A Tale for the Time Being

(1) The fierce storm causes the power to go out across the entire island. Ruth and Oliver’s little house is usually a blaze of light, but on this night, the Jungle Crow sees that it is barely visible in the dim light shining out of a bedroom window.

(2) In the bedroom, Ruth reads Nao’s diary to Oliver and reaches the part when Nao is alone at the bus station. But when Ruth turns to the next page, her heart skips a beat when she sees that it is blank. She turns the pages frantically, but all the pages left in the diary are blank. This doesn’t add up—Ruth had previously checked and saw that Nao’s writing went all the way until the end of the diary.

Ruth tells Oliver that the words are gone—that they were there before, but that they’ve disappeared now. She thinks that Nao changed her mind and that her life was shortened. Oliver is quiet for a while, and then he says that this probably affects their own lives, too—if Nao stops writing to her readers, maybe her readers cease to exist.

(3) Outside, the Jungle Crow sits in a tree and caws loudly, but it can’t be heard over the wind.

(4) Ruth tells Oliver that he sounds crazy, but he says that he is being logical. He says that Ruth should go find the words—since she is a writer, it is her job to find “missing words.”

(5) That night, Ruth has a strange dream that feels very real. In the dream, at first, she is in a forest and then finds herself in water. Words surround her, but she finds that are just sounds that have lost their meanings. Ruth realizes that she is in time, and that time has robbed the words of their meanings. When Ruth surfaces, she sees Jiko, who hands her glasses to Ruth. Immediately, she experiences Jiko’s memories, but Ruth wants to look for Nao, so she opens her mind and surrenders.

Ruth is transported to a hotel room, where she sees Nao wearing a man’s shirt and staring at herself in the mirror—but Nao disappears before Ruth can speak to her. Then, out of the corner of her eye, Ruth sees a quick movement that looks like a dark void, and she realizes it is the Jungle Crow, here to save her. The Crow leads her to a park in a busy city, where Ruth finds a man sitting on a bench, feeding crows. The Jungle Crow lands at his feet, and Ruth sits beside him.

The man nods at Ruth and asks her if she is the person he is waiting for. Ruth realizes that he is Haruki, and that he must be waiting for someone from his suicide club. She tells him that she and Nao are pen pals, and that Nao sent her to tell him not to kill himself. She says that Nao worries about him, and that Nao, too, plans to kill herself if Haruki commits suicide. Haruki is shocked to hear this

Ruth tells Haruki that Nao is at the train station, on her way to see Jiko. Ruth wants to tell Haruki more, but she is transported again and finds herself on Jiko’s temple grounds. She is holding Haruki #1’s French composition book in her hands. Ruth makes her way to the altar in Jiko’s study and places the book inside the white box. Ruth sees Jiko appear in the doorway and lets herself fall into Jiko’s arms, “into silence, into darkness.”

(6) The next morning, Ruth tells Oliver about her strange dream. She tells him that she tried to find Nao’s words but couldn’t, so she “came back empty-handed.” Oliver says that this sounds like an important dream, and he asks Ruth if she has checked Nao’s diary that morning.