The inside of a car always smells like its owner’s house. This car, owned by a woman who says her name is Rumi, smells like grown-up perfume, like city lights at night, and also, faintly and nostalgically, like cookies. I feel antsy, like I’ve accidentally wandered into a stranger’s house. I glance out at the glistening, rainy landscape, the raindrops sliding down the windshield, the plump white fingers resting on the steering wheel, then back at the raindrops on the glass.
“Well, I couldn’t just leave you there, sitting at a bus stop that hasn’t been in service for ages,” she says. “But it sounds nice, traveling by yourself. You want me to drop you in downtown Kobe?”
“Yes, please!” I answer, my voice cracking from nervousness.
“It’s Suzume, right?”
“Yes!”
“I’m on my way home from taking the little ones to see their grandma in Matsuyama.”
She glances in the baby mirror next to the rearview mirror. The reflection shows two car seats in the back, each with a child strapped in. They look the same age, have identical features, and are both sleeping with serious expressions.
“Twins. Four years old. Hana and Sora,” she says.
“Wow, twins?”
“They’re naughty little critters. Every day is a battle,” she says, smiling. “Anyway, you got lucky, because I’m headed for Kobe.”
“Yes, I’m very grateful!”
I bow my head, and the woman giggles.
“Relax, I’m not gonna bite your head off.”
Through her sunglasses, I can see her eyes narrow in a smile. I furtively let out the breath I’ve been holding and steal another glance at her as she drives. Her flared sleeves are the color of mustard, and her arms beneath them are so white they look like they’ve never seen the sun. Everything about her looks soft and plump. The delicate gold jewelry around her neck and wrists is beautiful against her rounded white figure. She’s pretty sexy, I think. Not quite as sexy as Tamaki, though. She’s alluring but also reliable— Just then, I hear a zipper coming undone behind me and turn around.
“—!”
My bag, which is squeezed between the two car seats (Rumi told me to put it there), is being slowly opened by the twins, who are now awake. The bag flops open, exposing the face of the kiddie chair.
“Mommy, look!”
“Look, Mommy!”
The twins start slapping Souta’s face from either side. I silently scream. Souta is lurching back and forth, at the children’s mercy.
“Stop that this instant!” Rumi shouts, glaring into the baby mirror. “Do. Not. Touch. Other people’s things!”
“Yes, Mommy,” the twins respond automatically.
“Sorry,” Rumi says to me.
“No, it’s completely fine,” I say, smiling awkwardly. I glance at the back seat. The twins are examining Souta, their noses practically touching him. Oh no.
“…They seem really interested in that,” Rumi says.
“Oh, it’s just an ordinary kiddie chair…”
“Ah, I see…,” Rumi says. She focuses on me, then back on the mirror. “Yep, still looking at it…”
You can survive this, Souta! I think, silently cheering him on as the twins start messing with him again.
The car is zooming down an expressway that runs along a valley. We travel through a few tunnels and over a few bridges. The sky brightens and darkens; the rain turns to mist and then to a downpour. Before I know it, the twins are fast asleep again. I check my feeds over and over, but Daijin hasn’t shown up since the bridge. Finally, the green mountains open onto a distant view of the Onaruto Bridge. White mist covers the sea, and crossing it feels like driving over clouds.
We arrive on Awaji Island, where another endless succession of mountains and tunnels awaits. Finally, sunbeams break through the clouds and light up the leaves all around us. At last, the car approaches the enormous bridge I saw on TV that morning. For a moment, I’m spellbound by the enormity of the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge towers glittering in the sun. The sea is like an endless blue carpet lit up by sunshine.
I open a map on my phone; we’ve left Shikoku and are about to enter Kobe. When I click on the travel log, the map zooms out to show about a third of the Japanese archipelago. I’m 588 kilometers from home. The unease of getting farther and farther away with no one to depend on blends with the excitement of having come this far on my own. My heart beats faster. It’s like we’re entering the next level of a game. On the far end of the bridge, rows of densely packed buildings stretch to the horizon.
“Be careful not to spill that!”
We pick up hamburgers at a drive-through downtown and stop in the parking lot to have a late lunch.
“You two better not get those car seats dirty!”
“We know!”
“We know!”
Whenever Rumi scolds the twins, they always answer back before she’s fully finished her sentence. I chew my hamburger in the passenger seat and nervously watch the drama unfold. Souta is now serving as a table for the twins. As I feared, they are sprinkling crumbs on him, dropping pieces of mayonnaise-covered lettuce on him, and scattering their greasy french fries on him. The older twin slams her full cup of orange juice down on the chair. Just as I’m sure it’s going to fall over, the chair adjusts its balance, preventing the juice from spilling.
“Wha—?!”
What are you doing, Souta?! The twins stare suspiciously at the chair. The younger twin hurls down his cup of juice. The chair jumps, and the cup bounces and settles safely in an upright position. The twins look on with growing suspicion. Souta is calm and silent. What kind of game is he playing?!
“I never noticed that before,” Rumi says out of the blue.
“What?”
“You can see the amusement park from here.”
“There’s an amusement park?”
“Yeah, over there in the woods.”
I follow her gaze past the buildings and electrical wires to a Ferris wheel on the side of a mountain. The tiny curves look perfect against the stylish, showy cityscape of Kobe.
“That place was always packed when it was open. We went there a lot when I was little.”
Rumi takes a bite of her hamburger and squints.
“Then business dried up, and about ten years ago, it closed. I guess they couldn’t afford to tear it down, so it’s just crumbling out there. You can see it from all over the city, and every time I do, it makes me a little sad.”
Rumi takes a sip of cola from her paper cup and mumbles to herself that there are more and more lonely places like that these days.
Lonely places. I repeat the words to myself. It occurs to me that those are exactly the kinds of places I’ve been seeing on this six-hundred-kilometer journey.
A phone dings. Crap, I forgot to reply to Tamaki, I think, but it turns out to be Rumi’s. She reaches out to a holder next to the steering wheel and taps the screen.
“Oh no!” she says.
“What’s the matter?”
“I was planning to drop the twins off at their day care, but it looks like they’re closing because some kids have fevers— Stop that!” she abruptly shouts at the baby mirror.
The twins, who had been assembling their empty hamburger boxes, paper cups, and plastic containers into a Jenga-like tower, quickly sit back in their car seats.
“I swear,” Rumi sighs, looking back at her phone. “I’ve got to open tonight, so I’d better find someone to watch the twins… Hey, I know!”
She turns to me like she’s had a flash of inspiration.
“Huh? Me?!” I ask, pointing to myself.