“Um, uh, what should we play?”
“Cooking!”
“I wanna make curry!”
Before I even finish my question, the twins—Hana, the sister, and Sora, the brother—have answered. I feel like they’re informing me that they already know all the fun things in the world and that we’ll be going through them one by one.
We’re in Rumi’s house on the corner of an old shopping arcade, on the second floor, in the kids’ room. Rumi is getting ready to open the bar downstairs. The twins set out plastic vegetables on a table with practiced motions and grasp their plastic knives.
“On your mark, get set…go!” Hana says.
Bam-bam-bam! They start chopping vegetables with startling enthusiasm. The plastic vegetables are held together by Velcro, and with each chop, the pieces come flying at my face. I throw my hands up in defense. “Curry’s done!” says Sora.
“ “Time to eat!” ” they call out, and they bite into their plastic vegetables in unison.
“No, no, no!” I say, frantically trying to stop them from actually eating plastic.
“Now this one!” Hana announces, apparently declaring the vegetable game is done, and hands me a box of tissues.
“Huh?”
“Whoever takes all the tissues out first wins. On your mark, get set…”
“Go!” The twins start tearing tissues out of their boxes, and white debris fills the room like confetti exploding from enormous party crackers.
“No, stop!” I shout frantically. As I rush around collecting the unused tissues and folding them neatly to put back in their boxes, Hana claps a hand on my back.
“You’re Mount Fuji!”
“Huh?”
They pull me to the center of the room. “On your mark…,” says Sora. I have a bad feeling about this.
“Go!”
They both charge into me and try to scramble up me like a mountain. Hana uses my kneecap as a scaffold while Sora grabs my right shoulder. Hana outdoes him by placing her foot on my left shoulder. At the same time, they both grab my head. Ow! I stand firm, trying not to fall over as they conquer my shoulders.
I’m panting, hands and feet planted on the floor, as the twins run around me like a perpetual motion machine and shout, “Wait, wait!”
“I may not be cut out for this…,” I mutter. One of them vaults off my back while the other gives chase, leaping up after them. I groan.
“I suppose I have no choice,” a voice says above my head. I look up in surprise and see that the sports bag, which I’d set on the desk, is wiggling. A second later, the kiddie chair jumps onto the floor.
“!”
The twins freeze. They are staring wide-eyed at the chair, which has righted itself.
“…Hey, what are you do—?”
I’m so upset I can’t even say, Souta, what do you think you’re doing?! As I watch, he calmly strides forward.
“L-look, kids, isn’t this cool? It’s a very special toy,” I say desperately. Souta stops in front of Hana, bends his knee like a loyal white horse in a fairy tale, and tilts his seat toward her. Hana climbs on like she can’t help herself. He raises one leg like he’s neighing, then begins to trot forward with Hana on the seat. A second later, the twins burst out laughing.
“Hey, me next!” Sora says, chasing after his sister. The kiddie chair gives them rides in turn, tap-tap-tapping around the room. They’re laughing and screaming like it’s the most fun thing in the world.
I wonder…does Souta like kids? As I watch his rhythmical motion, I feel myself getting excited, too.
“Can I be next, Souta?”
“No way!”
“It talked!”
Oops. We fall silent. Hana steps fearfully away from the chair. Crap. I frantically try to think of an explanation.
“Um, uh, it’s amazing, isn’t it?! It’s a chair-shaped robot with the latest AI technology…”
There are limits to what even a four-year-old will believe. My voice trails off. And then…
“What’s its name?” Hana asks, eyes glittering.
“Name? Oh, um, Souta…”
“Souta! Cool!”
The twins get down on all fours and crawl up to the chair like they know all about AI.
“Souta, what’s the weather going to be tomorrow?”
“Souta, play music!”
“Souta, let’s play word games!”
“Souta, what are the stock prices?”
They’re competing to ask him questions as if he’s Siri.
“Um, Souta’s not that smart!” I hurry to tell them.
“What did you say, Suzume?” Souta swivels toward me.
“It talked again!” the twins shout. Outside the windows, it’s already dark. Years from now, when these kids have grown up…, I think, watching them romp around the room with Souta, how will they remember this day? When they’re my age, how will think back on it? As typical childish fancy? As a mysterious phenomenon they can’t explain? One day, will their childhood memories fade into a hazy dream? Whatever the answer, I hope they remember this as the day they played with two new friends.
I learn later that while I’m babysitting the twins, Tamaki is deciding to follow me to Kobe (and ultimately to Tokyo).
“…She ran away?” Minoru mutters. He’s driving the two of them back to the fishing cooperative office after visiting the homes of associated fishermen. He glances at Tamaki. She’s seemed down for the past two days.
“I remember when I was a kid like her,” he says, trying to sound encouraging. “You know how teenagers are, always feeling cramped at home in their small town. So—”
“Don’t compare yourself to her,” Tamaki breaks in coldly.
“Oh, right…,” he says quietly and apologetically, the smile still pasted to his face with its five o’clock shadow. The poor guy still doesn’t know how to talk to Tamaki. It’s hard to tell what will set her off, especially when it comes to her relationship with me. She sighs aggressively. There’s still no “message read” notification on the LINE message she sent me.
In a voice too loud to be talking to herself but too rude to be complaining to a coworker, she says, “I’ve asked a hundred times, but she won’t give me a straight answer about where she plans to go or what she’s upset about… Hell, she won’t even tell me where she’s staying tonight.”
“Um, have you tried tracking the GPS on her phone?”
“Huh?”
“You know, those apps young couples install so they always know where the other person is.”
“I don’t have anything like that.”
“Then…,” he says, pausing to think. Everyone besides Tamaki knows how he feels about her. “Could you look at her bank account? It should show the purchases she’s made with her phone… Kids buy everything with their phones these days, right?”
Minoru parks in the lot next to the harbor, pulls the parking brake, and turns to Tamaki, who is intently doing something on her phone.
“…Did you find anything out?”
“She’s in Kobe,” Tamaki says, staring at the white glow of her screen. The details of the money I’ve spent over the past three days are all there. The ferry ticket, the bread I bought from the vending machine, the tickets from various stations in Ehime, the hamburger in Kobe… Thanks to a single unnecessary comment from Minoru, the cat is out of the bag.
“Kobe! That’s pretty far…”
“I can’t let her go any farther alone,” Tamaki whispers resolutely.
Minoru gazes at her lovely face illuminated by the bluish-white streetlights along the wharf and says, like he’s confessing his love to her (though his chances are zilch), “Um, Tamaki? If there’s anything I can do, anything at all—”
“Minoru.”
“Yes!”
“I’m going to take some time off work starting tomorrow. I know you’re busy, but could you cover for me for a few days?”
“Okay… Then I’ll take off a few days, too…”
“What are you talking about?” she says, finally looking up from her phone to glare at him. “You’re covering for me. You have to go to work.”
“Oh, right…,” he says miserably.
From my perspective, at this stage Minoru is just a boring old guy spinning his wheels and getting in my way. (Later he says he got shivers from being glared at by such a beautiful woman. He sounds happy about it, too, which is pretty sketchy if you ask me.) But his saving grace is that he always wants Tamaki to be happy, and that’s why I root for him anyway.