Ittekimasu

On the last day, at the last cleaning time, Fumika looked at Daichi and me on our knees at the end of the corridor, our hands flat on our rags, and at the whole of 2-B crowding the classroom door.

"Article…" she said, and gave up. "Just go."

We went, down the corridor on all fours behind our zōkin, the way we had in April, and behind us the class began to chant, "DA-VAI! DA-VAI!" Out of the window a ball from the baseball ground dropped into the neighbour's persimmon tree, which had been swallowing home runs all year. Daichi won by a head. I crashed into Fumika's bucket. And Kotone, by the window with her rag, laughed out loud: the teaspoon-against-a-glass laugh from Meigetsu-in, but all of it this time, in the corridor, in front of everyone. The class turned to look. She did not stop.

At homeroom they gave me a square board covered in messages. Kimura's was in one corner, small: Sorry about June. Your haiku are good.

"Goodbye, Sardor-kun!" said Kurata-sensei, in English. "See you!"

All year I had answered her in Japanese. I answered her in English.

"Thank you, Kurata-sensei. Your English is very good."

She cried.

In the club room Hanzawa-sensei stayed awake for twenty minutes, which was a record. He told us he was retiring at the end of the month, and read us his farewell slowly, as if tasting it:

Forty springs of chalk—

I leave the club room's kettle

to warmer young hands

He put the kettle that did not exist into Kotone's hands. "Hohoho. Officially, you have received nothing."

Then the gifts. Shiosai volume sixty-four, signed by everyone, for me to take home. From Kotone, a fresh pad of blue notes, "for Tashkent". From me to the club, what was left of my orange pad. And to Daichi, my 29.5 indoor shoes. He tried them on. His feet are 30. "Too small," he said, and we laughed like idiots until Fumika told us it was inefficient.

That evening the Moriyamas and I ate plov with the right rice, every grain on its own. Late at night, when the house was asleep, I baked one more loaf and pressed Tetsuo-san's wheel into the middle of it.

At seven the next morning Yukari-san handed me my last bento. I opened it at the table. Across the rice, in careful strips of nori, she had spelt one word: いってらっしゃい. Itterasshai. Go, and come back.

I could not close the lid. I tried twice.

Mio said nothing all through breakfast. Not one review. That was how I knew.

At the door, with my suitcase on the step and the bicycle bell above my head, I bowed to them. Then I said the two words I had been saving.

"Otōsan. Okāsan."

Tetsuo-san said "Mm," and looked hard at the ceiling. Yukari-san, who cries at television dramas and never in real life, cried in real life.

Buvi says: Bir kun tuz ichgan joyingga qirq yil salom ber. Where you ate salt for one day, send greetings for forty years. I had done the maths on the stairs. Three hundred and fifty-six days, times forty years: fourteen thousand two hundred and forty years of greetings. I stuck an orange note to the fridge, beside Mio's timetable, as the first instalment.

One day of your salt,

forty years of gratitude—

I owe you a life

At half past twelve the platform at Shirahama Station was fuller than it had been on the night of the Sea Festival. Half of 2-B. Kimura, at the back. Hanzawa-sensei, awake. Nakagawa-san in his apron. Grandma Tae, and Kotone's mother, and Kotone's father, who nodded to me once, the way he had on the drying racks in July. Daichi had been crying since before I arrived.

"Sado," he said, into my shoulder. "SADO."

Fumika bowed. "Sardor-kun," she said. It was the first time. "Article One: come back."

The cherry tree by the ticket gate was still in bud, pink at the tips, not one flower open. I had arrived in falling petals and I was leaving before the first one. I have never seen a whole blossom season. It seemed a good reason to come back.

I took the loaf out of my bag, the wheel in its middle, and bit it. Then I gave the rest to Kotone.

"In Uzbekistan," I said, "the bread waits until the traveller comes back to finish it."

"Put it in the freezer!" said Yukari-san.

Kotone held it in both hands, the way she had held the thermos in December. "A tin," she said. "With the desiccant from a nori packet."

