Her life was a story. The writer, Danieru – Daniel – had told her this in his emails. If she wished (and how much she did wish) for it to be told, he would find the words. The story would be Kana Grace’s; he would be her pen. And she thought now about her dream of the night before, and breakfast with her mom, and each of her daily routines, as if she were already telling him all about them.
✲
Kana was nearly finished packing. The feel of gauze, cotton and soft leather alternated on her fingers. One of the boxes held nothing but her leotards, tights, costumes and pointe shoes – many long unwearable. But there was never any question of her letting go of them; from the tiniest up, each item was a witness to her younger selves and to her progression as a dancer.
During Kana’s terrible bout of loneliness in Tokyo, what had helped to keep her sane – besides the foreign language classes and Ms Oka’s counselling – was ballet. By chance, a new studio had opened its doors just across the road from her lodgings. It was minuscule. Below street level. She loved it. Several times a week after class she donned tights and soft shoes and limbered up at the horizontal bar. The first time that the instructor asked her to dance she worried she might trip over herself from being rusty, but as soon as the emphatic music began her honed legs and arms remembered every gesture, and provided each with a fluid grace, effortlessly bending and swaying.
She had attended ballet lessons since she was a small girl, to the accompaniment of a thunderous piano, in the after-school clubs that were numerous in her home town. Week after week, she worked on her insteps, learned to have a good turnout, pirouetted and practised her entrechat. Accepting several roles in school productions, she had been a soldier in The Nutcracker; another year, a snowflake.
Alongside balance and coordination, ballet helped Kana acquire the concept of personal space. The tutu was a tangible illustration, a colourful decoration, of the boundary that surrounded every dancer.
And ballet accompanied her overseas, so that wherever she would go to study, and later to perform her research, she also danced. The Boston Ballet School. The Place in London.
All through the pandemic, in her room, she had carried on her practice. And watched videos of the Royal Ballet’s past productions of The Nutcracker, her mind spinning and leaping as she watched those graceful young women together on stage – three, six, nine … eighteen dancers. So nimble their every movement, so confident their identical steps, no brush of a leg or jolt of an arm outstretched, no collision. Eighteen personal spaces dancing in parallel, in harmony, separately and yet as one.
✲
Her travels had broadened Kana’s mind immeasurably. And from the time she had returned to the mainland, Kana knew that she would once more leave. And take her mom and dog with her. The inhabitants of mainland Japan were among the loneliest on earth. You had only to follow the media in recent years to think so. Hardly a week or month passed now without Kana and Hiromi reading or watching or hearing some report about the hikikomori, the adult recluses holed up in a bedroom of their ageing parents’ home; or about a forgotten elderly neighbour who had been left to wizen into a mummy; or about the men and women who drop everything to run off and go missing, joining the tens of thousands each year who become jouhatsu, ‘evaporated people’.
Not once did Kana consider these reports to be mere sensationalism or purely anecdotal. She knew families in which a grandfather or some other relative had ‘evaporated’ long ago just like the reporters said. She could not help but wonder if loneliness ran in many Japanese families.
But with Hiromi, to whom she had always been so close, and could speak her mind, never having to stand on ceremony, Kana found it nearly impossible to discuss kodoku, loneliness. Her mom, she knew, had to feel lonely sometimes. When does that happen? She would have liked to ask her mom, but never dared. How long does the feeling last? What makes it better or worse? These were questions she was always asking in her research. Another was, what words would you use to describe your loneliness?
Mother and daughter were sharing one of their last suppers in Utsunomiya when Kana asked this question under cover of a word game. She was thinking of a certain category of words in Japanese, onomatopoeic, that evoke sensations and states of mind. Kura kura, for example, a sound associated with giddiness; zuki zuki, with painful throbbing.
Kana put down her chopsticks and said, ‘When I think of feeling lonely, I think of the word buru buru. It sounds just like the feeling, don’t you think?’
‘Buru buru?’ Hiromi had finished her gyoza dumpling. ‘Yes, I suppose. Yes, I can see that.’
The sound usually described someone trembling – trembling from the cold or fright.
