Chapter 2

SUMMER 1 Let’s go back more than ten years. I was born and raised in a place called Sotogahama-machi, in Aomori Prefecture. It’s at the tip of the Tsugaru Peninsula. Saying it’s “at the far reaches of northern Japan” might get the point across. At any rate, there was nothing there. All it had was the ocean, the mountains, a sparse scattering of houses and fields, and the Tsugaru Monument on Cape Tappi. There wasn’t even a supermarket unless you got in the car and drove for almost half an hour. Out here, you needed a car to get by. I’d heard that once upon a time, the place was bustling with people who came to fish from the rocks along the shore. The border with the Union was right there, though, and after diplomatic relations were severed and tension started rising in earnest, most of the fishermen stopped coming. In fact, there was no telling what would become of the Hamana Port fishing industry itself. That said, the region had never been prosperous to begin with, so the relatively laid-back locals didn’t seem to feel there was much of a crisis. When the rest of the world thinks of Aomori, I’m pretty sure they think “lots of snow,” Osamu Dazai, Shuuji Terayama, the US-Japan Misawa joint military base, the Nebuta Matsuri, and things like that. The part about “lots of snow” is completely true. It comes whomping down from the sky (and whomping is the only word for it), but when I picture this land, I see it in deep green. On the Tsugaru Peninsula, low mountains roll all the way to the edge of the ocean. In summer, after the snow is gone, the trees on those mountains turn a rich and beautiful color, like a more saturated version of viridian. Meanwhile, the bright, pale green of the young grass and shoots catches the sunlight. I often gazed out at the contrast between those shades from the window of my house. The sight was full of gentle relief; any gloom I’d felt cleared away, putting my mind completely at ease. The land itself may have been pastoral, but the eyes of the world had been trained on Aomori quite a lot over the past dozen or so years. That was because Union-occupied Ezo was right across the Tsugaru Strait. The Union was an enormous bloc of Communist countries that covered half the globe. Our area was the borderland separating that superpower from Japan. In Aomori, in the first year of middle school, there was a special social studies unit where they drilled everything about the history between modern Japan and the Union into us. They wanted us to understand what was happening in the area where we lived. The class itself was boring, but strangely, the things I learned stuck with me. In 1945, the Soviet Union broke the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, and by October, they had taken control of Hokkaido. Even after Japan regained its sovereignty in 1950, Hokkaido—now called Ezo—remained under Soviet control. In 1956, at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, Khrushchev declared the establishment of the Union Bloc, which would unite Russia and all Communist countries in Eastern Europe and Western Asia. In the latter half of the 1960s, there was a growing trend of nationalist activity in Ezo. To fight it, in 1973, the Union suspended diplomatic relations with Japan, then formally severed ties in 1974. To this day, Japan remained split into two sections, North and South. These questions always showed up on tests, which meant I could still recite recent Union-related history from memory, right down to the dates. Actually, it might not have been because of the classes and tests. Because exchange between the countries had been cut off abruptly one day in 1973, there were a lot of families around here who had been permanently separated, with some members in Hokkaido and others on Honshu. It was common for people to have a cousin they couldn’t see anymore, and lots of my classmates had grandparents in Ezo. I personally had an uncle who’d gone missing during the fighting over the North-South split. The gritty reality was right in front of me, whether I wanted to see it or not—so maybe I’d absorbed the recent history by osmosis. There was one more thing: the tower. Let me tell you about that tower. First of all, I liked it. It was already standing in the middle of Ezo when I was born, and that distant view had been a constant in my childhood. If you looked north from the town where I grew up—which didn’t really qualify as “a town”—you’d see it, far away in Hokkaido, thin and white, like a mechanical pencil lead stretching to infinity. Even now, in memory, it strikes me as a strange sight. I never got over it, despite seeing it every single day. It was tall to the point of absurdity. If you started at the base, you could trace your eyes up it, on and on, watching it grow thin and distant until it finally vanished into the haze. It didn’t have a top. I mean, it must have had one, technically, but you couldn’t see it. When I was little, I often imagined that the tower stretched all the way into outer space and linked with another planet. You couldn’t say it didn’t. On the Tsugaru Peninsula, anyplace you could see the sky, you could always see the tower to the north. It was a constant presence, like the sun and the moon and the clouds and the stars. If there was one thing that set it apart from the celestial bodies, it was that it was unmistakably man-made, and if you wanted to physically go to it, you could…technically. Since it was on territory claimed by a foreign country that was in the middle of a tense military situation, getting there would be no small feat. Even so, I wanted to go there—to that tower. One of the reasons the tower sent a thrill through me, and a lot of other people, was the fact that nobody had any idea why it had been built. This unidentifiable object was overwhelming. It stirred up a grand sense of adventure in people, or at least it did in me. Of course, a hugely expensive structure would never have been built simply for the sake of it. There had to be some practical purpose in mind. The Union had made it for a reason. Something was there. Something terrible. Something we couldn’t even begin to imagine. Or something wonderful, perhaps. Something glorious. Something prodigious that would change everything— The total lack of information fueled my imagination, and fantasies became aspirations. “I want to go” became “Nothing for it but to go,” which finally vaulted into “I need to go.” The question “I wonder what’s there?” intensified into “Something must be there!” I was sure I’d find it there—something for me. The sort of secret that would turn my world inside out. I was convinced that I would go to that tower one day; the idea turned into an unshakable conviction. I had the feeling that all the potential I possessed was there. Until I reached it, I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere else. Unless I made it there, I’d end up losing all the possibilities that were open to me. I would never become anyone; I was bound by fate, traveling down a road with no turnoffs, deteriorating as the years went by… Lots of us revered the tower, but I can’t imagine there were many others who were that obsessed with it. As I told you, I was convinced of those things. As it turned out, Takuya was another of the handful of people who thought like I did. 2 It’s only a tiny bit, way deep down in my heart, but I think…I still resent Sayuri. My friendship with Takuya turned awkward because she came into it. All else aside, that’s an indisputable fact. My house was in the Minmaya area of Sotogahama-machi. It was right next to Gikei-ji, the temple that’s famous from the legend of Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Takuya’s house was in Minmaya, too, pretty close to mine; we lived only a ten-minute walk from each other. Up until we started middle school, though, neither of us even knew the other existed. The school district line ran right between our houses, and we’d gone to separate grade schools. I went to Minmaya Elementary, and Takuya went to Imabetsu Elementary. So we weren’t exactly childhood friends. We technically hung out with each other only during our three years in middle school. In my mind, though, he always occupied a special position, different from my other friends, and that’s still true now that I’m past thirty. Takuya and I ended up in the same class when we started middle school, and that’s where we first met. On the day of the entrance ceremony, everybody in our class must have introduced themselves, one by one, but for some reason, I can’t remember anything Takuya said. What I do remember is that it all started over airplanes. From the very beginning, that was the heart of our connection. It was before summer vacation, so I think it was June or so. I’d already gotten used to middle-school classes, where a different teacher came in for every subject, and I was bored, so I was reading an aviation magazine beneath my desk. Suddenly, I felt something light strike the back of my head. Geez, what? I looked back with quiet irritation and locked eyes with the guy in the seat behind mine. He had a piece of eraser on his left palm and was just about to flick it at me with the middle finger of his other hand. When he saw me turn around, he grinned. It was Takuya Shirakawa, and that startled me quite a bit. There are people who become minor celebrities soon after starting at a new school, even though they haven’t done anything particularly eye-catching. Takuya Shirakawa was that type of guy. He was good-looking, for one thing, so the girls had quietly started getting crushes on him. Plus, he was calm and mature. His whole aura was magnetic. He was way too good at athletic stuff, and his grades were insanely high. There were rumors that he’d gotten the top score in our year—by a mile—on both the midterms and the practical tests we’d taken soon after school began. When I asked him about it directly, later on, it turned out to be true. So there really are people who can do literally everything. The thought startled me, and I was genuinely impressed. But, technically, that was as far as my admiration went. I am not that type, not by any stretch. I’m good at some things, but when I’m bad at something, I’m completely hopeless. And there are more things I’m lousy at than not. I didn’t even try comparing myself with Takuya. We lived in different worlds, different dimensions, even if he was only a desk away. …And that was the guy who’d started messing with me out of the blue. I had no idea why. When class ended, Takuya hopped out of his seat and came straight over to me. “That’s about airplanes, right? Let me see.” He pointed at the magazine; the very edge of it was sticking out from my desk. I said something like “Yeah, sure…,” then pulled the thick, side-stitched magazine out of my desk and handed it over. He stood there holding it in one hand, dexterously flipping through the pages with his other hand. Geez, no matter what he’s doing, he looks good doing it. “I like forward-swept wings,” he said. “I know it’s kinda cliché for an aviation fan, but still. They’re just not quite what you’d expect, you know? They’re fun. Not something you’d see every day.” “Yeah, I get that,” I answered. “Like the F-FSW. The photos are way different from the F-16s we’re used to, but that’s what makes them cool.” “Right. Like the Sukhoi S-37; now that’s an interesting design.” “Yeah, and the Thunderbird 2.” “That one’s amazing, for sure.” He laughed. His smile was really friendly. “So the YF-22 and 23: What’s your call there?” Those were two test planes in competition to become the US Army’s next-gen main aircraft. “Maybe the 23,” I answered. “I bet it was the V-tail.” “Bingo. How’d you know?” “Because it did it for me, too.” By then, I was sure—I could totally be friends with this guy. “So you really like planes,” he said. “I make ’em, actually,” I told him. “At home. They’re models, but they do fly.” “What?! You kidding me?” He looked shocked, and he leaned in startlingly close. “Hey, is that for real? Geez, you shoulda told me! Can I go over and see them today? Like, right now?” “Right now…? But we’ve got club. Both of us.” “So then skip,” he answered bluntly. “We can do club stuff every day, but I wanna see your planes. And if I don’t go now, I won’t be as excited later. I really hate it when that happens. It’s fine—just take me over there as soon as school’s out.” In the end, I skipped the archery club I’d just joined and took Takuya back to my house. It may have been because what he said got to me—“If I don’t go now, I won’t be as excited later.” After all, I knew the feeling well. I tended to feel unsatisfied unless I took action on an idea right that minute. I couldn’t let ideas rest and mature; when I decided to make something, I couldn’t relax unless I made it immediately, and things like eating and sleep and homework became second, or even third, priority. That habit had resulted in a whole lot of dumb mistakes, but I’d never considered trying to mend my ways. At the far end of our garden, there was a wooden shed that we called “the garage,” for lack of a better word, although it was falling apart and barely counted as a garage anymore. As I rolled the shutter open— “Whoa!” Takuya’s eyes went round with excitement. “This is so cool!” “Yeah?” I think I blushed a little. “It’s not like I built them all, though.” The garage had originally belonged to my uncle, my dad’s big brother. I’d never actually met him, but I felt very close to him. He’d been a rabid aviation fan. He was an Air Self-Defense Force officer, but he’d gone missing in 1973, during the struggle over the North-South split. That was before I was born. If he wasn’t dead, he was probably somewhere in the Union right now. As a result, my dad had wound up inheriting the house, the garage, and everything in the garage. It was crammed with model planes and radio-controlled versions of various aircraft from all over the world, real components like propellers and canopies and control sticks, blueprints, exploded view diagrams, and the materials for making original models. It even had a lathe, a drill press, and a machine press. To me, it was a treasure trove. Dad didn’t have any interest in airplanes, and I was an only child, so I got to have my uncle’s legacy literally all to myself. I’d been playing in there ever since I was little. It was practically my room, to be honest. Of course, it was too drafty to sleep there, but aside from that, I spent a good chunk of my time in it. I could be with my collection all the time that way. I’d been crazy about planes and model aircraft since before I started grade school. For school craft assignments, I invariably made an airplane; even if there was no assignment, I was working on some sort of airplane pretty much constantly. Papercraft planes and free flight rubber-powered models and featherweight planes, things like that. The finished ones were displayed neatly on a shelf on the wall, so I could pick them up and fly them at will. I made radio-controlled planes from kits, of course, but the thrill soon wasn’t enough, and I just diverted the engine and built a plane according to my own original design. It didn’t have an electric motor; it was a powerful thing with a four-stroke engine. That had been just about a year ago, when I was in sixth grade. “You made these yourself… That’s completely nuts.” Takuya stepped inside and glanced around restlessly, his face flushed. He looked like a kid in a toy store. Actually, he probably looked exactly like I did every time I visited the model shop. I never would have expected that. Ordinarily, this guy acted perfectly calm, almost like an adult. I’d just assumed he was as enlightened as a statue of the Buddha. Nothing could catch him off guard or make him lose his cool. This new side of him was a big shock, and at the same time, it made me feel really close to him. No, that’s not the right way to describe it. I’d developed an incredible liking for the guy. He walked around the garage as if he felt at home there, pointing at each item in the collection and asking for explanations. I stepped up enthusiastically, of course. I told him when I’d made that, and what I’d thought as I worked on it, or how I’d put so much painstaking care into this one part. How many months I’d taken to build it, and how I’d gotten this or that component, and where from. I’d been dying to talk with somebody about everything I’d done, for someone to genuinely understand just how incredible the things I’d made were. I brought out the plane I’d designed and built last year, handed the transmitter to Takuya, and went with him to fly it, using a nearby farm road as a runway. There were only a few houses anywhere near my place, so it was perfect for flying model planes. The instant it left the ground, we yelled at the exact same time. That elation of flying a plane never gets old, and I’m sure it never will. It always gives me chills. Those fixed, man-made wings are flying through the sky. No matter how many times I put a plane in the air, no matter how often I see it, it feels strange. It sends a buzzing thrill racing up my spine. Takuya knew how to pilot it without getting a detailed explanation; he quickly got the hang of it and started operating it skillfully. The shrill vibration from the tiny engine, high in the air, drifted down to us. A plane you could hold with two hands wheeled lazily through the vaulted sky and the orange-tinted clouds, sometimes high, sometimes low. On that day, the thin tower in Ezo was clearly visible. Takuya steered the plane north, turning it in tight circles that made it appear as though he was trying to tangle it around the tower. When I looked up, the atmosphere was dense and clear. The round sky seemed like a lens pulling my heart up and into it. “What are you making now? What kind are you going to build next?” Takuya asked. He was sitting on a round stool in front of the drawing table in the garage, and I was doing maintenance on a radio-controlled plane. “Mm…,” I mumbled vaguely. “It’s still in the planning stages, and I haven’t started making it yet. I’m thinking of something a little complicated. I don’t know how to build it, specifically, and I don’t have much chance of getting it off the drawing board.” “So, what, it’s a secret?” “It’s not secret—it’s just…” I hesitated. “The thing is, I want to make it transform while it’s in the air.” “Transform? Like the F-14?” “Yeah, that’s great, too. But…” I figured he was going to laugh at me, and I considered not saying anything but decided to go for it. “…I want something cool, like the X-wings in Star Wars.” Takuya didn’t laugh, but he did look a little disbelieving. “You think that’s actually gonna fly?” “I said like them. If I made it exactly the same, sure, it wouldn’t fly, but it’s like… What I mean is—wouldn’t it be cool if the shape totally changed while it was in the air?” “Hmm…” “I mean, I know there’s no point if the shape change doesn’t do anything for the aerodynamics. I’ve got a few ideas bouncing around, but…” I put the radio-controlled plane back on the shelf, went over to Takuya, and picked up the college-ruled notebook I’d tossed onto the table. It was a scribble book, so I could sketch out ideas when I thought of them. I flipped through it, opened it to the page with notes about the transforming plane, and laid it on the table. “I’ve got a few ideas about the design concept. The problem is the control unit. Everything I’ve tried gets crazy complicated. I really don’t think I could make anything like that, so…” “Hey, gimme a pencil.” Takuya finally snapped out of the trance he’d been in since I showed him the notebook. I got him a B pencil out of a pen holder, and he rapidly started writing something on a fresh page. “What are you writing?” “Just sit tight and wait a sec.” I tried to peek at the notebook, but he covered it with his hand. Guess he was the type who didn’t like people watching while he was writing. “What about something like this?” After a little while, he pushed the notebook over to me, and I was finally able to get a look at what was in it. It startled me. What he’d sketched were ideas for a control system that would make my design a reality. The freehand, off-the-cuff sketch was short on details, and at first glance, it looked like a doodle. However, as I read through the notes he’d added with arrows, I realized the design was both novel and fairly practical. The shape would change during flight, and the mechanism would move the center of gravity for stability. It was a truly elegant system. I didn’t say anything for a few minutes, then looked at his face steadily. “…If I really tackle this, I may actually be able to build it.” “Yeah, ’cause I made it that way,” Takuya said, as if that was nothing. It was a shock, to put it very mildly. I knew I had the skills in this field, and I had always thought there weren’t many adult model-builders who could compete with me, let alone people my age. I’d been completely stumped by this problem for a month or two—and he’d gone and solved it in seconds. “Who are you?” I finally asked, astonished. “My dad does this sort of stuff; design-related work on machines. I grew up around it, so I just picked it up. I’ve started cutting metal on my own, too. Not to brag, but that tech school robot contest would be a cinch for me.” “Whoa…” That was a word he’d said several times today, and now it was my turn. “What’re you, a genius?” “You could say that.” Takuya’s proud expression dissolved into a grin. After I stopped oohing and ahhing, I noticed something. “It’s just…,” I said. “Yeah, that’s the thing.” There was one problem with Takuya’s idea. Naturally, he’d already seen it. I drew a deep breath. “It’ll be almost impossible to shrink a system this complicated down to model scale.” “Exactly.” The idea he’d written down was too advanced, the required precision too great, and it really wasn’t the sort of thing you could make model-sized. “So it would work on an actual plane…” I made that comment casually, then flinched at what I’d just said. “Right. If you’re really going to make this, it should be a real plane. Put a computer on board and have it do the control work,” Takuya said as if that was obvious. A real plane… I realized something surprising then. Never once had it occurred to me to make a real plane, or even to want to make one someday. Weird. Someday I’ll make a real plane… Right, of course. I could do that. The thought made me more excited than I’d ever been before. It was intoxicating. “So here’s a question.” Takuya interrupted my thoughts. I shook my head to clear it, then looked at him. “Yeah?” “The cultural festival is right after summer vacation. Want to make something together by then?” “Yeah, I like it.” It was a good idea. I think I was probably a little tired of deciding things by myself and working on them alone. “What sort of something, though?” I asked. “Well”—he grinned—“something neither of us has ever made before.” 