“You can come if you want,” Sedge said, though he hoped Riku wouldn’t. He had a feeling the boy only wanted to complain about how much time he and Mariko had been spending together.
“Yes, you’re welcome to join us,” Mariko said. “We just didn’t think you’d like our company, especially when you already have plans.”
“I only said I was going to do that stuff because I had nothing better to do. Now you tell me I can come along, but I know you want to be by yourselves. Just like everything you’ve been doing since he moved in.” He began enumerating all the things they’d done without him. Sedge was unaware that Riku had been keeping tabs on him and Mariko and knew exactly how often they did things together.
Sedge interrupted him, trying to be conciliatory. “It was my fault we didn’t ask you. I thought you’d be bored with our company and embarrassed to be seen with us. Why don’t you come, too? I’m eager to learn from you about the local birds.”
Perhaps Riku was only waiting for a more forceful invitation from Sedge, because his attitude brightened and he quickly forgave his stepmother.
He ran to the kura and returned with binoculars and a sunhat that trailed behind his neck. When Sedge asked what was inside the daypack on his shoulder, he said, “On one side peanuts, and the other side breadcrumbs. The peanuts are for me.”
Mariko drove the short distance to where the road met the reservoir. From there they followed the long loop around the emerald-green water below. Along the way, Riku leaned forward from the back seat and asked Sedge when he first became interested in birds.
“I don’t remember the very first time,” he said. “But I’ve had the interest as long as I can remember. My parents bought me binoculars when I was in elementary school so I could spot birds in our trees more easily.”
The question reminded him that it had only been when he met Nozomi, and they encouraged each other to spend time exploring nature, that he became what most people would call a birder. Due to the little free time they had, they went most often to places they could easily reach from their apartment. Year-round, in good weather, they bicycled to two separate heronries on the Sai River, followed by the bird sanctuary and bird-rich dunes of Kenmin Seaside Park.
Now that he was in Yamanaka Onsen, with only his feet and a used bicycle to get around, he made his sightings locally, in the rice fields and vegetable plots on the edges of town; around the temples and shrines ringing the valley; and along the banks of the Daishōji River. He had already filled a notebook with bird sightings—the kinds of birds he’d seen, their behaviors and locations, and sketches of them if he could manage it. He pulled it from his own daypack and showed it to Riku.
They passed bicyclists and cars parked at a trailhead, while a handful of people foraged for herbs and mountain vegetables up the nearby slopes. Despite Riku suggesting they stop in various places, Mariko didn’t do so until they’d reached Suginomizu, a small village hemmed in by sugi and pines that had been revived recently for tourism, but that tourists had only slowly discovered. With few people around, they could comfortably explore the area, including a rocky stream that meandered through the village. There was also a café and a treehouse built inside two kura; Mariko wanted to show them to Riku so he might get more ideas for renovating the one he’d moved into.
When they opened their car doors Sedge directed Riku’s attention to the birdsong around them, but he was curious about other things.
“Look,” Riku said as he approached a monument above the stream. “It’s to the village’s war dead. It says they were killed in World War II.”
“How many names are there?” Sedge asked, standing with Mariko behind him. He couldn’t imagine there would be many. The entire village was within sight of where they stood, and though he didn’t know how many houses might have been here seventy or eighty years ago, there were now fewer than a dozen.
“Did anyone in your family fight against the Japanese?” Riku asked Sedge.
“The war was ages ago.” Mariko’s tone was impatient, almost angry. “You can’t possibly mean Sedge’s immediate family.”
“Your grandfathers or great-grandfathers, I mean,” Riku corrected himself.
“One of my great-grandfathers fought in World War I in Europe,” Sedge said. “Afterward he moved with his wife to America. People in my family have led peaceful lives for as far back as I can remember. But that’s only me. I can’t speak for other Americans in Japan.”
Riku scrutinized the monument, as if trying to imagine the era when these villagers had fought and died. A moment later he continued walking. He broke into a run where the road curved and a few more houses stood behind a small bridge. As he ran, the shortness of his legs caught Sedge by surprise; they gave an impression of even greater strength and balance than Sedge had previously noticed. From a distance, had he not known Riku, he might have mistaken him for someone twice his age.
“Where on earth is he going?” Sedge asked, wondering if they should call him back. They started walking slowly in the direction Riku had run.
“It’s better to let him be,” Mariko answered. “He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
“Has he been here before?”
