Special Story – White Puzzle

1

Urakawa-san was a strange and mysterious girl.

I first met her during the summer vacation of my third year in elementary school. It all started when I snuck into a Western-style house on the edge of town that everybody claimed was haunted. Rumor had it that every night, a party of costumed ghosts would dance within the bounds of the imposing, old-fashioned Western house. The family that used to live there had gotten into an accident some six months prior, so I knew the place would be empty.

In all honesty, I had no real reason to sneak into a stranger’s house. I’ve never been an adventurous person or anything. I just wanted somewhere to be alone, and the Western-style house came to mind. Even third-year elementary schoolers have problems they need to deal with. Not that I can remember what they were anymore.

So, on a hot July day, I found myself biking to the Western house. It’s hard to remember how fast of a biker I used to be. I think the trip was somewhere in the range of 30 minutes to an hour. That feels about right.

There was a locked gate at the entrance, but it was just a tad shorter than me, so I climbed over it without much trouble. I walked over to the garden, sighing out a lungful of hot summer air. I was planning on finding a nice shady spot that wasn’t visible to any passersby, taking a break, then heading back home whenever I felt like it. Getting inside had never even been an option in my head. But as I approached the house, I noticed some of the curtains swaying from inside a window. At first, I was almost convinced there really were ghosts, but as I got closer I saw that the window was open, letting the breeze in.

It was only then that I remembered how high in the sky the sun still was. I smirked as I glanced up in the sky, ridiculing myself for even thinking ghosts could be out at such an hour. The clouds in the sky were a pure and blinding white.

A natural conclusion to make from an open window would be that somebody else was around. Even an elementary schooler should have been able to put two and two together for that one. But for some reason I still can’t understand, I was under the impression that the window had been opened long ago, remaining that way until I found it. I’m not sure what had me so convinced, but maybe it had something to do with how quiet the whole house was. It was like the difference between seeing a tree limb attached to its tree and finding a stick on the ground. The house just no longer felt like a place where anyone could reside. It almost felt like if I were to hold my breath, I would begin to disappear, too.

I slipped my fingers into the open crack, pulled the window up, and climbed inside. The first thing I noticed was the thin layer of dust covering the floor. With every step I took, my hollow footsteps echoed throughout the house. Any time I stopped, the sound disappeared, leaving only silence. But it didn’t feel like regular silence. It felt like less than that, somehow, as if there was nothing beyond or other than the silence. Even the chirping of the cicadas, which had been so annoyingly insistent, began to feel distant and removed. I took several purposed steps through the building, confident that there was nobody I had to be cautious of.

I walked through a hallway and into an entry hall, faced with a large staircase. Walking upstairs, I found another hallway. There were several doors on both sides, but there was only one open door, the second to last on the right side. I peeked into the room, finding a small bed accompanied by a desk with drawers. There was also a ladder attached to the right wall, leading up to a hole in the ceiling, most likely the attic. The room instantly became much more exciting.

Naturally, I ended up inside the small attic of a large Western-style house. I laid down on the floor, entranced by the peaked triangular ceiling.

I didn’t even know that I had fallen asleep until I suddenly woke up. When my eyelids fluttered open, I was faced by a short-haired girl. She was so close to me that I could see her clearly even though I was lying down. She seemed to be somewhere around mid-elementary school, like me. Her expression as she looked down at me was blank, as if she was just staring down at an inconsequential puddle.

“Who’re you?” I asked. I was having a hard time digesting the situation, as I had just woken up.

“I should be asking you that. Why exactly have you come in here?”

The fact that I had invaded someone else’s house without permission suddenly became real. I had gotten so comfortable that I began to delude myself into thinking I was in my own personal space.

I sat up quickly, immediately apologizing. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t think there was anybody here.”

“And that would be reason enough to enter uninvited?”

“No, it’s not that, just… I didn’t really think I would be making trouble for anyone.”

The girl sighed heavily, as if she were releasing a great burden. “Oh, I suppose it is fine. You certainly were not causing trouble.”

When I finally saw her face-to-face, I became stricken with the realization that the girl was breathtakingly lovely. It was the first time in my life that I had thought of a girl as lovely rather than cute.

“What is your name?” she asked, sounding completely uninterested in my reply.

“I’m Tsumiki. You write it with the characters for ‘building blocks’.”

“Quite the odd name you have.”

“Well, it’d be a pretty normal name if building blocks didn’t suck.”

“I see. You may have a point.”

“Who are you?”

“Who am I, indeed? I am something like a ghost.”

Something about her words was inherently believable. It was like reading a math textbook and memorizing a formula that you figured must be true. The area of a triangle is the base multiplied by the height all divided by two. The interior angles of a quadrilateral always add up to 360. This girl was a ghost.

“Now then, Tsumiki. Do you like Calpis?” she asked, tilting her head.

I finally found out that the lovely girl’s name was Urakawa-san as we sat together drinking Calpis. We talked about all sorts of things together in that attic. I learned we were the same age, and even born under the same zodiac sign, but we had different blood types.

Urakawa-san’s parents had passed away some six months before, and she was currently living with her grandparents. Evidently, she wanted to come back to her house over summer vacation.

