Chapter One - 1

Chapter One

 

I. 1989, A Library, Japan

 

1

 

 “Is there a moon in heaven?”

“There is.”

“You're lying,” Kimiyo said with a shake of her head. “You've never seen that.”

“I don't need to have seen it to know.”

“I know there's no moon.”

Kimiyo said this in a sullen voice and picked up the black stamp off the front desk. November 18^th, 1989. The stamp bore the current date.

“Heaven has everything.”

Kirisame, the librarian, took the stamp and pressed it onto Kimiyo's library card. The eight numbers indicating the date were left behind. Kimiyo took the card and waited a moment for the ink to dry before inserting her card into her book.

“It looks like it might snow.”

“I forgot my umbrella,” Kimiyo said with a sigh.

Outside the window hung a dim, ashen sky. It was so dark it was hard to believe it was still daytime. The old wooden window frames were rattling, probably from the occasional gust of wind. Even the glass was vibrating slightly. Kimiyo looked at her reflection in the glass. Her expression was extremely gloomy.

Kimiyo picked up her bag at her feet, waved goodbye to Kirisame, and headed for the library's reading room. After a short walk down the hallway, the door to the reading room was on the left. It was a sliding door that was getting up there in age, and the panel made a loud noise whenever it was moved. It was so loud that it would make you want to cover your ears, and it echoed throughout the library, but nobody was annoyed. Everyone already knew the nature of the door, and anyone who didn't would never visit this library.

A private library owned by the “Foundation of Knowledge”. The vast library built in the northernmost part of Japan was almost never referred to by its real name; most people just called it “The Library at the End of the World”. (See figure) The Foundation was originally established on the outskirts of town, so that was where the library was located, far away from public transport lines. Although the library had recently undergone extensive renovations, the building's existence was still a secret known to only a few people. It was called “The Library at the End of the World” due to its distant location and lack of popularity.

 

 

 

 

Kimiyo discreetly pulled the door open and entered. It was dark and dreary. When she turned on the light, several long tables were revealed by the pale blue-white of the fluorescent lights. All the tables and chairs were angular and looked solid. When she actually sat down, she found they were hard and uncomfortable to sit on. Kimiyo, however, was used to it and could sit on them for hours. She was alone in the room. She'd taken a seat near the center.

The room wasn't very spacious. It seemed to be just the right size for a reading room, but it felt somewhat chilly. Kimiyo hid her hands in her sleeves and spread the book on the table. It was a story based on Western folklore. It seemed the book's covers had originally been a velvet red, but the brownish color they had now was more reminiscent of a barren desert.

As she unfurled the pages and began to follow the letters with her eyes, the door suddenly flew open with a loud bang. It was a violent sound, as though something had collapsed somewhere. It gave her a headache. Judging from the sound, there was no doubt that the door had been opened by someone who didn't know about its issue. Kimiyo looked up and saw the visitor. He was a young man wearing a black peacoat. Kimiyo vaguely guessed that he was in his mid-twenties. He glanced at Kimiyo with a puzzled expression, then looked around the reading room. Finally, he returned his gaze to Kimiyo. Kimiyo's shoulders shrank and she decided to pretend not to have noticed his look. However, he was already slowly approaching her.

“Good afternoon.”

His tone was less than pleasant.

“Good afternoon,” Kimiyo replied.

“I've been looking for you for a long time. A very long time.”

“Me?”

“I was looking for you.”

“I don't know you.”

“That's alright. I thought maybe you did.”

The man turned to the blank white wall with a faraway look in his eyes. The wall was shabby, and its paint peeled. He might have been imagining something using that wall as a screen, but Kimiyo had no idea what it was.

“My name is Kito. To be precise, now my name is Kito,” he said in a hushed voice. “Do you believe in reincarnation? No, there's no need for you to believe me now. We keep meeting each other. In this world, we've met many times over the course of the centuries. We met before in Tokyo. We met near the French-German border. We may have met in New York, and we may have met in Vienna. And today, we met in this library.”

“Ahh, sure,” Kimiyo sighed, not hiding her irritation. “That's really lame. If you wanted to talk to me, you should have just done it like a normal person. Please leave me alone.”

Kimiyo raised her hand as she spoke. She was angry at how impolite he was. For some reason, she found it particularly hard to forgive him. However, as she looked for a place to bring down her raised hand, she couldn't find one. Kimiyo had no choice but to withdraw her hand, interlacing her fingers in her lap.

Kito stroked the collar of his black coat with his slender fingertips. His movements were delicate.

