On the following morning, when I woke up, I heard her voice.
I got up. She was talking to someone below. I soon realized that she was talking on the phone.
“Yes, thanks. So, then, I will bring him there.”
I was waiting for her silently.
I could sense the presence of her getting closer to me and climbing up the ladder.
Her face appeared, and my eyes met with hers.
“Oh, you have already gotten up? Did you happen to listen to my conversation on the phone?”
“No, I just got up. What’s going on?”
“Are you ready to get up now?”
“What time is it?”
I climbed down the ladder.
I washed my face at the kitchen sink. She made me a cup of hot tea.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Hey, I knew you were listening to my phone conversation.”
“Only the last part, though.”
“To the hospital. My friend works there. I think you may want to consult a doctor at least once. You know, I am not a doctor.”
“My condition is not bad at all.”
“Umm, I know that. But you are not normal.”
“Not normal?” I repeated her words.
Yeah, from the beginning, I have, we have not been normal. There’s no way I can be normal after all this time.
“Anyway, it is going to be okay. Don’t worry. In fact, his specialty is psychology. He would not operate on you or ask you to take medicine.”
“So, what will he do to me?”
“He will just talk with you.”
After changing clothes, I and she agreed to go out together. So as not to be conspicuous, I borrowed her clothes. I wore a knit hat to hide my face and put on sunglasses. Also, I covered half my face with the scarf. When I looked into myself in the mirror, I noticed that I was looking very suspicious. It would have been a surprise for anyone witnessing the person in the mirror that he was not carrying a gun.
The weather was better than yesterday. The car she drove was going down a mountain road. After a lake appeared in the view, we kept on going along a flat, straight road.
“What do you think about the idea of ending the war?” She suddenly asked me while driving.
“It’s a difficult question, isn’t it?”
“Right, it’s difficult.”
“I know someone has such an opinion.”
“So, what do you think?”
“Well, I think it is natural that someone has such an opinion.”
“So, what do you think about those wanting the war to end?”
“I’m not sure. Even if someone wants fistfights to end, the game of boxing will not go away.”
“Yes, that’s right. After all, boxing is a kind of sports.”
“What’s the difference between sports and war?”
“Killing each other is not sports.”
“But, they are the same in terms of competing in skills. In war, we might end up dying, though. Even boxing matches and car races are much more life-threatening than doing nothing, I think.”
“You insist they are the same?”
“No, that’s just an excuse.”
“So, what do you mean?”
“Sports will not disappear because there are people who want to do it and those who want to spectate.”
“You say that the same is the case for war?”
“I’m not sure, but I think it might be the case. Although I don’t want to witness the war, many people seem to crave for it.”
“I doubt it. Many people would feel they don’t want to watch it. That’s how I interpret it. They would want no one to lose their lives for nothing.”
“Fewer people lose their lives for nothing in war than in sports,” I replied.
“But I think it is wrong to find the meaning of life in killing each other.”
“You may be right. I don’t know what is right.”
“You know, human beings originally fought against each other to plunder something, right? If they did not fight, they could not survive. Such conflicts have inevitably existed in the world of living things. Only the winners could survive. However, that is not the case anymore. I believe that, with their wisdom, humans have built the society in which they no longer had to fight against each other.”
“We no longer need to plunder anything. Don’t you think that it is the reason why we can fight purely?”
“But, the lives that were lost will not be brought back. Aircrafts are destroyed. What was born and what was created will end up disappearing.”
“I think it is worth it.”
“Oh, I wonder why you have become that way.” She smiled wryly. “How can I explain this?” She glanced at me once, looked to the front again, and sighed. “I’m not your private tutor, though.”
“Of course, you are not. Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t you have any objection?”
“None.”
“Make an appeal to me for the justification of fighting in the sky, please.”
“No, I can’t. There is no such thing as justification.”
“Still, do you want to fight? Why?”
“I don’t know, but ...” I looked for the right words. There was no such thing, though.
“But?”
“If you fly, you will understand it,” I replied.
“I have flown. I learned to pilot an airplane. But, that scared me a lot.” She chuckled. “Right, I can somewhat understand why you feel comfortable while flying. But, I feel safer when driving a car.”
“Just flying an airplane is different from flying an aircraft and then being engaged in aerial combat.”
“Do you say I should fight in the sky?”
“Yes. By doing so, I believe you can understand how I feel.”
“I think I would never be able to. To begin with, I will probably die before I understand it.”
“Correct. So, only those who understand can survive.”
“Oh, I see ... It is the result of natural selection, I suppose.”
The phrase “natural selection” is slightly different from what I have in mind, I felt. Rather, those who can believe fighting is the act of graciousness will lose their lives one after another. It might be the reason why the descendants of those who think that avoiding to fight is beautiful have survived. Those who have become extinct after going through the selection are normal ones. The species of Kildren has just been born and are destined to become extinct easily rather than going through the selection processes to disappear eventually.
It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive. We got to a middle-sized city, and she parked the vehicle at a parking lot of a building, which was as big as a school. After getting out of the car, we walked on an asphalt road for about five minutes. The site was so spacious that it looked more like a factory or a research institute than a hospital.
We entered a long, narrow, two-story building and went up the stairs to the back end of a corridor. The notion of security was rather absent, if it was a laboratory. Is this a facility attached to the hospital? People walking in the corridors were young ones, wearing regular clothes. I did not see anyone in white coats or those who looked like patients. There was no patient room, either.
She stopped and knocked on a door.
After a moment, the door was opened, and a tall man was standing inside. He was wearing a beard and a pair of glasses. He was in a brown sweater. The pattern on the fabric surface looked as if dust had clung to it.
“Hi.” He held out his hand to shake her hand.
“Hello.”
“Come to think of it, I should have visited your place.” He said in a low voice. “Now, come in ...”
I bowed and entered the room by following her.
“Last night a person from a newspaper company came to my place. So, I think I should come here.”
“Haven’t you been followed?”
“I think we haven’t.” She replied.
A white desk was at the back of the room, and there was a window on a wall on that side of the room. The blind was pulled down. On one wall was a bookshelf that reached to the ceiling. On the other wall was a cabinet whose interior could not be seen. Two sofas were placed in front of the desk. She took a seat on one of them, and I sat next to her. The man walked to the desk, brought something back, and sat on the chair opposite us. Then, he put whatever he brought on a table. It looked like a small tape recorder.
“Nice to meet you. I’m a friend of Dr. Sagara’s. My name is Hayase.”
“Nice to meet you.” I bowed slightly.
“Dr. Sagara told me most of the story. Anyway, make yourself comfortable, please. You need not worry about anything. Are you okay?”
I nodded without words.
“Here.” She took an envelope out of her purse. It was folded in two. “I got it yesterday.”
“Okay.” He took it, reached back, and placed it on the desk. Then, he looked back and stared fixedly at me. “Now, umm, yes. In fact, I have not seen a Kildren before. You are the first one. May I ask you several questions?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“What’s your name?”
“Name? You mean, my name?”
“Of course.”
“I cannot recall it.”
“Can you not recall your own name?”
“No.”
“So, what’s her name?” He indicated her with his hand.
“She’s Ms. Sagara.”
“It was the name I spoke of earlier. Do you know her first name?”
“Ms. Aoi.”
“You can remember it.”
“I have retrieved it.”
“Is there anyone else whose name you remember? If it is a person you know, anyone will just do.”
I thought about it. The first person who came up in my mind was a woman with white skin.