Authors: Miyuki Miyabe
Brave Story
BRAVE STORY by MIYABE Miyuki. Copyright © 2003 MIYABE Miyuki.
All rights reserved. Originally published in Japan by KADOKAWA SHOTEN
PUBLISHING CO., LTD., Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with
OSAWA OFFICE, Japan, through THE SAKAI AGENCY.
English translation © VIZ Media, LLC
Jacket painting and map illustration © 2007 Dan May
Designed by Courtney Utt
No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means without written permission from the copyright holders.
Published by
VIZ Media, LLC
295 Bay Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
ISBN: 978-1-4215-4057-3
Haikasoru eBook edition, December 2010
Contents
Chapter 1 The Haunted Building
Chapter 3 The Transfer Student
Chapter 8 The Realities of Life
Chapter 1 The Village of the Watchers
Chapter 5 Gasara, Merchant Town
Chapter 7 The Abandoned Chapel
Chapter 14 The Spectacle Machine
Chapter 17 The Town and the Cathedral
Chapter 18 Mitsuru’s Whereabouts
Chapter 28 The Elder of Sakawa
Chapter 29 The National Observatory of Lourdes
Chapter 31 The Second Gemstone
Chapter 35 The Tragedy of Lyris
Chapter 36 The Cathedral Cages
Chapter 42 A Conversation at Night
Chapter 45 The Imperial Capital of Solebria
Chapter 46 The Mirror of Eternal Shadow
Chapter 51 The Traveler’s Path
Chapter 55 The Tower of Destiny
You have been chosen. Walk the true path.
No one believed it at first
. Not even a little.
It began right after the beginning of the new school year, and no one knew who started it. Rumors are like that.
Everyone knew the story, down to the last detail. They could even tell you whom they had heard it from, and when. Still, even if you traced the chain of he-said, she-said a hundred people back, you wouldn’t find the original source.
“Hey, you know that big building next to the Mihashi Shrine, over in Kobune? They say it’s haunted!”
That’s how Wataru Mitani heard it, from Katchan, the son of the bartenders over at Bar Komura. Katchan’s real name was Katsumi, a girl’s nickname. The story went that his parents—expecting a girl—had decided upon the name way ahead of time. The obstetrician told his mother that the ultrasound showed it was “definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a girl.” But on that ninth of April, eleven years ago, a healthy baby boy arrived one week ahead of schedule, his wailing cry so distinctive that soon everyone, even the people in the nursing ward across the hall, came to recognize it instantly. It was a funny cry. He sounded hoarse and gravelly.
“My old man says I must’ve been smoking inside my mom’s tummy.”
Wataru didn’t find it hard to imagine at all. He remembered, with a laugh, the year they entered Joto No. 1 Elementary School together. They walked to class one December morning, both donning their school-issue yellow hats. As soon as they got into the room, Katsumi had run over to the sputtering old kerosene heater and stood there, shivering, even when the teacher came in the room. When he was told to take his seat, he replied as casually as could be, “Oh, don’t mind me. Just get on with it,
chop chop, chop chop
.” Wataru had somehow managed to keep from bursting out laughing until he got home, where his parents thought he was making the whole story up. The episode had since become legend, and, even now that they were all in fifth grade, the teachers would say things like, “Doing your homework, Komura?
Chop chop!”
Katsumi’s voice had been hoarse as ever when he told Wataru the rumor about the haunting in hushed, excited tones. His voice broke when he said the word “ghost.”
“You’ve always been into ghost stories, Katchan.”
“It’s not just me, everyone’s talking about it! Some guy was walking by there the other night and he saw it! And when he tried to run, it chased him!”
“So, what kind of ghost is it?”
“They say it’s an old man.”
Oh, how unusual.
“What’s he dressed like?”
Katchan scratched his nose, and his raspy voice became even lower. “He wears a cloak. A black cloak, covering everything, like this,” he said, swinging his hands up as if to throw a hood over his head.
“So how could they see his face? How would they know he’s an old man?”
Katsumi’s face wrinkled. Wataru would sometimes run into Katsumi and his uncle at the market or at the station, and his uncle would always greet him with a bright “How are you,” his face wrinkling in exactly the same way.