“You always say 'That's no good. That's a lame way to do it',” he said. “But I didn't approach you casually, and I don't want to get to know you. We already knew each other from the start. No, you don't have to believe me. But I will tell you one thing, even if it is lame. We will continue to be reborn. Forever and ever.”

“I don't believe in reincarnation.”

“You think it's impossible?”

“When we die, we just sleep forever in a world of darkness. Even children know that. No matter how much you wish it wasn't so, there's no heaven and no reincarnation. It's all nonsense for the churchgoers.”

“But I have to talk to you about the fate of our reincarnations. We've been reincarnated, and we met in this library in 1989 – I know this might sound ridiculous, but please let me finish. We've been reunited. But this meeting wasn't foretold in the stars or anything. We were just bound to meet each other eventually, even if we didn't intend to. And we're also bound to kill each other. We keep reincarnating, we keep killing each other – you see, we have a curse engraved upon our souls that every time we reincarnate, one of us will kill the other. Eventually, at some point in the future, either you will kill me, or I will kill you.”

Kito's eyes looked serious, but Kimiyo couldn't help but think that it was all a setup. When she began to doubt his attitude, everything about the Library at the End of the World began to look like a set for a stage play. She looked at the door. Was that door so noisy because it was a cheap, hastily set up prop? No, it wasn't. It was just an old door that made a terrible noise. It had to be. But how and where did it scrape against to make a noise like that? Kimiyo was confused. She shook her head.

“I understand. I've been reborn. And so have you. Is that right?”

“And eventually, one of us will kill the other.”

“And one of us will kill the other,” Kimiyo repeated Kito's words. “I feel like an idiot. This is so stupid.”

“It really is.”

Kito laughed.

“Besides, what you're saying doesn't make sense.”

“Which part?”

“Why are you the only one who has memories from your previous life?”

“I don't know. Not for sure, but I do have a sort of idea.”

“You don't get it, do you?” Kimiyo narrowed her eyes and scoffed. “That raises a more important question. How do you know I was reincarnated? You might have known me before I was reborn. But then I was reborn, wasn't I? My appearance must be completely different, and the place where I live, too. And I myself have no memory of any previous life. So how could you possibly know that I'm the reincarnation of the person you remember, in other words, the reincarnation of me from my previous life?”

“Because of the moment I was reborn as Kito. The moment I return to this world, I see you.”

“My appearance?”

“Yeah. I kept looking for you. Even though your name changed and you were born anew, you were still you. I was still me, too. But I killed you with my own two hands – I want this stupid nightmare to end. I want you to understand, I don't want to kill you. That's why I came here, to this Library at the End of the World.”

“I don't want you to kill me either.”

Even as the words left Kimiyo's mouth, she felt as though she was being cruel. Kito's head was drooping. He looked serious. He had the same lonely shadow around his eyes as when he'd first entered the reading room.

“May I ask you something?” Kimiyo asked softly. “Who was I?”

“You were a student at an art college in Tokyo. It was 1971. Unlike the present you, the previous you had retained your memories of your previous life, so we were able to reunite again relatively quickly. We attended the same university. You were my junior. The pictures you drew were beautiful. You always laughed at my art. But I was a music student, so it couldn't be helped that I was a lousy artist. But you always praised my piano playing.”

“Guess I was pretty mean.”

“Ha,” Kito laughed, never looking up from the floor. “You were mean, but you were wonderful.”

“But you killed me.”

“Yeah. I killed you.”

“Why am I the only one who can't remember anything from before my current life?”

“We were trying to break the irrational chain of reincarnation. I think we actually made it halfway to success. But I guess it was only halfway. That's why you lost your memory.”

“When I lost my memory, that was breaking the chain of reincarnation. If you hadn't appeared before me like this, everything would have been fine.”

“No. Even if we hadn't met again today, one day one of us will kill the other, either me or you. It's a curse that has persisted since the era of the Six Headless Knights. In our previous life, you and I tried to escape from the curse. But maybe because we only made it halfway, you were reborn as the Kimiyo you are now, without knowing anything about it.”

“Not that I really care, but what are the Six Headless Knights?”

“It's a French legend from the 13^th century.”

Kito glanced at his watch.

“I'll tell you more later. I have to go, I already called a cab. Taxis come even to the end of the world.”

“Goodbye, I hope we meet again,” Kimiyo said sarcastically.

“I'm sure we will.”

Saying this, Kito left the reading room. It seemed he'd learned his lesson regarding the noise of the door, as his exit was polite and quiet. As soon as Kito left, the usual silence suddenly descended on the room. The Library at the End of the World really did feel like a sorry building, isolated at the edge of nowhere. Kimiyo looked around the room. There was a window high on the wall. At the moment, it was covered by pitch black curtains, so she couldn't see through it.

