anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day?
We never heard the name of the flower?
Another title that made no sense whatsoever.
Still... they were used to it by now.
If anyone else had slapped a title like that on a manuscript, they would have assumed it came from some rookie author.
But the author was Fang Qiu, so naturally there was nothing to worry about.
So the editors who still had work waiting for them drifted back to their own desks, while the two women who had just decided to stay and read the draft crowded in beside Bai Qing and started on Fang Qiu's new book.
The story took place in a small town in Inazuma.
A late-summer afternoon. Cicadas droned beyond the window, and a light breeze slipped in through the frame.
Jinta Yadomi lay there cursing the couple walking past on the road outside, the ones loudly discussing something far too explicit, sucking on a popsicle and flipping through a manga. Beside him, a girl kept interrupting, chattering at him nonstop.
Jinta Yadomi went still for a second, then put the manga down, walked all the way to the kitchen, and started making ramen.
"Hey, the egg's going to set, you know?" the girl said, leaning over his shoulder.
When Jinta Yadomi didn't react, the girl grabbed him and shook him.
It was at that moment that Jinta Yadomi's father appeared, asking his son to make him a bowl too.
A warm, homey little scene.
"That's Fang Qiu for you, this is really well done. Childhood sweethearts, right? Nice. I love books with this much everyday life in them," one of the female editors said.
"Mm, yeah." Bai Qing nodded.
Fang Qiu's command of the pen truly was astonishing. She rendered the delicate warmth of ordinary days with perfect precision, and made it feel real.
This girl had improved again.
And then they turned to the next page, and Bai Qing and the two editors found themselves puzzled.
The girl greeted Jinta Yadomi's father with a smile, and the father gave her no answer at all.
Hm?
Why did Jinta Yadomi's father act as though the girl wasn't even there?
Jinta Yadomi agreed to his father's request.
The girl beside him immediately took offense, complaining loudly about why he'd make a bowl for his dad but not for her.
Jinta Yadomi went on talking with his father and paid her no attention at all. He made two bowls of noodles. But while they were eating, the girl, still sulking, plopped herself right down on Jinta Yadomi's lap. His face went scarlet all the way to his ears, and between that and the sweltering heat, he passed out cold.
And Jinta Yadomi's father acted as though the girl simply did not exist, assuming his son had only fainted because the weather was too hot.
That left Bai Qing and the others more confused than ever.
What was going on here?
In his sleep, he remembered the past.
Back when he was a child, he and five playmates had gone catching bugs together in the forest, and the girl, small then, had been among them.
That was where Bai Qing and the others learned the girl's name.
Meiko "Menma" Honma.
She said to Jinta Yadomi, um... there's something I want to ask you for. And right there in the middle of her sentence, Fang Qiu turned the camera of her prose aside and described a withered flower standing in a bottle.
When Jinta Yadomi woke, Meiko Honma was sprawled on top of him.
Here, through a stretch of interior monologue, Fang Qiu laid out Jinta Yadomi's thinking: he believed this girl was nothing but a hallucination, conjured up by too much pressure and a heat so brutal it blurred a person's mind.
Meiko Honma, meanwhile, told Jinta Yadomi that she wanted him to help her grant her wish.
But when Jinta Yadomi asked what the wish was, Meiko Honma said she didn't know either. She only remembered that it was a wish everyone had to help with before it could come true.
Reading this far, Bai Qing and the others were more baffled still.
What exactly was Fang Qiu writing here?
They reined in their impatience and kept reading.
Just then, a knock came at the door.
Meiko Honma hurried over to answer it, and Jinta Yadomi rushed after her.
The person at the door turned out to be a girl in bold, fashionable clothes. The moment Meiko Honma saw her, she lit up with excitement and threw her arms around her.
What left Bai Qing and the others even more bewildered was that this girl, exactly like Jinta Yadomi's father, could not see Meiko Honma and could not hear her speak. She only felt that her shoulders were oddly heavy.
The girl's name, it turned out, was Naruko Anjou, another of their childhood playmates.
Except the bond between them was nothing like what it had been back then.
Naruko Anjou handed over the vacation homework to Jinta Yadomi and left.
Meiko Honma wanted the two of them to make up. Jinta Yadomi reluctantly agreed.
Still, he told Meiko Honma that it wasn't only Naruko Anjou. Everything now was different from how it had been.
Jinta Yadomi put on a cap and glasses and set out, though he hesitated when his hand was on the door.
