Sometime after I fall asleep in the back seat, Serizawa gets sick of the silence and turns on some music—although I only learn that later. He taps his phone, sets it in a holder next to the wheel, and a bouncy drum-and-guitar intro starts playing through the big speakers embedded in each door. A sunny female voice begins to sing.
“In order to see his mom, I boarded the train all on my own!”
It’s a Japanese pop song from decades ago. Serizawa sings along happily, tapping time with his fingers on the steering wheel.
“The twilit cityscape and cars passing by, I watched out the corner of my eye…”
“That song’s obnoxious,” Tamaki mutters, glaring at the young man she still knows nothing about.
“You’re kidding—this is the ultimate road trip song. Plus, there’s a cat in the back seat!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Is that Suzume’s cat?”
Still not getting it, Tamaki says grumpily, “We don’t have a cat.”
Serizawa rummages around in the glove compartment, finds his wallet, and takes out a card.
“My name is Serizawa. I’m a friend of your daughter’s friend. I think.”
Tamaki takes the card distastefully with her fingertips. It’s a school ID, with a photo of Serizawa half-asleep. His bleached hair is poking out in weird directions like he just woke up, and his round glasses are perched on his nose. “Tomoya Serizawa” is printed next to the picture, along with his birth date and university department.
“…You’re studying education?”
Tamaki frowns. This seems at odds with the man’s less-than-serious appearance.
“I want to be a teacher,” he answers simply.
“…My name is Iwato,” Tamaki says curtly, returning the card.
“Like they say, there’s no such thing as coincidence. It’s a long drive, so let’s enjoy it.”
For whatever reason, Serizawa half-smiles and shifts gears. The car coughs and jolts but still manages to speed up and overtake the car ahead.
“…This thing’s a real piece of crap,” remarks Tamaki.
“I got an amazing deal on it used!” he replies happily. “It should’ve been at least ten thousand, but an older friend working in Kabuki gave it to me cheap. Pretty cool, eh?”
Wait, does he mean Kabukicho, the infamous nightclub district? Tamaki sighs, as if to say, Whatever, I don’t even care anymore.
“Anyway, are you okay with this? You know it’ll take at least seven hours each way, right?”
“Fine by me. Your daughter’s not the only one looking for Souta.”
“She’s not my daughter,” Tamaki says, looking down at the road as it flies by. After a pause, she adds, “…She’s my niece. My older sister’s daughter. I took her in after my sister died. She was a single mom.”
“Oh yeah?” Serizawa says noncommittally, caught off guard by this abrupt personal revelation.
“My sister died at work, unexpectedly. When I got the news, I dropped everything and ran to get Suzume. She didn’t have any other family,” Tamaki says, still focused on the asphalt below her. She’d wanted to tell someone. It didn’t matter who—she just wanted someone to listen. She’d been thinking about it the whole time she was on the Shinkansen to Tokyo, staring restlessly at the passing scenery.
“She was only four years old. When I told her we were going to Kyushu together, she just nodded. But that night, she disappeared. She’d gone to find her mom without telling me, and she got lost. It was March—a cold, snowy night. I’d been living in Kyushu for a long time, and the early spring cold surprised me. I was so worried, thinking about her outside on a night like that. I walked around in the dark looking for her for what seemed like forever.”
She can still remember the terror and worry she felt that night like it was yesterday. She walked through slushy streets shouting my name, shining her flashlight into the shadows. When she thought about what might happen, her breath stopped. The whole experience felt like a long nightmare.
“When I finally found her, she was crouched in a snowy field, hugging this little chair that her mother had made for her. She loved that chair. When I saw her, it broke my heart—”
Tamaki hugged the little girl—me—and said to me through tears, “Starting today, you’re my daughter, okay?” She still remembers how small and cold my body felt in her arms.
The car is crossing over a big bridge spanning the Arakawa River. Far in the distance, a silver train is running parallel to us over a steel bridge. Men and women are kicking a soccer ball around a brown field on the riverbank. Tamaki squints at the light scattered on the river’s surface.
“Twelve years,” she whispers. “…It’s been twelve years since that night. I brought her back to Kyushu with me, and the two of us have been living there ever since. But—”
There’s a dry exhale, and Tamaki glances at Serizawa. He’s smoking a cigarette, his face blank.
“Oh,” he says flatly, noticing her gaze. “Don’t like smoke?”
She smiles wryly. “…It’s your car.”
She remembers he’s a stranger. What is she doing, telling him all this? She’s glad he’s the kind of person he is. He’s not bending over backward for her, so she doesn’t have to return the favor. They don’t expect anything from each other, so there can’t be any disappointment. They’ll only be together for a day or so. In that case, someone like him with no interest in other people is ideal. For the first time, Tamaki feels something like fondness for Serizawa.
“Sounds like we’re going back to her hometown, then,” Serizawa says, exhaling his smoke with relish. “I don’t really get it. Do you think Souta will be there?”
“Who knows… Nothing’s left there now.”
Tamaki glances at the back seat. I’m still sleeping soundly.
“Why don’t you just go back to Tokyo? Maybe then she’ll give up these crazy ideas,” she says.
“No way. I need that twenty thousand yen I lent Souta.”
“You’re kidding,” Tamaki says. “What are you, a debt collector?”
Serizawa laughs, as if that was a compliment. Whatever, Tamaki thinks, watching him from the corner of her eye. I know one thing for sure, at least—no way in hell is this guy cut out to be a teacher.
The red convertible crosses into the next prefecture, driving north into an increasingly green landscape.
“And she’ll be so mad at you, my daaarling!” Serizawa sings along with the music.
I sleep for a long time, lulled by the rocking of the car. Now and then my eyes pop open and I survey the scenery like I’m a deep-sea diver coming up for air. Then I go back under to sleep some more.
Each time I open my eyes, the view is different. Sometimes the roadside is lined with chain stores, sometimes we’re in a village with only a scattering of houses, and sometimes we’re driving through valleys with nothing but green. After a certain point, the only other vehicles on the road seem to be big trucks. Large tarps attached to the front of the trucks say things like MINISTRY OF THE ENVIRONMENT, REMOVED SOIL, and CONTAMINATED SOIL. I don’t have the energy or will to think, so I let it all stream past my eyeballs and fall back asleep.
One time, I open my eyes to find that the car is driving through a peaceful village. The road is smooth asphalt with no potholes, and the centerline is bright yellow like it’s just been painted. But if you study them closely, you can see that all the houses and shops we pass are abandoned, already half reclaimed by the surrounding vegetation. The cars parked slantwise in the parking lots, the windows left wide-open, the lunch signs left beside the doors—all of it has a peculiar sense of interruption, like life has been paused midstream. Everything on either side of the road is silently decaying. The village sits, emptied of its people, with only this well-maintained thoroughfare ferrying trucks back and forth through its heart. The whole scene feels like the continuation of a dream. After watching it for a while, I sink back into the mud of sleep.