She lowered her hand back into her lap, trying her best to seem calm and collected despite the dark clouds of melancholy I could see gathering like a storm in her eyes. The guilt and self-loathing I felt at the sight was so crushing to me that I thought my ribs might cave in and puncture my lungs. But even worse than how terrible I felt for slapping Akira’s hand away was the realization that even this person—the one I’d let in and opened my heart to more than anyone else I’d ever known—still couldn’t break this curse for me. And that was a harsh reality so cruel, it felt like a punch right in the gut.
“I really thought it might be okay if it was you…” I said.
Despair enveloped my entire body. I was going to be like this until the day I died, wasn’t I? I’d never know the warmth of another human being, let alone take them by the hand and share this life together with them. I was doomed to die alone.
“I genuinely hate myself for this, you know… Like, what did I ever do to deserve having to live a life like this?”
“Mugino…”
I bit my lip. I should have known better—hell, thought I’d already given up on getting better years ago. But now, whatever wretched little scraps of hope I’d clung to deep in my heart had turned to sharp, tiny needles that spread throughout my chest.
“I’m sorry, Iguma-san. I didn’t mean to hurt you…” These were the last words I could manage before I sank into a pit of self-loathing.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not taking it personally, I promise,” said Akira.
Her words felt like a soft blanket being gently laid over my entire body.
“I know you call it a condition, like it’s some sort of horrible disease,” she went on. “But if it weren’t for me knowing you couldn’t touch other people, I never would’ve felt comfortable going on this trip together with you, right after what happened to me. And I know that’s probably a pretty inconsiderate thing for me to say, given that it’s obviously a huge insecurity of yours, and something that’s caused you a lot of pain. But I guess I just wanted to say that you just being you isn’t always a bad thing, at least in my case.”
Akira smiled at me.
“So don’t feel like you have to change. Some things we’ve just got to live with, y’know? You’re fine just the way you are. But if you really do want to try to get over it…I’d be more than happy to help you work on that whenever you want. I don’t mind if it’s hard at first, or if you react in ways you don’t mean to. Just say the word, and I’m all yours.”
Her smile was all-encompassing. All-accepting. All-forgiving.
It felt warm. And gentle. But most of all, painfully bittersweet.
“…Thanks, Iguma-san.”
“Nah, don’t mention it,” Akira replied. Then her smile broadened into a beam of sunlight so bright it could turn this frozen fall back to summer again. “So tell me—whaddya wanna do tomorrow?”
We went on with our journey at a leisurely pace. We stopped by the zoo and broke into the giraffe exhibit to pose next to them. We checked out a local theme park and completely crashed the stage show they were in the middle of performing. We went through factories, airports, military bases, police stations, power plants, and all sorts of other places normal civilians would never be allowed to enter. We enjoyed this frozen world to our hearts’ content, in each and every way we could think to. Countless detours and side trips later, we finally arrived at Tokyo’s Adachi ward, where my uncle’s apartment was located, after another—
“Uh, how long has it been since we left Nasu, again?” I asked.
“Heck if I know,” said Akira. “Like a month, maybe?”
“Okay, yeah. Guess that works…”
I scribbled down “another month or so” in my journal.
It felt like I was definitely abridging things quite a bit at this point, but ah well. All we’d really done in the interim there was take our sweet time enjoying ourselves, so as long as I got that part across, I figured it was probably good enough.
I closed my notebook and slid it back into my bag. We were currently taking a break outside a mini-mart, sitting on a pair of guard rails shaped like upside-down letter U’s. Beside me, Akira was happily stuffing her face with a piece of fried chicken.
Now that we were in Tokyo proper, the sparse scenery we’d enjoyed in some of the northern prefectures had given way to an all-out concrete jungle, and there were people literally everywhere you looked. This town had always been much too crowded and stifling for my tastes. And yet, for whatever reason—be it a fond sense of homecoming or simply the fact that time was currently stopped—I didn’t loathe it all that much at the moment.
“Man, that was good,” said Akira, throwing her chicken wrapper into a nearby garbage can. “So you said your uncle’s apartment was somewhere around here, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just another thirty-minute walk or so, maybe.”
“Gotcha. Dang, I’m getting kinda nervous all of a sudden…”
I was right there with her. Though we’d certainly gone the long way around and changed our perspective on the timefreeze along the way, we’d still walked all the way from Hokkaido to reach my uncle’s apartment. If we didn’t find anything there after all that effort, it’d feel like quite the letdown. But we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. Plus, ending the phenomenon wasn’t even our goal anymore.
We left the mini-mart parking lot, and I led the way to my uncle’s apartment to the best of my ability, using the streets and buildings I recognized along the way as my guide.