This was the third time now since the timefreeze began that I’d dreamt of the past. Which felt like a lot, at least to me—especially when they were these vivid, borderline one-to-one recreations of actual events exactly as I remembered them rather than your usual, more jumbled and incoherent types of dreams. I wondered if it had something to do with the sorts of beds I’d been sleeping on, like the one in the elementary school nurse’s office or this café sofa, for example. I’d heard it was more common to have lucid dreams in the shallower stages of sleep, after all. Or could there be some other explanation for it? I had no idea, but it sure didn’t seem like just a plain old coincidence—if anything, it almost felt like my subconscious was trying to tell me something. Something vital.
“…Nngh…”
As I lay there lost in thought for a while, I eventually heard Akira moaning in her sleep. I sat up and looked over to the sofa where she lay tossing and turning. Her eyes were tightly shut and wincing, and she had a hand pressed against her chest as though she was struggling to breathe. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead too. Something was clearly not right with her.
“Iguma-san?”
Unable to touch her to shake her awake, I could only call her name. When she didn’t visibly respond, I tried again, but in a slightly louder voice. Finally, after a few more attempts at this, her eyes shot wide open in terror.
“A-are you all right?” I asked.
Akira’s eyes slid over to me. Then she heaved a sigh, slowly releasing all the tension in her body.
“Oh, it’s just you, Mugino… Yeah, I’m fine. Was just having kind of a bad dream, that’s all.”
“You sure?” I asked. “It looked like you were in a lot of pain…”
“Nah, it’s cool. I’m used to it by now. Not the first time or anything.”
This did not do much to reassure me. But at least she didn’t seem to be feeling physically unwell or in any actual pain, so I took her at her word.
“Well, okay,” I said. “I’m gonna go back to sleep, then.”
“Wait, um—Mugino?” said Akira, calling after me.
She’d sat up to stop me right as I was about to walk back to my own sofa, so I turned to look at her. She was staring at me with her lips parted and trembling—as though she’d been right on the verge of telling me something but got cold feet at the last minute.
“…You wanna talk for a bit?” I asked, attempting to meet her halfway.
I assumed she was probably just still feeling a little unnerved by her nightmare, and I didn’t think she’d be able to get back to sleep. But apparently I was wrong, as she hung her head in resignation and shook it.
“Actually, no. It’s fine,” she said. “Don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet.”
“You…don’t think you’re ready?” I said, confused.
“Oh, I mean, uh—not that it’s a huge deal or anything!”
She was being unusually evasive now, backpedaling away from whatever it was she’d thought about telling me. I had to admit this only made me more curious.
“Anyway, sorry,” she said. “I should probably sleep too. I’ll tell you some other time.”
“Er, yeah, okay… Sounds good.”
Akira pressed a hand to her brow and laid herself flat again.
It didn’t feel great going to bed with a giant question mark hanging over my head, but I wasn’t going to press her on it. Prying into each other’s business wouldn’t do either of us any good, and I was feeling too tired to have any deeper discussions right now anyway. So I returned to my own sofa and laid myself back down to sleep.
After making it through central Fukushima, we took the bypass road south (still on foot, obviously). We’d been walking along National Route 4 all the way from Morioka now. According to a travel guidebook I’d perused at a bookstore a ways back, it was the longest highway in Japan, running from Aomori to Tokyo. This meant that as long as we kept on following the highway, we’d be sure to reach our final destination eventually, with no risk of getting lost.
That being said, it could also get quite boring being on the same road for so long. We took little detours whenever we needed a break or a change of scenery. That was exactly what we were doing right now: After quickly tiring of the dull, monotonous view along the bypass road, we’d stopped to check out a little park along the highway. It was directly adjacent to a stately old temple, and—perhaps to play into this connection—there were a number of old-fashioned buildings littered across the park grounds, including a five-story pagoda and recreations of both peasant and samurai residences. The whole park seemed to have a theme of getting in touch with local history.
“Wanna take a peek inside some of these?” I asked.
Akira shook her head. “Nah, I don’t really care about history and all that junk. I mean, I don’t mind checking ’em out if you want to, but yeah.”
“Mmm… Nah, I think I’m good for now. My feet are kinda tired anyway.”
“Let’s go find somewhere to sit down, then,” said Akira, walking ahead.
