Every time they saw a house, Kino peered at it closely, looking for residents, but there was never anyone in view. The forest road crested a gentle hill. At the top, Kino cut Hermes' engine and rolled him down the slope. When they reached the bottom, momentum carried them a bit further along the flat roadway before Hermes came to a stop.
Kino was about to start the engine again, when a clanking sound caused her to look around.
A short distance from the road was a neatly mown patch of grass. In the center of it, a man sat tinkering with a little machine. He was apparently so preoccupied with his repairs that he hadn't noticed Kino and Hermes approaching.
Hermes cried softly, "Oh, a person! And so close!" as if he'd just spotted a member of an endangered species.
Pushing Hermes, Kino approached quietly. She watched the man poke at his machine for a moment, then said, "Good morning!"
"Yaaah!" The man leapt to his feet, spinning to stare at Kino and Hermes.
He was about thirty and wore black horn-rimmed glasses. There was an expression of sheer panic on his face, as if he had seen a ghost.
"W-w-w-w-w-w-w! W-w-w-w-w... w-w-w..." he said, never getting out the next letter.
"Are you okay?" Kino kept her voice low. "I didn't mean to startle you..."
"W-w-w-whoooo... w-w-w-w-w-heeee-wheennn..."
Hermes whispered, "Kino, is he speaking another language? Maybe he's introducing himself properly. Maybe his name is 'Oo-Weee.' "
"I'm pretty sure it isn't."
"Y-y-you . . the man managed to say.
"Oh!" said Hermes. "You can speak."
The fellow grabbed his head with both hands. "Y-y-you don't know what I'm thinking?"
"Huh?" Hermes was honestly perplexed.
Kino tilted her head. "I don't understand . . ."
The man recovered from his panic attack, looking more relieved than frightened, and, if Hermes read his expression correctly, amazed. "You can't understand my thoughts!"
Was that a question or a statement? Kino wondered.
She licked her lips. "Not at all. I understand what you say, but..."
He looked as if he might die of happiness. Then he showered them with words. "Of course! I can't 'hear' your thoughts either! Oh! Wonderful! Wonderful! You're... you're not from here, are you? Of course! That explains it!" he rambled on, not awaiting an answer. His expression changed yet again – eager to the point of desperation. "W-w-will you join me for tea?"
"We can stay a little longer," said Kino carefully. "Will you tell us why people here never leave their houses?"
The man nodded eagerly. "Of course! I'll tell you everything!"
He told them, first, that his name was Kyoshi, and that his house was a short way down the forest road. It was a lovely house, beautifully landscaped and well-tended, with a profusion of fragrant flowers around the front door — star jasmine, lavender, and gardenia.
Kyoshi ushered Kino and Hermes into a large, brightly lit room furnished with tasteful wooden chairs and tables. They looked as though they might be handmade. Visible through a large, curved window was a carefully maintained herb garden.
The house, like the town, was too quiet; apparently Kyoshi lived alone.
Kino, jacket in hand, sat down on one of the chairs. Hermes stood to the side on his stand. Kyoshi rustled about in his kitchen for a few minutes, then returned with two mugs of tea. He placed one on the table before Kino, then sat down on the low sofa.
Kino sniffed at the steam rising from the obviously hand-thrown mug.
"The tea is made from the herbs in my garden. I don't know if you'll like it, but it's very popular locally."
"It smells interesting. Flowery. What is it called?"
"Dokudami tea."
Hermes gasped. "Doku? But that's... There's poison in it? Don't drink it, Kino!"
Kino peered into her mug and asked, "Poison... tea? ls that some sort of... of joke?" Perhaps the people of this town had good reason to remain distant if they were in the habit of serving each other poisoned tea.
Kyoshi chuckled. "You really aren't a local, are you? Ah, I shouldn't have laughed. I didn't mean to make fun of you. Dokudami doesn't mean that it is poison; it means it's an antidote for poison or for toxins in the body – a health drink. Now that I think about it, I suppose anyone would react as you did if they were offered 'poison-something' tea." His smile melted and he began to cry, then to sob.
