Interlude: Kyoko Draws
Yusaku thinks that everything Kyoko draws is perfect. Even the drafts and the things that end up rolled into a ball in the wastepaper basket.
Kyoko thinks. Then Kyoko draws. When she draws, she stops thinking. The pen dances on the paper. Kyoko never knows for sure what she is going to draw, until it is done.
Now she is drawing a landscape. A river. A bridge. Two lovers standing on the railing of the bridge, the girl in a school uniform, the boy in old-fashioned shirt and trousers. Yusaku can see his wooden sandals. But he does not see their faces, for their backs are turned towards the watcher. They remind him of the boy and girl in that American movie. Titanic. Only they stood on the railing of a ship, not a bridge.
What is Kyoko drawing? Herself and Yusaku? Someone else?
Will the two lovers in the picture jump? Commit double suicide?
They look like they could fly. Kyoko does fantasies sometimes.
Yusaku lets his eyes wander around Kyoko's room. Suddenly he finds the girl in the picture. It is a photo of a girl standing on a beach, wearing a school uniform. She is young, too young to have a lover, but the uniform is the same, and her position. And Yusaku remembers the picture. Kyoko took it on a school trip. The girl is their friend.
Chihiro.
Yusaku does not disturb Kyoko while she draws.
When she is done, she writes a little poem above the image.
'Sweet and slow, my love,
is the river-water here
where I first found you.'
'There.' Kyoko sound satisfied. The image is beautiful, like a poster.
'It's lovely.' Yusaku says, 'Who are they?'
'She is Chihiro, and he is someone she will meet some happy day. Beside a river. I invented the poem first, and then I decided I would illustrate it, and give to her. It's her birthday soon.'