“Some people just aren’t morning people…,” I complain with a sigh as I brush the kinks out of my hair using the brush Chika lent me.
“Who are you talking about? Your boyfriend?”
“I told you I don’t have a boyfriend! It was just a general statement.”
Sometimes I wish I had a tidy, short haircut like Chika, but a memory of my mom praising my long hair as a child gets in the way, and I can’t bring myself to cut it.
Chika is brushing her teeth next to me. “When that happens,”—she spits out a mouthful of water—“if you kiss them, they’ll wake up!”
She smiles knowingly. She sure can turn everything into a brag, I think, more impressed than annoyed.
“I’ve got to take a shower and get ready for school. You eat breakfast!” Chika says.
As I’m enjoying another fantastic free meal in the dining room, her little brother, who’s eating with me, suddenly says, “Hey, look! This is amazing!”
I glance at the TV tuned to the morning news and accidentally inhale a mouthful of rice. Above a caption reading “Cat spotted on Akashi Kaikyo Bridge!” is an image of the big white suspension bridge. The camera zooms in. A white kitten is strolling casually along one of the bridge’s thick cables. The reporter is narrating in a tone that says, This is a harmless, entertaining news piece.
“It’s unclear how this cat got onto the bridge, but it certainly is bold! A video of the cat recorded inadvertently by a dash cam is trending on social media—”
“Souta, look, it’s Daijin!” I say after running back to my room. I pick up the kiddie chair and shake it up and down. “Come on, wake up already!”
Like yesterday, all I’ve gotten in response to multiple good mornings is soft snores and that same old warmth. Souta refuses to wake up. I shake him, then turn him upside down, then tap him, then set him back on the tatami and remove my hands. The chair topples over like a lifeless lump of wood. This isn’t working.
“Dammit!”
“If you kiss them, they’ll wake up.” Chika’s knowing voice comes back to me. Maybe… Maybe that wasn’t just a boast. What if it’s a practical little trick to wake people up that a late bloomer like me just doesn’t know about? I grab both sides of the seat and bring my lips toward Souta’s face—well, toward the backrest serving as his face. My first kiss, I think as my lips approach the wood. I close my eyes. My very first kiss…
“…But he doesn’t have a mouth,” I mumble, opening my eyes. That wasn’t a very good tip.
“Suzume?”
Suddenly, Souta is talking to me. I pull my face away. He takes two noisy steps backward.
“Good morning. Is something the matter?” he says coolly. My cheeks flame, like a hot wind has just blown over them.
“Look at this! It’s Daijin! What in the world is that cat trying to do?!”
The slow-to-wake kiddie chair stares at the cat prancing over the suspension bridge. What does it think it’s doing first thing in the morning?! Apparently trying to soothe my anger, Souta says calmly, “Gods are capricious by nature.”
“Gods?”
“The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge crosses the strait to Kobe. We have to hurry—”
“Suzumeee, you’re leaving soon, right?” Chika says from outside the room, knocking on the door. “Have you changed yet?”
“That looks much better on you than on me!” Chika says, looking me over from head to toe like she did when we first met. I’m wearing beige culottes, a white T-shirt, and an oversize jean jacket. The kiddie chair and my school uniform are in a big sports bag. My hair, which I never did manage to get brushed out, is in a single braid pulled forward over one shoulder. Chika nods approvingly.
“You stand out in your uniform carrying nothing but that chair. You can keep those clothes and the bag.”
“Chika…” My nose tingles at her casual, natural generosity. “How can I ever repay you for this?”
“Don’t worry about that! Just come visit again.”
Dressed in her sailor uniform, she hugs me in the entryway to the inn.
“I’ll come—I promise…!”
I sniffle and hug her tight. She already feels like my best friend. An hour later, as I’m walking along, I suddenly catch the fresh, citrusy smell of the clothes I’m wearing. Ah, that’s the smell of Chika, I think with a pang.
“Can’t we take the bus?” Souta asks, sounding flummoxed as he looks up at the sky.
“…The next bus is in six hours,” I say, checking the faded schedule on the wall.
With a loud splash, a pile of leaves that must have accumulated on the corrugated roof above us comes tumbling down in a rush of water. We huddle in the dim bus-stop hut, breathing in the smell of water and staring hopelessly at the rain.
After we left Chika and came down the mountain to a road with a decent amount of traffic, we tried hitchhiking. When I looked up the nearest train station on my phone, it turned out to be fairly far away, which meant the shortest route to Kobe was by car. I stood on the edge of the road, next to the rice fields with their profusion of red cluster amaryllis, and timidly stuck out my thumb at passing cars.
“Suzume, you have to show a little more enthusiasm. Wave your arms or something,” Souta said from inside the bag after about five cars ignored me.
“What if you went out and stood on the road? Someone might stop out of shock,” I quipped back pointlessly. But the more I thought about it, even if a car did stop for me, a teenage girl, it might not be the kind of car I should get into. Just as I began to reconsider, lightning flashed, rain started pouring down, and I bolted for a nearby bus stop.
“Suzume?”
I’m sitting on the bench in the bus stop nodding off a little, thinking about how tree frogs must have feelings since they sing for joy in the rain, when Souta quietly says my name. He’s almost whispering, like he doesn’t want to disturb the sound of the raindrops.
“What?”
“…This chair is a memento of your mother?”
“Oh… Um, yes.”
The sluggish whiz of tires on a wet road interrupts the frog song again. Cars occasionally pass the bus stop, but no pedestrians.
“Why does it only have three legs?”
“Um…I don’t remember very well, because I was little, but…” The feeling of searching for a distant memory is like being in someone else’s dream. The world in the dream is governed by slightly different rules, and the plot won’t move forward.
“A long time ago, when I was in preschool, I lost the chair… I searched all over for it…and I think…when I found it, one leg was missing.”
“That’s—”
The noise of an approaching car interrupts Souta. It’s a strange noise, like the car that just passed is backing up in its lane. I pick up the chair, which is leaning out of the hut to see, and just then a blue minivan really does back into view and stop in front of us, its hazard lights flashing. The side window reflecting the rainy sky rolls down with a quiet whir.
“Where you headed?”
The person in the driver’s seat asking the question is a woman in light-colored sunglasses with loosely curled chestnut hair.
“You can sit there all day, but no bus is gonna come.”