“What time is it?” I asked. There was a clock on the wall, but I could not read the time because of the reflection. That is such an ill-natured clock.
“That doesn’t matter. You are waking up.”
“I have yet to decide whether I should wake up.”
“You are waking up, without a doubt.” The woman looked delighted. “You should not go back to sleep again. You are awake.”
Surely, she was right. I got up without words. In short, I raised my body, like pulling the control stick toward me.
“Oh, you are angry, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Really?” She sat on the bed, and bounced her body closer toward me. “Hey, shouldn’t you go back to the hospital? Won’t they be angry at you?”
“I think they will reprimand me.”
“How are you going to deal with it?”
“Well, I still have not decided what to do about it, though.”
“They will be angry at me, too.”
“Who do you mean by ‘they’?”
“Who will reprimand you?”
“Well, I wonder who.”
“The staff in the hospital?”
“No.” I shook my head.
Those in the hospital are the same as mechanics to fix malfunctioned machines. In the case of machines, they have two options: they fix and return them, or dump them. In the case of humans, they cannot restore them to the original conditions in many cases, or they cannot just trash them immediately just because they are deemed irreparable. Those are the only differences.
If someone got angry, they would be those who call for the repair. At least, I did not remember my asking them to fix me.
In the first place, I have been out of order from the beginning. I could never get back to the original form. I was the one who knew the fact most. But, for some reason, just by remembering the bed in the hospital, I felt the tickling sensation. Why? I guessed there were many insects, which were too small to be seen, and they were eating patients’ bodies that were unrecoverable, little by little. They had got to be the ones that were making me ticklish.
It was the reason why I ran away. I secretly got out through the window. I was still in a condition that was decent enough for me to execute such an act.
With no jacket, I felt cold.
Still, the moon was beautiful.
I realized for the first time that I could view such a bright moon from the ground. After walking for a while, I used a telephone. It was a collect call because I had no money. Before she was on the phone, I had to explain to a man about the charge. I told a lie that I dropped my wallet. Of course, my excuses were generally lies.
“Yoo-hoo. No, wait ... Who is this?”
“Ah, it’s me.”
“You just said it’s ‘mee’?! Really? Are you sure?”
“You know, I have a favor to ask you.”
“I heard you dropped your wallet. Did you? Where? Like, on the cloud?”
“No. I just escaped from the hospital. I left my wallet there.”
“The hospital on the cloud?”
“Typical hospital.”
“Hmm. Hospital ... Are you serious? I thought you had died.”
“Yeah. Well, I might have died once.”
She laughed.
“Funny. It’s you, and it’s true. You are indeed alive! Oh, am I glad to know that? I’m not telling you a lie. I’m thrilled. Do you want to know how happy I am?”
“Yeah ... Can we meet now?”
“Of course, we can. I’m bored tonight. Ah, I’m lucky. You know, according to the horoscope, today would be a lucky day for me. I thought it was strange because nothing had happened to me until a moment ago. But it was right. It has just become a very, very lucky night for me.”
“I have neither money nor a car. I cannot come to your place.”
“Okay. I will pick you up.”
I gave her the information about where I was. I expected that she could come get me by car in merely half an hour.
Then, I waited in the phone booth without doing anything. I felt it was like a cockpit. Thanks to that, it was not cold and I started feeling better gradually. If someone came to the booth, then I would pretend to call someone. But no one would bother to use such a phone to make a call that late at night.
There were few cars coming and going. Most of them were big, rectangular trailers. They were so huge that they could possibly be driven only on such roads at night. I started to wonder if they were conveying whales. The whales were assuming the form of rectangular slabs.
As the lights of her car were approaching me, I got out of the booth. She turned on all four of the headlights. It was a sedan, whose pathetic-looking face looked like that of a trampled catfish. It made a U-turn, could not quite draw a compact arc, ended up running onto the pavement, and stopped after scratching the curb with its chassis.
I got into the car, and sat on the seat next to the driver.
“Wow, you’re real. True. Not a ghost!” She shouted in a husky voice. She threw herself from the driver’s seat into my arms to hug me.
“How can you tell that I am not a ghost?”
After a long kiss, she pecked me once quickly, and got her face off mine.
“Sorry? What?” She opened her eyes and looked at me from a close distance.
“Well ...”
“A ghost will vanish if it is kissed twice.”
“Oh, really.” I nodded. “I did not know that. Well, what if the ghost does not know the rule?”
“That can’t be helped. I think that’s okay as long as I can kiss the ghost.”
“I agree with you.”
“For how long have we not met each other? I feel that it has been for quite a long time.”
“Right.”
“How have you been?”
“As I said, I have been in the hospital.”
“Oh, I see. Were you wounded badly? Did your airplane crash?”
“If I crashed, I would not be alive. Just a little bit. I just landed roughly.”
“Roughly?”
“Onto the place, which was not a runway.”
“I know. I know. Umm, you mean soft landing, right?”
“Isn’t it for a rocket?”
“Rocket? You mean, the rocket for the outer space?”
“Yeah ...”
“Can an aircraft fly to the outer space?”
“It cannot. An aircraft cannot fly to the place with no air.”
“Really ... Hey, what is up with that? Where to go?”
“You mean, the rocket?”
“No, about us.”
“Well, first, I wanna eat something warm.”
“Ah, that sounds nice.” She let her body bounce. “And then? To my place? Or go somewhere else?”
“Where?”
“Anywhere will do fine.”
I brought my face close to the windshield and looked up at the sky. When I was on the ground, the sky was always above me. I saw the round moon appearing to be floating at the high place in the air. It had been white a moment ago, but was painted in pink now. It could be due to the color of the windshield.
“We cannot go there.” She said.
“Oh, where?”
“It’s the sky, isn’t it?”
“Ah.”
“Wanna go there?”
“Yeah.”
She chuckled while shaking her body. It might have shaken even the vehicle. Then, the starter agitated the engine as if it was gargling, and we drove onto the straight highway under the moonlight.
I was feeling a slight dilemma about asking her to come. I thought I made use of her, even though I did not want to see her that much. I did not quite like either night or moon too much. It was not that I was missing the highway greatly.
The crazily-designed speakers on the dashboard squeezed out the sound of tightly packed swing jazz uncomfortably. I did not like to listen to it that much.
Still, all of them were not bad.
I wondered who made use of me, to take advantage of me. The night, the moon, and the swing jazz were made use of because they were there by chance. I thought I might have been the same as they were. Probably, that is the case.
Then, I think, if they wanted to use me, they had better push me into the cockpit of a fighter aircraft and have a runway prepared for me, rather than waste my ability by having me in a bed of a hospital or getting me in a car with a woman at night. It would have been a much more skillful method.
If they give me a chance.
I will fly until I am worn out.
I will fight until I am wrenched off.
I promise.
I wanted to tell the white moon that could be seen from the side window about it, but I kept silent now, of course.
Because I made such a promise quite a long time ago.