3 What we decided to make was a radio-controlled jet. All the aircraft I’d made before had been prop planes, and I’d never made anything that used a model jet engine. When I mentioned it, Takuya pointed at me and said, “That’s it.” “But model jet engines are insanely expensive. They’re over a million yen, easy. Even the used ones are several hundred thousand.” “I know that already.” Takuya was unperturbed. “Then what are we gonna do?” “We don’t have to buy one. We just have to get one from somewhere, right?” “What’s that supposed to mean? Where would we get it? How?” “Just let me handle it. I’ve got an idea.” A few days later, on Sunday, Takuya actually brought the engine over to my place. He even had a small tank filled with aircraft fuel on the cargo rack of his bike. The engine wasn’t new; there were marks that showed it had been used, but it was an excellent one, a product from a brand-name manufacturer in West Germany. It was one I was always staring at catalog photos of and sighing over. I patted and stroked it for quite a long time, enjoying the feel of the cold metal, gazing at it from every possible angle, drinking in its functional beauty. The pungent smell of the fuel enchanted me, too. When I ran a finger around the rim of its air intake, I felt an electric thrill. I never knew something like this could exist, something so beautiful and pleasant to touch… I got pretty close to forgetting that time was passing and that Takuya was right next to me. After spending a while like that, I suddenly turned to Takuya. “But how did you get it?” He looked a little uncomfortable. “Um. Well, uh… You want to know?” “Hey. Spit it out.” “I don’t mind telling you, but I think you probably shouldn’t ask. If you know, you’ll feel guilty using it.” “You mean…” Apparently, Takuya’s acquisition methods had not been aboveboard. I think my reaction was pretty mixed. Takuya’s voice was cheerful, and he didn’t sound at all ashamed. “Hey, it’s fine. After all, it’s here now. You know it would rather be flying than lying around unused.” He knocked lightly on the engine. That clinched it for me, and I didn’t press the issue any further. Something that got clearer and clearer to me later was that Takuya was a bit of a troublemaker, nothing like what you’d expect from his usual honor-student attitude… Although, I didn’t know if that was how he genuinely was or whether it was some sort of act. There were several examples, one of which was that he smoked, and quite heavily given that he was just in his first year of middle school. “It gets stressful, being the perfect kid all the time. Pretend you didn’t see this.” We were measuring the engine together when he told me that; he was smoking a cigarette, although he didn’t seem to be enjoying it much. The people around him didn’t have a clue that he smoked; he never messed up. But when he was with me, he’d relax and burn through several cigs in a row. Thanks to that, I had to pay quite a lot of attention to how my hair and clothes smelled so my parents and teachers wouldn’t get suspicious. “You know those irons with a steam function, the ones that get wrinkles out of suits? If you use one of those, it gets rid of the smoke smell completely,” he’d once told me. Taking Takuya’s recommendation, I diligently used my dad’s steam iron on my shirts and trousers every day. For the three years I hung out with Takuya, my clothes were neat and wrinkle-free. “I guess honor students don’t have it as easy as you’d think, huh…?” I sighed with utter sincerity. “I still kinda wanna be one, though. I wouldn’t mind taking on a little stress.” “I call BS.” Takuya stuck a butt into an empty oolong tea can and smiled cynically. “Get a load of you. You don’t think that at all.” “What? I do so.” “Nah, you don’t. I can tell,” Takuya declared, sounding plenty confident. Then all of a sudden, he said, “Personally, I’m jealous of you.” I wasn’t sure how to reply. “Me? Why?” “You just do whatever you want with your life. You’re so matter-of-fact. It feels like you’re just you, and you don’t care what the people around you are doing. I like that. I think guys like me naturally gravitate toward guys like you.” “Huh…” He’d gotten very passionate during the speech, and his mood was contagious. “Everyone’s always got their eye on me, you know? And it’s bad enough that some people won’t like it.” “Yeah.” I gave him an honest answer. He really did tend to attract attention, no matter what he was doing. “The way people look at you, what they think of you—you start feeling jerked around. Like everyone’s relying on you for a million things at once, until you can’t just be yourself. It’s tougher than you’d think.” “Hrmm…” I grunted a bit. I’d never heard anything like that before. People live in all kinds of worlds. You might be in the same sphere with someone, even in the same school, but it really doesn’t feel the same when your positions are different. “So ever since we started school, I’ve had an eye on you. I wanted to know more about you, but I was too scared. Too much pressure. Like, if I take my eyes off you just because you’re quiet, you’ll end up doing something huge all of a sudden. Makes you nervous, y’know?” “Hmm. I see.” I’d drifted back to the engine and started working as I muttered responses. Meanwhile, I was feeling thoroughly impressed. Takuya was telling me about his weaknesses with as little affectation as if he was talking about the weather. It gave me an odd feeling I’d never felt before. His casual, frank way of talking energized me, too. I’m a simple guy—or at least not complicated. At his age, he was consciously playing to the expectations of others in some situations and acting like his true self to get through life. To me, the existence of such a person was a shock, plain and simple. It was so new. Takuya really was fascinating. “Smoking’s bad for you, though,” I offered, because I’d felt like I had to say something. As he lit a new cigarette, Takuya looked somewhat annoyed. Then he abruptly leaned forward and blew smoke in my face. “What are you doing?!” Coughing, I waved my hand to disperse the cloud, and Takuya laughed. “It’s fine. Let’s get lung cancer and die together.” The two of us could have chosen an existing scale model airplane or a similar, orthodox airframe configuration. If we had, we would have been sure it would fly. I’d gone through quite a lot of trouble to study aerodynamics on my own, and I’d even designed and flown original planes before. On that point, I was confident. The wonderful thing about airplanes is that if you design them to fly, then build them exactly according to the design, they’ll always, always fly. If they don’t, it’s either because the design was flawed or because your building skills weren’t up to it. I was good at both. If I built it the way I usually did, it would fly, no questions asked. Which may have been why I was just a bit bored with the idea. I wanted an adventure. Plus, it was only natural for something that looked like an airplane to fly. I wanted something bizarre to fly. I wanted to build something that had a chance of failure. “What about a flying wing?” Takuya opened Aviation Fan and pointed to a photo. “Like this one. Doesn’t it seem sort of unexpected, like a UFO?” “The shape is fun. It looks like it’d actually fly pretty easily, though.” “You’re kind of a pain, aren’t you?” Takuya opened one eye wide with weary amazement. “You want it to fly without looking like it’ll fly.” “I mean, c’mon. It’s boring if you already know what’s gonna happen.” “You’re full of yourself.” His lips barely moved as he spoke, because he was holding a cig between them. “I know what you mean, though.” “You do? Really?” “Of course I do,” he said. “I want it, too. Something you’ve never seen before. Something you don’t know yet. Something you’ve never experienced. Sensations you’ve never felt. The unknown is the only thing in the whole world that has any real value.” “Look at you and your cool one-liners.” “What about a ring wing?” “A closed wing, huh…?” I thought about it. Closed-wing planes have main wings that are shaped like a ring, or a tube. Since the wings don’t have tips, wingtip drag doesn’t happen. You can get away with using less area compared to flat wings, so when you first look at it, they’re so small you wonder if they could actually get off the ground. It might be shaped more like a rocket, for example. But… “That sounds like too much work,” I said. I didn’t mean to say it aloud. “That’s what you want, right?” Takuya pounced on the comment. “That settles it, then.” And so, that day, we started drafting the plans. At the time, Takuya didn’t know a whole lot about aerodynamics, but when I loaned him three technical books, he read them all in a night and quickly caught up to the point where building models wasn’t a problem for him. I’d spent a long time learning all of that, and he’d crammed it all into a single night. Brilliant people have so much latent power. It lit a fire under me that was not too far from fear, but it was great to have a friend on the same level that I could talk to. It was the first time in my life I’d seen somebody my age who could handle a lathe or a milling machine as well as I could. “That’s because we’ve got similar stuff at my house, and I’ve liked making things since I was a kid. It’s a miracle I’ve still got all ten fingers.” He looked at me and grinned, and I smiled back involuntarily. That happens when you sympathize way too much. I should’ve lost a finger or two by now, too. The aerodynamic design really was a pain in the butt, but we did it together, and we found out how to make it work. Naturally, neither of us was content to simply have it fly. Unless it flew well and looked cool doing it, it wasn’t even worth discussing. We went back and forth, sketching all sorts of ideas on paper, and by the time we finally managed to draft a plan we were satisfied with, July was already over. We used carbon fiber and aircraft balsa for the body. We’d chosen those materials for several reasons, but the biggest one was that we had tons of both at my place. I was so grateful to my uncle I’d never met. Making something with somebody was fun. Over summer vacation, we made the airplane in the garage, working in silence. We cut shapes out of the materials and sandpapered them without saying a word, our faces intent. When you’re really focused on making something, you can’t hear anything else, and you completely forget to speak. Still, I sensed my partner with something that wasn’t my eyes or ears. I don’t know how Takuya felt. I did think it would be nice if he was in the same boat, and I bet he was. When we took breaks, we talked about ourselves. Our families, for example, and stories about random people in our class, and TV shows we’d watched a long time ago. Dumb stuff. From time to time, we’d give the work a rest and take the train into Aomori City to go blow off steam. We’d shop, have lunch at the eateries in the station building, and swim in the pool. When you go out on the town with someone you’ve just made friends with, you tend to get all keyed up, but I didn’t feel even a little of that. It was as if I’d been friends with Takuya for years. Being there with him felt right. By August 20, when the short Tohoku summer vacation ended, we’d finished most of the body. The cultural festival was on September 25, and we spent the month until then painting, making fine adjustments, and performing engine maintenance. We painted the aircraft a vivid blue. “Blue looks the fastest,” Takuya said. “Huh,” I replied, impressed. Hearing it from him, I assumed there would be some sort of scientific or psychological basis for it. When I asked him to explain, though, the answer was disappointing. “No, no, it’s just how it looks to me.” Blue is a good color, though. I love the blue of the JASDF’s Blue Impulse planes. Both Takuya and I agreed that we weren’t going to do a test flight before the main attempt. When you already know the plane’s going to fly right, a public flight is just a boring show. Both for the audience and for us. What we wanted to do, and to show other people, was something that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. But if you asked me whether it would fly or not, I would’ve said yes, a hundred percent. I had absolute confidence in that. After all, we’d built it together: me and Takuya. 4 It’s nothing to brag about, but I’m a rain man, and I’ve been making it rain (or snow) on field trips and sports days since forever. That year, though, it was nice and sunny for the cultural festival. It was so bright and clear, literally not a cloud in the sky. The whole sky was a blue that was nearly too blue, the kind that sticks in your memories of summer. In the morning, on the short trip from Minami-Yomogita Station to school, I gazed up at that sky and drew a deep breath. The area around our school was dotted with small tracts of mixed forest; other than that, there was nothing but rice paddies, farm fields, and a few houses. The only mountains were low ones in the distance. When the sky was blue, it felt unbelievably vast. Both the place and the weather were ideal for flying our project. A red dragonfly flew past at about eye level, and as my gaze followed it, I took a deep, calming breath. Even though there was still half an hour before homeroom started, Takuya was in the classroom already. “You’re late, Hiroki.” “No, I’m not. You’re early.” Around us, a couple of students were making adjustments to the decorations in the classroom. Our class had decided to do a run-of-the-mill, ticket-based, traditional Japanese sweets café. Takuya came closer and spoke to me in a voice too quiet for the others to hear. “I already finished assembling the plane.” “Huh?! Already? Geez, what time did you get here?” “About an hour ago. I was feeling kind of restless.” We’d taken the plane apart and brought it to school, little by little, starting several days ago. We’d also brought a set of tools and the fuel, of course. There was an unused wooden storage shed in a corner of the school grounds, and although there was no telling how he’d done it, Takuya had swiped the key to it from the faculty room. Sand had gotten into the shed and left grit all over everything, but he’d said it was a convenient place to smoke, since no one would notice him in there. That was where we’d hidden the airplane. What we were going to do was a complete secret, both from the school and from our classmates. This was a guerrilla project. We definitely had to keep it a secret from the teachers. They were bound to give us a hard time about safety considerations and whatnot—if worse came to worst, they might forbid it altogether. Both Takuya and I were really not fond of having adults stick their oars in, and this was doubly true if the adults were amateurs who didn’t know a thing about planes. We wouldn’t let other people control us. We’d built it ourselves, and we wanted control of it ourselves. When it came to that feeling, Takuya and I were in such close agreement that we could have been twins. When homeroom ended and the beginning of the cultural festival was announced, Takuya and I got our shifts at the class café out of the way ASAP. We dashed out of the classroom, ignoring all the attractions, split up the way we’d discussed beforehand, and got to work on the preparations. We’d planned to act at 1:00 PM, but since the assembly work was already done, we moved the time up by an hour. I got the key from Takuya, went to the storage shed, and carefully checked over the assembled airplane, making sure there weren’t any defects. Back when we were building it, we’d made a point of each checking the parts the other was working on. Takuya would look at what I’d made, and I’d look at what he’d made. There were no problems whatsoever. He’d put it together beautifully. I powered it up and did an inspection, working the movable parts—the ailerons and elevators and retractable landing gear. The landing gear lagged a little, so I adjusted it. Then I fired up the jet engine to get it warm. It was a dangerous thing to do inside such a small wooden building, but there was no way around it. The air rapidly grew hot and stifling. The smell of exhaust was thickening in the room, too, so I cracked open the door. The storage shed had been shoddily built, and drafts blew in from several places; right now, I was grateful. Meanwhile, Takuya was getting the runway ready. The area behind our middle school’s main building had been paved with asphalt and was used as a staff parking lot. This was the country, so there was enough space for it to feel relatively empty. A private road stretched straight from the back of that parking lot. It was only ever used by people who had business at the school. Takuya had bought some yellow-and-black vinyl rope at a home center on one of our trips into Aomori City, and he stretched this down the center of the parking lot, restricting traffic. He was making sure no people or cars cut across the straight line we were using as a runway. He’d prepared the runway to lead straight into the private road. According to our calculations, the space in the parking lot would be enough for takeoff, but if something came up, we’d use the private road to buy ourselves some distance. Later on, I learned that conscientious Takuya had picked up a striped construction barrier from a work site somewhere, put it across the end of that road, considerately made a sign on a piece of veneer that read ROAD CLOSED FOR CULTURAL FESTIVAL, and leaned the sign against it. I cracked up when I found out. It took a lot of guts to lie like that. “You’d be surprised what you can get away with if you just act like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. Nobody ever suspects.” That was what Takuya had told me back when we were planning this, when I’d said that somebody was bound to notice and call us on it if we restricted traffic. “That’s why I’m in charge of the runway. When you don’t have a clear conscience, you always give it away.” He was right, so I’d agreed and gone along with his plan. Takuya’s poker face worked wonders. When I reached the back of the school building, carrying the plane and transmitter and toolbox under my arms, he’d finished the runway without anyone asking questions. “This is the starting line,” Takuya said, tracing an invisible line on the asphalt with the rubber sole of his shoe. I gently set the plane on it and ignited the engine to get it warmed up again. A transparent flame, neither red nor blue, heated the air until it was shimmering. From time to time, the smell of burning jet fuel reached my nose, and I tensed up in spite of myself. Of course, we were attracting attention now. Little by little, a crowd was gathering, including teachers. They were relaxed about the whole thing, apparently unaware that this was an unauthorized event… Or maybe they had realized, and they were just being nice and pretending they hadn’t. “Hey, is that a rocket?” a kid we knew from class asked. “Uh, no. It’s a plane.” “It don’t got wings, though.” “Yeah, it does.” “Is it supposed to fly? Or is this a joke?” “Just shut up and watch,” I snapped. “Takuya, let’s do it now.” I was cracking under the pressure. “Sure. Let’s go.” Spreading his arms, Takuya started herding the audience back. I picked up the transmitter I’d set down earlier, extended the antenna, and lightly shifted the control stick. I felt the servos inside the plane come to life, and the ailerons and elevators moved, as if the plane was stretching out to get ready. That was enough to draw a little cheer from the crowd. I took a deep breath. “Here we go.” “Let her rip.” I pushed the throttle lever up. The tiny jet engine pushed off against the air. The plane began racing along in a straight line. A shrill, metallic sound scratched at my eardrums. We’d made the airframe light, and it vibrated with every little bump and dip in the asphalt as it rolled along. It made me nervous, but I knew easing up on the throttle was not an option at this point. I kept holding the lever down with my thumb for dear life. Suddenly, the plane rose lightly on a cushion of air, and my heart soared with it. I took the plane higher. The power of this thing was on a whole different level from the prop planes I was used to controlling. It was just plain fast. I made it wheel, then called it back toward me. It responded more sensitively than I’d expected, which made me a little jumpy. The usual shiver climbed up my spine and spread all through me, making every cell tingle. I took it across the roof of the school building, then made it sketch three big circles in the sky. That was about when the voices and noises around me finally started to register again. When I took a quick glance around, everyone was looking up at the sky like a bunch of idiots. It was hilarious. People leaned out of second- and third-floor windows in the school building to watch, too. We’d attracted quite a lot of attention. I got the urge to see our plane flying up close, so I sent it sweeping low enough to almost brush the ground. It flashed past in an instant, leaving a Doppler-warped engine scream in our ears. Ahhh. It’s that feeling again. How can I even describe it? Would the people around me understand it? It feels as if there’s two of me. Like I’m both here on the ground and slicing through the air above as a plane. I’m not controlling the plane—I’m me and the plane. For these little moments, I’m holding two possibilities inside me. Half of me is racing through the sky, and the other half has his feet planted on the ground. As I look up at myself flying, I’m also looking down at myself standing on the ground. The split feels good; it’s a multilayered version of myself. We’re constantly sharing our emotions with each other. It really is a unique experience. I’m not pretending to be something else, and I haven’t become one with anything. The only way I can describe the experience is to say that I’ve split off a part of myself as a separate possibility. My two selves felt intoxicated in two different ways. “Hey, don’t space out,” Takuya’s voice called. “Let me have my turn.” I stabilized the plane, then got into position to hand off the transmitter. There’s a bit of a knack to handing over a transmitter while the plane is in the air. I held it out to Takuya, who was next to me, keeping the control stick firmly in place with my finger. Takuya put his finger above mine, holding the stick down. Gently, one hand at a time, I let go. We did all this in an instant. We’d practiced it over and over beforehand, so we were able to do it smoothly. After my fingers left the transmitter, I felt a bit dazed. Once it was out of my hands, I was finally able to observe the plane from a neutral perspective. Its flight was sharp and precise, nothing like a prop plane, and watching it woke up every cell in my body. Its long, thin, rocket-like airframe pierced through the layers of the wind. I knew instinctively that its annular wing was slicing the air, like a vegetable peeler. The awe hit me like a chilly wave of almost-embarrassment, as if a layer of skin around my heart had been smoothly peeled off, and the sensation made me break out in goose bumps all over. I bent back, tipping my face to the sky, and shouted with elation. My voice disappeared beneath the ear-piercing metallic roar of the motor, and the noise had quite a lot of people poking their heads out of windows to watch. Light applause had started around us. I took the transmitter again, and tension ran through every muscle I had. The clicking of the control stick altered my awareness once again. I flew the plane for a while. It felt great. But before long, the sense that something wasn’t quite right began to coil around me. I couldn’t have described what was wrong—it was just that under-the-weather feeling, like when you have a cold coming on. It took me a few moments to realize that it was because the plane wasn’t responding as well as it had earlier. “Hey, I think something’s wrong,” Takuya said just before the engine sputtered. “Shoot!” Hastily, I tried to bring the plane down, to reel it back in, but it was already too late. The engine stalled. The plane had been on the other side of the school building just then, and it fell down behind it and disappeared. We heard a crash. “The gym!” Takuya and I yelled and took off running at the exact same time. We sprinted around the school building and came out on the side with the athletic field, near the gym. We guessed the plane had hit a wall or a window. We went all the way around the gym, looking up at the walls. The plane wasn’t there. From a distance, we heard somebody calling our names. Several people had poked their heads out of windows on the third floor of the school building and were pointing at the roof of the gym. “Oh, come on! Up there?!” I ran toward the building. I could feel Takuya following me. I ran through the main entrance and up the stairs to the third floor, taking the steps three at a time, then I bolted into a nearby classroom. It just happened to be an unused one. Our school was in a depopulated area, so it had a lot of empty classrooms. Diving for a window, I leaned out. Our plane had caught on the curve of the gym’s rounded roof. The blue plane was strangely picturesque against the aqua-colored tin. It was as if the roof was a waterslide at a pool, and the plane was poised to slide off it at any moment. Its soft nose had crumpled, snagging on the roof and sparing the rest of it from slamming into the ground. “AAaaaAAAaaaaAAAaaah…” Takuya and I whined in near-perfect unison. For a few seconds after that, we gazed at the airplane in dazed silence. Before long, the humor of the situation hit us. An incomprehensible amusement worked its way up from the depths of my stomach. I was a little bewildered, and my cheeks tensed as I bit back the urge to laugh. For no particular reason, I looked over at Takuya. He was making the same face. At almost the same moment, we choked and cracked up. Our laughter was soundless for a little while, our sides twitching, but before long, we couldn’t take it anymore. We howled with laughter. This was no time to be laughing, but we couldn’t help it. Takuya leaned against the aluminum window frame and I leaned against a desk, both of us doubled over and laughing until we could barely breathe. “Ahhhh…” Exhausted, Takuya sighed. Then he said: “We are the best team ever.” In all thirteen years of my life, I had never felt so content and close to anyone. After that, Takuya and I got called to the faculty room and were read the riot act. Our teacher told us never to do something that dangerous without permission again. Later, in the middle of the night, we sneaked back into the school, climbed up onto the gym, and retrieved the plane before the rain could get it. Or a teacher. 