The Moriyamas and Kotone rode with me: the 12:40 Shiokaze Line to Kamakura, JR to Ofuna, the Narita Express. For the first minutes the sea stayed in the windows, on the right this time.

At half past five, in the departure hall at Narita, Buvi called. It was half past one in Tashkent, and the bitten loaf sat on the shelf behind her.

"Hurry," she said. "The plov is getting cold."

While I was laughing, Mio held up her phone. On the screen was a photograph from New Year: a wooden plaque on the rack at Watatsumi Shrine, written in pencil, in a small upright hand I would know anywhere.

New Year's wooden plaque—

let him go, and let the road

bend back to this shore

"Mio-chan," said Kotone, very red. Mio did not look sorry at all.

Then Mio said, in Uzbek, carefully, the way she had practised in the bath: "Xayr, Sardor-aka. Tez qayt." Goodbye, big brother. Come back soon.

Tetsuo-san shook my hand like a man closing a deal. "Mm," he said. "August." Yukari-san held on to me until a security guard coughed. Kotone did not say goodbye. We had agreed.

I went through security with my shoes in a tray and my heart somewhere behind me. On the other side, I turned round.

"SARDOR!"

The whole departure hall heard it. No "-kun". Kotone stood at the barrier with both hands round her mouth, and she shouted her haiku across the hall, every sound of it, in Japanese: "Sakura mada. Tsubomi no mama de. Matte iru!"

In my English, it goes like this:

Cherry trees, still buds—

they are keeping spring for you.

Go, and come back home.

"ITTERASSHAI!"

I shouted back, with everything I had learned in three hundred and fifty-six days:

"ITTEKIMASU!"

The whole hall looked at us. Businessmen, a tour group, a policeman, a child with a balloon. She did not care. For once in my life, neither did I.

At twenty to eight the plane climbed out over the dark fields, and a window opened in my head for the last time.

[Japanese: N2]

[Reading the air: 51% (enough)]

[Saying it out loud: MAX]

[Quest complete: Save the Literature Club]

[New quest: Come back]

[Time limit: none]

Underneath it, one more line began to open: Kotone affinity. I closed the window before it could show a number. Some things you don't need a window for.

I set my phone to Tashkent time. Then I took off my grandfather's watch, which had said Tashkent time for three hundred and fifty-six days, turned the hands forward four hours to Shirahama, and left them there.

Light spring rain was running across the window.

Leaving in spring rain—

half of the bread stayed behind,

so I must come back

Two half-moons of bread: one on a shelf in Chilonzor, one in a tin by the sea. Waiting, at the two ends of Asia.

From Kotone's notebook — Monday, 13 April

Recruitment week. I am a third-year. I am president of a club with two members (Fumika-chan and me), a kettle that doesn't exist, and a tin.

The tin sits on the shelf between Shiosai volume one and volume sixty-four. Inside: half a round loaf with a bicycle wheel in the middle and a bite out of one side, and the desiccant from a nori packet. I check it every morning. This is not a club activity. I write it in the log anyway.

The window is covered in blue notes. His orange pad is in the drawer. I'm saving it for when I need to be loud on paper.

On the eighth, the first day, I stuck one on the cushion by the window. It's still there.

New school year, blue notes

on the empty seat by me—

he is only late

Last night, a photo on LINE from Sardor (no "-kun"; I shouted it across an airport, I can write it in my own notebook): cherry trees in the Japanese Garden in Tashkent, pink all the way up. Two words: Here too.

Tetsuo-san's route map for August is pinned above the kettle, a pencil line from Tashkent to Samarkand. Mio-chan drew a whitebait at the Samarkand end. I don't know why. (I know why.)

Article 12, clause 1: three members by the autumn review. Fumika-chan has already said it twice. Clause 2 is the Aliev Clause now. (If an exchange student comes, they count. From the first day.)

Sixty flyers. I'm going down.

In the courtyard, first-years hurry past. I hold out a flyer and say, out loud: "Literature Club! It's quiet. It's nice. Please come."

A first-year stops.

My Tanabata wish, last July, was one word: voice. The wind couldn't read it. I can.