Come to think of it, the water Akira had given me from his canteen had been lukewarm too—though I’d been feeling too ill at the time to pay it any mind. Also, hadn’t he promised to take me somewhere nice and cool? Sure, it wasn’t quite as hot in here as it was outside, since we weren’t in the direct sunlight anymore, but it was still quite muggy and uncomfortable. Did they not have air conditioning?
I looked around the ceiling and walls, but I didn’t see any sort of A/C unit installed. This perhaps baffled me more than anything thus far. How could a modern business establishment of any repute not have A/C in this day and age? Surely there had to be an oscillating fan or something, I thought to myself as I scanned the room.
Aha! There, in a corner of the tatami room, was an electric fan—albeit a very old and antiquated one. Even the rotary blades were made of metal, and it was coated in a thick layer of dust.
“Oh, that old thing?” said Tsuru, noticing my gaze. “Yes, it broke quite a while ago, unfortunately… It’s totally kaput now. Sorry, I know you must be awfully hot…”
“Oh, no… It’s okay…” I said.
“You’ll just have to make do with this, I’m afraid.”
As I fanned my face with my hands, Tsuru offered me an uchiwa fan with a very retro pattern on it.
“Here,” said Akira, taking it from her. “Let me do that for you.”
“Oh, um… Okay… Thank you very much…” I mumbled.
As he started fanning me with the uchiwa, I could feel my flushed cheeks and neck gradually cooling off.
“It’s such a shame, really…” Tsuru grumbled idly as she handed me a wet towel to wipe my brow. “How many years has it been now since they stopped manufacturing electric fans for household use? I can’t even recall.”
Wait… They don’t even make them anymore? Since when?
That seemed like a rather dubious assertion to me. Although, come to think of it, we’d been using the same fan at our place for well over ten years now, and most homes did have air conditioning nowadays. Maybe there was no longer enough demand for electric fans to warrant producing them, and I simply didn’t notice?
“Yes, it’s really quite a shame,” said Akira, nodding. “I believe it’s been three or four years now, maybe?”
“I guess that sounds right…” said Tsuru. “I remember looking everywhere for a replacement when mine broke down, and I simply couldn’t find one anywhere. There’s nothing I hate more than making my customers feel uncomfortable, but what can you do?”
“Not much, especially when munitions production takes precedence over everything else.”
Munitions? This word wasn’t familiar to me, so I cast a curious glance over at Akira.
“Don’t worry, though,” he said—smiling first at me, then at Tsuru. “The war will be over soon, I promise.”
His tone was reassuring—but his words were anything but.
Sorry, did he just say, “war”? I hadn’t misheard him, had I?
I tried to wrap my head around this outlandish claim.
Was Japan at war right now? Surely not, right? I hadn’t heard anything like that.
To be fair, I didn’t keep up to date with international politics or anything. I never read the newspaper, and my mom and my friends at school never talked about those sorts of things. So even if Japan had gotten itself involved in some sort of conflict overseas, maybe it wouldn’t be too surprising if I were completely oblivious.
It was still a pretty hard sell, though, all things considered.
“Just you wait,” Akira went on, as I sat there dumbstruck. “Once my fellow soldiers and I get sorted, we’re going to hit their navy right where it hurts. We’ll deal the enemy fleet a devastating blow they’ll never be able to recover from, and they’ll have no choice but to surrender… That’s the whole reason I enlisted as a kamikaze pilot in the first place.”
Soldiers? Enemy fleet? Kamikaze pilot?
What were the words I was hearing? It felt like I’d dived straight into the pages of my history textbook. But Akira’s expression was as serious and steadfast as could be—he was so earnest, I almost felt bad for feeling discombobulated rather than reassured.
I turned my gaze to Tsuru, who was smiling back at him.
“I know,” she said with a nod. “I have every confidence that you’ll pull it off.”
“Bet on it,” said Akira. “I won’t let you down. I swear on my life, I’m going to personally sink an enemy ship—for His Majesty, for the Empire, and for all its people. That’s what I’ve trained for. That’s why I became a pilot.”
He spoke slowly and confidently, as if measuring each and every syllable.
But I still felt utterly lost and confused.
Even assuming, just for a moment, that Akira was an actual kamikaze pilot, why did he sound so calm—even enthusiastic about it? I remembered what the newscaster had said about them on the TV yesterday: that they were sent off with planes full of explosives, and only enough fuel for a one-way trip. In other words, their mission was to kill themselves. They had no purpose but to self-destruct, no hope of survival. How could anyone talk about this like it was perfectly normal, or even an honor?
I didn’t understand. But perhaps the more pertinent question was: Where exactly was I right now? Clearly, I hadn’t woken up in the world I knew. There was far too much about it that simply wasn’t adding up.
Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a newspaper lying on the table beside me. Even at a glance, I could see that the front page was covered with a bunch of difficult kanji I didn’t recognize. I reached down to grab it and checked the date.
JUNE 10TH, SHOWA YEAR 20
I blinked a few times.
What…? No, that can’t be right…
Showa Year 20—that would have been 1945.
The final year of World War II.
But then…wouldn’t that mean…
Was I in 1945 right now? Was that even possible?
A flurry of question marks was swirling inside my head like a raging tempest. Trying my best not to have a panic attack, I rephrased the question to myself:
Had I somehow been sent back into the past?
To seventy years ago? To World War II-era Japan?
Through some sort of…time slip phenomenon?
No way… I refused to believe it. It was completely, utterly impossible.
I tried to calm myself down and think rationally.
Thinking about it from a common-sense perspective, there was no possible way I’d actually experienced a time slip. That was just a convenient trope used in sci-fi or fantasy stories to make the plot more interesting. It was a product of fiction, not reality; there was no scientific basis whatsoever for time travel to actually occur.
But I had to admit, something like that would go a long way toward explaining all the bizarre things I’d encountered since I woke up this morning. The whole town vanishing, the lack of infrastructure, the unpaved roads, the wooden houses… The strange clothes that Akira and Tsuru wore… The lack of cold water and air conditioning…