5 Whenever I think about Sayuri, there are several scenes that invariably play out in my mind. One is a memory of seeing her at Minami-Yomogita Station. Minami-Yomogita was the closest train station to our middle school. It was pretty big for the Tsugaru Line, but it had only two platforms, and there was just one ticket gate, on the inbound platform. To get to the outbound platform, you had to go up, cross the prefab pedestrian bridge that spanned the tracks and linked the two platforms, then go down again. The view from the platform consisted of houses and rice paddies and mixed forest. It was the sort of local, underfunded station you see all over the country. There was a wooden waiting room in front of the ticket gate with a stove that was kept glowing in winter. Classic “snow country” stuff, I guess. Except for the kids who rode their bikes to school, almost all the students at our school commuted through this station. I say “almost all,” but it was a rural middle school, so the numbers still weren’t anything to write home about. Takuya and I spent forty minutes every day getting from our houses to this station’s platform. So did Sayuri. I’m pretty sure it was near the end of our second year of middle school—a year and a half after the radio-controlled jet incident. I can’t remember the exact date, but I think it was probably a couple days before spring break started. The students at our school called the train that left after 3:30 the “going-straight-home train,” and the one that left after 5:00 the “club train.” Takuya and I took the club train. Takuya was in the speed skating club, I was in the archery club, and we were both fairly enthusiastic participants. Every day, when it was time to catch the train, Takuya and I met in the same place on the platform, boarded through the same door, and took over the same box seat. No matter how cold it was, there was an unspoken rule that we’d wait on the platform instead of going into the waiting room. When one of us stood on the platform, the other could see him even from outside the station. That evening, I was waiting for the train and Takuya on the station’s outbound platform, just like always. The weather was clear, and I tucked my chin into the collar of my bomber jacket, which I’d put on over my uniform. The orange of the setting sun was eroding the blue sky, and my white breath dispersed slowly as the wind carried it away. A group of girls came in through the ticket gate, chattering noisily, and I glanced at them. I’d heard Sayuri’s voice. I focused squarely on her but then looked away almost immediately to keep up appearances. Even so, I kept her in the corner of my vision the whole time. “How much longer?” “There’s still time.” I imagined the conversation with her friends. After all, the number of trains was kept to the absolute minimum, so if you just barely missed one, the damage was astronomical. Back then, Sayuri wore her hair in pigtails. It was a plain style, but it suited her. That day, I’m pretty sure she was wearing a thick duffle coat over her winter uniform, and a loosely wound muffler— And she was laughing cheerfully with her friends. That part was unusual, which is why I remember it so well. Although Sayuri’s group had passed through the ticket gate, once they’d checked to make sure the train wasn’t here yet, they promptly retreated into the waiting room. I gave a small sigh of relief, letting the tension drain out of me. As if taking their place, I heard rhythmic footsteps coming down from the pedestrian bridge. It was Takuya. He was holding two cans of coffee that he’d bought from the hot-drink vending machine, one in each hand, and from time to time, he’d toss them into the air to give his skin a reprieve from the heat. As he stepped down onto the platform, he threw one of the cans to me. When I caught it, the can was pretty hot against my frigid fingers, and I almost dropped it. We’d had a small bet the day before, and the coffee was the prize. Takuya raised his can to his lips, gazing absently at the opposite platform. “Hiroki, when are you going to work again?” “Oh. Uh, let’s see…” Currently, we were working part-time on the sly, without telling the school like we were supposed to. “Club activities end tomorrow. Maybe the day after that, then. What about you?” “Tomorrow’s morning practice is the last one for me, too. Okay. The day after tomorrow it is.” “Sure thing.” As a rule, students at our middle school retired from their clubs at the end of their second year. The public reason was so that we could focus on our high school entrance exams. However, Takuya and I had been spending our spare hours working part-time. Up till now, we’d only been able to work on the weekends, but starting the day after tomorrow, we’d have a long holiday in addition to the break in club. We’d be making money hand over fist. We weren’t really worried about the exams. Everyone knew Takuya’s grades were good, and mine weren’t all that bad, either. Besides, as long as I got into high school, anywhere would be fine. Or at least, that’s what I thought then. We discussed a few things about how we’d get to work, then quietly waited for the train. Neither of us was a talkative type, so we often spent our time together in silence. The arrival announcement played, and I leaned forward a little to see the train’s headlight, small with distance, far down the straight track. The train slowly grew bigger, slid wearily into the platform, and creaked to a stop. Through the windows on both sides of the train, I saw Sayuri’s group hurry through the ticket gate on the opposite platform. Unconsciously, I listened carefully to the sound of their footsteps as they ran, scrambling up the pedestrian bridge, then back down again. I heard the clang of Takuya’s empty can as he lobbed it into the wastebasket, then realized I still had half my coffee left. I chugged the rest in a hurry, then tossed the can underhanded. It very nearly bounced off the rim of the basket, but it ultimately dropped inside. When I turned back, I caught sight of Sayuri out of the corner of my eye; she and her friends were just boarding the train, jostling each other a little. “I’m going to leave you behind,” Takuya called to me, and I scrambled for the door. Just before I boarded, I looked up at the red sky. Over the roof of the train, I could see that tower, wreathed with thin clouds. It was faintly red, piercing into the round sky. Maybe I was drawn exclusively to things I could only watch and couldn’t ever have. Takuya and I took over a box seat, rudely putting our feet up on the opposite bench. It was the seat we always used, one we’d chosen for no real reason, and the way we always sat. Takuya was reading a magazine about Mac computers. I killed time by reading the Jump magazine I bought every week, one day late. We were usually silent on the train, too. Not talking was natural for us. Sometimes I see people who can’t stand silence without conversation, and I always wonder what they’re so nervous about. With Takuya, the quiet made me feel at ease. Just the rhythm and snippets of faraway conversations around me. The way the world outside faded until the surrounding houses disappeared into pitch-black darkness and the way my hazy face reflected in the mirror of the window glass were parts of my world. All within reach. They were familiar to me, protecting me. On that day, though, I stiffened as something like a ripple of unease interjected itself. At first, I didn’t understand what it was. Before long, the ripple surfaced in my mind as a single voice. The voice was Sayuri’s. I’d picked her out of the ambient conversation as she chatted with her friends. The other girls’ voices were too muffled to hear. Only Sayuri’s voice reached my mind, sharp and clear. In the midst of the white noise, I listened to her with a sort of cringing restlessness. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to immerse my mind in the calming darkness beyond the window. Then I saw Takuya’s face reflected in the glass. His eyes were still on his magazine, but his face was tense in a way that wasn’t like him. He’s listening to her, too… I knew what was going to happen with near certainty. Something potent and bitter thrust its way upward within me, and my chest constricted. My jaw clenched. An unwarranted sense of defeat formed inside me. Most of it was due to the fact that Takuya was cool, and girls liked him a lot more than they liked me. …But of course that wasn’t all it was. 6 The next day, after the exhausting, long, and pointless closing ceremony was over, I changed into my tracksuit and went to the archery range. Club activities had ended for me after that morning’s practice, but I felt like shooting just a little bit more. This was a practice that agreed with me. I was there, and so was the target. I sent my mind flying toward it. When I did, a sharp path formed between the two of us. In that moment, the sights and sounds around me vanished, creating a world without any kind of static, one that held only me and the target. As if the two of us had switched places. In that moment, I was the bull’s-eye, and the bull’s-eye was taking aim at me. That instant was so clear and crisp. Then there was a dry thud, and I’d realize that I’d struck the distant target. It didn’t always go that well, of course. There were times when the static didn’t vanish—and other times when the path didn’t form straight and true. Those shots weren’t nearly as beautiful. Recently, I’d been completely hopeless. Something rough and scratchy in my mind was constantly making jagged edges in my reflexes. The techniques I’d learned were physically ingrained in me, so the arrows did hit home to a certain extent. But that sensation of clarity wouldn’t come. My focus ran out, and I’d just given up and crouched down right where I was when I realized Takuya was peeking in at me through the archery range window. “I came to watch. You’re finishing up?” “No… Taking a break. I’m really out of it today.” We bought two triangle packs of coffee milk at the school co-op, which was just about to close, then sat down by the drinking fountain near the athletic field. “You retired, and you’re still practicing? You must really be into it.” Takuya jabbed the straw into his drink. “I’m not doing it because I care. How was yours?” “My what?” “Your club this morning. It was your last practice, so they must have made a big deal out of it. Did they make you say a few words to the group at a meeting?” “Yeah, they did.” Then he casually dropped a little bombshell on me. “And in honor of this momentous occasion, a girl told me she liked me.” “Whoa, dude, again?!” “Yeah.” Takuya told me indifferently about what had happened. Just as he was leaving, a group of three girls had stopped him, and a junior club member, Matsuura, had given him a letter…more or less. Of course, he wasn’t the type of guy who would have gone around telling everybody. The only time he talked about this stuff was when it was just the two of us. He wasn’t bragging at all. To him, it was nothing to brag about in the first place. I sighed. “Lucky duck. How many does that make?” “You’re acting like it’s a whole bunch. Counting from April, she’s the second one.” “Uh-huh, and that’s too many.” “Well, yeah, maybe.” Takuya rummaged in the pocket of his trousers and pulled out his lighter. I knew he was about to light up out of habit, so I kicked his shoe with my toe. Realizing we were still at school, he took his hand out of his pocket. “And?” I said. “Huh?” “You turned her down? …Like before?” “Yeah.” I started blowing bubbles in my pack of milk. “Man, what might have been. It was the Matsuura from year one, class two, right? She’s cute… She would’ve been a great girlfriend.” I didn’t mean anything by it. Thinking about it now, though, I might have been unconsciously trying to sound Takuya out. “Hey, do you actually think that?” Out of nowhere, he was on the offensive, and my heart skipped a beat. “Well, yeah. She’s really popular, you know? And you turned her down. Normally, that wouldn’t even happen.” “Who cares about normal?” He clicked the lighter in his hand, over and over. “What about you, then? Why don’t you go out with her?” he said abruptly. “Huh? How’d we get from that to this?” “Would you date her, if it was you?” I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Kana Matsuura is cute, sure. Stays out of trouble. But that doesn’t mean I have to go out with her, does it?” “Hmm…” “I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be. Who cares if she would’ve been a good girlfriend? Am I right, Hiroki?” “…Yeah, you’re right,” I answered quietly. What he was saying made total sense. On the other hand, what I’d said was awfully clichéd and cheap. “So listen,” he said, leaning in. “You should go out with Matsuura.” “No, no, no. Look, why me?” “Not the one for you, either, huh? Hmm. Then who would be?” In that moment, Sayuri’s face surfaced in my mind, and I hastily tried to think about something else. I stammered. “Uh… Well, um.” “C’mon, what? Use your words.” Takuya was wearing the smirk he wore when he was plotting something. That clued me in. He was getting me back for asking him leading questions earlier. Faltering, I reached for an answer that intentionally missed the point. “I mean…I’m not saying Matsuura isn’t good enough. Plus, she is cute… But c’mon, I don’t even know what you’re supposed to do when you’re dating, or how. So I mean…I’m good. Really. Okay?” Takuya snorted with amusement and clicked his lighter. Then, when he’d had enough fun watching me fumble for my answer, he turned to me and whispered, “Hey. She didn’t tell you she liked you.” “You’re the one who brought it up!” “Ha-ha-ha! I got you good!” Takuya laughed, while I sulked. That conversation was as dumb as most of the others we had, so we were able to just laugh it off. However, thinking about it later, the subject was pretty risky. Takuya was popular and cool, and he had that aura about him. But if that was all he had going for him, there wouldn’t have been anything to worry about. The trouble was that he was a good guy. He had his head on straight—an important and rare quality. It was also likely that he was attracted to Sayuri. And he had so much going for him, and he was approaching it the right way. He wasn’t trying to cover it up, nor was he saying things he didn’t mean just to navigate the situation, the way I was. I really did like him for that. I liked him a hell of a lot. I’m pretty good with people, which means I can make friends with practically anybody. There were people I went out and had fun with, both in class and elsewhere, and I was constantly goofing around with them. But the time I spent with Takuya was something completely different, something special. There was an exceptional bond between us, and I didn’t want to damage it. Those feelings were stronger than my attraction to Sayuri. At least, back then they were. I could feel a day coming when those scales would tip the other way, and the idea terrified me. And that wasn’t all. Takuya was sharp. He’d probably already realized that I liked Sayuri. The dangerous tension in our team was already there. Takuya and I first met Sayuri Sawatari when we were in our second year of middle school. Technically, the school was pretty small, so we’d heard of her before then. We just never came in contact with her. Up until that point, she was just a name with a face in our year, not even an acquaintance. The only chance we had to get to know girls from other classes was during club, and Sayuri was in the music club. When we moved up to year two, there was a class shuffle. I ended up in a different class from several of the friends I hung out with, and I was bummed about that, but at least I was still in the same class as Takuya. In front of the posted class assignments for the new term, we grinned at each other and bumped fists, like boxers right after the gong. Sayuri was in that class, too. She was a very beautiful girl. But I don’t think the guys ever talked about how Sawatari was cute, or a babe, or anything like that. It was more like…Sayuri’s beauty was the type that was well hidden inside her. Like music you listen to with headphones, her beauty was complete within her, and it didn’t radiate outward. Unless you looked very carefully and paid extremely close attention, you’d never catch the way she shone. She made a good contrast with Takuya, who let his aura shine bright and draw attention no matter what he was doing. At the time, it really mystified me. Why didn’t anyone realize how beautiful she was? A girl straight out of a dream was right there in front of them, so why weren’t they talking about it? That said, I hadn’t immediately noticed Sayuri’s light myself. I saw it only after a certain small, trivial thing brought us closer and we started talking. In our year two Modern Japanese textbook, there was a section of Kenji Miyazawa poems. The teacher in charge of that class was a guy named Yoshitsuru, and when we reached that section, he suddenly got so enthusiastic and emphatic that he was practically a different person. According to him, Kenji Miyazawa was the greatest poet ever, and “it’s the duty of any kid who knows Japanese to give every one of Kenji’s poems a careful reading.” Then he launched into a huge, obsessed lecture. We were just confused. This was a middle-school class, but the guy would print out bulletins from some university or other and make us read them, or put us through mock seminars. Finally he made us form groups and told us to do joint research projects and submit reports. Anyway, Takuya, Sayuri, and I ended up doing that report together. It was just coincidence that we ended up on the same team. Takuya and I had planned to be a team of our own, but Sayuri happened to stay home from school on the day we split into groups. The two of us were the smallest group in the class, so she ended up getting lumped in with us. “Pretty sure he was a failed lit nerd,” Takuya said, resting his elbows on a library room table. “He” was Yoshitsuru, the Modern Japanese teacher. “Yeah, I’m sick of it. This is not a middle-school assignment,” I complained right along with him. Watching us, Sayuri gave a breathy little laugh. “A lot of Kenji Miyazawa’s fans are really intense. There are tons and tons of people who are completely head over heels for him. I hear some of them join the literature club just so they can read Kenji… Although, I didn’t know Mr. Yoshitsuru was one of them.” “Huh…” As I listened, I was feeling somewhat flustered. Sayuri was the only girl in this group, but she wasn’t awkward or timid at all. That was unexpected. I’d always assumed girls got nervous unless they were close to somebody of their own sex. Apparently, she wasn’t bothered by the fact that this wasn’t her home field. Or if she was, she hid it well. I was also surprised that she was so natural with us when we’d never had a proper conversation before. “But, Shirakawa and Fujisawa, you both like Mr. Yoshitsuru, don’t you?” she asked suddenly. Takuya and I glanced at each other, then stared at her. I didn’t know about Takuya, but as far as I was concerned, she was right. “What makes you think that?” Takuya asked. “You’re kinda birds of a feather. You get so excited about something that you lose track of everything else before you know it. Like him… So I thought you might sympathize.” “Hmm…,” I muttered. She sure was sharp. “Did you know the two of us before this, Sawatari?” Takuya asked. “Uh-huh.” “Where from?” “I saw that thing last year. You know, the, um…” Sayuri mimed flying with her right hand. “…The cultural festival, huh?” Finally, it all made sense to me. “Yes. That was amazing. You two made that together, didn’t you?” “That’s right.” I nodded, feeling pleased. “You aren’t doing it this year?” “No, not this year,” Takuya answered. “There’s no point in doing the same thing over and over again. Besides, we’re working on something a little different now, and we have our hands full with that.” “Something different? Like what?” “It’s a secret,” I said. “Aw, too bad.” Sayuri pursed her lips. Then, out of nowhere, she asked, “Hey, what’s friendship like for guys?” “Huh?” That was what I said, but I meant What kind of question is that? “You two are super close, aren’t you? You’re always together. I was just curious about how that felt.” “We don’t know, either, and it’s not like we’re together all the time,” Takuya answered. “Hiroki’s got his own friends, and so do I. Besides, I’m pretty sure hanging out feels the same whether you’re a guy or a girl.” “You think so?” Sayuri lowered her voice a bit. “I get the feeling it’s different.” Still, she didn’t seem as if she was going to pursue the issue further. I gave a half-hearted “Huh.” To be honest, at the time, I felt that Sayuri was in the way, just a little. She wasn’t exactly rude, but the way she asked all her questions was threatening. Frankly, I would have been more relaxed if it had been just me and Takuya. What if Sayuri’s intrusion broke something we had? Takuya and I were already a perfect team; we didn’t need anyone else. Adding a foreign entity—a girl—would throw things off-balance. I’m not an intuitive person at all, but thinking about it now, that sneaking suspicion turned out to be really accurate. Sunday came two days after that, and once the three of us had finished our morning club activities, we all went to Takuya’s house to do some more work on the report. Takuya lived alone with his dad, and even on Sunday, his dad was holed up in his work space in another building. That meant we were able to get together informally. Convenient for us. Sayuri’s house was in Naka-Oguni, close to the school, and she’d suggested that we do this there, but Takuya and I had casually vetoed that. Two guys couldn’t go to a girl’s house! Too embarrassing. However, Sayuri apparently didn’t care about those things, and she had no qualms about going to a guy’s house when there wouldn’t be any adults present. “She’s kinda funny…” Later on, Takuya and I compared notes on her with each other. In the middle of our thorny adolescence, her behavior was curious. Takuya’s house was an old, traditional Japanese-style place that looked a lot like mine. He showed Sayuri and me into a room with a Buddhist family altar. Then, with some difficulty, he lugged in a big, low table from the room next to it. We spread out our notebooks and the materials we’d borrowed from the library on top of it. Sayuri eased her posture just a little, shifting her legs to the side, and sat there looking small and quiet and like she completely belonged in this room. To her, this really was nothing. She seemed incredibly relaxed. Suddenly, she put her hands on her knees, shoulders curving inward, and cocked her head slightly. “It’s strange. I feel like I’ve dreamed about this before,” she said. Her defenses were completely down, and maybe that was what nudged the pendulum in my heart to begin its first slow swing. She said she liked Kenji Miyazawa. We made fantastic progress on our report, mostly thanks to Sayuri. She was startlingly clever. Both Takuya and I had brains that were fundamentally wired for science, and our grades in math and the sciences were pretty good, but Sayuri was the opposite: She was