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herself? Why does she sometimes laugh at nothing? Is she crazy?” a small group once asked me at recess, forming a circle around me. “Why do you sit in class and stare out the window while we’re playing karuta or Fruit Basket? Why don’t you talk to us, Midori? What’s the matter? Don’t you like people?”
    To tell the truth, they were correct. I was a strange child, and they sensed it. It was because, even then, people seemed so odd to me in their single-minded concerns and simple pleasures. I did not know at the time why, at the age of five—at an age before the world had had time to inflict many wounds on me—I felt this way. Somehow, though, I felt somewhere a world existed that was my true home, not the rice fields or the gray mountainsides in the distance, not the rivers and the fishermen standing along their banks, not the dusty fields where other children played games during afternoon recess, not the farm on which I was being raised, not the little town of Ami. And it was not that I felt I belonged in a radiant, carnivalesque city like Tokyo either. It was that I somehow knew I simply did not belong with people.
    I knew all that at the age of five. But it was at nine years old that I discovered my true being in this world.
     
    In fourth grade we read a book called Gongitsune . This is an honorable way of spelling and saying the name of the fox, the kitsune . Many of the new kanji we were learning that month were in this tale, and beside each new character the publisher had printed small hiragana , the simpler alphabet, to guide us to the right sound and meaning. I didn’t need hiragana as much as the others, though. Kanji was easy for me. When sensei introduced new characters, it seemed I could look at them and, almost by magic, they would reveal their meanings to me, yet one more reason for my classmates to be suspicious. So when sensei gave us this story, I read for pleasure, I read without having to study our new words.
    Gongitsune is about a little motherless fox named Gon, who finds a small village while he is out looking for food and begins to steal from the villagers. One day Gon steals an eel from a man named Hyoju. The eel was supposed to be for Hyoju’s sick old mother. And because Gon stole the mother’s meal, the old woman dies. When Gon discovers the consequence of his actions, he tries to repent by secretly giving things he steals from other villagers to Hyoju. But the villagers see that Hyoju has their things and they beat him up, thinking he’s the thief. From then on, Gon only brings Hyoju mushrooms and nuts from the forest. Hyoju is grateful, but doesn’t know who brings him the gifts, or why. Then one day he sees a fox in the woods and, remembering the fox that stole the eel for his dying mother, he shoots, and Gon dies. It’s only afterward, when the gifts of mushrooms and nuts stop showing up on his doorstep, that he realizes it was Gon who had been bringing them all along.
    “And what is the moral of this story?” our sensei asked after we finished our reading.
    We waited with our eyes open, our mouths sealed tight. We knew that she would deliver the answer the very next moment, that our input was not important.
    “The moral is that there is an order to the world, that everything is as it is for a reason. Gon’s mother dies, Hyoju’s mother dies, Gon is shot while he tries to make amends for his mistakes, and Hyoju feels guilty after realizing he’s killed the creature that’s been helping him. But nothing can be done about this. Everyone must accept their own fate.”
    We stayed silent. A few children nodded. But I didn’t like what the sensei said. I didn’t think the story was about accepting fate. I thought it was about how stupid Hyoju was for not trying to find out who was leaving mushrooms and nuts. Gon wasn’t that clever really. Hyoju, if he wanted to know, could have discovered Gon at any time. Instead he chose the human way. He chose the path humans almost