Kino and Hermes simply sat there watching him.
Tears streaming down his face, sniffling occasionally, Kyoshi began to speak again. "It has been years... since I could talk like this... with other people. Ten years. No, maybe more. If I didn't talk to myself all the time, I'd probably have forgotten how."
When he didn't elaborate, Kino asked, "Why?"
Kyoshi removed his glasses and wiped his tears away, nodding repeatedly. "Yes, yes, certainly, certainly." He blew his nose and put his glasses back on, then let out a long slow breath and began, "Well, to put it simply, in this country we feel each other's pain. So we don't meet face-to-face. I mean, we can't meet face-to-face."
Kino shook her head. "You feel... each other' s pain? What does that mean?"
Their host took a sip of his tea. "Didn't your parents ever tell you to try to understand how the other person feels so you won't hurt their feelings? They must have told you that – I think all parents do. Have you never thought to yourself how nice it would be to know what other people are thinking? What a useful, wonderful skill that would be? And how lovely it would be for them to know when their words or actions had hurt you?"
"Yes! I have!" cried Hermes, pouncing on the question before Kino could reply. "Just on the way here, Kino was–"
Kino shot Hermes a warning glance.
Kyoshi continued, "The people of this city believed that. I should explain that most of the work here has been done by machines for a very long time, so we lived very easy lives. Food was plentiful; everyone's basic needs were met; it was a land of peace and prosperity. As a result, people had nothing but time on their hands and began applying their minds to a wide range of things. Discovering new medicines, pursuing the sciences, creating works of literature, art, and music. I learned to build furniture." He gestured at the table and chairs Kino had admired. "And in the midst of this... renaissance... a group of doctors studying the human brain made a revolutionary discovery. If we developed the unused portions of our brains, they said, then we would be able to receive each other's thoughts and feelings directly."
Hermes asked, "How's that supposed to work?"
"Well," Kyoshi continued, "let's say I form the word hello inside my head. Everyone around me receives not so much the word as the tact that I have greeted them. They sense the emotion behind the greeting. In fact, it's more subtle than that; if I were to be sad about something – no words, just sad – then that sadness would be transmitted to the people around me. in theory, those people would feel my sadness, and be kind to me, and we could discover a way to be happy together. It's similar to the way a mother can understand exactly what her baby is crying about, even though it can't speak. I believe the word for it is empathy or maybe telepathy. "
"l see," said Kino.
Hermes was silent.
"Everyone praised this astounding discovery. We would be able to see into each other's hearts. We would be able to truly understand each other. For so long, we'd communicated with these little bits of noise called words that don't come with any guarantee of understanding. Now, we could abandon them entirely! Or so we believed. The scientists searched for a simple way to give this ability to every one of us, and produced a medicine that could do it. We all took it."
"Everyone?" Hermes asked.
"Everyone. We all wanted to be at the same level. To evolve together. No one wanted to be left behind. And, in a sense, we have evolved."
"What happened?" Kino said, unconsciously moving to the edge of her chair. "You said, 'in theory.' Clearly, things didn't exactly turn out the way you expected."
Kyoshi's face fell, but he continued in even tones, "From this point on, I can only describe my own personal experience. I took the medicine. The moment I woke up the next day, the question 'Can you hear me?' was bouncing around my head. There was no one in the room. I was a little surprised to actually receive a message from someone who wasn't even in the room with me. Of course, the words themselves were not being sent to my head; my brain was simply interpreting the feeling I received as someone saying 'Can you hear me?' Naturally, I replied, 'I can hear you!' and got back, 'I can hear you too! This is amazing!' Then, 'I'm at your door' came shortly after, and I raced out to find my lover standing there. She, too, was telepathic. We were beside ourselves with happiness and spent long moments sharing an incredible sense of... oneness. It makes me laugh to think about it now."