In the end he opened it anyway.
Jinta Yadomi suggested taking a walk first. He wanted time to steel himself.
But Meiko Honma climbed onto a railing to play, and lost her balance.
Watching her about to fall, he remembered his father opening a door to tell him that something had happened to Meiko Honma. His composure shattered, and he lunged to catch her.
He missed, but Meiko Honma wasn't hurt.
It was then that they ran into two more of their childhood friends, Atsumu Matsuyuki and Chiriko Tsurumi.
They couldn't see Meiko Honma either. Worse, when Jinta Yadomi carelessly let the name Menma slip, Atsumu Matsuyuki cut straight into him, mocking the dropout who sat at home all day.
Jinta Yadomi fled.
When Meiko Honma caught up with him, Jinta Yadomi told her to leave him alone. When he was with her, all he ever remembered were things he'd rather not.
Having said it, Jinta Yadomi turned and walked off.
Meiko Honma stayed where she was, hurt, not daring to follow.
By this point, under the weight of Fang Qiu's formidable prose, Bai Qing felt an unbearable pressure settling on her chest.
The other two editors didn't look much better.
Back home, Jinta Yadomi lay on the floor and thought back to that summer.
Their little group had gathered at the secret base.
Naruko Anjou asked Jinta Yadomi whether he liked Meiko Honma.
With all of them pressing him, Jinta Yadomi said, "Who'd ever like an ugly freak like that?"
The words were barely out before he realized he had hurt Meiko Honma, and he turned to look.
He expected her to cry. She cried so easily.
Instead, Meiko Honma gave him a small, helpless smile. Face burning, Jinta Yadomi bolted out of the secret base.
And Meiko Honma chased after him.
She never caught up.
Jinta Yadomi had thought it would be enough to apologize the next day. He never imagined that the next day would never come at all.
Reading this, Bai Qing and the others all went still.
"Ah Qing, you may not believe me when I say this... but I've got a really bad feeling about where this is going..."
"Me too..."
Bai Qing felt it too.
She turned the page. Meiko Honma had made her way home.
Her younger brother and her parents were all there.
Her mother was in the middle of an offering.
And her brother was telling her to stop doing this.
"Every time you cook you set out a portion for Big Sister. It's an eyesore."
"But this is her favorite dish."
"Dead people don't eat, do they?"
"Don't talk like that. Your sister was such a scatterbrain, maybe she hasn't even noticed she's dead yet." Her mother smiled bitterly as she said it.
"I do know, though."
Tears welled in Meiko Honma's eyes, and her voice cracked as she murmured to herself, "Menma knows. Menma knows she's already dead."
At this, Bai Qing and the others sat frozen.
...
That couldn't be right.
This adorable Meiko Honma was already dead?
She was a ghost?
And when they read Fang Qiu's description of the memorial tablet on the altar, of Meiko Honma in a kimono, smiling at the camera with that innocent, unclouded joy, the weight in their chests pressed down even harder.
The book wasn't long yet, but they had genuinely fallen in love with this bright, playful, guileless girl Fang Qiu had created.
And Fang Qiu had simply sentenced her to death right out of the gate...
It was hard to swallow.
What happened to healing and heartwarming?
The story opens by killing off a girl this cute. Where exactly was the warmth, where was the healing!?
But they were already aboard the pirate ship...
Much as they wanted to jump off, they couldn't. They had to know what became of Meiko Honma. So, with no other choice, they followed Fang Qiu's ink and kept reading.
The scene cut into Jinta Yadomi's memories. After Meiko Honma's death, their little group had fallen apart completely.
While he was making noodles, he thought of Meiko Honma pestering him to stir the egg in properly.
So he shut off the burner, tore out the door, and went looking for her.
He ran the whole way toward their base.
"The day I always wanted, the day after that day, the day I could finally apologize to Menma. My stress... it must have created her so that I could apologize to Menma. And if that's true, then I can't go on like this!"
He ran all the way to the base, and there he found Poppo, Tetsudō Hisakawa, the last of their childhood circle.
Tetsudō Hisakawa told Jinta Yadomi that he'd spent these years traveling abroad.
Jinta Yadomi told him everything that had been happening to him, and Tetsudō Hisakawa believed him without a shred of doubt.
So the two of them started planning how to bring Meiko Honma back.
They settled on collecting Meiko Honma's favorite cards.
Because her favorite cards had to be traded for, they needed to buy packs.
