet, worn paper in their curiosity. By the time the sirens were heard, the old magic breadcrumb bag was nothing but a few pieces of soggy brown paper drifting on the calm surface of the koi pond.
Now, this is not the end of the story. There is still more to tell, more that makes it worthy of the infamous ‘once upon a time’ beginning.
You see, many years later, but not too many years later, the girl Kana came back, exactly like she had promised. She went straight to the koi pond, with a bag of breadcrumbs, exactly like she used to. The bridge’s low, flat arc had lost almost all of its light green paint over the years, and only a few flecks remained stuck to the old dark wood here and there. The grain of the wood had risen out in waves, and Kana ran her hand fondly over the raised texture of the old railing. She opened the bag of breadcrumbs as she looked down at the water, and smiled at the familiar sight of the fish. The orange and white shadows of the koi gathered around the bridge, their noses making ripples on the surface of the water. Kana sprinkled a big handful of crumbs over them and watched them eat, listening to the little plops as they sucked the crumbs under and remembering.
Kana noticed a boy leaning over the railing next to her in the water’s reflection. She looked up quickly, a bit startled, but no one was there. It had been the boy from the window in the cherry trees. She looked back at the water; his reflection was gone. Kana glanced immediately up at the cherry trees, which were just starting to turn colors for autumn, and saw the boy’s window. It had always been open before, even when it was winter-cold, but now it was closed and empty. The boy wasn’t there either.
Kana’s gaze drifted sadly back to the water, and she sprinkled another handful of crumbs for the bright-colored koi. It surprised her how much she missed the boy. She didn’t even know his name. His family probably moved out of that house a long time ago, she thought.
When the last of the breadcrumbs were gone, Kana said goodbye to the fish and left the park. She passed the boy’s house, and asked one of the neighbors who was outside sweeping her front walkway about the boy who used to live there.
The woman told Kana how the boy had suddenly been hit by a car and killed as he was coming home from the park some years ago. The boy’s parents had never moved out, but they were thinking of selling the house. Why did the young lady ask? Had she known Kojiro?
Kana smiled sadly at the woman, despite the shocking news.
Yes. She was… a friend of his.
A year later, Kana bought the house next to the park that the boy had lived in. Every day she looks out from his window, and sees him watching her from the old wooden bridge, with the same tender smile from so long ago. And when she feeds the koi, he is there, standing beside her as a reflection on the water. She knows he is there, she can feel him watching over her. She knows that he waits patiently, protecting the koi just like she asked him to when she was a young girl moving to America, and waiting for the time to come when she will join him permanently on the old wooden bridge over the koi pond.
~* The End *~
 Mitsukeru Furidomu · Mon Jul 30, 2007 @ 07:25pm · 3 Comments |