“Two or three times. The last time was with Kōichi. I don’t remember what brought them here. But it turned into one of their fights.”
“You mean they argued?”
“Kōichi didn’t have the patience to argue. He would get mad and strike whoever had angered him. He didn’t always do it to hurt the person; I don’t think he ever put all his strength into it.”
Sedge wondered again what had attracted Nozomi to such a man.
They soon reached a small bridge crossing the Sugimizu River, so narrow it seemed only a stream. Cement walls two meters high and covered with moss lined both banks.
“Did that include you sometimes?”
“Kōichi never hurt me. He might have abused me verbally, but he was never physically violent. And he was only that way when he was drunk. When he was sober everyone could see he adored me. At those times he treated me as well as he could.”
“For some reason I thought he hurt you,” he said as they crossed the bridge into the shade of a tall mixed forest. To their left stood a scattering of old farmhouses.
“Not me. Riku.”
“He spared you but not his son?”
“He said he’d never do anything to mar me. And he didn’t. But Riku has always been a strange boy, and Kōichi found every reason he could to bully him. Which isn’t to say he didn’t love Riku, too. And Riku knew this, and I think was conflicted in how he felt about him. He was both hugely relieved and hugely despondent whenever Kōichi left us.”
“He has a lot of scars inside.”
She nodded somberly. “I remember one time he beat Riku. It was right before he left us two years ago. Some older boys at Riku’s school had been making fun of him, and during a break between classes one of them swiped his pencil case, ran into an empty classroom, and threw it out the window, three floors down. Riku told the boy to fetch it, but the boy, knowing his friends were watching, only laughed at him. Riku had one of his episodes, as we used to call them, and launched himself at the boy. He not only knocked him to the ground, but by the time a teacher came in to break things up Riku had gone through two of his three tormenters. The last one had been a local judo champion, but I’m not sure he would have lasted much longer against Riku. But when Kōichi found out, Riku, as always, met his match. He beat Riku worse than Riku had beat the kids in his school. He kept telling Riku there was greater dignity in walking away, that later in life he’d never think of it again, and if he did he’d be grateful for the life lesson. By fighting he lowered himself to their level. But he said this all while punishing Riku, who cowered at his feet. I don’t think Riku learned a thing from him. Other than his hypocrisy.”
Riku let out a far-off whoop, interrupting Mariko. It had come from where the crumbling path they were on curved to the left and disappeared. As Mariko went on speaking, Sedge led her to a bench above the river, under a row of cedar trees but bathed in sunshine.
“For the next few days Riku stayed home from school. On his last day home, when I returned from work, he had just finished making one thousand paper cranes and stringing them together. They were a peace offering to Kōichi, but more than that, I think he believed he might win his father over with them. And Kōichi was moved. When he first realized what Riku had done, that the cranes were for him, he actually shed a few tears. But he never thanked Riku. And he never apologized for beating him.
“About a year ago,” she continued, sitting on the bench they had come to, “another group of schoolboys bullied Riku. Knowing about his love of birds, they put a dead baby sparrow they’d found under a tree into his desk, and when he opened it and saw it, he picked it up and immediately left the classroom, right in the middle of class. It apparently caused a commotion among the students who saw what he had in his hand. After burying it in a park near the school, he waited outside the main gate for several hours until the students who had pranked him passed by. This time he didn’t leave a single foe standing. Again there were three boys in the group, and two had to be taken to the hospital, both with broken ribs. Because the boys admitted to bullying him, Riku was suspended for one month rather than expelled. When Kōichi found out and tried to teach him the same lesson as before, Riku was a year older. Instead of cowering under Kōichi’s blows, he stood and took them. And when Kōichi tired, he fought back. He turned the tables on him, until he heard him begging that he stop. I was beside myself, not knowing what to do. But in a way Kōichi solved everything for us, because a few weeks later he left and never came back.”
It was hard for Sedge to imagine such scenes playing out in their peaceful village and inside the house where he now lived.
“Riku made one thousand paper cranes again, but this time he gave them to the students he’d beaten up. That made his punishment at school slightly less severe, but it also made the bullies stop picking on him quite so much. Riku told me later that making the cranes had taught him something. When I asked him what, he said that for some people the cranes meant nothing at all. But for others, they made a difference in his relationship with them; they made forgiveness easier. Even now, he has a collection of paper cranes and adds to them sometimes. I guess he thinks he might need them again in the future, though I hope he won’t.”