“I am very unstable. You might say I am like a ghost,” she claimed.

I had a hard time wrapping my head around what she meant, so I repeated, “Unstable?”

She nodded. “I simply do not feel like I belong anywhere. Say, for example, the world was made up of gears. There are big and small gears all around me, and they each have their own place, but I do not seem to fit into any of them.”

Now that, I could completely understand. If I was forced to put my motivation for sneaking into the house into words, I would probably have put it the same way. I didn’t know where I belonged, and felt insecure, so I ran off to be alone. “Well, everybody feels that way at some level, right?” Maybe not everyone could put it into words, and maybe everyone felt it to a different degree. But whether in the classroom, the schoolyard, or walking home with their friends, surely everybody got that feeling eventually.

Urakawa-san shook her head. “But I seem to have so much more of it. It affects me so strongly that reality becomes inadvertently affected.”

“Those are some really big words.”

“You’ll see it soon. You’ll realize that I’m unstable.”

I went back to that Western house to meet with Urakawa-san the next day, then the day after that. It wasn’t until the third day after meeting her that I finally understood what she had meant.

We had been having some sort of conversation about the end of the universe. The kind of stuff that everybody thinks about but never wants to put into words. Something about Urakawa-san and the mystical air of the Western house seemed to pull those kinds of conversation topics right out of me.

At one point, she said, “Everyone’s potential peaks the moment they’re born. From there it’s all downhill.”

“Even when they put all their effort into getting more knowledge and skills?”

“Yes. Growth itself is just a function of measuring capability. Someone who is capable was destined to grow from the start. Being labeled capable just means you erased any external doubt of being incapable.”

I nodded in understanding.

“And then–” Urakawa-san’s words were cut short as she gently held her head with her right hand.

Is something wrong?

Just before I could voice my concern, I noticed that the outline of her body was shimmering ever so slightly. Then, I could see through her. I remembered what she had told me. I am something like a ghost.

My image of Urakawa-san slowly faded away, completely disappearing.

The next moment, in her place was an older girl who looked to be about high school age.

It’s Urakawa-san, I thought. It’s Urakawa-san, but grown up. Her hair was longer, lending to a different impression. But it was still her. Her white skin, hair as black and lustrous as the night sky, and eyes that were disturbingly beautiful. There was no other girl who could look so lovely as Urakawa-san.

She continued with a rare smile on her face. The smile was vivid, yet cold. “And then, people refer to the loss of all potential as death.”

Urakawa-san had described herself as a ghost. It came before her name, her grade, and anything else. So did she see herself as someone who had lost all potential?

Her voice resonated clearly. Almost too clearly. “This is the upper limit. I can’t go any farther.”

I had no idea what that could mean. It was somehow terrifying.

She continued, “I’m worried about whether I’ll be able to find the piece that was lost.”

I noticed a Band-Aid wrapped around the middle finger of her right hand. It was yellow and printed with a little cartoon bear. It clashed heavily with the rest of her image.

Her form began to shimmer once more, and then I was suddenly looking at the Urakawa-san I knew, with short hair. As I struggled to overcome my shock, she pulled out a memo pad and ballpoint pen from her pocket, writing something down. I glanced over, checking out her scrawlings. Written down in surprisingly rounded characters were the words Future, 15 years old, summer.

She turned her gaze to meet mine. “You saw my future self just now, didn’t you?”

I could only nod in response.

“I am unstable. I can’t seem to live in one point of time. Every now and then, I get replaced by my future or past self.”

It was wildly unbelievable. At least, it would be coming from anybody else. But for the strange and mysterious Urakawa-san, anything was believable.

“Did I happen to say anything?” she asked.

I repeated her words back to her. “People refer to the loss of all potential as death.”

“Anything else?”

I continued on, “This is the upper limit. I can’t go any farther.”

Urakawa-san’s eyes widened in surprise, a particular rarity. “Oh, I said that?”

“Mhm. Then you wondered if you would find the piece that was lost. That was all.”

She knit her eyebrows. Even the wrinkles between her brow were lovely enough to pull my gaze. “What did I look like?”

“You had a white blouse with navy blue slacks. Your hair went down about halfway to your back.”

“How old was I?”

“I guess around high school. I’m not too sure.”

“Did anything else catch your attention?”

That question reminded me of something. “You had a Band-Aid on your right middle finger. It was yellow, with a cartoon bear printed on.”

Her eyes narrowed. Then, she smiled in the exact same manner as her future self had. “How interesting. How very, very interesting.”

The vivid yet cold smile stayed spread across her face.

✽

That had all taken place seven years ago.

I rode my bike every single day to that Western house to go and visit Urakawa-san. When I left, I would say, “See you tomorrow,” and she would respond in kind. At the end of that summer, we promised to meet up the next summer. I brought it up, and she nodded in response. We exchanged phone numbers, but never made a single call to each other.

Fall, winter, spring, and summer, my thoughts revolved around that attic.

That hasn’t changed, even now that I’m a high schooler.

Urakawa-san is most certainly unstable, and I get the occasional visit from a past or future self, but that’s just become part of her appeal.