brilliant at literature. Yoshitsuru had copied and handed out expert papers on modern lit, which were definitely too much for middle schoolers to handle, but she read them and summarized the content for us without much trouble. We were thoroughly impressed, and we wrote the report pretty much exactly the way she said to. However, what I really admired was how incredibly alive Sayuri looked when she was reading books or talking about them. It was so dramatic that she seemed like a different person. When she talked about the books she liked, I could see her sympathy, and intimacy, and empathy. “The thing is—I really understand Kenji.” If he had someone reading him this seriously, Kenji Miyazawa was probably pretty satisfied. “Kenji Miyazawa, huh…?” Frankly, I couldn’t make heads or tails of his stuff when I read it, and I sighed in an attempt to expel the fog from my mind. “I’ve never even thought about whose books I like, or what kind.” “What sort of books do you two usually read?” “Computer books and books about physics. Stuff like that,” Takuya said, then jerked a thumb at me. “All this guy reads is manga.” “It’s not all manga.” “Okay then, tell us the title of the last book you read.” “Uh…” I thought for a little. “Whetting Techniques, Expanded.” After I said it, I thought with some disappointment in myself, That’s pretty boring, I guess. “What’s that?” Sayuri asked, mystified. “It’s basically a book on how to sharpen blades,” I said. “Like how to use a grinder to revitalize the point on a drill press, and then things like cutters and kitchen knives…” “You can sharpen kitchen knives?” Sayuri was more impressed than I’d expected. “Sure. Why are you so surprised, though? Anyone can.” “I can’t. That’s amazing. I didn’t know boys read things like that. And then you do all sorts of useful things with it…” “Ha, no, this guy’s special. That is not typical reading material for a guy,” Takuya joked. “He’s a little weird.” “The stuff you like is weird, too!” Sayuri watched us, laughing in that breathy voice of hers. Her laugh was always adorable, almost ticklish. “That’s so neat. All I’ve got is literature. I read pretty much anything in that category, but…” Since it was her, I thought she probably really did read everything she could get her hands on. A question occurred to me, and I immediately asked it. “Hey, Sawatari, why do you read? I mean, I only do it when there’s something I have to look up, so…” “Why do I read when I don’t have a reason, you mean?” “Yeah.” “That’s a good question.” She thought for a minute. “I think I do it because I want that feeling that hits me when I’m reading.” “What feeling?” “Disappearing.” “Disappearing…?” “Um… First, all the things around me go away. Then I go, too,” she said. “I’m not reading the book anymore; all that’s there is what’s inside. Doesn’t that ever happen to you?” “I’m not sure,” Takuya said. “I think it feels like that when you get really absorbed in something.” “It does,” Sayuri said. “But not quite. It’s more like I’m switching this world and the other one…” “What if it’s something like this? Can you get that absorbed when you read it?” I put the paperback of Spring and Asura over my face and lolled backward. “I can’t even tell what the heck is written in here.” “Uh-huh. I can.” “Seriously? You get lost in ‘Surrendering not to the rain, nor to the wind’?” “That one’s fine, too, but…” Sayuri giggled. Then her face grew serious, and she started to recite a poem from memory. “‘Though my hands are fevered, my legs weak, yet I am he who builds this tower.’” “Tower?” I flinched and sat up, fast. “Yes.” She nodded, paging through the collection of poems in the book. “‘Exquisite where’er it may be, here and there, present and future, on the axis of onward-gliding time, brilliantly illuminating the darkness, the ineffable sanctity of that tower.’” “What is that?” Takuya asked. “It’s called ‘Though My Hands Are Fevered, My Legs Weak.’ It’s a poem Kenji wrote right before he died. That’s my favorite.” “What did that part you said just now mean?” “I’m not actually sure… I think he probably meant something along the lines of ‘I’m about to become something indestructible.’” “It sounds kind of like he was talking about that one in the north,” I said quietly. “It really does. I bet that tower will stand there for a century or more, too.” Sayuri poked at the glass pitcher of barley tea with a finger, sending ripples through it. “Books are indestructible memories,” she said. “Take Kenji Miyazawa. Even now, a hundred years later, his book is in print, and we’re reading it. There are even people like Mr. Yoshitsuru. He’s still definitely here, in his own way. I envy him. I’m sure everybody would forget about me right away, never to remember. Right now I’m still at school with my friends and everybody else. It’s fun, but after we graduate and start going to different schools, it wouldn’t take long.” I was startled, and so was Takuya. She didn’t know us that well, but here she was just chatting with us about this deep and serious stuff. We never saw it coming. Sayuri didn’t sound particularly sad or lonely, just practical. Her genuine feelings showed more clearly that way. Genuineness is a scary thing. Jokes and banter don’t put pressure on people, but revealing how you really feel will make them nervous. Somebody needed to say something, so I stepped up. “I don’t think they will…” “It’s true, though. After all, I’m sure I’ll forget a lot of my friends and other people. It’s a two-way street. I think that’s just how it goes, but…” I probably managed to keep the shock from showing too much on my face. I mean, do girls start thinking about the distant future like that now? That’s so weird. All I think about is what I’m going to do for the rest of today or what I should do tomorrow. Anyway, Sayuri’s comments made a big impression on me, and I thought that alone would make me remember her for quite a while. I wondered whether I should assure her that I wouldn’t forget. I was pretty torn; it’s hard to say something so dramatic. Ultimately, I kept my mouth shut. I think I probably should have said it, though. In Modern Japanese class several days later, the teacher called on Sayuri and had her read Kenji’s “The Morning of the Last Farewell.” Her voice was as transparent as spun glass, a perfect match for a poem about sleet and snow. Much later, years later, I thought about it. Even back then, Sayuri had been asking us for help. She’d been screaming for us to take her somewhere else, to the place we promised. I don’t know why she came to us. All I can say for sure is that, back then, we were probably the only ones who had enough power to take her somewhere. Maybe she sensed that. After all, she was terrifyingly sensitive. We were too young, though, and we were thinking only about ourselves. Of course we were. Even so, I still think about it: If we’d picked up on her silent cry sooner, I’m pretty sure Sayuri and Takuya and I would all have ended up in very different places. And that makes me so sad I can hardly stand it. Parting ways with Takuya at the drinking fountain, I went back to the archery range. I needed to shoot more. I stepped onto the floorboards of the deserted range and glared at the target. Focusing until every last nerve was under my control, I ran through the series of motions, nocking an arrow to my bow. “She’s cute, sure…but that doesn’t mean I have to go out with her, does it?” “I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be.” “Then who would be?” Takuya’s honest, straightforward words had become my mental static. My shot was crooked. Of course it was; I wasn’t being honest. “Sawatari.” I heard the pleasant sound of the arrow hitting the target. I was spot-on. But there was a mistake here, somewhere. We’d had nothing but the closing ceremony and homeroom that day, and all of the students had promptly left. Which meant there was almost no one at Minami-Yomogita Station after three in the afternoon. I meandered across the station’s pedestrian bridge, hands shoved into the pockets of my jacket. Just before I started down the stairs to the platform, I casually glanced out a window at the view, then stopped in my tracks. On the platform, a girl was reading a paperback while she waited for the train by herself—and that girl was Sayuri. I was immediately tense. I couldn’t just keep standing there, so I slowly started walking again. For no discernible reason, I tried to keep my footsteps quiet as I went down the stairs. As soon as I left the steps, I turned to face the rails and stood there, pretending I hadn’t noticed her. Frankly, I think I was scared. Sayuri and I didn’t really have anything in common. A conversation could get awkward fast, and she might decide I was boring… I could imagine all sorts of awful scenarios, and I was a coward. I was also afraid of Sayuri herself. I’d sensed a power in her, something that could change who I was, whether I wanted it to or not. If I was near her, she might put her small white hand inside me and rebuild my heart as easily as changing out plastic bricks. If Takuya had been there like usual, I probably could have kept a conversation going without feeling the pressure, but… Takuya was his own can of worms. I wanted to have a bit of self-restraint, for his sake. Or maybe I was just using that as an excuse, and I only wanted to avoid her. I stood about forty to fifty feet away from Sayuri, looking the other way, yet staying intensely aware of her. I heard a soft rustle as she turned a page in her book, and I stole a glance at her. She was wearing the same duffle coat as yesterday, and she had her chin tucked into the same muffler. From time to time, a puff of white breath mingled with the clear air of that fine afternoon. It was a pretty cold day, but she didn’t look very cold. Maybe she didn’t feel it when she was lost in a book. Her posture was so nice, too. When people read books standing up, their heads tend to droop, but her back was perfectly straight. She had large eyes with big irises. Every so often, they moved a little or blinked, and without really meaning to, I was staring at them. And then… She glanced my way and noticed my presence. “Fujisawa.” Sayuri closed her book, her hands coming together as if in prayer, and she called my name with a smile. Her smile was the definition of carefree, the kind that lit up and instantly changed the mood of the place. My face was burning red. Bewildered, I wondered how I should interpret that expression. Sayuri was trotting over to me, so I took two or three steps closer to her as well. She stopped just a foot and a half away. Close enough to send me completely off-balance. “If you’d noticed me, I wish you’d said something,” she said, oblivious to my dismay. “I was just thinking of doing that,” I said, keeping up appearances. “You’re heading home late, Sawatari. I thought I was going to be the only one on the next train.” “I know. I was practicing, and it made me late.” “Violin?” “Yes. I’m a klutz, so I’m always later than everyone else.” Then she asked, “Shirakawa isn’t with you today?” “No. I stopped by my club, too.” “You practice archery by yourself sometimes, don’t you, Fujisawa?” “How did you know?” It was getting harder and harder to keep calm, and I turned toward the rails. “I walk by the archery range a lot. I heard arrows, but it wasn’t time for club, so I peeked through the window.” “I have trouble clearing my mind, so I can’t always concentrate with everyone else around. Basically…I’m just bad at it.” “You’re like me.” I could feel her smiling beside me. I could also sense an approaching train, so I looked down to the end of the tracks. As the white diesel engine slowly glided up to the platform, I watched it impatiently. The whole time, I could feel Sayuri’s eyes on me. She and I boarded the train through the very last door. Sayuri didn’t sit down. Instead, she leaned against the wall that separated the passenger area from the engineer’s seat. Next to her, I did the same thing. “Fujisawa, spring vacation starts tomorrow. What will you be doing?” “Working part-time with Takuya.” “A part-time job? Lucky. I’d like to do that, too. Do your parents…?” “No, they don’t know. Are you bad at keeping secrets like that from your parents?” “Yes, I’d probably get caught. Where will you be working?” “At a factory in Hamana that subcontracts to the military. We’ll be assembling guided missiles.” “Lucky… All I’ve got is club.” “You’re not retiring?” “No, not for a little longer.” “I see.” “Mm-hmm.” And the conversation petered out. I probably should have asked her more about herself. If you think about it, there were tons of things to talk about. What piece she was playing in club right now, for example, or what kind of music she liked, or even about her family. For whatever reason, though, I stayed quiet. In the silence, I listened to the regular clickety-clack of the train wheels crossing the seams in the rails. At first, it seemed like a countdown until the awkwardness could be over, but before long, it started to feel as if I was listening to my own heartbeat. The train swayed, and Sayuri’s shoulder brushed against me. That was when it happened. Put briefly, it was the power of attraction. I sensed it in Sayuri; it was like a whirlpool in the ocean, and I was the little boat getting sucked in. Whatever it was inside me that generated all my emotions was being drawn into her and locked away. It reminded me of the Bermuda Triangle or a black hole. Of course, that was just something I’d felt, not necessarily something she’d done. But in that one moment, something had forever changed me on the inside. Like whoever I’d been before was someone else entirely. It wasn’t fair, but I felt something almost like hatred for Sayuri. I never asked for this drastic transformation. I preferred changing myself, little by little and of my own free will. Mastering a tool I hadn’t been able to use before, for example, or learning how to shoot accurately. She’d taken over me, and it was all I could do to withstand the pain of it. The announcement that we were approaching Naka-Oguni Station played, and my harsh, stormy mood eased just a little. It didn’t disappear, though; it lingered, seething and stirring the surface of the water. I might get used to that mood, I thought, but it would never go away. “We’re here already…,” Sayuri said as the train began to brake. What does that mean? I thought as my heart gasped for breath. Did it mean she hadn’t been bored, riding a train alone with me in almost total silence? I wanted to ask, but that’s what socially awkward people do. As I hesitated, she glanced up into my face. “Fujisawa, listen.” “…Hmm?” “Yesterday, I dreamed that I was going home with you like this.” I gulped, then froze up. I thought my heart would stop. What on earth does that mean? I wasn’t sure, but could it mean she didn’t mind being alone with me all that much? Maybe it meant I had a chance here. How could I not have been happy about that? The blood rushed to my head. The train stopped. With a heavy clunk, the doors opened. Sayuri turned on her heel and descended to the concrete platform, her feet light on the steps. Almost as if I was being pulled toward it, I went up to the door. She did another about-face, looked at me, raised a hand, and smiled. “Bye-bye. See you in the new term.” “…Yeah.” With timing straight out of a TV drama, the door closed. Its glass window slid between me and Sayuri. I hadn’t managed to ask her anything, but I almost felt as if she hadn’t let me. It was both a disappointment and a relief. The train shambled into motion, and slowly Sayuri and I slid sideways and apart. I stuck to the glass at the very back of the train, following Sayuri with my eyes. She’d just walked down the stone steps at the end of the platform, to the rails. Naka-Oguni Station didn’t have a pedestrian bridge linking its platforms, and passengers had to walk directly across the tracks. Sayuri didn’t head straight for the ticket gate. For a little while, she walked comfortably along the track, toward me. Then she hopped up onto a rail, steadied herself, and began to walk along it as if it was a balance beam. From inside the receding train, I watched Sayuri acting out a scene from Stand by Me. She was beautiful in the truest sense. Her form had shrunk in the distance, so I went to the door she’d left through, rested my forehead against the glass, and sighed. The storm was still there inside me. When I glanced out the window, we just happened to be traveling toward the tower in Ezo. The sight of that tower stirred up a different swirling current in my heart, a confusion I couldn’t control turning my breath ragged. When I gazed absently at the tower, the image of Sayuri walking along the rails appeared over it. In the picture in my mind, Sayuri was prepared to walk forever down a track that led to the tower. 7 Sayuri’s presence lingered in my heart for ages, and that night, I wasn’t able to sleep until nearly dawn. When I got up, my head was foggy, my parents had already gone to work, and my grandpa had gone out somewhere, too. I slapped together a breakfast in the kitchen, then watched TV while I ate, still half asleep. On the news, they were discussing the minister-level conference that was scheduled to take place between the US and the Union a few days from now. The focus was expected to be on Japan’s North-South problem. The Union was apprehensive about the US military buildup at the Misawa base. Meanwhile, America planned to request a clear statement from the Union explaining why that tower had been built in its Ezo territory, as well as permission for an inspection to prove it wasn’t a military facility. That’s not even funny. Don’t go giving away its secrets like that. I felt a little anxious. To Japan, the Union was the enemy, but with regard to the tower, I ended up siding emotionally with the Union no matter what I did. I left the house, boarded a train, and got off at Tsugaru-Hamana. I hauled my granny bike out of the station bicycle parking lot where I’d left it, then rode down a road that ran through farm fields, standing up on the pedals. After I’d crossed two bridges, the road curved to avoid a small mountain, and once I was past that, Emishi Manufacturing came into view. I coasted into the factory lot without braking, did a lap around the parking area, which was big enough for a large truck to turn around in easily (it was actually covered in grass and way bigger than it needed to be), and stopped in front of the office building. When I entered the factory through a shutter that had been rolled up all the way, two employees—Miyagawa and Satou—were sitting by a potbellied stove in their work coveralls. “Hello. Oh, is it break time? Yessss!” “Yeah, have a seat,” Miyagawa said. I grabbed a folding chair that had been leaning against the wall and started to unfold it. While I was busy doing that, Takuya emerged from the kitchenette with a tea tray. “You’re late, Hiroki.” “Sorry.” Takuya started setting the teacups on the old table. Satou promptly reached for the karinto, the brown sugar crackers that had been provided as a tea snack. As he did so, he turned to me with amusement. “Hey, Hiroki. We heard.” “Heard what?” Miyagawa elaborated. “So you guys stole one of the JMSDF’s Chukars, huh?” “We did not.” Takuya had finished getting the tea ready and taken a seat in another folding chair, and he and I objected in unison. “We didn’t steal it,” I added. “We found it in Amagamori.” Takuya picked up where I’d left off. “It was downed during a training exercise, and they just left it in the woods, so we took it home.” “Meaning you did steal it,” Satou wisecracked. “Good thinking, though. The engine on that may be a little underpowered, but it’ll probably get the job done. You guys managed to score the most expensive component for free, huh?” “Be careful they don’t track you,” said Miyagawa. “But they’ve been doing lots of exercises with drones lately, so I doubt losing one or two of ’em will be much of a problem.” “What he said. The Public Safety Commission already has their eye on us. If they catch you by accident, it’ll totally blow.” “Public Safety’s coming here?” I asked. “But you’re working with the US military. Why would they suspect you?” “Well, c’mon, we’re making explosives,” said Miyagawa. “We might be selling them to terrorists under the table.” “Also, the boss just looks like a troublemaker,” Satou joked in a low voice. Just as we were about to laugh— “Sounds like defamation, boys.” The aluminum door to the office opened, and the president, Mr. Okabe, walked in. His voice was deep and intimidating. Between his close-cropped hair, his five-o’clock shadow, and the cigarette between his teeth, he was a tough-looking guy. If he hadn’t been in his work coveralls, you would have guessed he was a gangster. “So? What was that about me?” Satou muttered “Shit” under his breath. Turning to the two of us, Mr. Okabe told us he was sorry, but there wasn’t any work for us today. “The stuff I was going to have you work on hasn’t gotten here yet. Come back tomorrow. You’ll have work to do worth more than the cost of the materials.” “Awww…” We spoke in unison again. “Don’t gimme that.” “Yessir.” “All right, we don’t need you here today, so get on up top.” After that, he spoke to his two staff members. “You two quit lazing around and get to work already.” Takuya and I cut diagonally across the tall weeds of the Emishi Manufacturing yard, wove through a group of enormous wireless antennas that had to have been illegally installed, then crawled through a tear in the chain-link fence. Going through the factory lot and leaving through the back was the shortest way to get “up top.” If we’d taken a real route, we would have had to walk quite a bit farther on a winding road that took the long way round. We passed through a small graveyard, took a path that ran beside an unmanned temple, and then we were finally on the mountain. We climbed straight up the unpaved mountain track. Walking was tough, and the incline was hard to handle, but it got us where we were going fast. There was a practical reason we’d started working part-time, of course. Back when Ezo was still a part of this country and still called Hokkaido, there had apparently been plans to dig a tunnel under the Tsugaru Strait. A long, long one, like the tunnel under the Strait of Dover. In the end, that plan had been scrapped when the North and South split, but there were still remnants of the construction around Mt. Hakamagoshi, like abandoned stations and tracks. We climbed the slope without talking. We were panting, our breath making white clouds in front of our faces. Still, we kept going, and all of a sudden, the trees ended and the view opened up. We were at the peak: a magnificently wide, gentle slope. At this time of year, it was white with residual snow. The snow-covered ground rolled on into the distance until it broke off, and beyond that was sky. We always stopped and stood still here. The view of the sky from this position was due north. The tower was visible. We gazed at it for a little while. When we glanced to the right, there were several low, decaying wooden structures on the vast snowfield, with ample space between them. Three platforms in a row, linked by a pedestrian bridge, and a wooden main building. It was an abandoned station, alone in the middle of the snowfield. The group of buildings reminded me of a photo I’d seen of an observation base at the South Pole. The structure here was one of the stations from the tunnel project, discarded while it was still under construction. It had been abandoned completely, and nobody ever came near it. We’d been making something here since the autumn of our first year of middle school, and our job at Emishi Manufacturing was bringing in the money to buy parts for it. We walked over the white field, snow crunching underfoot. There was a lot less snow than there had once been, and the rusty rails showed through here and there. “It’s melted quite a bit. I want to get started again soon,” I said. “Let’s hope it’s actually done snowing,” Takuya answered. During the deepest part of winter, this place was buried, and we’d hardly been able to come here at all. Plus, we’d been low on funds. Beside the abandoned station was a shed that had probably been built to house heavy construction equipment. It was a wooden