The Umineko Festival

At eight o'clock on Saturday there were gulls on the gym roof, forty of them, all facing the courtyard, as if someone had told them there would be food. Someone had.

By nine the shopping association's sixty-litre pot was sitting on its burner by the cherry tree, and the cumin had begun. Tetsuo stood beside me in his navy apron with a red fire extinguisher, like a man guarding a very small king. Through the Old Building's open doors the café ran down the ground-floor corridor: borrowed tables, paper gulls on the windows, a hand-washing station with a sign in Fumika's writing, and at the end, by the door, a small table with a box of folded season words and a pad of pale-blue notes.

The smell did the advertising. By half past nine people were drifting out of the gym, following their noses across the courtyard like cartoon characters.

Fumika ran the tickets like a railway: a queue, a fare, a stamp, a platform number. Minase was the host, bowing people to tables in his winter gakuran as if he were seating them at an embassy. His fan club queued four times. On the fourth, Fumika looked at their tickets and said, "You're aware this is plov," and they said they were.

Every customer drew a season word from the box and gave it to Kotone. She read it, turned her pencil once, wrote, and handed over a haiku, without a word, in under a minute. By eleven a first-year was telling the queue that the girl at the end was the Haiku Oracle, and people were queuing for her who had already eaten.

Mio came at ten with two friends, drew persimmon and got this:

Persimmon, so ripe—

the little sister pretends

she is not sweet too

"Whatever," she said, and folded it in half and slid it into her phone case behind the stickers, where I happen to know she keeps only important things.

Tetsuo handed me the extinguisher for one minute to draw a word. Autumn wind. Kotone wrote, and gave it to him with both hands.

Autumn wind—the chain

clicks once in the quiet shop,

a road clears its throat

He read it. He went very quiet. Then he said, "Mm." And after a while, "Mm," again, and came back to the pot and stood beside me without saying anything else for half an hour.

Daichi drew red dragonfly. Kotone pointed her pencil at me: my turn. I wrote it on an orange note, counting on my fingers over the steam.

Red dragonfly lands

on a catcher's dirty mitt—

even he stays still

As he read it, Fumika stamped his ticket and said, without looking up, "Hoshino-kun. Regarding your report. A trial period, effective today. Article One."

And for the first time in recorded history, Daichi Hoshino stood completely still.

The devzira did what Buvi had promised all my life. When the lid came off, every grain lay on its own, glossy with oil and cumin, yellow carrots and barberries on top like jewels, and none of them stuck to anything. I nearly cried into the pot. We sold out at 12:50: a hundred and fifty plates.

"A hundred and two points!" shouted Yukari, who had eaten two.

On Sunday morning we did it again, and sold out by 12:30, an hour before the kukai.

At 13:40 the gym was full: four hundred people on folding chairs, waiting for the dance club, which was next. A screen above the stage said VOTE HERE beside a large QR code. We had twenty minutes.

Minase went first. He read his haiku as if he were reading the news on a very good day, clear and calm, and the gym clapped warmly.

Clear sky of autumn—

the arrow has left the bow

but I still hold it

Then me. My knees were not calm. I read mine in my best Japanese, and I thought of Buvi's kitchen.

Autumn: plov for all—

in Tashkent, my grandmother

sets one extra plate

A murmur went through the chairs. In the third row an old woman took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes, and I had to look at the ceiling.

Then it was Kotone's turn, and I looked at the floor.

I had promised. I looked at the scuffed boards of the stage, at a strip of coloured tape, at my own green-toed shoes. I heard her step up to the microphone. I heard four hundred people go quiet.

"Au—"

Her voice broke on the first word. It went up, thin, almost a squeak.

Silence. Someone coughed. Nobody laughed. I stared at the floor so hard I could have counted the grain in the wood, and I didn't look up, and I didn't look up.

I heard her breathe.

Then she started again, from the beginning, and this time her voice held. Low, and clear, and nothing like a squeak at all.

Autumn moon, you crossed

six thousand kilometres—

stay a little more

Silence. Then the gym came apart. Four hundred people clapping, stamping, somebody whistling, the dance club cheering from the wings in their costumes. I kept my eyes down. All I could see were her shoes at the edge of the stage, and they were turned towards me.

It was a beautiful haiku about the moon, I thought. The moon really is very far away.

The screen counted the votes. First place, by a landslide: Kotone Shirase. Then Hanzawa-sensei, woken for the purpose, shuffled to the microphone and announced his special prize.

"Aliev-kun," he said. "Terrible Japanese. It has a hole in it where the heart shows. Hohoho."

Minase got nothing at all. He laughed out loud, and for the first time I saw the dimple.

At half past three I carried the empty pot round behind the Old Building to the tap. By the incinerator, too far away to hear, Minase and Kotone were standing facing each other. She was saying something. He bowed. I went and washed the pot very thoroughly, with my back to them.

Minase found me there ten minutes later. He leaned on the wall and watched me scrub.

"She turned me down," he said. "Out loud. 'I'm sorry, there's someone I like.'" He smiled at the pines. "You're an idiot, Aliev-kun."

"Why am I an idiot?"

"Because you still don't know who the moon is."

From across the courtyard, where he was carrying chairs with Fumika, Daichi cupped his hands round his mouth. "SADO, IT WAS YOU!"

I laughed and waved him away. He put the chairs down and took a breath that emptied the courtyard of air.

"SARDOR! THE MOON! IT WAS YOU!"

It was the first time he had ever said my name right. He had to shout to fit all the sounds in.

I laughed again, and went back to the pot. I didn't let myself believe it. I was leaving in March. There was Rule 7. Some sentences you don't let into your head, because you know you'll never get them out.

On Monday the council held the review. Minase had recused himself and sat with us, so the vice-president read our line: Literature Club. Counted members: 3. The club continues. Hanzawa-sensei, awake the whole time, stood up and bowed to the council, very low, for the club he had never saved.

That night an email came from Ōno-san at the Hikari Foundation. My return flight was booked: Wednesday 25 March, Narita, 19:20, to Tashkent.

I counted. A hundred and forty-nine days.

I sent it to Kotone on LINE, because a date is a time and a flight is a place: 25 March. Narita. 19:20.

She replied with one blue square.

🟦

From Kotone's notebook — Monday, 27 October

Four hundred people

understood my seventeen

sounds. He did not. Good.

Good, because if he had understood I would have had to die on the spot, on the stage, in front of the dance club.

Bad, because. Just bad.

Things that happened:

1. My voice broke on the first word. The squeak. THE squeak. I was thirteen again for one second.

2. I started again. Nobody laughed. Four hundred people waited for me. I didn't know people could do that.

3. He kept his promise. He looked at the floor the whole time. (The whole time. I checked. Then I was annoyed that he kept it so well. I am not a reasonable person.)

4. I said it to Minase-senpai. Out loud, by the incinerator, which is not a romantic place. "I'm sorry, there's someone I like." He said thank you. Then he said, "He's an idiot, you know." I said I know.

5. Hoshino-kun screamed his whole name across the courtyard. He laughed. HE LAUGHED.

6. The club is alive. Mizuki-senpai, it's alive. Sixty-four volumes. Fumika-chan has put Hoshino-kun on a trial period and wrote it on her calendar in red.

7. The plov was right. Every grain on its own. He nearly cried into the pot. (I saw. I was not looking at the floor.)

He told me the date. March 25.

I looked at it on my phone for a long time. Then I sent a blue square, because LINE is for times and places, and anything that matters goes on paper.

So here it is, on paper.

One hundred and forty-nine days. That's eight haiku and a bit, if you count in syllables. I am not going to count. (I counted.)