Lover on the Breeze

Naoko calls me Puff, because I puff up in the wind and billow in the breeze.

She was in her first year at elementary school when her father, Takashi, hung me in her bedroom. Once he had fixed me in place with silver hooks, he stroked her head in satisfaction.

“Naoko, it’s light blue—your favorite color. Isn’t it pretty?”

“I wanted pink—blue’s for boys.” Naoko pouted, but she couldn’t take her eyes off my ever so pale, liquid-sky blue.

My role was to cover the right side of her bedroom window.

Outside, a white-painted veranda overlooked the garden beyond.

The other cloth, my twin, said dismissively, “Now we’re stuck here, we’ll just get dirty in the wind,” and went to sleep. I wasn’t at all sleepy, and I gazed curiously around Naoko’s bedroom at the pink cushions and her shiny study desk. As if aware that I alone was awake, Naoko looked over at me. That’s when she named me Puff.

Come morning, Naoko went off to school, her red schoolbag on her back. Sometime later, her mother, Kazumi, came in to clean the room. “Let’s get some air in here,” she said, coming over to open the glass window behind me. For the rest of the day, until Naoko came home, I floated and flapped, almost swimming around the room.

When Naoko came home, she exclaimed, “It’s cold in here!” and shut the window. And, still with her schoolbag on her back, she said,

“Puff, I’m back,” and buried her face deep in my folds.

Despite my name, I hated the wind. In winter it was cold, and in summer it was unpleasantly warm, and the sensation of being touched up all over my body was gross. Naoko always felt the cold and kept the window shut, for which I was thankful.

At night she would quietly bundle me up in her arms and nestle her face up close.

There in the darkened room, I would be caught in her embrace, listening as she murmured my name. Whenever she was sad, she always came to me for a cuddle.

Yukio first came to her room around the time I had just turned eleven. It was the season I hated most, when strong, gusty wind whipped up petals from the cherry tree in the garden and stuck them all over me.

Naoko had just started her second year in high school. Kazumi was jittery, and she kept coming up to the room with juice or snacks.

Every time she went out again, Naoko and Yukio looked at each other and giggled shyly.

“Sorry,” Naoko said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a boy come to my room, so Mom’s getting a bit carried away.”

“That’s okay.”

Yukio was a rather slight, unremarkable-looking boy. He wasn’t all that tall, either, and his face, with its beautifully pronounced cheekbones, was smaller than Naoko’s.

The surface of his fine black hair shone pale brown in the sunlight streaming through the window. Beneath thin, delicate brows, his eyes were shaped like small leaves, the black pupils reflecting soft brown in the sunlight.

His long arms, extending from the rolled-up sleeves of the white shirt of his uniform, were thin, but the muscles were well defined, contrasting with Naoko’s soft limbs.

Yukio was a little taller than Kazumi, and as he walked, he generated a slight breeze in the room.

“Oh, Puff’s got caught in the window.” Naoko got up, opened the window, and pulled me loose.

“Puff?”

“This curtain . . . that’s what I used to call it when I was little, and the habit’s stuck. I suppose you think that’s very childish.”

“Uh-uh.”

Yukio didn’t laugh at Naoko, just shook his head, narrowing his eyes.

“It’s a good name,” he said simply, and bit into one of the cookies Kazumi had left for them.

Every time his fingers and arms moved, soundlessly, a light breeze blew through the room. It was as if his sinewy limbs were summoning it.

As I watched those quiet arms gently making the air vibrate, it occurred to me that I wanted to feel this breeze flow all over me.

Yukio often came to the house after that. On his sixth visit, the two of them were watching a movie on the small television in the corner of the room when Naoko suddenly tugged at the sleeve of his uniform.

Yukio swayed as though in the breeze and brought his face close to Naoko’s, lightly placing a kiss on her. His thin, pale pink lips fluttered down toward her without a sound. They reminded me of the falling cherry blossom petals as they stuck to the window screen.

Yukio’s eyes were open, his lashes just slightly lowered. Naoko had her eyes firmly closed, so I alone noticed how his lashes fluttered in the breeze.

One Saturday night not long afterward, Yukio stayed over at the house. Kazumi and Takashi were attending a memorial service some distance away.

Laughter sounded continually from downstairs as the pair of them cooked dinner, and the aroma of stew came wafting up to the second floor.

Later they came upstairs and sat side by side eating milk pudding.

Naoko had apparently made it the night before and had left it to chill overnight. The soft white custard slipped easily between Yukio’s pale blossom-pink lips.

“This is good.” Yukio looked at Naoko, smiling.

Naoko pouted unhappily. “But the potato salad was a disaster, and you cooked the stew pretty much all on your own.”

“It’s the least I can do when you’re letting me stay over.”