building that looked like it had been thrown together in a hurry, and I suspected they’d meant it to be temporary. We called it “the hangar.” We went closer to it, and after we circled around to the back door, Takuya took the key out of his pocket. “Without the rest of our materials, we’re not gonna get anything done here now. We may be set for the main engine, but we still don’t have the exterior nanonet or the starter motor. The big one is probably the superconducting motor, and finally, we’ll need a whole lot of kerosene. I dunno if we’ll be able to cover all that with part-time work, especially not minus a day.” “We’ll figure it out. There’s summer vacation, too,” I told him. “True.” We went into the gloomy hangar. The wallboards of the tumbledown building didn’t fit together properly, and light from outside streamed in through assorted cracks. In that faint light, you could just make out the shape of the thing in the center of the room. Takuya raised the lever on a switchboard on the wall. There was a clack, and four halogen floodlights threw their pallid light on the object from all sides. An aluminum frame, with plastic sheets draped over it in places. It was still just a skeleton, but a glance was enough to tell that it was a big bird with folded wings. We’d made an airplane. A real one. Completely unique, the only one of its kind anywhere. The Velaciela. That was the name we’d end up giving it later on. It means “white wings,” or so we were told. We’d decided ahead of time that the aircraft was going to be white. After all, it was destined to go to that white tower. That’s right. We weren’t just going to fly it. We had a destination in mind. We wanted to go to the place that looked close enough to touch and yet was beyond reach. No matter what it took, we wanted to see the strange land of Ezo and its enormous tower up close. We gazed at our work in progress, the bones of our winks, and basked in the deep, pleasant emotion that slowly filled us. We saw visions of the day we’d climb into the multiseat cockpit, open the throttle, and take off, feeling the g-forces work on us. We were planning to fly over the border, to that tower, in this Velaciela. We’d decided to build the airplane right after that jet incident in our first year. The next one will be real. I think we’d both had that thought, that sense of what was to come, while we were making the radio-controlled model. We were learning to do things we’d never done before, and we could do more and more on our own. The pleasure of it was incredible. The elation drove us onward. “Let’s do it.” “Yeah.” That was the only real discussion Takuya and I had on the subject. We didn’t even consider the possibility that we couldn’t. Looking back, we had serious guts: middle-school kids, trying to build a plane we could actually fly in, totally from scratch. After we retrieved that radio-controlled jet from the gym roof and lashed it to the cargo rack of a bike, Takuya and I had a very terse discussion on the way home. We didn’t say much because there was no real need to. “How far should we fly it?” I asked. Depending on the answer, the design would change quite a bit. “About that. There’s a place I want to go,” Takuya said. “Me too,” I said. And that was it. Neither of us explained exactly which place we meant. We already knew each other very well, and we didn’t need to ask our intuition to know we were working toward the same thing. It was the middle of the night, so we couldn’t see it to the north then. But in our minds, that pure-white tower rose in the blackness, emitting rays of light like a midsummer sun. Why the tower? If you’d asked me that at the time, I doubt I could have given a satisfactory answer. Even now, I’m not sure I can explain it very well. Unless you grew up right next to it, seeing it every day, it might not be possible to understand that longing, that impatience. You have to start with what it was like to see that tower every day for more than a dozen years. The tower taught me just how beautiful straight lines were. In terms of distance, it was about 220 miles from the Tsugaru Peninsula. That’s pretty far, but it looked so close. No, close isn’t quite right; it was more that it seemed to be bearing down on us. (Later on, I learned that wasn’t an illusion, but a phenomenon known as macroscopic quantum tunneling.) Sometimes, it seemed to be flaunting its beauty. What on earth was happening in that beautiful place? What sort of brilliant, wonderful secrets did it hold? I had to know. If there had been a path on solid ground between me and that tower, I’m sure I would have taken it sooner, no matter what it took. If a train had gone there, I would have jumped on. If not, I would have ridden my bike. If the road wasn’t one a bicycle could handle, I would have walked. The time would have been nothing to me. But in reality, what lay between me and the tower was the ocean and a closed national border. There was something beautiful in a place I could see; something was there, and yet I was separated from it. Excluded. It was almost personal, like I was being shunned. And so I had to make a formal objection. I had to have it. One day, during the winter of our first year in middle school, I got the opportunity to watch Takuya’s club practice. He was in the speed skating club. Naturally, there was no skating rink at the school, so the club members took a minibus to a distant rink that had been set up on a lake. It was pretty high in the mountains, and it had a good, clear view of the Tsugaru Strait and the tower beyond it. I leaned against the minibus’s sliding door and watched Takuya start. The pistol went off, and Takuya pushed against the ice with his skate blade, launching into a sprint that was more like running than skating. As he set off, I got the feeling he was staring straight at the tower. Even after he began to build up speed and his upper body leaned far forward, his eyes were fixed on the distance. Before long, he entered the curve, and the tower slipped out of sight. Still, even when it was behind him, he was sprinting toward it in his mind, I think. When Takuya had skated three quarters of the looped track, the tower came back into sight again. Almost frustrated, he mustered his strength and shoved the ice behind him until he crossed the finish line, slowly shedding the momentum he’d built up. But his eyes were constantly on the tower. When I realized what he was doing, I almost teared up a little. I felt like yelling “We’re the same! I’m like that, too!” When you find someone who cares about the same things as you, as much as you do, it’s impossible to describe how hard it hits you. Back then, Takuya didn’t feel like “someone else” to me at all. It even felt like he was a second me. “We’re totally going there.” That was what I told Takuya, thumping him on the back, when he’d changed into his shoes and come back up to the bus. Startled, he gazed at me steadily. Then he said, “Yeah, absolutely.” He smiled, and I think he was trying to hide his embarrassment. When it came to building an actual plane, we had two general problems: materials and the runway. At first, we’d planned to clean up the garage at my place and build it there, bit by bit, component by component. In that case, the issues were how we were going to transport the plane, and how far, and where we were going to fly it from. We needed a place with plenty of room and a long straight line. Somewhere as near as possible to Hokkaido. We wanted to aim straight for the sea, without flying over houses or the town. At one point, we even gave serious consideration to commandeering a highway somewhere or changing the whole design and turning it into a seaplane. It was a genuine coincidence that we found that abandoned station. “Could we make it work with some abandoned train tracks?” It was Takuya who’d hit on that idea, of course. He came up with all kinds of ideas. In our search for a straight section of track that would make a good runway, we wandered along between the rails with no real destination in mind, like something out of a movie. This was right before the first snowfall of that year. And then we reached the top of that mountain. When we found the abandoned station, we jumped and cheered. The place had rusted rails crawling down a gentle slope and crossing in complicated ways. Track switches. Three island-type platforms. A decaying enclosed overpass going up and over to connect them. All of it fascinated us. It was like a secret base. The station was half-flooded with overflow from a nearby lake, which meant the island platforms were actual islands. How cool was that? There were fish living in that water, and you could probably catch them without too much trouble. We were over the moon as we explored the whole place. We ran up the pedestrian bridge (when we got to the top, the floor felt ready to drop out from under us, so we walked softly), chucked rocks at the water from one of the platforms, and took the seats out of an abandoned bus that had tipped over, tossing them outside. I’d always wanted to try napping with a train rail as my pillow, and that silly little dream of mine came true. If I’d done that on a track that was in use, the results would have been ugly, but there was nobody here to see or disapprove. Then Takuya came running down the track like a train and kicked me in the side. He was breathing hard through his nose, sounding almost like an engine himself. It wasn’t just from the exercise. “What’s got you so worked up?” “This! What, you don’t feel it, too?” “Of course I do!” I told him. And so we decided to build our plane there, at the abandoned station. In terms of geography, we’d be able to take off directly over the ocean, and there were straight rails here, too. If we were going to take off from there, it would be easiest to build it there. On the other hand, we didn’t have any prospects for the problem of materials for a while. There were a ton of things we needed. First and most important, a jet engine. Aluminum for the frame, and a carbon nanonet. A superconducting motor. All expensive stuff. We’d have to get the funds together somehow. And the problem of how to get those things was even tougher. We were minors; how were we supposed to order items like that? In the end, we did find a way, and once again, we had the abandoned station to thank for it. Sometimes when one thing goes right, it starts a chain reaction that sets everything in motion. Over the course of multiple trips to and from the old station, we learned that the fastest way down the mountain was to go straight down the mountain track and come out at the back of Emishi Manufacturing. We’d sneak through the factory lot. From there, we could take a paved road and get to the station easily. There was a break in the rusty chain-link fence, and if we went through it, infiltrating the lot was a cinch. One day, an employee caught us in the act. We didn’t learn his name until later, but it was Satou, the youngest guy at the company. He dragged us up to the boss’s office, stern-faced. When he spotted us, we’d tried to run, but he’d tripped Takuya and had him pinned on the ground in no time. I couldn’t just cut and run by myself, so I’d grudgingly surrendered. They were only dealing with middle schoolers who’d sneaked onto their property, so I thought this was overkill, but the atmosphere was so tense and prickly I had no idea what would happen to me if I said so. The boss’s room was on the second floor of a prefab building. There were several steel desks for staff members in there, so it really seemed more accurate to call it an office. The president, Mr. Okabe—whose name we didn’t know yet—was at the desk at the front. He was reading a newspaper, a cigarette between his teeth. When Satou shoved us forward, the two of us stumbled a bit. “These are trespassers who’ve been coming in through the back,” he said. “Huh?” said Mr. Okabe. He put down his paper and stood up, cigarette still in his mouth. He was a big guy. He might not have hit six feet tall, but he was really close. His arms were as thick as clubs. He looked down at us. “Who’re you supposed to be?” he asked harshly. “You’ve got one minute; gimme your excuse. If I like it, I’ll send you home in one piece.” Sick with fear, Takuya and I scrambled to explain. Cutting through this lot was an easy way to get to the abandoned station, and we’d found the station while looking for a runway, and we were thinking of building a full-size plane there… “A plane?” Mr. Okabe sounded suspicious. “Oh, hey, are you those kids? The little twerps who pulled that stunt with a jet at the middle school?” Without thinking, I responded with a question of my own. “How do you know about that?” Immediately after I said it, I ducked my head, thinking he might get mad at me for answering back, but Mr. Okabe stubbed his cig into an ashtray and smirked. “Adults have their own intel networks. I’ve got connections with the whole faculty at Minami-Yomogita Middle.” Very quietly, I heard Takuya say, “Shit.” I felt the same way. Apparently deciding he might be able to get through to him, Takuya took the conversation in a different direction. “Um, this is a munitions factory, isn’t it?” “You bet it is. Lotta scary guys make their dangerous toys here. It’s not a place for kids to wander around.” “Could you sell us some aluminum?” I was startled. What the heck was he saying? “Aluminum? What are you going to do with that?” “Use it for our plane.” Satou interjected, “This isn’t a toy plane?” “No. It’s a two-seater,” Takuya snapped. I’d been stunned by the sudden development, but the blood finally started to make it to my brain again. Being able to procure materials from somewhere this close would be fantastically convenient. I decided to follow Takuya’s lead. “And a superconducting motor or a small jet engine or something—if you can!” I said loudly. “Whoa, hold it, a jet engine?” Leaning back against the edge of the desk, Mr. Okabe lit a new cigarette. “Do you have the plans? Lemme see.” The plans were in my jacket pocket, folded up small and beginning to wear through at the creases; I took them out and handed them over. It was the design Takuya and I had been pouring all our energy into since early fall. Mr. Okabe laid it flat on the desk, rubbing at it to straighten out the wrinkles, then began examining it closely. “Two main propulsion systems…a ring wing… You’ve got some pretty fancy ideas here. Hey, Satou, come take a look at this.” “Yessir… Whoa, what the hell? You’re doing this for you, that’s for sure. Still, this is, hmm…” “What?” “It looks like it could fly, technically.” “Of course it does!” Takuya and I said at the same time. “Go get Miyagawa. He knows the most about this stuff,” Mr. Okabe said, and Satou jogged out of the room. “Do you make planes here, too?” I asked. “Nah. We don’t do that much. We make a lotta similar things, though.” Satou came back with a solidly built employee. That was Miyagawa. He already seemed to know what was up; he nodded to the president, then went right over to look at the plans on the desk. “Your design’s pretty close to the line…,” he said, after looking at it intently for a while. “C’mere a sec,” he said, calling us over. “This bit. The second the legs are up, it’ll crack. It’s fine to make it light, but you haven’t kept it strong.” “But if we mess with that,” I said, “the balance of the whole thing is gonna—” “Yep,” Miyagawa replied bluntly. “So you’ll have to redo this whole thing. I’ll teach you the nitty-gritty, so come ask me later.” “Well? How’s it look?” Mr. Okabe asked. “It’s an interesting idea. Go ahead and let them do it,” he answered. “Hmm. I see…” Mr. Okabe exhaled smoke. “Listen, aluminum alloy for planes costs a bundle, but I’ll sell you some if you’ve got the money. Do you?” “Well, uh…” “And do a coupla kids like you even know how to work metal?” “Yes!” I practically snapped. It was pretty much the only thing I could do, but I could do it with utter confidence. This was no time to be humble or hesitant. “Don’t underestimate us, sir,” I added. “I think we can do it, of course,” Takuya said. His voice seemed more powerful when he was talking quietly. “Well, you talk big enough. All right, c’mon downstairs.” Mr. Okabe walked to the exit and opened the door. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” We were taken outside, then into the next building over—the factory—which was open all the way through the second story. One wall was almost entirely shutters, and it was made so that big trucks could drive in. “Show ’em how it’s done first.” Mr. Okabe jerked his chin lightly, and Satou immediately got down to business. The stacked objects were boxes made of thin iron, of a size you could hold with both hands. Inside, they were fitted with components and hooks for holding cords. What Satou showed us was how to put a square hole in the side; the work itself wasn’t hard, but it was a demanding process that didn’t allow for even the slightest error in positioning. When they prompted us, we didn’t have to ask for any more information. We just picked up the necessary equipment and completed the same process on two or three more boxes. The next thing they had us do was weld the hemispherical exterior of something; we managed that without a problem, too. We definitely got a shock, though, when the last object they brought out was an orange cylinder about as tall as a person. We were supposed to add a tail assembly, hook up a laptop, and run an operation check on the electrical components, and the actual work was stuff even we could do. When we timidly did it, Mr. Okabe said, “If you snot-nosed kids can handle that, color me impressed.” “But this is a…,” Takuya murmured. “Yeah, it’s a ballistic missile.” “Agh, I knew it!” We forgot our manners and yelled. Mr. Okabe scratched his chin and spoke with some amusement. “You’ve got a job here if you want it, you two. We’re short-staffed right now. If you do, I’ll sell you aluminum or a motor or whatever you want at cost. It’s dangerous work, so the hourly wage is set pretty high.” We looked at each other. Never underestimate the power of sheer dumb luck. But apparently, the dangerous guys at the factory had taken quite a liking to Takuya and me. That was how we got steel lockers and work coveralls and dangerous yet lucrative jobs at Emishi Manufacturing on our Sunday afternoons and long vacations. From the winter of our first year in middle school to the spring of our second, while we worked, we borrowed a corner of the factory and went back over our design. (At that time of year, the snow kept us from going to the abandoned station.) Every so often, Miyagawa or Satou would confiscate our blueprints and pick them apart. That ticked us off, but their critiques were always correct, and they freely taught us procedures and design techniques we didn’t know. In the end, we gratefully followed their recommendations. However, there was one we just couldn’t follow, no matter how strongly they pushed for it. It was winter vacation of our second year of middle school. Takuya and I worked from morning till evening, putting the finishing touches on guided missiles and inspecting them. As the tension rose between the US-Japan alliance and the Union, Emishi Manufacturing got more and more job orders. The processes we were in charge of were the simplest and easiest ones, so we weren’t busy enough to start genuinely panicking. When we had a free moment, though, we were told to help out with processes that were usually the purview of the full-time staff members, and carts loaded with missiles just kept coming. We couldn’t let down our guard. We had to use our heads and work efficiently, and the job was plenty difficult enough. During a break, I told Mr. Okabe that we were going to have to buy kerosene at some point and asked him how much it would cost. Suspicious, Mr. Okabe asked if we were seriously planning on building a jet. “Look, if you pay for it, I’ll sell you kerosene or nitrogen or whatever you need,” Mr. Okabe said, crunching away on a rice cracker. “Jet fuel’s expensive, though. And it’s risky stuff for kids to be handling, too. Why not just knuckle under and make it a reciprocating engine or a semiconducting motor?” “No, we can’t compromise,” Takuya answered. “Huh…,” Mr. Okabe grunted, and I know he thought we were a couple of smart-asses. He shifted in his creaky folding chair. The small monaural TV beside the stove was showing the news, which was reporting on a scramble drill at the Misawa base. “Why go to the trouble of making it a jet engine?” he asked. “Because they’re cool!” “Because they’re cool!” Takuya and I answered in perfect sync. After I said it, I thought, Wait, no, that’s not quite right. And when I said “That’s not why!” Takuya said the same thing at almost the same time. “Hold it, Hiroki, there were other reasons.” “Yeah. We thought about other stuff before we settled on that.” “What was it again? Why did we give it a double engine?” “Uh, you know.” “Oh yeah.” “Because we want to make it transform!” Again, we spoke at the exact same time. “No, that’s not it, either,” Takuya said. “There was a real reason, and we decided to make it transform because of it, remember?” “Really?” “Hold on, kids. Do you know how much a jet engine costs?” Mr. Okabe cut in. “How much, sir?” “Enough to shatter your dreams.” I wilted. Takuya clammed up, too. The news had shifted to footage of a large-scale exercise being conducted at the Amagamori Range. Several training support warships were deployed along the Sabishiro coast, enthusiastically firing orange-painted Chukar IVs and Firebees. The Chukars and Firebees were unmanned jets known as target drones; they were treated as enemy fighters and shot down. They were manufactured solely for the sake of these drills. Lines of fire streaked from the coast of Amagamori toward the sky, and ground-to-air missiles were launched. The screen showed close-up footage of a Firebee taking a bullet in its center and exploding, then a Chukar falling into the forest, its wings shot through. “That is such a waste,” I said, and meant it. “They make all of those just to shoot them down. If they’re gonna do that, couldn’t they just give us one for free…?” I was expecting to hear Quit talking crazy, but Takuya was staring at me, wide-eyed. “That’s it,” he said. “Oh…” I knew what he was thinking right away. “Look, whatever.” Mr. Okabe might have seen through our plan, but he sounded too tired to deal with us if he had. “Just be careful, all right? I don’t wanna deal with a couple of dead kids.” Early the next morning, Takuya and I transferred from train to train all the way to Misawa, then switched to a sightseeing bus and got off at the Amagamori stop. After making sure nobody was watching, we climbed over a fence that was dramatically marked DEFENSE AGENCY. Then we spent the whole day wandering nearly at random through the dense woods on the flat land. The blackish-green conifers were coated with pure-white snow, and the contrast made us dizzy after a while. If we were spotted by range personnel or members of the JSDF, we’d definitely be in deep trouble, and we had to keep our nerves sharp the entire time. When the sun had nearly set and we were on the verge of giving up, I thought I saw something orange out of the corner of my eye, and my whole body buzzed with excitement. It was a downed Chukar IV, lying there with a tree root as its pillow. Target drones were promptly retrieved, but Takuya was the one who’d figured that there had to be some that were missed. I was about to call to him, but his quiet “hey” came first. He’d spotted a different Chukar. We’d found two at once, only twenty yards apart. When we checked them over, one had been completely destroyed, but the other was nearly undamaged and apparently salvageable. Takuya and I covered it with a plastic sheet to hide it, securing the sheet with rope. Then we carried it right out of the forest, without being spotted. To anyone who saw us, we must have seemed completely bizarre: two middle schoolers carrying a big cylinder that looked like a missile. It was dusk when we walked through the town, so we were able to relax a bit, but when we got on the bus, when we went through the ticket gate, and when the conductor actually came to inspect our tickets, we got nervous. Silently, I chanted to myself, Nothing to hide, nothing to hide, like a spell to ward off danger. When we reached Minmaya and made it through the ticket gate, a sigh of deep fatigue escaped us. Takuya and I walked down pitch-black farm roads, carrying the Chukar, and stowed it in the garage at my house. Later on, when we checked the engine, it still ran just fine. For only a few thousand yen in transportation costs, we’d gotten our jet engine. 