Suddenly, through a gap in the curtains, she saw the ghostly pale face of a girl. Kimiyo let out a small scream of surprise, but the girl had already disappeared. Kimiyo convinced herself that she must have been seeing things. She was at the end of the world. There was nothing beyond that window. Nothing but an empty grey expanse. No – it might snow soon. Kirisame said so. It might have been snow. Kimiyo returned the book to her bag. She didn't think she could focus on reading anymore.

Kimiyo left the reading room. Kirisame was still at the front. He was reading a science magazine with his feet propped up on the desk. When he spotted Kimiyo, he smiled and beckoned her over.

“Hey, listen to this.”

“What is it?”

“Bats can perceive space in three dimensions using only sound.”

“So? Even a human can recognize where a sound is coming from. Hey, did it wind up snowing?”

“Go see for yourself. Do you like snow?”

“I do.”

“Come on then, young lady. Here's your umbrella.”

Kirisame took the umbrella out from under the front desk.

“Do you believe in reincarnation, Kirisame?”

“I do. No, I should say I want to believe in it. That's the honest truth.”

“I wonder if people actually can reincarnate.”

“There are stories of children in this world who are born with memories of their previous lives. Children who can speak and write in languages they were never taught, or accurately describe cities they've never visited. Once there was a girl whose past life was a Japanese soldier. She had a masculine personality and even had memories of being shot to death by a machine gun.”

“Is that true?”

“It's true as a story. But I don't believe that reincarnation as a phenomenon is real. That's the reality.”

“But you still believe in reincarnation, Kirisame?”

“Yeah. There are many secrets surrounding the phenomenon of reincarnation that science can't explain. There are cases of people being born with physical characteristics from their previous lives, like bruises or scars from injuries.”

“That's a strange story,” said Kimiyo, tilting her head to the side. “Why do reincarnations occur?”

“American scientists have attempted to explain the phenomenon of reincarnation with things like lying witnesses, latent memories, or genetic memory. Certainly, among the thousands of reported cases of reincarnation there may have been some lies, and some may have been the person speaking about latent memories without realizing it. However, as for genetic memory, I can only say it's nonsense. Memories aren't stored in the genes, they're stored in the nerves of the brain. Even if you remove a gene and implant it in another person, no memories are transferred, and similarly, memories aren't inherited from parent to child. The memories that make people themselves are once in a lifetime events. They don't come from anyone and they don't go to anyone. You only live once. It's lonely. That's why people long to be reborn.”

“I don't want to be reborn. I'm fine with just the one.”

“Well, you're stronger than most.”

Kirisame stepped out from behind the desk, his arms outstretched.

Kimiyo glared at Kirisame, but she couldn't stop her mouth from curving into a smile.

Kimiyo had been diagnosed with a tumor in her hypothalamus and given six months to live, a year if she was lucky. The late discovery and the size of the lesion made surgery impossible, and she could plausibly drop dead at any moment. Occasionally Kimiyo would develop severe headaches that made her believe that she was halfway dead already. The headaches could at least be controlled with medication. Her doctor had recommended she be hospitalized, but Kimiyo refused.

Kimiyo had no parents. They had also died early due to illness. She'd been taken in by relatives, and since graduating from high school, she'd spent her days in solitude, neither going on to higher education nor searching for a job. It had only been a few months ago that she discovered this neighborhood library.

“I just don't cry easily.”

Kimiyo said this with no expression on her face.

“Really? I was planning to cry along side you when you lay dying. I can't let you die without crying.”

“Don't talk nonsense.”

With a bitter smile, Kimiyo left Kirisame.

As she walked through the dimly lit entryway, she passed Utamika. She was the other librarian. There were two librarians employed at the Library at the End of the World. The only other employees were the director and a few administrative staff members from the Foundation.

“Ah, Kimiyo, how are you?” she asked. “Is Kirisame still in?”

Utamika sounded like she was panicked.

“He is.”

“Oh, thank goodness. I forgot something.”

Utamika ran off, her ponytail swinging behind her. It seemed that woman was always in a hurry. Or was it just that Kimiyo happened to always see her when she was in a hurry?

Kimiyo slung her bag over her shoulder and headed towards the front door. On the way, she thought about that man Kito who had told her about reincarnation. The other side of the glass door was pure white with snow.

It was the Library at the End of the World. It truly did look like the end of the world.

 

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