Chapter 102

The radio playing in the deep night was like an SOS, sent on a paper airplane from a sea of stardust. Hello, I’m here. Hello, is anyone out there? It was that quiet corner between today and tomorrow. Sometimes, I feel so alone. I want to reach out to make sure other people are still there. I want to hear the voices of people passing by, similarly adrift. So during those moments, I listen carefully. I write a letter with no address on a torn-out sheet of notepaper. Recipient? You. Address? Unknown. Postmark? Undetermined. At the bottom, I write “Asuka,” then I fold it carefully and send it into the air. It collides with the wall and comes right back. The undelivered feelings were forming a pile, enough to fill a file folder. Am I just lonely? Or is it you that I miss? Another night of me trying to find the right frequency. Hello, I’m here. Hello, is there anyone out there? The lead of my mechanical pencil broke, and I looked up from my textbook. Leaning back against the chair and stretching, I heard a popping sound from somewhere in the vicinity of my shoulders. When I checked the clock on the wall, I saw both hands overlapping right in the middle. I must have been concentrating longer than I thought. How you spend your summer in your third year of high school will have a big impact on whether you pass the entrance exam or not. Or so the teachers keep saying. Whether it was true or not, I’d feel awful if I failed the exams after putting on that big show in front of my dad, so lately, I’ve been studying late into the night. In the end, the only memories I have of summer vacation are the time I spent with you, friend. Our date at Ichijodani. The summer study trip. Visiting Grandma’s house. Then the last festival of the summer. “…The next song is…” My secondhand retro radio, perched on the corner of my desk, spat out garbled static. Even when it was working fine just a moment ago, the sound often gets distorted all of a sudden. When that happens, I carefully fiddle with the dial and adjust the position of the antenna. You can listen to the radio using an app on your phone, but I don’t like going through that extra step, for whatever reason. It’s not the vague flow of information I like anyway. What I’m after is being able to pick up someone’s voice myself. The sound quality isn’t as good as it would be on the latest high-tech speakers or headphones. But it’s a nostalgic, soothing sound. It makes me feel warm inside, like I’m sitting in a coffee shop, bathed in the chatter of strangers. This is how listening to the radio should be, I think. Usually, when I’m studying, I don’t play anything at all—or if I do, it’s only songs that I’m used to so they won’t affect my concentration. But late at night, I suddenly long for the sound of the radio. Determined as I am, studying for so long every day gets exhausting. Both of my parents are teachers, and unless they’re unusually swamped with work, they both usually go to bed well before midnight. The nights in the countryside are so quiet and peaceful that I sometimes feel like I’m the only one awake. I think that’s why I want to get out the radio. The voices of the radio deejays, the listeners calling in—they all make me realize that, somewhere out there, others are working or studying hard and listening, too. It makes me feel like we’re all connected in the night. Mulling it over, I picked up my mug. My coffee was piping hot when I poured it, but now it was lukewarm, and the taste made me grimace. I touched my phone screen as it lay on the table charging, but I had no new notifications. I sighed, with a half-defeated grin. If only I were your classmate. I might have been able to send you a message over LINE, instead of writing a letter with no address on it. Maybe I would’ve been able to call him, instead of relying on the radio for companionship. “Saku, you still up studying?” “Right here at my desk. What about you, Asuka?” “Just taking five.” “Wanna chat for a bit? Might wake you up a little.” “…Sure!”