“How’s work going?” I ask. I know he’s older than me—ten years older, in fact—but somehow I want to sound like we’re equals. Plus, he doesn’t look his age—nothing like it. I wonder how old he does look, and then I realize he doesn’t look any age in particular. There’s really no way to tell.
By “work” I mean the jobs he gets using his psychic powers to contact dead people. Sayaka had hired him because she really wanted to talk to her boys.
But when I bring up his “work,” he frowns.
He hadn’t had any luck contacting the little boys, he explains. They were hardly old enough to talk when they died, so when he tried calling them from this side, they probably didn’t understand—or maybe they were too little to even go to the place where other dead people go. He was still looking for a way to reach them.
He didn’t mention it, but I knew he might also be having a cash-flow problem. He had pretty much given up his fortune-telling business for the time being while he was working for Mrs. Yoshiba, and he wouldn’t be paid until he got results. It occurred to me that Sano’s family would probably have been willing to pay him for finding Sano’s body, but I decided not to mention it.
Then, out of the blue—and I’m not sure why—I asked if he had a girlfriend, and he got this creepy grin on his face. “No,” he said, “but I’m open to suggestions.” So I cut things off right there.
Am I ever going to find the right boyfriend? A truly fine boyfriend?
I remember those cliffs. The second time around, after I got away from the Round-and-Round and was swimming upstream in the River Styx with all those other souls, ready to go over to the other side. But then up there, written in solid rock on the world-of-the-living-side cliff, was a message for me.
I decided to ignore it and go on, but then I heard this really loud voice.
“Hey! Aiko!”
And I looked up and there was that weird, age-free Tansetsu Sakurazuki, waving to me from the top of the cliff. Grinning for all he was worth. As though he was really, really happy to see me. And it was the kindness in that smile that brought me back to this side. Or sometimes I think about the first time I was there, between life and death, the way he reached out and grabbed my collar—the look on his face, the feel of his hand. In fact, I think about it a lot. All the time, in fact.
He had this really firm grip, but there was something reassuring about it at the same time. And his face had a lot of “character”—a little weird, but in a nice way.
Shit, shit, shit!
Now part of me was even thinking it might be nice to do it with this totally weird guy. But the thing is—I like them cute. Or at least somewhat normal looking…like Yoji. Yoji!
And I’ve given that up, haven’t I? Never again will I do it with somebody I don’t like. Didn’t I promise myself that?
The next time it’s going to be with someone I’m crazy about. Someone who’s crazy about me, who’ll treat me right and take care of me. Someone who’d fight tooth and nail to protect me. Someone I care about, someone I love more than anyone else, someone I’d fight tooth and nail to protect. Somebody who’d stop my heart with one look—and who would then come running to jump-start it again!
If I could find somebody like that, it would be love at first sight. I’d fall totally in love with every inch of him. Not some part of him, or something about him, or in some certain way, but in every way, with every bit of him, the very core, the very essence of him. My heart’s jump-starter would have the kind of face that would pop into my head the minute I started thinking about love…
Hold on a second.
What is Tansetsu’s face doing popping into my head? Must be some kind of mistake. Maybe I just feel grateful to him for bringing me back from the land of the dead—maybe that’s why I spend so much time thinking about his geeky face. And it is totally geeky—the long, straight hair down over the ears, that dopey look—but maybe the popping is natural enough if you factor in the minor detail that he saved my life.
It couldn’t be love, could it?
And then there was still Sano.
He’s probably still out there, dead somewhere. I finally mentioned him to Tansetsu, and he got in touch with Sano’s family. They hired him to try to find the body. Hmm. I guess when I think about it now, I realize that Sano was probably a little bit in love with me. Maybe that’s why he was calling to me from the other side. And maybe everybody kept telling me I should sleep with him because they knew how he felt about me. Maybe Kan…well, who knows?
Anyway, if you really were in love with me, then I’m