When Meiko Honma came back to Jinta Yadomi's house, she found him already asleep, and on the box he'd been using to hold the cards, something was written.
"Hero Menma's Equipment Box."
"Thank you, Jinta."
Meiko Honma was so happy. She leaned against Jinta Yadomi's shoulder and fell asleep.
Reading that scene, a small, knowing smile tugged at Bai Qing's lips.
That was Fang Qiu for you. The writing was superb, truly warm, truly healing.
The next day, Tetsudō Hisakawa came to the door.
Once he learned Meiko Honma had come back, they decided to bring Naruko Anjou in on it.
So they went and found her.
In the end, together with Naruko Anjou, they completed the collection.
Only, Meiko Honma didn't disappear because of it.
That much the three of them had expected. No surprise there.
Meiko Honma was the heart of the whole book, after all, and the plot had only just started unfolding. There was no way she'd vanish this early.
They kept reading.
At Meiko Honma's insistence, Jinta Yadomi had no choice but to go to school. There he ran into Naruko Anjou's friends and took a round of mockery, which killed whatever appetite he had for classes. He went straight to the secret base instead.
And there Tetsudō Hisakawa told him that he could see Meiko Honma too.
When Jinta Yadomi got home, he found that Meiko Honma had reduced the kitchen to chaos.
She had been trying to imitate the sweets Jinta Yadomi's mother used to make. And that stirred up his memories of his mother.
He regretted so much that as a child he had thrown childish tantrums at her while she lay gravely ill.
A few days later.
Tetsudō Hisakawa invited every member of their old group to come search for Menma together.
Half believing, half doubting, all of them came.
They grilled food at the entrance of the base, marveling at the reunion after so many years. Atsumu Matsuyuki arrived last, and told them that on his way there, he had seen Meiko Honma.
That threw Bai Qing and the others for another loop.
Another Meiko Honma?
What was this?
So the whole group set out to search.
They combed the area and never found this second Meiko Honma.
When they returned to the base, Atsumu Matsuyuki told them that the Menma he'd met had asked him to pass on a message: stop putting yourselves through this.
"Even though Menma is dead, Menma wants all of you to stay close forever."
Jinta Yadomi knew Atsumu Matsuyuki didn't believe him, so he brought out the sweets Meiko Honma had made, wanting to prove it.
All it earned him was a torrent of merciless laughter from Atsumu Matsuyuki.
But at that very moment, Meiko Honma picked up the fireworks Naruko Anjou had brought and lit one.
Then she drew, in the air, the symbol for infinity that Jinta Yadomi had explained to them all when they were small.
Reading that, Bai Qing and the others were struck breathless by Fang Qiu's descriptive power.
It was as if they could see it with their own eyes: a girl in a forest full of drifting sparks, sweeping a firework through the dark, tracing an exquisite symbol into the night.
Serene, and warm.
Like a fairy of the woods.
Atsumu Matsuyuki was dumbstruck. His composure crumbled and he demanded to know whether Jinta Yadomi had pulled some kind of trick.
When Jinta Yadomi denied it, Atsumu Matsuyuki tore off and ran.
The next day, Chiriko Tsurumi came to Jinta Yadomi and asked him for a favor.
Jinta Yadomi agreed.
That afternoon, Jinta Yadomi went to speak with Atsumu Matsuyuki and told him that the Meiko Honma he'd seen was a fake.
Atsumu Matsuyuki cursed him out.
And resolved to prove to all of them that Meiko Honma really did exist.
On Chiriko Tsurumi's end, the whole group gathered at the base as well.
That night, the other Meiko Honma truly did appear. But her identity was exposed by Chiriko Tsurumi at once. The second Meiko Honma was Atsumu Matsuyuki in disguise.
Reading that, Bai Qing and the others all sat stunned.
Atsumu Matsuyuki tried to run, and the others caught him. Then he laid everything bare. He had never forgotten Meiko Honma either.
Because back then, when Meiko Honma ran out of the base chasing after Jinta Yadomi, he had stopped her and confessed his feelings. She fled in a panic, and that, indirectly, had led to her death.
All these years, he had believed her death was his fault.
He had never been able to let it go.
He wept.
And then, all at once.
He felt someone wipe away his tears. While he sat there frozen, Jinta Yadomi told him that Meiko Honma had just touched him.
And she'd asked him to pass on a message. Thank you for the hairpin. And... I'm sorry...
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