Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume24 Chapter8
Afterword[edit]
You know, there's definitely moments where it feels as though inanimate objects have a soul.
Hello, it's Konno.
The day I finished "Yellow Rose, Hardball Fight," our bike returned home after going missing for about seven months.
I wrote that it had gone missing, but sis had locked it up properly in the bike parking lot, so I can only think that someone had silently made off with it.
When I found out about this, I thought of Yumi's blue umbrella.
I wrote about that episode in "Rainy Blue," and I've also experienced it first-hand. It happened before I became a writer – I wasn't even in the convenience store for five minutes, but my umbrella disappeared from the umbrella stand.
It had started to rain. What shocked me more than the loss of the umbrella was the thought that there were people like that out there. In the end, I never got that umbrella back. But as a substitute, I decided to return Yumi's umbrella to its rightful owner.
In that story, Miffy-chan (Aota-sensei) says, "Perhaps your umbrella would like to know how those ten days were for you too." It didn't feel so much like the umbrella returning was as a result of my desire to have it return to Yumi. It was the umbrella's feelings that made Aota-sensei's daughter's eyes stop on it in Fukushima station.
Which brings us back to the original story about the bike.
One day in May, there was a phone call. A bike that had been abandoned in the neighborhood for a couple of days "belongs to your family, doesn't it?" The person who placed the call was the owner of a bike store we used to use. Apparently, someone in the neighborhood had noticed the abandoned bike, seen the sticker for the store on it, and got in touch with them.
I accompanied the bike store owner's wife to the location and, although it was a bit more worn, rusted and abandoned, it was definitely our bike. It had a lock on it that sis's key opened. We took it like that to its hometown – the bike shop – to get the store owner to have a look at it. Initially it looked in no condition to ride (which would be why it was abandoned) but with the noted doctor's (shopkeeper's) surgery, it recovered.
I couldn't help but feel grateful to the person who, prior to abandoning it, had thought, "I'll leave it here." Since it was just a stone's throw away from the store, it was able to eventually return home. It felt like that was the bike's fervent hope. Then it would thank this unknown kind person, tell the bike store owner about itself, and thus make its way home. Thinking about that, I started to cry.
– Well, doesn't it make you feel as though inanimate objects have a soul?
By the way, bicycles make an appearance in "Yellow Rose, Hardball Fight." It feels like its related, since our bike made its appearance the day I finished writing that manuscript.
Looking at the bike that our bike store owner had fixed in the twinkling of an eye, I couldn't help but wonder, "Would Rei's bike have been saved if it had been taken to him?" No, no, the official supplier of bicycles to the Hasekura household would have to be suitably skilled. Instead, my curiosity was piqued as to just how much damage would have to be done to render it unfixable.
The wonderfully restored bike had another lock added to it and once again sis is riding it. But, after it had gone missing and not been seen for a couple of months, the inconvenience was unbearable, so we'd already bought a new one – making us a family of four with five bikes.
Konno Oyuki.
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