“This is for you,” Rumi says, taking off her baseball cap and placing it on my head. “Now you look even more like a runaway.” She giggles. I guess she’s figured out I’m not on a solo vacation. I blush, though it’s a bit late to be embarrassed. She hugs me tight. Hot tears spring to my eyes, and I bury my face in her soft shoulder.
“Rumi, thank you so much…!”
“You’re welcome,” she says, patting my back kindly. “Don’t forget to call your parents.”
“I won’t!”
We’re standing outside Shin-Kobe Station. Behind me, the Shinkansen departure bell is ringing incessantly. I keep waving until Rumi’s car disappears into the distance.
Shoot, I forgot all about Tamaki! I squat down by a column and hurriedly open my LINE app. I had notifications muted.
“F-fifty-five messages…,” I blurt out. Fifty-five. Fifty-five messages from my aunt in one day. This is bad. I can’t decide if I should open them or leave them untouched for the rest of my life. But can I survive the pressure if the number keeps growing? I steel myself and tap Tamaki’s icon.
“Wait, what?! She’s coming to get me?!”
“Suzume!” Souta says, popping his face out of the bag to hurry me along. “We can still make the next train. Hurry up and buy a ticket!”
“We’re taking the Shinkansen?”
“That’s the fastest way to get to Tokyo, isn’t it?”
This morning, the photos tagged #withDaijin showed famous tourist spots like Kaminarimon in Asakusa and Tokyo Tower—places even a country bumpkin like me could recognize instantly.
“Taking the Shinkansen to Tokyo is gonna drain my bank account…,” I mutter, but I buy the ticket anyway. A zero just fell off the end of the account balance I had diligently socked away from my allowance.
“Pay me back later, Mr. University Student!” I say.
“Leave it to me,” my sports bag laughs back.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been on the Shinkansen. I pull the cap Rumi gave me down low over my eyes, glance nervously around the car with free seating, and choose a window seat, pushing myself against the wall.
The train slides out of the station with almost shocking quietness and accelerates. We zoom through some tunnels, and before I know it, the city’s jumble of buildings is gone. We cross a few big rivers, and then we’re in the middle of fields and rice paddies. I open a map on my phone, and the image scrolls to the left faster than I’ve ever seen it go. When I whisper as much to Souta in surprise, he says, “Yeah, yeah, it’s fast.” But I’m so excited, even his nonchalance can’t dampen my mood. My eyes are glued to the landscape racing past outside the window.
I see mountains, sea, buildings of all shapes and sizes, houses and factories and stores, deserted arrow-straight paths dividing the paddies, and a little truck idling along in the distance. I can see the tiny form of its driver. Next to a yellow-green rice field swaying in the wind, there’s a small wooden hut straight out of a period film. On the side of a mountain, a graveyard reflects the sun. Next to a river, I spot a couple walking a dog. As I watch it all go by, I have the odd thought that I’ll probably never stand in any of those places myself. I’m nearly certain I’ll never go into that convenience store or order a meal at that family restaurant or watch the train go by from that window. I’m so tiny, and life is so short; I’ll never be able to go to most of the places flying past outside the window. Most of the people in the world are living their lives out there, beyond my experience. The realization hits me with a mixture of surprise and loneliness.
As I think about all of this, I drift off to sleep, and when I wake, the ocean fills the whole window. I open my map. We’re almost in Kanagawa Prefecture. “Now arriving in Atami,” a computerized voice says from the ceiling.
“Souta…!” I say, almost in tears. “Did we pass Mount Fuji already?!”
“Hmm, now that you mention it—”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!”
“Sorry, sorry,” he says, casually brushing me off. To cheer myself up, I buy a sandwich, a coffee, and an ice cream from the food trolley.
“You wanted to see it that badly?” Souta asks.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I reply.
Then, before I know it, all I can see is buildings. An unbroken, constructed sea extends to the horizon and continues on and on. It has a different quality than anything we’ve passed, and the word metropolis, which I’ve only heard in geography class, pops into my mind. The landscape here is covered entirely with man-made things on the scale of a sea or a mountain range.
Humid air and masses of people hit us as soon as we disembark at Tokyo Station. On the verge of suffocating, I follow the directions coming from the sports bag, turning right and left as the waves of people carry me along. I make it to the correct platform, but no sooner have I found a seat on an air-conditioned train than the voice in the bag hurries me along.
“Get off at the next stop!”
We step off the train at a station called Ochanomizu. There, I buy a bottle of cold water from a vending machine covered in a glowing black screen like something out of a sci-fi movie and gulp it down at the end of the platform. When I finally catch my breath, I glare over my shoulder at the bag casually hanging there.
“…I feel like you’re making fun of me!”
Souta laughs. “Before we look for Daijin, there’s somewhere I want to go. Would you mind making a phone call for me?”
“Huh?”
“The number is—”
“Wait a second!”
I scramble to type the number in, tap the call button, and hold the phone up to the back of the chair. It stops ringing, and a female voice says, “Hello?”
“Kinuyo? It’s Souta. I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch.”
Huh?
“…Yes, I’m fine. I’m relieved to hear you sounding so well!” he says, his tone awfully familiar. Then he tops it off with an awfully debonair laugh. What?