‘Like not having the warmth of someone close to you,’ Hiromi pursued. ‘Or feeling afraid on account of being on your own.’
‘Yes, exactly.’ And seeing her chance, Kana went on, ‘And with what sound do you associate feeling lonely?’
Hiromi’s face turned thoughtful.
‘Chiku chiku,’ she said at last.
It was a sound used to refer to a prickling pain.
Was it precisely this pain, chiku chiku, that her mother had felt during Kana’s years abroad?
✲
This photo album had travelled with her all the way from Boston. Of course it was going to Okinawa. It was a repurposed scrapbook filled with snapshots of Kana’s time in America, decorated with origami and bright pink stickers. Some days Kana would pull out the album and look over the pictures. There she was sitting on the manicured lawn at a students’ picnic. And there she was with her friend Kara, sharing a couch and coffee. And there was Kara saying something to the camera. And there they were in a head shot, beaming.
The album had been Kara’s parting gift to her – the work of several thoughtful hours.
Kara Rodano was the best friend that Kana had always dreamed of having, the kind of friend she hadn’t been quite certain even existed outside of movies, novels and pop songs. She had met her on campus, in an aerobics group, after which they had begun spending time getting to know one another. Kara was from Fallston, Maryland. She was studying communication science and planned to become a speech-language pathologist. She shared Kana’s interest in the mind and helping others, and though she wasn’t the best cook in the world, not by a long shot, when it came to baking she sure knew her way around an oven.
Americans were fascinating to Kana, ever since her three-week homestay in Indiana. That had been right at the beginning, before Boston, when her body clock was still on Japanese time. She’d remembered to stand at the right distance from her hosts, allowing for the imaginary tutus around their waists as they talked and walked and went sightseeing. Kana was charmed by the Americans’ voluble hospitality; the regular potlucks to which she would contribute a salad; their habit of making quote marks with their fingers as they spoke.
But it was with Kara that she would acquire a rapport. That was something new for Kana, and magical. The two young women, hanging out, could talk for hours and neither of them notice the time. Rapidly Kana’s soft voice matched Kara’s accent – she pronounced Maryland as ‘Marilyn’ and said ‘jeet yet?’ for ‘did you eat yet?’ like a Marylander born and bred. Without trying, at least too consciously, she held herself like Kara – or, rather, like Kara in front of Kana. The same straight back, the same folded hands, the same intent gaze. Sitting and talking face to face, they looked like mirror images of one another.
In the album a close-up photo showed the two friends in an excited hug. It captured the day Kana had become certain that their bond was something special. They were sitting on the dorm couch, in the middle of one of the ‘deep conversations’ they enjoyed.
‘No way,’ said Kara. ‘Seriously, you don’t know your personality type?’
‘Seriously,’ Kana said.
Kara got up a web page on her phone. It was a five-minute, multiple-choice quiz, of the kind that appear in waiting-room magazines. Kana took the phone and responded to the questions, agreeing or disagreeing with a list of statements. When Kara was shown the result she squealed with joy.
They had the exact same personality type.
Now, it was simply a quiz, a thought-provoking bit of fun, and Kana knew better than to treat the result too seriously. Yet her having responded just like Kara, even more than the result pronouncing them both intuitive, diligent and compassionate introverts, pleased her no end.
Kara smiled wide at Kana and Kana smiled wide at Kara. Their mutual excitement confirmed to each that their feelings were reciprocated. When Kana saw herself in her friend’s gaze, she saw the assured and cheerful woman she’d hoped she might one day become. She no longer felt her difference as a burden, weighing her down into solitude.
After Kana returned to Japan, the friends would use every way at their disposal to stay connected: letters and parcels, calls and email, text and video messages. Also: prayers.
✲
Kana, on her plane from America, had carried a Bible.
‘You’re a Christian?’ Hiromi repeated the word with unconcealed confusion. Their spirituality had been limited to dropping coins in the local shrine’s collection box on New Year’s Day.
‘Kurisuchan?’ Hiromi said again inwardly, but no, the word still meant very little to her. Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark – that was more or less it.