8 After I became intensely conscious of Sayuri, I started to notice her health seemed frail. She wasn’t actually absent much, but she often left early. There were also two or three times when she felt faint during the morning assembly and ended up going to the infirmary. Back then, though, all I or anyone else thought was that she was a girl, and these things happened. After the Kenji Miyazawa report for Modern Japanese, Takuya, Sayuri, and I had gotten a little closer, and sometimes we’d get together and chat. That said, of course, we weren’t all that close. After all, we were in middle school, and that wall between boys and girls of that age existed for us, too. Both Takuya and I felt much more at ease hanging out with other guys, and Sayuri got along well with her friends of her own gender. By the time we started our third year, that had changed. There was a class shuffle. For the first time, Takuya and I were separated. I was disappointed, but we were together all the time outside school, and just being split up in school didn’t change our relationship. I was the amiable type, so I fit in with the members of my new class easily, and Takuya did his thing and took over the class next door at his usual speed. Sayuri ended up in my class. I was secretly happy about that, but I felt a little guilty at the same time. It seemed like I was cheating somehow. Beginning that spring, I could see Sayuri becoming the odd one out among the girls in our class. I didn’t really understand why. I certainly couldn’t ask her directly. Navigating school relationships can be hellish. If you fail to build connections within a week or two after a class shuffle, the consequences will haunt you for the rest of the year. Maybe that’s what tripped her up. Sayuri was pretty, and she probably wasn’t aware of it. Maybe that earned her the enmity of the other girls. Unconscious charm does tend to lower the goodwill of members of your own gender. She was the type who could always remember her dreams, and sometimes she’d tell me or Takuya what had happened in dreams she’d had. She liked talking about things like that. But those meandering stories don’t appeal to everyone; maybe that drove others away. I don’t know what the truth was. Whatever the cause, in our second year, Sayuri had always ridden the train to and from school with her friends, and by the summer of our third year, she usually went home alone. And if I’d picked up on it, Takuya must have, too, even if he was in another class. That may partly explain why he dragged Sayuri into our secret. It was a hot, sunny, bone-dry day at the beginning of July. The plane we’d spent a full year constructing was making steady progress, and at that point, we were stretching the exterior nanonet over the frame. This is the most fun part of the job; all at once, it starts to look like an airplane. Every day after school, Takuya and I raced to the abandoned station and applied as much of the exterior as we could. That was our plan for that day, too. When sixth period ended, I surreptitiously watched most of my classmates leave for supplemental lectures intended to help them with high school entrance exams, while I hurried out of the classroom myself. Just as I was about to leave, Sayuri stopped me. “Fujisawa, I’m going, too.” I froze, taken aback for several different reasons. “Going…where? Sawatari…” “The place where you go every day. Shirakawa invited me yesterday. He said he’d show me something cool.” “S-something cool…,” I stammered. The fact that Takuya had invited Sayuri to the abandoned station, without checking with me first, was a pretty big shock. If the people around us found out what we were doing, it could spiral into a major problem. I didn’t think Sayuri would actually tell on us, but there was no way of knowing when and how the secret might slip out. We’d been building this on our own, and we’d been so careful to keep the place under wraps. And he’d just leaked it to a girl. I wasn’t okay with that. Frankly, I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing. That was how I felt about it. Now that the cat was out of the bag, though, if I refused to take her, it would only make the situation more complicated. I don’t know if Sayuri noticed my conflicted feelings. “Come on, let’s go!” she said. Her big, round, straightforward eyes urged me on. Giving up, I motioned for her to follow and left the school. When we got to Minami-Yomogita Station, I waited for Sayuri to buy a transfer ticket to Tsugaru-Hamana, and then we waited on the outbound platform. Before long, Takuya belatedly appeared through the ticket gate. Sayuri called his name and waved. From an angle where she wouldn’t see it, I shot him a fierce glare. Sorry. Takuya got his meaning across with a subtle gesture and expression. We’d been around each other a lot over the past few years, so we were able to communicate on a subtle level. It dawned on me that Takuya hadn’t seen this emergency coming, either. On the train, the three of us sat in the same box seat. For the half hour or so it took to get to Tsugaru-Hamana, we made small talk. About stuff like which variety programs we enjoyed and what we thought of this or that entertainer. Maybe because she was the type who liked saving the fun for later, Sayuri didn’t ask a single question about where we were going or what we were planning to show her. As far as we were concerned, that was a blessing. During the whole pointless conversation, I was dying to grill Takuya about why Sayuri was here right now, but of course I couldn’t ask him in front of her. When we got off at Tsugaru-Hamana, Sayuri told us her ticket had gotten stuck in the bottom of her pocket. I grabbed the chance to get Takuya down onto the platform ahead of her so I could whisper to him. “What’d you go and tell her for?” “I didn’t mean to. We were talking, and it just kinda happened.” “What do you mean, ‘It just kinda happened’?” “I can’t really explain it, but this was all I could do. I’m really sorry.” That told me nothing. I tried to press him harder, but Sayuri stepped down from the train and kept me from saying anything else. Sayuri had apparently been told that we were going to drop by the place where we worked first, so she stopped at a store in front of the station and bought some ice pops as a present. As Takuya and I waited outside the store, we continued our whispered conversation. “If we show her that, she’s going to ask all kinds of questions. She’s gonna ask us why,” I muttered. “Yeah, she will,” Takuya responded quietly. “So what do we say?” “Wanna just tell her we’re flying to the tower?” “That would be a really bad idea…” “Yeah. But what do we tell her if she asks where we’re going?” “You think of that, stupid.” “Who are you calling stupid, stupid?” “Um…” “What?!” Sayuri interjected from very close to us, and we yelped in unison. Before we noticed, she was standing right in front of us, holding a plastic bag. We snapped to attention and froze there, and after a silence, we both gave awkward smiles as if we’d planned it. Sayuri giggled, as if the smiles had been contagious. “You two are so weird.” She said it so bashfully, so kindly. I never knew the word weird could sound so affectionate. When we got to Emishi Manufacturing, feeling sweat trickling under our shirts, Mr. Okabe was watering the yard with a hose. Apparently, this heat was too much for him. He’d stripped his coveralls off both shoulders, which left him naked to the waist, and there was a can of beer at his feet. When we hailed him from a distance, he called back, “Hey! Hot as hell out here.” Then he glanced our way, noticed Sayuri, and reacted with surprise. Sayuri gave a slow, polite bow. “Good afternoon. I’m sorry to intrude like this.” “No, uh, ’scuse me…” Looking more flustered than I’d ever seen him, Mr. Okabe shoved his arms through the sleeves of his coveralls and yanked up the zipper. “Uh, thanks for always looking out for my two idiots there…” I saw Mr. Okabe’s face soften and turn a little red. Oh, come on… I wanted to snap at him, but I kept it to myself. Having gotten our share of the ice pops, Takuya and I were leaning against the big tree in the center of the yard. Once we got into the shade, it was cool all of a sudden. We weren’t the only ones taking shelter there; a little stray cat that lived under the eaves of the factory was rolling around, scratching his back on the grass. When we approached, he flinched, but promptly relaxed again and returned to scratching his back. As I nibbled on my ice pop, I watched Mr. Okabe in the distance. He was immersed in an intense conversation with Sayuri, with that same moonstruck look on his face. “So about Mr. Okabe…,” I said to Takuya absently. “Huh?” “Is he single?” “I heard a rumor he was divorced.” “I kinda get that.” I wasn’t sure whether it was because he was restless or because being around a young woman was making him nervous, but Mr. Okabe kept scratching the back of his head with one hand. Sayuri giggled, but I couldn’t tell whether what Mr. Okabe was saying was funny or whether she found Mr. Okabe himself so amusing. “He’s weird, huh…?” After I said it, I got the feeling that the way I’d said it hadn’t been friendly enough. Something about it felt wrong. Takuya bit off a sliver of flavored ice, then tossed it to the cat. The cat flinched again, then timidly came closer and started to eat it. “Whoa, the little guy’s eating it,” Takuya said, surprised even though he was the one who’d given it to him. “Weird cat,” I muttered. The word really wasn’t anywhere near gentle enough. When we opened the big door of the hangar at the abandoned station, Sayuri spotted the occupant of the gloomy shed, and she ran inside. Then she turned back and stared at us, her already large eyes growing even rounder. “Oh, wow… An airplane?!” “That’s right,” Takuya answered calmly. “You’re making this all by yourselves?” Sayuri asked, looking at me. “Yeah. We’ve been building it since the summer of year two, little by little. We’ve been working part-time at that factory, getting the components, and getting advice from Mr. Okabe. Right?” “Mm-hmm.” Takuya nodded. “It’s nowhere near done yet, though,” I muttered, as if she couldn’t see that herself. Sayuri went up to the plane with its half-applied exterior and slowly reached out. Then she caught herself and withdrew her hand. “Can I touch it?” “You could even slap it around a little and it wouldn’t break,” Takuya said. Softly, Sayuri touched the nanonet exterior with the tip of her middle finger. I was watching her closely, and something happened. I didn’t know exactly what, but it was something. The moment her fingertip touched the plane, Sayuri’s entire body trembled as if she’d gotten an electric shock. Startled, she yanked her hand away. “H…” Hey, are you okay? I started to say it, but I broke off. Sayuri had laid both her palms on the plane, feeling its cool texture. Then she stepped closer, closed her eyes, and almost nestled against it. I heard her sigh. Sayuri, in her white sailor uniform, was pressing her cheek to the pure-white wing. In that moment, the two white figures looked like one entity to me, like separated twins who’d just found each other engaged in a wordless conversation. The plane of metal and plastic seemed like a living creature. It felt like all our blood, sweat, and tears making this thing were all for her sake, and it astonished me. I was almost deluded into thinking this whole thing was the result of a divine revelation, that fate or something like it had ordered us to make an airplane for her. I was just a little freaked out, and I turned to Takuya. He’d switched on the modem, hooked it to a notebook computer, and was booting it up. Silently, I pinched his shirtsleeve and tugged on it. He turned to me, his eyes silently asking, What gives? Then he spotted Sayuri, and his eyes widened. Sayuri’s eyes opened, just a little. “Wow…,” she whispered, like she was telling a secret. “This is… This really is incredible.” Soft as her voice was, I heard the words as if they’d been spoken right next to my ear. I felt goose bumps all across my skin. It was all I could do to stammer out a thank-you for what she’d said. We couldn’t bring ourselves to start working and leave Sayuri on her own, so that day, we didn’t touch the plane. Takuya, Sayuri, and I sat on one of the abandoned station’s platforms, throwing rocks into the lake, gazing at the cumulonimbus clouds that lurked in the distance, and idly cooling off in the evening. Sayuri said she wanted to try fishing, so we got poles and lures from the hangar and taught her how to cast. She didn’t catch a single fish, but… “It’s finally where I want it to go,” she said, sounding satisfied. I lay in the shade on the platform, gazing at the sky. The sun gradually sloped downward, and the sky had begun to take on a reddish tinge. Two contrails stretched across it, headed southeast. Takuya, right next to me, was reading a book. Sayuri had taken off her shoes and socks, seated herself on the edge of the concrete, and was stirring up the surface of the water directly below her with her feet. “It’s so open up here…,” she said. “There’s nobody around. Say, how did you find out about this place?” “It’s a long story,” I told her. “You can’t sum it up?” “Short version, it was coincidence.” “Don’t you think it’s a little like a place in a fairy tale?” “A fairy tale…?” Takuya looked up from his book. “Uh-huh. One of the ones from England or northern Europe. You’re walking through the woods, and you wander into this mysterious place, unknown to anyone but you. Fairies lived there long ago, but they’re gone now.” “Hmm.” Takuya nodded vaguely. “What happens after you wander in?” I asked. “You can’t leave, of course,” Sayuri answered nonchalantly. “People like that go missing. They’re spirited away. They live their whole lives fishing and gathering nuts and things in the abandoned fairy village.” “…That doesn’t sound so great,” I said. “Really?” “It does seem like something out of a storybook, though,” Takuya said. “Really…?” Sayuri seemed faintly discontented. “I’d love to wander into a strange other world.” “You’d be in trouble if you couldn’t leave,” Takuya pointed out. “It’s fine now, but this place gets buried in snow in the winter. You wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, and that hangar gets really drafty. You’d never be able to live in it.” Sayuri’s small lips pouted. “That’s fine. You don’t have to be so realistic about it. I’m just imagining.” “Well, yeah, I guess.” Takuya nodded. “Besides, with that airplane, you could fly out whenever you wanted, couldn’t you?” Sayuri’s eyes widened as if she’d suddenly thought of something. “Say, when will it be finished?” I resettled myself on the concrete, cross-legged, and stretched my back. “We’d really like to finish up during summer vacation. Problem is…” Takuya finished the sentence for me. “That’s probably not going to work out. It looks like we’re going to need a lot more time. We’ll aim to have it done before the end of the year.” “I see… That’s still a long ways away…” I heard a rumble of thunder, distant and faint. I looked around, scanning the sky. The thunderheads that had billowed up like cream in the sky to the north were now a dark gray. Those thunderclouds were right by the tower. They coiled around its lower section, slowly traveling east. If anyone was over there, I thought, the heavy rain and lightning was probably giving them a really rough time right about now. “Where are you going to go in that plane?” Sayuri asked. “To the tower,” I told her. Something jabbed me in the shoulder hard. Takuya was grimacing, and I realized I’d made a huge slip. I’d been watching the tower, and the question had been so natural that I just answered. Shoot, I thought, and I tried to repair the damage, but it was too late. “The tower? You mean the Union’s tower?” Sayuri leaned forward suddenly. For a fraction of a second, Takuya and I looked at each other. It was a certain sort of confirmation. Then we turned to Sayuri and nodded in unison. “Yeah.” “We think it should be possible to fly there in about forty minutes,” Takuya said. “The problem is how to get across the border. We’ve got an idea there, too, though,” I said. “That’s amazing… Really?” Even after she’d heard about our plan, Sayuri didn’t get worried or start trying to lecture us; she just listened with childlike delight and occasionally said, “Wow, that’s so neat!” Before long, we were relaxed and really opening up to her. “That’s amazing; you’re so lucky. Hokkaido…” And so I said what you’re supposed to say at times like these: “Do you want to come along, Sawatari?” “Huh? Can I?” I nodded immediately. At the exact same time, Takuya said, “Yeah.” “Really? Yes, I’ll go. I want to go.” Sayuri came right up to me, walking on her knees, then plopped down to sit with her legs splayed in an M-shape. “Oh, wow, thank you!” “We might fall out of the sky before we get there, though,” Takuya said. “It’s fine. We won’t fall.” “What makes you say that?” “I just know,” she said without artifice, and somehow, the prophecy felt like one we could count on. Our plane wouldn’t fall, because she believed it wouldn’t. “Promise, okay?” “Promise what?” I asked. “Yeah. Promise you’ll take me to Hokkaido. Please.” “Okay.” I nodded. “It’s a promise, then,” Takuya said. “No matter what,” Sayuri pressed us again. Her eagerness made me genuinely happy, and it felt like a promise worth keeping. I got the urge to give her a little extra. “If you’re going to go that far, we should do something special to set it in stone.” “Like what?” “The plane doesn’t have a name yet. It’s okay, right, Takuya?” “Mm-hmm.” He nodded. “You think of one, Sawatari.” “Huh?! But, I mean, that’s not… It’s your plane…” “You have to, or else we’ll forget,” Takuya threatened jokingly. “What?! No!” she said instantly. “But I’m not sure I can come up with one all of a sudden…” “It doesn’t have to be right now.” “Wait, I’ll think about it. Ummm…” Sayuri thought hard for a little while. She tried out various words, saying them silently to herself. Finally, she murmured one that didn’t sound like anything I was used to hearing. “It’s a word that came up in a book I read once. It meant ‘white wings.’ Velaciela.” That became the name of the promise. After that, the three of us walked across the field through a deep-red sunset, side by side. We went down the sloping mountain road, stumbling now and then. By the time we were back at Emishi Manufacturing, the sun was almost down, and it was a relief to see the fluorescent light filtering through the windows of the factory and the office. After we stopped in to say good-bye to Mr. Okabe, we cut through the Ookawadai shopping street to Tsugaru-Hamana Station. Sayuri was taking an inbound train home to Naka-Oguni, so we saw her off at the platform. Even after she boarded the train and sat down in a box seat, she kept waving to us through the window. After the train pulled away, Takuya and I relocated to the next platform over, then boarded the train to Minmaya, which arrived a few minutes later. “I’m glad you asked her to come,” I said. Takuya nodded in heartfelt agreement. The fans on the ceiling spun, and Takuya and I naturally slipped into silence. Takuya gazed absently out the mirrorlike train window. I watched one of the fans, for no reason in particular, and took a deep, contented breath. It wasn’t Sayuri’s fairy tale, but I felt as if the tranquil time at that abandoned station, and the gentle silence of this train, would go on forever. Tomorrow, and the day after, and next year, and after that. I had always longed to reach that tower beyond the clouds on my own, but from that day on, it was the site of an important promise to me. “Promise, okay?” she’d said. We’d nodded without hesitation, and in that moment, we had nothing to fear. Or so we thought. As a matter of fact, the world and history had begun changing, very close by. But right then, my world was the nighttime smells of the train, my trust for my friend, and that electric sense in the air that came from Sayuri’s presence. Or at least, that was what I wished for. 9 US and Union Militaries Clash Off Tsugaru Coast Before dawn on the fifteenth, an armed conflict between the US-Japanese and Union militaries occurred in the neutral zone extending from the waters far off the coast of the Tsugaru Strait to the 42nd and 41st parallels. According to an announcement from the US Army press secretary, the clash was accidental and on a very small scale. There were no casualties among US-Japanese personnel. Whether there were casualties on the Union side is unknown. Union-Related Organizations on Alert; 3,300 Personnel Stationed In response to the US-Japan/Union armed conflict, with the goal of deterring operations by domestic terrorist organizations, the Metropolitan Police Department has announced that it will station 3,300 security personnel at organizations and facilities with close ties to the Union. In protest of the invasion of territorial waters by a Union marine patrol ship in February of this year, the Uilta Liberation Front, a domestic anti-Union terrorist group, has issued an advance notice of bombings targeting Union corporations. There is some danger that they may be planning similar crimes due to the recent armed conflict, and the police department is tightening security. I found out about those reports on a newspaper’s website. “The waters far off the coast of the Tsugaru Strait” was the ocean I’d been watching from the abandoned station yesterday. Had there been a battle out there after we’d gone home? We’d been so close to the center of international attention. It was extremely weird realizing how blissfully ignorant we’d been, learning about it later from the news. Something huge had happened in the world and in history, right in our backyard. But (at least at the time) the only world I could grasp was small and limited, a modest, palm-sized thing. As soon as school let out, Takuya and I went to work at Emishi Manufacturing. When we went into the locker room to change into our coveralls, Satou came by and told us that some trouble had come up suddenly, so no work for us today. When we offered to make tea or do anything else they could use some help with, he kicked us out. “Some things we can’t let you kids hear. Get lost already.” “They only treat us like kids when it’s convenient for them. We came all the way here! Seriously, what’s their problem?” I groused. Takuya was lost in thought. “…Oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening.” “Satou and the other guys are having some sort of trouble,” I said. “Wanna go spy on the office for a little?” “No way. Do not do that.” Takuya shot down the suggestion so quickly and so harshly, I flinched. “Geez. What’s the matter?” “I don’t think this factory is what it looks like. I’ve thought so for a while now,” he said, brooding. “We shouldn’t get in too deep.” 10 Two days later, Takuya stopped by my class. Since the beginning of our third year, Takuya and I had had an unspoken rule that unless we needed something, we wouldn’t visit the other’s class. We’d be together outside school once class was over anyway, and if we went out of our way to hang out together at school as well, we’d end up neglecting our other relationships. That’s why it was weird when he showed up during lunch. “C’mere a second,” he said, then took me over to Sayuri’s desk and told her he had a favor to ask. “A favor? What is it?” “I hear the music club isn’t meeting today.” “Uh-huh. The current members are going to a joint practice session at the city gym. There’s a recital coming up.” “So the music room is empty. Hey, Sawatari. You brought your violin, didn’t you?” “Huh? Yes.” Sayuri guessed what he wanted from the way the conversation was going. “Shirakawa, don’t tell me…” “I’d really like to hear you play.” “What?!” Sayuri came very close to shouting, then remembered where she was and lowered her voice