The assembly point was the lounge of the Dream Island Marina. Sasaki looked quite busy lapping his ice cream. Aside from him and Kensuke, the only one there was a metropolitan official named Naito; the councillors representing Minato Ward had yet to turn up. It was ten minutes past the appointed time of 10:00 a.m. Summer vacation had just begun, and on this weekday morning, many young men and women came to the marina. Whenever a young woman passed by, Sasaki's face would lift from his ice cream and follow the woman as she walked off. Kensuke poked him in the ribs with his elbow.
'Leader, it's disgraceful. At your age.'
'Don't "leader" me, okay?' replied Sasaki wryly.
'You told me this was going to be a serious expedition.'
'Leave me alone, will you?'
Kensuke's sarcastic barbs were having their effect, and Sasaki waved his hand as though to chase away an annoying fly.
'Making a mountain out of a molehill' was a saying that existed to describe Sasaki. His trademark impulse to blow things up tenfold had been applied to the Battery No. 6 inspection crew, which in Sasaki's telling was to consist of the best scientific minds the city could muster. But Kensuke had arrived to find only Sasaki and a city official.
'Where are the other members?' the baffled Kensuke had asked, blinking.
Sasaki had given this excuse cringingly: They're all busy and called in one after another to cancel.'
Naito, the city official, revealed a different story when Kensuke questioned him about the matter. Apparently, just one ward councillor and one city official were required for the inspections, but Sasaki had nagged them persistently to be taken with them. All Sasaki's talk about having been 'commissioned by the ward council' and having 'organized a survey team' had been barefaced lies. The truth was that Sasaki had tapped Kensuke so he wouldn't look too bad just tagging along by himself.
'Here comes Mr Kano. We're ready to go.' Spotting the representative of Minato Ward, Naito rose to his feet. Reflexively, Sasaki and Kensuke also stood up.
Waiting aboard the small cruiser tied up at the wharf were the captain and a single deck hand, also government employees. The team, now six members in all, motored out of Dream Island Marina under the bright summer sun at half past ten and headed for Battery No. 6, which was but a stone's throw away.
On their way they passed under four bridges. The girders of one of them, so low as to be almost within touching distance, blocked out the rays of the sun for a moment, and the whole weight of the thing seemed to bear down on them. As they passed under the fourth bridge, the Rainbow Bridge came into view and beyond it Battery No. 6. Kensuke recalled how he'd looked down at the island from the Rainbow Bridge's pedestrian walkway shortly after the bridge's completion. At the observatory, using the binoculars, he'd peered into the depths of the woods that overgrew the battery. Now, for the first time, he was seeing the island from approximately sea level.
As the profile of the island loomed larger, Kensuke was getting his hopes up. He was finally gaining access to the setting of a nine-year-old fantasy that had burgeoned and morphed with a will of its own. Battery No. 6, an irregular pentagon with a surface area of about twelve acres and a perimeter of about a third of a mile guarded by a stone wall sixteen feet high, apparently had a freshwater well on it despite its being a manmade island in the middle of the bay. Thinking that with water you could survive, for nine years Kensuke had kept Yukari alive on that walled island. He understood it was a ridiculous notion. Yet he couldn't discount that bizarre smile of satisfaction Aso had displayed on the threshold of death. Had Aso, his brain invaded by cancer, succumbed to his own lie? Or had he perhaps, hoping for a place to live after death, conflated the image of heaven with the uninhabited island?
Likely expecting to be fed, a large flock of seagulls circled the cruiser. Flying just above the surface, the birds skimmed Battery No. 6 and swept up high over it. As if shaking the gulls loose, the cruiser pulled alongside the landing on Battery No. 6.