After passing by some of the park’s facilities, we came out into a large clearing with a wide-open lawn, some playground equipment, and a pond. We made our way over to the edge of the water and agreed to take a rest there. I hunkered down cross-legged on the grass, then opened my backpack and pulled out a red bean bun I’d picked up earlier. Massaging my calves with my free hand, I started munching away. I’d put on a bit of muscle from walking every day—and I felt like my abs had grown more defined too.
While I was busy filling my stomach, Akira was off skipping rocks across the pond—or trying to, at least, as each pebble she threw froze in midair long before it hit the surface of the water. But then she would throw another pebble at that pebble, and then another one, until eventually she’d formed a tiny cluster of floating rocks like a miniature planet in midair. This was a little game Akira liked to play with herself on occasion; it didn’t seem all that fun to me, but it was decent enough for a time waster, I supposed.
“You’ve got good aim,” I said.
“Eh, not really,” said Akira. “Pretty average, I’d say.”
Incidentally, the rock she chucked right as she said this was the one and only pebble that missed its mark. I felt bad for distracting her and ruining her streak.
“You ever try any sports or anything?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Played basketball for a while.”
“Oh, dang! That’s cool.”
This surprised me, for whatever reason. Maybe I just had a hard time imagining Akira taking part in any team-based activities.
“Yeah, I was pretty into it back in junior high,” she explained. “Quit after the first month once I got into high school, though.”
“How come?” I asked.
“…Couldn’t really tell you, honestly. Guess maybe I just cooled off on it all of a sudden. Wasn’t like my teammates or coaches were bad or anything like that. Not really sure what happened…”
Akira reared her arm back and hurled another rock—which then collided with the others in her creation, causing a clattering sound to ripple through the volleyball-sized mass of pebbles.
“Who knows,” she said. “Maybe I’d be enjoying high school a lot more right now if I’d kept at it a little longer.”
Akira stopped throwing rocks at this point and came over to sit down next to me. Her lingering sadness was evident in profile.
“Well, I’ve never done any sports…” I said. “But I can totally relate to being really obsessed with something one minute, then completely cooling off on it the next. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve suddenly lost interest in keeping up with a manga I’d been following and looking forward to every single week…”
“Isn’t that usually the story’s fault, though?” said Akira. “Like the plot got stale, or things were moving too slow for you or whatever?”
“No, I don’t think it’s that, per se… Or wait. Is it?”
“Don’t ask me. I don’t know your life.”
Now I wasn’t so sure. But I was fairly certain I could think of other examples of me suddenly losing all enthusiasm for something without any particular reason, even if none were coming to mind right now. For every time you fell in love with something so hard that it felt like it stoked the very fires of your being, there would be another time when that fervor would simply fizzle away for the tiniest of reasons, related or otherwise. People could not control the things they loved.
“Well, it happens. Sometimes you just burn out on something,” I said. “Just gotta find something else you’re passionate about to take its place.”
“Yeah, if only it were that easy,” Akira said offhandedly, then fell backward onto the grass.
We spent about twenty minutes resting there after that, then left the park and got back on the highway heading south. We seemed to be nearing a metropolitan area, so the number of tall buildings and businesses along the road had increased yet again.
“How much longer until we get to Tokyo, again?” Akira asked as we walked.
I quickly ran some numbers in my head to give a rough estimate.
“Think we should be able to make it in another two weeks or so,” I said.
“Dang,” said Akira. “Still farther out than I thought.”
“But it probably won’t feel that long, since we’ll be in civilization the entire time. No more long country roads or fifty-kilometer tunnels like the first leg of our trip.”
“That stupid tunnel, man… Felt like we spent a whole week trudging through that thing. Don’t ever wanna go through there again.”
“Yeah, that was pretty rough,” I said with a strained laugh, trying to at least somewhat relate to the look of bitter reminiscence that now adorned her face. In all honesty, though, I still hadn’t forgotten the rush of exhilaration I got upon first arriving at the seafloor station—that feeling like you’ve glitched out of bounds in a video game and into an area the developers never intended you to see. I knew I’d treasure that moment for the rest of my life. I mean, how many people would get to experience that?
“So what are you gonna do when time starts moving again, Mugino?” Akira asked me nonchalantly, as though she was simply asking my plans for the weekend.
In truth, we had no guarantee that time would ever start moving forward again. This whole odyssey of ours could be completely in vain, and Akira knew it too—but I figured she was just floating the question casually to make conversation, so there was no need for me to overthink it. Still, I struggled to come up with an answer.