“No way! And anyone can make milk pudding.”

“But it tastes great!”

“But . . .”

After finishing their dessert, Yukio and Naoko stood up and slipped between the white sheets on the bed. I watched intently as his inexpert fingers slipped over her skin and, though he rarely perspired, beads of moisture welled up on his forehead.

Just as a small drop fell from his delicate skin and landed on her collarbone, I noticed her glance over at me.

The next morning, Naoko got out of bed alone, dressed, and went downstairs.

A faint smell of eggs frying came wafting up. It seemed she was getting her own back for yesterday by cooking breakfast for Yukio.

Yukio remained asleep, his shoulder exposed, in the bed she had vacated.

His bony shoulder shivered with cold, and at that moment I slipped one of my silver hooks from the curtain rail.

One by one, my silver hooks slipped free, and as a gust of the wind that I hated so much came blowing through the window, I jumped and let myself be carried on it.

I swam through the room on the wind. It all happened in a moment, soundlessly, as if on the ocean floor. Holding my breath, I quietly let myself down over Yukio’s body.

I could feel that skin I had been watching for so long.

“Naoko . . .” murmured Yukio in his sleep, drawing me into an embrace.

A light breeze as he raised his arms set my body atremble. Every movement of his fingers or legs or shoulders generated a quiet, slightly damp puff of air.

“Naoko.”

Again a light breeze came from his lips.

Each time it blew, I breathed it in, trembling. I finally realized I had been hanging in this room for the past eleven years just in order to be bathed in this breeze.

“What’s going on?”

Naoko’s voice was suddenly harsh. She must have finished making breakfast, for she now stood by the door in semidarkness, staring at us.

“What the—” Yukio sat up, rubbing his eyes.

“What is Puff doing over here?”

“I don’t know. He must have blown over in the wind.”

“As if! You’re telling me he unhooked himself from the rail?”

“I don’t know how that happened.”

Yukio looked at me, puzzled. The bed creaked under his weight, and the tremor caused me to slip to the floor with a faint rustle.

That winter, Naoko and friends from her school club gathered for a small Christmas party in her room. The room was littered with alcopop cans and snack packets.

One brown-haired boy who was sitting in the center of the room telling joke after joke suddenly tapped Yukio on the shoulder.

“Hey, Yukio, have you ever been unfaithful?”

“Of course not.”

“You’ve never done it with another girl? Not even once?”

A short-haired girl who was a close friend of Naoko’s said,

“Stupid! Yukio’s not like you,” and slapped him on the head.

Watching them as he sipped his fizzy drink, Yukio said innocently,

“Actually, there may have been one time . . .”

“Eh? Really? You never!” exclaimed the girl, drawing closer.

Yukio laughed, then abruptly looked over and pointed at me.

“Just once, I mistook Puff for Naoko.”

“Whaaat?” Everyone laughed.

“I cuddled him and called him Naoko. It really came as a shock when I realized what I was doing!”

“Yukio, you’re so dumb!”

The brown-haired boy alone seemed mystified. “Who’s Puff?”

“It’s Naoko’s pet name for her curtain, like it’s a teddy bear or something. ’Cos she’s still just a kid.”

“Hah! I bet you find that sort of thing cute, don’t you, Yukio?”

Yukio chuckled quietly and poured some more fizzy drink between his lips.

Only Naoko didn’t laugh. She sat huddled in the corner of her bed and glared at me.

One afternoon not long afterward, still in their school uniforms, Yukio and Naoko sat talking quietly in her room, which was filled with evening sunlight.

“You want to split up? Why?”

I was taken aback when Yukio said this, and I trembled even though the window wasn’t open.

“Um . . .”

“Won’t you give me a reason?”

“Well . . . I’m in love with someone else,” said Naoko, staring into space, her eyes dry. “To tell the truth, I’ve known about it ever since we got together. You reminded me of him, and that’s why I fell for you. I’m sorry.”

“Oh.”

Yukio nodded meekly and looked sad. They sat in silence for a while, staring at the sky changing color outside the window, as though watching a movie. The sunset gradually darkened and finally turned to indigo.

Yukio wept a little.

I watched the transparent drops trickling from his eyes, and for the first time, I hated Naoko for making him cry like that.

There, in the room vacated by Yukio, Naoko embraced me. It was the first time in a very long time, and her knees trembled as they

sank into the carpet. Her hands gripped me tightly and wouldn’t let go.

Naoko’s unnaturally hot breath felt oppressive, like a gust of summer wind. She made me damp with her breath as she buried her face in me.

Motionless, she closed her eyes as if in prayer.

There, in that room void of the breeze aroused by Yukio’s arms and fingers, my body hung heavily. The indigo-tinged air stiffened in the silence, no longer making any attempt to move.