again. “No, I don’t want to.” “Why not?” “Because it’s embarrassing.” “No, it’s not,” Takuya declared as if that was enough to settle it. “Why do you want to hear it? My playing isn’t worth all the trouble,” Sayuri said. “Do I need a reason? Besides, I won’t know what it’s worth until I’ve heard it.” Inwardly, I was seriously impressed with Takuya’s aggressive negotiation tactics. I was pretty sure I couldn’t get away with talking like that. His relentless intensity could move mountains. I worried he was being a little too pushy, though, so I decided to jump in. “Just one piece is fine; play the one you’re best at. You can pretend we accidentally heard one of your regular practices. How would that be?” Then I added, “I mean, but if you seriously don’t want to, we won’t force you.” “What would you do if I said I would never do it?” Sayuri asked us. I glanced at Takuya. His expression said, This one’s all yours, so I thought for a little before I responded. “…Mope, I guess.” “I really have to play…?” Limply, Sayuri buried her face in her desk in a gesture of surrender. With the faintest trace of victory in his expression, Takuya said, “Okay. After school, we’ll come to the music room.” As he was leaving, he elbowed my arm lightly and murmured, “Nice assist.” When we opened the music room’s heavy wooden sliding door, Sayuri was already there, leaning against the grand piano, gazing at the floor. The window was wide open, and a breeze blew in, rippling the white curtain. She’d acted so embarrassed that I’d thought we might have to tough out the heat in a closed room, so that was a relief. She probably didn’t care if people outside heard her, just as long as they didn’t know who was playing. The music club had apparently rehearsed a little before the joint practice session; the desks and chairs had all been moved to one side of the room. Takuya and I grabbed some steel and wood chairs from a spot by the wall, found a place that looked promising, and sat down. “I’m really not very good, you know,” Sayuri said. “That’s fine. I’ve never seen someone play a violin in person before. I won’t be able to tell whether you’re good or bad,” Takuya said, which didn’t exactly seem tactful. “And that’s not the reason we want to listen anyway,” I said. “I can’t wait to hear it.” “Urgh, I’m nervous.” Sayuri had been nearly hiding in the shadow of the piano, but she timidly came out, holding her violin by its neck. Standing in the center of the room, she put some sheet music on the music stand. The wind blew in, ruffling the pages, so she clipped them down. The golden light from the late afternoon sun streamed in through the window. From where we sat, Sayuri seemed to be glowing in the light behind her. When she tucked her hair behind her ear, the gesture showed up as a shadow in the sunset. “What’s the name of the piece?” Takuya asked. “A Distant Calling Voice,” she said. “Listen, please don’t laugh at me. I’ll get stage fright. Don’t clap, either. Also, I’d rather you didn’t really look at me.” Takuya opened his mouth to crack some sort of joke, but he stopped himself. “All right.” Sayuri gave a sigh. Then she began to play. As Sayuri had said, I don’t think her performance was all that skillful, but she played the piece very conscientiously. She never got careless or sloppy. Like Takuya, I knew almost nothing about music, but I’m sure her performance was a faithful one. It felt as if the entire melody, every pause, had her full attention. The song she played was a very simple violin solo. Maybe it was supposed to have a piano accompaniment or something, but today, of course, we had only the violin. And she was the only one I’d wanted to hear, so that was perfect. The tune was gentle, tender, maybe written for singing aloud. Somehow, the melody made me think of the color of the sky at this time of year. Blue, with low, scattered clouds drifting in it, when maybe something transparent might come sprinkling down from it. As her performance entered the second half, while its style remained as grand as before, the melody picked up a faint tinge of sadness. It reminded me of the setting sun, when the clear light begins taking on warm undertones. Tranquil but uneasy. Right around then, she slowed the tempo of her violin slightly, and the song became bolder. The golden, slanting sunlight streaming in through the windows seemed to be the melody itself made visible. I sensed it flowing into me, bringing me closer to her. The psychological distance between us had shrunk in a short amount of time—but that was only an illusion, of course. Still, her heart had been made audible, made visible, and drinking in the fact transported me. The piece ended in a strange way—it just broke off without warning, without a sense that it had landed. I was uncomfortable there while the last notes lingered in the air, but then it suddenly made sense. Its failure to come to rest seemed a lot like Sayuri herself. Something about her didn’t feel quite real, as if she was something from a dream, a sort of illusion… After that, Takuya, Sayuri, and I went home together. We locked the music room, walked through the empty halls, and returned the key to its hook in the faculty room. We changed into our outdoor shoes in the main entrance, cut across the athletic field, and boarded an outbound train from the station platform. Just before I climbed into the train, I looked at the tower, the way I always did. Some days, the Union’s tower looked incredibly close. Today was one of them; I could see it falling down on my head at any minute. The whole way home, even after Sayuri left the train at Naka-Oguni, the echoes of her song lingered in me. Over and over, I remembered the way she’d walk ahead of us, turning restlessly to look back, and the view of her small knees when she sat in the opposite half of the box seat on the train, and the way her head tilted when she played the violin. That night was a sweltering, tropical one, but I was so happy I slept like a rock. 11 In the Tohoku region, summer vacations are short. The longer winter vacations balance everything out, but I still felt like we got the short end of the stick. After the first term closing ceremony signaling the beginning of that brief summer vacation, Takuya, Sayuri, and I went to the abandoned station, still wearing our school uniforms. It was a hot, breezy, incredibly fine day. Every so often, the smell of sunbaked grass got annoyingly pungent, but a breath of wind would promptly blow through and sweep away the heat. When I squinted, I could see a heat haze like a lens distorting the air. Somewhere along the way, Sayuri had started joining Takuya and I when we met up on the way home from school. She also came to the abandoned station quite a bit. I’d started to accept this as a matter of course. The work on the plane was going more smoothly than we’d expected. Miyagawa had found us a used superconducting motor for cheap somewhere, so we had almost all the parts we needed. That was a real shot in the arm, and we’d spend every day absorbed in our work until late. We’d finished machining the transforming wings, and from the outside, the plane looked almost complete. Now all we needed to do was work out the fine details of the control system. Plus, although it was jumping the gun a bit, we needed to draw up a flight plan. If all went well, we might actually be able to fly by the end of summer vacation. “The nanonet won’t reflect radar. Do we really need to be that cautious about this?” I peeked at the laptop Takuya was holding on his knees. The screen showed a map of southern Hokkaido that he’d downloaded from the Internet. I didn’t know where he found it, but it was high-definition. If you clicked on the map, it showed 3D-modeled topography of the mountains. “Well, yeah, but it’s not a stealth plane. Besides, we’re flying through the neutral zone. Even if it’s got a nanonet exterior, they’re gonna find us. Either the Union army or… No, if we fly wrong, the US military will find us before the Union does.” Sayuri was out in the sun, leaning against the wall of the hangar and reading a book. At first, she’d hung out and tried listening to our conversation, but she’d given up fast on the technobabble and wandered away. Takuya and I were in the hangar, with the big bay door wide open. A strong, pleasant breeze was blowing in. “I think we really will just have to fly as low as possible. Camouflage ourselves with the waves and the terrain. If we leave early in the morning, we should be able to hide in the mist, too; that’ll make us harder to spot visually. Once we’re in Ezo, we can just go by that map and fly between the mountains.” I pointed at the 3D mountains on the screen. “Yeah, but I’ve got a bad feeling about flying by this data. It’s an old map, and we won’t actually know what the landscape looks like until we’re there. Once we’re over land, I think we’ll have to take the risk and fly higher.” “But the Union’s radar won’t pick us up over land, either. What they’re focused on is the neutral zone. The Velaciela’s small, and if we fly really high, the shadow we leave on the ground will be smaller than a songbird.” “Yeah, probably. If we do that, then we really should switch the propulsion as we hit land. We’ll blast over the ocean in one burst, then fly quietly over land.” “Right.” After that, we went back to work. Takuya was putting together a flight control program on his computer, and I was busily soldering the substrate. The light clicking of his keystrokes echoed in the room, while a faint thread of white smoke and the smell from the melting line of solder rose from beneath my hands. This complicated work is a real pain unless I get totally lost in it, so I focused on it until nothing else existed but my hands. Before long, I lost all sense of time. The next thing I knew, I’d made a startling amount of progress. Out of nowhere, I sensed something I couldn’t describe. Maybe a noise had reached me subconsciously. Outside? I put down the soldering iron, stretched my back, stood up, and went out. The weather was as beautiful as ever. The sun was so fierce that it stung my skin when I stepped out into it. The green of the grass was vivid and almost blinding under that intense light. The clouds drifted slowly, and the wind was kicking up waves on the surface of the lake… And what I saw next made me go cold. A shudder ran through me before what I’d seen even registered in my conscious mind. The three station platforms were in front of the hangar, with the wooden pedestrian bridge linking them. Since it had been abandoned and exposed to the elements when it was still under construction, there were holes in the floor, and parts of the walls were missing. In one of the spots where the wall was gone, Sayuri was hanging by one hand, ready to fall at any moment. The lake was right under her. The rails had been submerged. “Sawatari!” On reflex, I broke into a run. I jumped over the waterway, then dashed into the station yard. My eyes never left Sayuri. She was dangling from the edge of a floorboard by one hand. From time to time, she squeezed her eyes shut, and the hand supporting her weight trembled. I saw right away what must have happened. The floor over there had been eroded by the rain, and it was falling to pieces. Sayuri had probably gone up on the bridge to look through the broken wall at the distant view when the floor gave way. “Hang on!” I ran up the steps of the pedestrian bridge. The places I stepped on cracked and creaked. When I reached the top, I sprinted over to the far edge, where Sayuri was. “It’s…okay. It’s not that high.” Sayuri was looking down anxiously. Just as she spoke, the board she was clinging to cracked audibly and broke off. I was almost on top of it when I saw it break. She’s gonna fall! Losing its purchase, her hand fell— But I caught her wrist! I’d practically dived to grab it. I knew instinctively that this was no time for restraint, so I grabbed it hard enough to crush it. Her weight suddenly came to bear on me with a tug that threatened to pop my shoulder out of its socket. Sayuri was very thin, only around a hundred pounds, but that was still a lot of weight to support one-handed. The lake was right in front of me, reflecting the color of the sky, and I was leaning out into empty space as if I was standing on a diving board at the pool. Sayuri’s pale, anxious face looked straight up at me from in front of the cerulean water. I couldn’t blame her. But finally… I made it! A sort of shiver traveled up my arm and spread all through me, and I started to sweat. As she hung there, dangling by her wrist below the sky, Sayuri glanced at me for a fraction of a second. Her expression relaxed into something almost dazed. “We did this…before…” I know she said that, but I barely heard her. I was too swamped with relief to pay attention. A sigh escaped me. “Phew… Made it. Hang on, I’ll…” Pull you up is what I was about to say, but just then, the boards under me snapped. My sense of balance went strange. The glittering water was suddenly in my face, and then I felt it all around me. I’d fallen into the lake. The water was cloudy with sand, and I couldn’t see a thing. I panicked for a second, but then my feet found the bottom, and I managed to push my head through the surface. At almost the same moment, Sayuri poked her head up out of the water. When we stood up straight, the water only came to our waists. Takuya finally noticed what was happening. He jogged to the edge and stood on the rocks by the water. When I looked around, the rocks he was on seemed like the easiest place to get back up on land. Sayuri and I headed over there, sloshing through the water. “Are you okay?” Takuya asked. “Nobody’s hurt?” “No, just wet,” Sayuri said. Then she smiled at me. “I’m sorry, Fujisawa. Thank you.” “Well, I guess it was a good thing you were over water.” Takuya held out his right hand, intending to help Sayuri up. She reached out to take it. And I was hit by the urge to prank him—but to be honest, part of me also didn’t want to let him hold Sayuri’s hand that easily. I grabbed Takuya’s hand before Sayuri could and pulled it. “Waugh, hey— Aaaaaah!” Takuya tried to plant his feet at the water’s edge, attempting to recover his balance, but he fell in with a huge splash. I cackled. “Trying to stay the only dry one around here, huh? Some friend you are!” “What the heck was that for?!” Takuya leaped up out of the water and shoved me down, and I went all the way under again. When I got my feet back under me and poked my head up out of the lake, Takuya splashed water into my face with perfect aim. “Look at you,” he said. “You’re totally soaked.” “Yeah, just like you.” “Shut up.” For the past couple of minutes, I hadn’t been able to stop laughing. “Sorry. I needed to drag you down with the rest of us; I couldn’t help it.” “You what?!” “C’mon, don’t get so mad.” “Why shouldn’t I be mad?!” Takuya dunked me again. Using the buoyancy of the water, I jumped on his head and dunked him right back. From underwater, he knocked my legs out from under me. I wiped out magnificently, then floated on the surface. “And don’t get back up. Come on, Sawatari, let’s go.” Takuya started walking toward the bank. Sayuri had started giggling. “Hey, Takuya, wait up! Sawatari, tell him to stop being so grumpy.” “I’m sorry, Shirakawa… Mmph.” Sayuri was still laughing, although her mouth was closed. “What is it, Sawatari?” Takuya asked. “Watching you and Fujisawa made me a little jealous.” “Of what?” Takuya and I spoke in unison, looking blank. Fortunately, the weather was good, and the scorching midsummer sky broiled the ground like a stove. The three of us lay on one of the abandoned station’s platforms, letting our clothes dry while we were wearing them. After we’d spent about two hours like that, dozing and rolling over from time to time, our clothes were almost back to normal. Finally, the sun began to set. From here, the evening sun always looked bloodred. Its ruddy light was reflected in Sayuri’s leather shoes, which were propped up against a pillar to point at the sky. “When I saw you hanging there, Sawatari, I really freaked out,” I said. “I knew it was falling to pieces and probably wasn’t safe, but…I wanted to take a little walk and clear my mind.” “We let you get bored, huh?” Takuya looked apologetic. “We did kinda ditch you to work the whole time.” “No, that wasn’t what I meant. It’s fine.” Sayuri hastily shook her head. “I wanted to see the view from somewhere high. I also wanted to get a good look at the tower, so…” “Ah.” Takuya nodded. “You can see it really well from here, can’t you? The view isn’t just clear—it’s picture-perfect. I got a little lost in it, so I sat on the edge of the bridge and let my mind wander. I was sitting there for a long time. Maybe it was hard on the floorboards.” Sayuri was choosing neutral phrases, but I wondered if she was deliberately avoiding the insinuation that she was heavy. But Sayuri was so thin that absolutely no one would ever have thought that. If you asked me, she needed to gain weight, for her own sake. I couldn’t forget how slender her wrist had been when I’d grabbed it; it had felt ready to break. I sat up, making my abs do most of the work, and studied Sayuri out of the corner of my eye. She was sitting with her legs outstretched and her hands on her knees. She’d taken off her socks and shoes, and her bare feet were exposed to the red sunlight. Her legs were long and slim, and my heart skipped a beat when I realized how beautiful their curves were. For a little while, I stole glances at her calves and at her thighs in her short skirt. Sayuri was gazing absently at her toes. Then, for no particular reason, she touched her big toe with her index finger. A ladybug that had been flying near her for the last minute or so came to rest on her fingertip. Little by little, the bug began crawling up Sayuri’s finger, and she held very still so as not to frighten it. “Back there, just for a moment, I was dreaming.” “Dreaming?” I asked. “About what?” “Hmm…oh, I forget. Probably about that tower.” “It doesn’t look real, does it…?” Takuya said, sighing. “The Union is amazing.” I glanced at the tower, letting my gaze slide up it from its base. “It looks like the tip of that tower might be connected to some other world.” The top was too hazy to see. No matter how good the weather was, I’d never managed to catch a glimpse. It was just too tall. From the sky, I heard the noise of an airplane. The ladybug was still on Sayuri’s hand, crouched near the base of her index finger. To me, it looked like a red jewel on a ring. Then it took flight. Sayuri sighed; she’d been holding still so as not to scare it off. She leaned back, bracing her hands on the concrete, and looked up at the sky. “The sun’s taking forever to set, isn’t it…?” It really is, I thought. The light around us had taken on its reddish cast some time ago, and yet the sun was still above the horizon, over the water. Twilight is really just a moment or two, or it should be, but this one felt as if it was stretching into an eternity. “Feels like it’s been sunset all day,” I said. Sayuri looked at me, and I saw her eyes in that red evening light. In that moment, time stopped— —and I saw a vision. In that fleeting dream, I was Sayuri, and Sayuri was sitting on the edge of the pedestrian bridge with its broken wall, gazing at the tower. The wind blew toward us from the tower, whipping up waves on the lake. Before long, the colors of everything she saw changed, as if they’d been painted over with the stroke of a brush. The color of the sky went dull, like an old photograph. There was an odd, metallic sound. A myriad of ominous contrails stretched across the sky, enough to cover it. And then the world turned inside out. Up became down, left became right, the foreground became the background. Or maybe the inversion happened to her. She could see a swarm of tiny lights, like sparks, bursting around the tower. Sayuri wondered, mystified, what they could be. I knew. It was a battle. War. There was a war happening over there. I watched it without any particularly deep emotion. Since this was a dream, I couldn’t think very well. And then it happened. Near the base of the tower, there was a flash. It was like a camera flash, but dozens of times more powerful. A moment later— The tower… …was at the center of a massive explosion. An ill-omened, terrible crimson radiated out from that flash like the spokes of a wheel, and the whole sky turned red—the bright shade first turned even more vivid, then faded to something darker. The tower was shattering into pieces. Broken, it slowly fell out of the sky, burning all the while. Everything was breaking, disappearing, vanishing, and I was aware that I was seeing the end of the world. So the apocalypse is as red as paint, I thought, quietly impressed. The air rumbled. Then the blast wind came. The heat scorched me while my hair and clothes whipped in the wind. I was nearly sent flying. The pedestrian bridge warped, creaked, swayed. And the floorboard that had been jutting out into the sky broke. I’d been sitting on it, and my sense of balance was gone. Falling. I was falling. Sayuri was falling. Oh. The tower had been holding up the sky. Now that it was gone, the sky was falling. Of course; how obvious. I fell and fell, forever and ever… I had that sense of free-falling, the kind that hits you sometimes when you’re sleeping, and I jumped. I looked around. I was on the platform at the abandoned station, gazing at the setting sun with Takuya and Sayuri. I felt as if I’d been dreaming for just a moment. About something very important. “I had this dream, for just a second,” I said. “What about?” Sayuri asked. I couldn’t remember. “I forgot.” “The sun’s taking forever to set, isn’t it…?” she said. I didn’t remember the daydream until much later, years later, after everything was over and the damage had been done. I always remember the important stuff when it’s too late to save anything. Even after our clothes and shoes were fully dry, we kept gazing at the eternal sunset. It really felt as if this twilight would last forever. I wanted it to. But slow as it was, the big sun sank steadily in the west. It touched the waterline, then finally slipped out of sight entirely, leaving only a vague blur of light low in the sky. Our surroundings had turned dim and gloomy. Takuya and I looked around, then got up, although it wasn’t clear which of us had moved first. However, Sayuri kept sitting where she was, holding still, her hands clasped around her knees. “Oh, I don’t want to go home,” she said. “It’s summer vacation,” Takuya told her. “This place is ours till summer’s over. Just come back again tomorrow. And the day after. Come here whenever you like. Every day will be like today, for as long as you want.” Sayuri looked up, and the way she smiled just then reminded me of how a cloud could change shape. That really was a special summer. Even now, I can’t free myself from the memory of that day. It was the last day we saw Sayuri. 12 Summer vacation had begun. Every day, Takuya and I worked at Emishi Manufacturing from morning till past noon, then went to the abandoned station and worked on the Velaciela until nightfall. When we parted ways on the day of the closing ceremony, Sayuri had said she’d come over every day, but she didn’t show up even once. We didn’t know what had happened, and we felt a little abandoned. However, we had a real airplane just days away from flying, right in front of us, and we threw ourselves into the project. Almost there, I said to myself silently, over and over. We’d be able to fly soon. Then we could go there. To the place we promised. Sayuri had said she wanted to go to the Union’s tower. When I said we’d take her, her round eyes had grown even rounder with surprise. She’d insisted that she wanted us to take her along. Insisted that we promise, with so much urgency in her voice. Of course we’d take her, and we’d be ready soon. Somewhere along the way, that thought had pushed our loneliness and questions to the back burner. Takuya ended up working on nothing but the control program for a full two weeks. There was a part that required several complicated processes, and it was giving him a hard time. We’d divided the program development work between the two of us, but I wasn’t up to it, so I left the software development to him and focused exclusively on the hardware. On August 6, we had a mid-vacation school day. Sayuri didn’t come. “I wonder if she’s not feeling good,” Takuya said. When he mentioned it, I remembered that she had been sort of frail. “Well, she did fall into the water.” I thought back to the day of the closing ceremony. “Maybe she got sick.” “Could be.” Takuya took a drag on his cigarette, grimacing at a bad taste in his mouth. For the week after that, we were absorbed in working on the plane again. It was steadily getting closer to completion, but we didn’t manage to finish it by the end of summer vacation, the way we’d hoped we would. Sayuri still hadn’t stopped by. On August 13, the new term began. Sayuri wasn’t in the ranks at the opening ceremony. Even after homeroom began, her seat stayed empty, and I started to understand that something was wrong. My homeroom teacher was a young woman named Ms. Sasaki. She stood in front of the class, and even before she offered a typical greeting, she said she had something important to tell us. “Due to a sudden family situation, Sayuri Sawatari transferred schools during summer vacation,” she reported stiffly. Maybe she wasn’t used to making these kinds of announcements. The classroom buzzed. For a little while, I wasn’t able to process what she’d said. As the message gradually sank into my brain, confusion kicked up inside me like a whirlwind. I stared at my pencil case on my desk. It abruptly receded into the distance—and then there it was again, right under my nose. My sense of perspective was scrambled. I felt dizzy. I closed my eyes, pressed the spot between my eyebrows, then pushed my middle fingers against my temples. Hey, calm down, I told myself. How the hell am I supposed to stay calm?! my brain yelled back. “Transferred?” I murmured the word to myself. It felt so unreal. This couldn’t be happening. That day was all complicated announcements and homework submissions, and then school was over. I immediately went to Takuya’s class and grabbed him. “That’s insane,” he said. “What family situation?” “I don’t know.” “What school did she transfer to?” “I don’t know that, either. They didn’t tell us in homeroom.” “Let’s go find out.” He strode off toward the faculty room. When Takuya opened the wooden sliding door, his grip was tense and determined. He looked genuinely angry, and I realized I’d never seen that from him before. He went straight up to Ms. Sasaki and got right to the point. “Tell us why Sawatari transferred schools, please.” “Mr. Shirakawa…” The teacher was startled by Takuya’s stony expression. When she answered, she sounded as bewildered as she had in class when she told us about the transfer. “Her parents told me it was due to a family situation, but I…” “What kind of situation?” Takuya asked again. “It’s not normal for a student to switch schools out of the blue, without explanation.” “The school didn’t ask; we didn’t want to intrude. Listen, Mr. Shirakawa…” “Tell us which school she transferred to, then.” She was starting to panic, just a little. “Well, you see…we don’t know.” “You don’t know? You have to know. There’s a whole process; you can’t transfer a kid without notifying the other school.” “You’re right,” Ms. Sasaki said. “Ordinarily. But for whatever reason, this time is an exception. It’s causing trouble for us as well. The school has no idea where Miss Sawatari has transferred to. The vice principal is running all over the place trying to…” “But…,” I muttered. “That’s completely ridiculous,” Takuya said. As we left the faculty room, he said it again: “That’s ridiculous. There’s no way.” I’d been in a daze ever since I heard the news, but I was also starting to think it wasn’t fair. And then I remembered. They’d handed out a class directory at the beginning of the first term, and it was still in my bag; I had it with me. Of course Sayuri’s address was in it. I found the crumpled-up directory in the bottom of my bag. “Takuya, let’s just go ask them.” And that was how we took a train to Naka-Oguni. We’d used Takuya’s laptop to access an online address lookup service, typed in the address for Sayuri’s house, and pulled up a map. Her house was near the station, along a major road, and it seemed like it would be easy to find. And it was. The house was big, with a spacious garden. The property was twice the size of the lots of the houses across the street and on either side of it. It had a high wall, and the boughs of pine trees hung over the top. The building was a single-story traditional Japanese house; it seemed very old, but it was a sturdy, well-built, magnificent building. We went through the garden and pressed the bell at the front door. We could sense someone moving inside, and before long, a woman who was probably Sayuri’s mother emerged from the entryway. The front door was big, too. Sayuri’s mom didn’t look like Sayuri herself. When we introduced ourselves as Sawatari’s friends, she was startled. “Sayuri has friends?” she said with surprise, and I instantly didn’t like her. I hid it well, though. I think. “That’s right,” I said politely. “We came to say hello,” Takuya added. Mrs. Sawatari looked as bewildered as Ms. Sasaki had. Then she told us that Sayuri had already moved to their new place. “It was all settled very suddenly,” she said. “She was already over there before summer vacation ended… I’m very sorry she didn’t say good-bye.” She was stiff and cold toward us—maybe it was just because two guys had dropped by out of nowhere to visit her only daughter, but I got the feeling it wasn’t. We told her we wanted to know their new address. Or at least the name of the school she’d transferred to. Mrs. Sawatari went quiet for a little while. Then she said that she couldn’t tell us because there was “a bit of a situation.” A situation? What’s that supposed to mean? My temper flared up, and I had the urge to grab her. I managed to stop myself at the last second, but all I could do was ask a stupid question. “What situation?” Naturally, she wouldn’t tell me. “As it turns out, Sayuri needs to start a new life in a new environment, from scratch.” Mrs. Sawatari’s tone softened a little, almost apologetically. “It is really very complicated, and I can’t really sum it up. The bottom line is that she needs to completely distance herself from her former environment and friends for a while. I’m sorry, but please do leave her alone.” “Did she say that’s what she wants?” Takuya asked sharply. “She didn’t, but… No, she wants this, too.” Nobody with any sense would believe that answer. Takuya and I went silent, letting the question So which is it? roll around, unsaid. Both of us were really good at belligerent silence. “Er, boys…” Mrs. Sawatari caved. “Would you tell me your names? Next time I see Sayuri, I’ll tell her you stopped by to visit her.” We still weren’t satisfied, but we weren’t going to get any further with this approach, so we bowed to her and left the Sawatari residence. Takuya and I walked to the station in sullen silence, and I was struck by a sense that something didn’t fit. I absently mulled over it, trying to pin down what it was. Mrs. Sawatari had said she’d tell Sayuri next time she saw her. Maybe it was a figure of speech? But it had sounded as though Mrs. Sawatari wasn’t able to see Sayuri all that often, either. Next time? Where in the world had Sayuri gone? We hurried to the hangar at the abandoned station almost as if we were fleeing to it for shelter. For a while, neither of us spoke. After that, we sluggishly started to put the finishing touches on the Velaciela. The clicks of Takuya’s keystrokes were unusually slow, and the tool holder I’d attached to my belt felt incredibly heavy. Before long, I’d lost all will to work, and I leaned against the fuselage like laundry on a rainy day. “What ‘situation’…?” I muttered. Seriously, what is it? I gave it a little thought, but all I could come up with were scenarios straight out of a bad soap opera. From the other side of the plane, I heard Takuya’s voice. “Doesn’t seem like money trouble. Her mother wasn’t freaking out, either. At first, I thought it might be a run-of-the-mill divorce, but…” “But then why hide where she went?” “Exactly. So what the hell is going on?” I had no idea, so I went quiet. Takuya fell silent, too. We both thought in circles, imagining things at random. We had almost no information to work with, and just considering the problem wouldn’t bring us any satisfactory answers. We knew that, but we couldn’t get the question off our minds, and the ominous feeling just kept getting stronger. Takuya broke the silence. “Whatever the reason is, it came out of nowhere for Sawatari, too. She didn’t just run off into the night without a word.” “What makes you so sure?” “Well, I mean… Look over here.” I went around to Takuya’s side of the plane. He was looking at a spot by the wall. Sayuri’s violin case was propped against it. When we went home on the day summer vacation began, she’d left it there, saying it was too heavy and she was tired. “She was planning to come back here during summer vacation,” Takuya murmured. I see… That wasn’t enough for us to decide what to do, though. Wouldn’t that mean Sayuri had needed to go because of something that desperate, that serious? We went home without making much progress on the work, and the gloom dragged on for about three days. Finally, I got sick of feeling discouraged. My emotions were just going around in circles in a murky, undefined swamp. I wanted to get at least one or two things clear. “Let’s go to Sawatari’s house again,” I told Takuya. “Yeah… If we press them hard, we might get some new information.” “So let’s go.” As before, we got off at Naka-Oguni Station and walked along the road. Then Takuya and I stopped in our tracks at the exact same moment. We stood there, without saying a word, for about a minute. The place where Sayuri’s house had been was now a vacant lot. In the hangar at the abandoned station, we said nothing. We hadn’t even turned on the lights. It was a different sort of silence from that earlier one, a few days ago. Sayuri had vanished completely. That was what it seemed like, anyway. She hadn’t “gone away.” I felt as if something huge, way too big for us, had just carried her off. It’s not fair, I kept repeating silently. I was furious at the shapeless, imaginary thing that had kidnapped Sayuri. But that harmed no one but me, physically and mentally. I’d get exhausted, then discouraged, and then the anger would flare up again, like some sort of spasm. The torturous cycle repeated over and over because there was nothing specific to focus my feelings on. It’s awful, being so angry with nothing concrete to be angry at. I couldn’t get rid of my ugly feelings, which meant they dragged on endlessly. Takuya sat in a chair in front of the worktable and glared at the wall. I paced around and around the unfinished Velaciela. When the soles of my feet started to get tired, I stopped and stood still. It happened to be the very place where Sayuri had pressed her cheek against the Velaciela, enraptured, when we first showed it to her. I stood where she’d stood then, touching the place she’d touched. Sawatari. What is the Velaciela supposed to do? We promised we’d fly it with you, remember? You’re just gonna disappear and leave your Velaciela behind? I silently asked—and I realized with shock what’d I’d said. “Your Velaciela.” Somewhere along the way, I’d started building the plane not for myself, but for her. My work on the Velaciela was work toward the promise we’d made with her. Keeping the promise had been so self-evident to me that I hadn’t even noticed that my motives had changed. More than Sayuri had left us that day. My enthusiasm toward the Velaciela had deteriorated significantly, replaced by the stinging impatience of desperately chasing something irretrievable and failing to catch it. We’d figured that we had about a week’s worth of work left on the Velaciela. The next day, once school got out, Takuya and I rode the Tsugaru Line and worked on putting the finishing touches on it at the abandoned station, the way we always did. Unlike always, we were still in a funk, and the work made zero progress. The day after that, Takuya didn’t come to the abandoned station. I waited for him on the platform at Minami-Yomogita, but even after the train pulled in, I didn’t see him, so I had to board the train alone. What with all the turmoil lately, maybe he’d caught a cold or something. Alone, I touched up the Velaciela. At this stage, we were both in charge of completely separate areas, so working by myself didn’t give me any real trouble. But before I was finished, the work didn’t feel worthwhile anymore, so I finally stopped and spent the rest of the time throwing rocks at the lake until the sun went down. The next day, Takuya showed up on the platform at Minami-Yomogita on schedule. He didn’t seem interested in explaining yesterday’s absence. The day after that, Takuya was gone again. The day after that one, I was the one who didn’t go. I felt guilty about it, and the following day, I was careful not to run into Takuya at school. But when Takuya didn’t show up on the platform at Minami-Yomogita, selfish as it might have been, I felt like he’d let me down. Selfish, I know. When I went to the abandoned station, I saw no sign Takuya had been there yesterday. We had a notebook where we recorded our progress, and he hadn’t left a note. My sigh echoed uselessly in the deserted hangar. I was worn out. I was fully aware of that. I want to rest a little, I thought. I hadn’t wanted a break from a project for the past several years. After all, before I’d met Takuya, I’d worked on everything to completion on my own, and it hadn’t seemed at all strange to me. Now, though, being alone was just a little harder than it once was. The next day, and the day after that, I decided against going to the abandoned station. I thought I’d change my plans and “go to work” if I ran into Takuya on the platform, but I didn’t. For about a week after that, I went to the abandoned station on and off. Even on the days when I went, I spent the time gazing absently at the sky. The season for cultural festival prep got closer, and the school was buzzing. For some reason, our middle school held its cultural festival earlier than other schools. Come to think of it, our guerrilla flight was about this time two years ago. The memory stirred up a mix of nostalgia and bitter sadness inside me. That day, junior members of the archery club wanted to discuss something festival-related with me, so I was late leaving school, and I ended up taking the club train for the first time in quite a while. Even though it wouldn’t be the right time for it, out of habit, I waited for the train in my usual spot on the platform. Then, from beside me, I heard familiar footsteps and a voice I knew well, and I glanced over. I’d recognized Takuya by his voice, but I didn’t know how to react to the cute girl on his arm. It was Kana Matsuura, a junior member of the skating club. Despite the intense heat of the end of summer, Matsuura was cuddled up next to Takuya. They obviously weren’t just members of the same club who’d happened to run into each other. “What the hell is that?” Those were the first words out of my mouth. I wasn’t paying attention to the expression on my face, but Matsuura looked frightened of me. “What the hell does ‘what the hell is that’ mean?” Takuya parroted back at me. “You…” My voice was shaking a little. I started to say What about Sayuri? but choked the words back down. I couldn’t let Matsuura hear that. “We did what we could, but it’s over.” Takuya avoided saying her name, too. “We’ve hit a dead end, and you know it. We can’t just keep obsessing about it forever.” “What about the Velaciela?” “That’s…” Takuya’s voice weakened, but almost imperceptibly. “It’s… Count me out. I’m not up for it anymore. You do the rest on your own.” “Are you serious? Quit… Quit saying you’re going to quit. We said we’d go over there together.” “Look, I’m tired.” He really did sound tired. To be honest, I was feeling it, too. “Maybe this is how it was always going to end. It might be the perfect time to call it quits.” “Hey!” I yelled. “What’s with the act?! Are you just giving up because it’s hard?!” “So what if I am?” “Since when do you quit? You know that’s not how you do things. That’s not who you are! Knock it off.” “You don’t know anything about me,” he said. This was a total cliché, like a crappy TV show but worse. “Talking to you makes me sick. Don’t ride in our car, all right?” With that, he prompted Matsuura, and they went over to where the next train car would stop, putting some distance between us. My blood was boiling, and I watched them go in a kind of daze. Matsuura turned back to look at me anxiously a few times, but Takuya pointedly didn’t. Before long, the train came and I got on, but the idea that he was in the next car over ticked me off, and I started unconsciously jiggling my knee. That wasn’t even a habit of mine. I felt so rotten that I couldn’t stomach going to the abandoned station, and I went straight home that day. The next day, I put my head back on straight and went to the abandoned station. I think I did it partly to get back at Takuya. After all, I’d done everything by myself before. If he wasn’t going to hang out with me anymore, so what? I’d just get the job done on my own. I’d show him. I’d been so confident on the way there, but I wasn’t ready for the way all the sounds in the empty hangar were mine. I pulled myself together and broke out my tools. Still, the absence of the usual distant clicking of Takuya’s beloved computer keyboard or the scratchy noise of the hard disc hurt more than I’d expected. It was all so pointless. The energy went out of me, and the tool I’d been holding slipped from my hand. What am I doing? What was the point of putting in all this time and effort? I didn’t have friends who’d rejoice in the success with me. She wasn’t there to shower me with praise: Wow, that’s amazing! Listlessly, one step at a time, I got down off the aluminum ladder, then crouched on the ground. Everything that happens now is just going to be me, I thought. Finishing it. The takeoff and the landing. And it would be so boring. Little by little, like squeezing out a rag, my spirit drained away until I didn’t have any strength left. This is because you disappeared, Sayuri, I muttered silently. You were too much a part of this. We invested too much in you. If you go and vanish on us, we can’t move. It was all wrong now. I couldn’t make this anymore. The power that had set us in motion, that had pushed us forward, forward, forward—was gone now. I took off the tool holder I’d been wearing and threw it to the ground. Count me out. That was what Takuya had said. He was always quick to decide. You’re right. I’m done, too. It doesn’t matter now. I left the hangar and pushed the big double doors shut. I tied them in place with the chain we used as a lock, then hooked three padlocks through it, sealing it completely. I went in through the back door and picked up my bag. My footsteps seemed louder than usual. For some reason, I felt anxious and impatient. I went over to the switchboard and flipped the breaker. There was a muffled clack, and all the lights died. In the dead space, the Velaciela looked fake, like a model skeleton at a museum. I left through the back door and locked it, then buried the bundle of keys in the dirt. Then I started trudging toward the path down the mountain. My bag was heavy. It had never been heavy before. Hey, you’re headed downhill, I reminded myself. What’s wrong with you? I was right at the edge of the woods. When I looked back, the distant hangar with its chained-up doors looked very shabby. Far beyond it, I could see the tower. It was as straight and beautiful as ever. Just as I always did, I could almost hear it calling to me. I started to turn away, but I could feel its reproach. The tower drew me, tried to call me to it, as much as ever. A wave of self-pity swept over me, bringing tears to my eyes; furious and disgusted with myself, I gritted my teeth. Don’t call me. Don’t tempt me. Don’t put me under your spell…please… I tried walking with purpose, my footsteps firm and solid, but that strength promptly left me. I looked down as I forged ahead. Behind me, I felt like the tower was hanging over me, following the curve of the sky and covering me with guilt. I was trying to erase the past—my own desperation, the way I’d soothed the thirst I’d constantly felt for years, how urgent the word promise had sounded from her. I was so ashamed. Don’t look at me. I murmured the words to the tower’s aura. I wanted to go somewhere I couldn’t see it. I’d never thought such a thing before, of course. The idea had simply occurred to me, a whim, but before long, it was infinite inside me. I didn’t want to look at the tower anymore. I couldn’t stand being there. I didn’t want to go near any of it anymore—the abandoned remains of our poor half-built airplane or Sayuri’s presence, which I remembered for no apparent reason every now and then. I want to go somewhere. I remembered Sayuri had said something similar. Was that it? Is that why she actually disappeared? The idea of going far away suddenly began to feel real and imminent. I went home and mulled it over thoroughly. Spring next year would be key. I couldn’t let that slip by me. I enthusiastically pored over entrance exam guidebooks and exam information websites. I learned that a certain distinguished private high school in Tokyo was famous for letting students test in, and they had a system of preferential treatment for students who came to the city from other prefectures. The entrance exam was tough, but if I really hit the books, I could probably make it work. I spent several days talking my parents around. I wanted to go to a good university in Tokyo, I explained, but then I’d have to commute two hours each way to the cram school in Aomori City every day. Instead, it would be more efficient for me to go to a prep school in Tokyo that had a solid system for exam preparation. I pled my case, and finally I got permission to attend. After that, in order to make up for the work I’d missed, I began studying like my life depended on it. It was boring work, all of it cramming, but I was decent at setting goals, making road maps, and plugging away toward them. While I was glued to my desk, drawing additional lines on graphed functions or reciting the practical uses of auxiliary verbs, I conveniently didn’t have to remember Sayuri or the tower. Sometimes I passed Takuya in the halls at school, but we both felt awkward and guilty around each other. By that point, we didn’t even say hello. In the words of adolescent society, we were “over.” Up until just a little while ago, we’d been inseparable every day, which made this change a drastic one. My chest did ache at the thought, but I had lots of new things to do, and I wanted to avoid triggering any more gut-wrenching emotional pain. While all this was going on, the second term ended, winter vacation began, and the third term, which was completely focused on exam-taking, was over before I knew it. I just barely managed to qualify for the school I’d been trying for. I didn’t happen to overhear what Takuya had opted to do next, and I didn’t bother asking. Because the closeness Takuya and I once shared had been broken, I did resent Sayuri just a little bit… But I’ll acknowledge that’s a selfish way to put it. I resented her, but there was nothing I could do about it. We were past mending at this point, and I was fully aware that it wasn’t really Sayuri’s fault at all. So I decided to take the rational view—that these things just happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. Considering how it turned out, though, the rational approach was not the one for this. Much later on, I would know it. I’d liked Sayuri. I’d also liked Takuya. Losing both of them had broken something inside me, something that would never be repaired. I tried to forget them, but I just couldn’t seem to do it. It hurts when the memory won’t let go. Some things you forget whether you want to or not, some things you can’t forget even if you want to, and some things you absolutely can’t afford to forget. It was a lesson I’d never wanted to learn, but I never had a choice.