Chapter 3

SLEEP 1 In spring of the year I turned sixteen, I set foot in Tokyo for the first time. When I got off the Tohoku Shinkansen and went through the ticket gate, the sheer size of the crowd made me draw back in shock. Tokyo Station was enormous, and it was windowless, like a subterranean city. If it hadn’t been for all the signs, I’m sure I wouldn’t even have managed to get out of the building. I found the Marunouchi subway line and boarded it. I hardly even had to wait for the train to arrive when I got to the platform. In this world, a train arrived every five minutes. Time didn’t move the same here—not the way it did back where I used to belong. This was exactly what I’d been looking for when I came to Tokyo. I remembered that morning, when I’d left the house in Minmaya. My mom had said she wanted to go with me to Tokyo, to see me off, or even just as far as Aomori or Hachinohe, but I wouldn’t have it. I wanted to find a new self in a new place, and I desperately wanted to avoid arriving there with the dust of my hometown clinging to me. I got off at Nishi-Shinjuku. When I climbed the stairs and stepped out onto the broad avenue, right in front of me, a skyscraper topped with something like a plate at the top soared up into the sky. That’s huge, I thought, stating the obvious. I turned right at the Naruko Tenjin Shrine intersection, then walked for about five minutes, studying the map. When I happened to look up, I was surrounded by skyscrapers as large as that earlier one. What a magnificent view. It’s a whole forest of towers, I thought. This district was full of them, too. The cluster of high-rises in Shinjuku’s new downtown area watched me from above, unmoved, but they didn’t afflict me with that sense of urgency. It was a huge relief. From there, I walked about ten minutes, and then the cityscape changed. The skyscrapers vertically eroding space suddenly thinned and vanished, and old residential streets began crawling out over the ground. That shift in scenery was truly novel. The force drawing my mind upward was now pulling it out horizontally. Because those streets were on lower ground, when I stood at the top of the slope, I could look out over all of them. The difference in the landscape was stark. When I gazed across it, the old residential district really was…well, old. It seemed as if the townscape from the fifties had been preserved just as it was. Almost all of the houses had tile roofs—an impressive sight for a boy who’d grown up in snow country; I wasn’t used to seeing tiles. The town had a genuine human feel to it. Tokyo’s neighborhoods weren’t all like Shibuya and Harajuku and Ginza. I slowly descended the curving stone steps that led into that district. The dorm I’d be living in for the next three years was somewhere around here. After getting a little lost, I found the dilapidated social welfare agency dorm. It may have been a dorm, but it wasn’t the old-fashioned kind that forced you to live communally. The living quarters were more like wooden one-room apartments with kitchens. It was a two-story building, and the room I’d be living in was on the second floor. My dad had found it for me through a work connection. When I actually got a good look at it, it was obviously in the “built forty years ago” bracket. It didn’t have a bath, and the washroom was shared. At least the rent was extra cheap. Well, this works just fine for me, I thought. I had no complaints. I hadn’t come here to enjoy living in luxury on my own. As long as I had a place to sleep, I didn’t care about anything else. The cardboard boxes I’d shipped over formed a haphazard pile in the middle of the floor. I detoured around them, cut across the room, and opened the window to air the place out. An aluminum sash would’ve been too convenient for this place; the frame was wooden, and whenever you pulled on it, the glass panes rattled something awful. It was a beautiful day, the way the sunlight lanced into the gloomy room through the window. I left the window open and went out for a rambling walk. For starters, I thought I’d learn my way around the immediate neighborhood and get ready for my new life. When I looked around just outside the shared entryway, the dorm was flanked by a coin laundry and a public bath. When I walked a few steps, I came out on a broad avenue almost immediately, and there were convenience stores and all sorts of restaurants. Two of them were from the same chain and facing each other across the road, but even so. From what I’d seen, I’d be well taken care of. The place seemed to have pretty much everything. This was Tokyo, after all, and I’d imagined a noisy neighborhood full of cars and people, but it was much quieter than I’d expected. There was a pleasant street lined with trees that was the wrong width for cars—it almost looked like a park. I walked down that street and came out onto a different one. Then I took left turns and right turns, keeping sure not to get lost. Before long, I came out on Ome-Kaido Avenue. When I walked toward its west side, there was an area surrounded by a metal fence beside the road, and it looked like there was a new building under construction. It reminded me of the vacant lot that had been Sayuri’s house, but only for a moment. Replacing houses and buildings is an everyday thing in Tokyo, I thought, and calmed down. In a way, it was better to have a life so hectic that I didn’t have time to reminisce. For no particular reason, I looked at the sky. And then— I was aghast. In the sky to the north—faintly, above the houses—I thought I’d seen a line rising straight up, like a mechanical pencil lead. I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again. Sweat broke out all over my body. It was definitely there. The tower. It was small compared to the view in Aomori, tiny and hazy, but there was no mistaking it. It was the tower that stood in Ezo. It couldn’t be true. I couldn’t possibly be able to see it. I remembered the distance from Aomori to central Hokkaido, visualized the size of the tower we could see from Aomori, then worked out a mental estimate of its diameter, then assumed the actual diameter was double that value, give or take. There was still no way it should be visible in Tokyo. On paper, that was definitely true. Still, I could just barely see it… I stopped an elderly passerby who seemed like a local; I told him I’d just moved in and asked if it was always possible to see that tower from here. The man told me his eyes were bad and it was pretty hard for him to make it out, but he’d heard that you could see it on days when the weather was clear. Like Mount Fuji. That was completely ridiculous. Even after the old man had gone on his way, I just stood there blankly. This was awful. I’d moved all the way down here so I wouldn’t see that thing, and yet… I staggered. With a light metallic crash, my back connected with a chain-link fence. We had an entrance ceremony, and then the new term began. I’d braced myself for the discomfort of being alone in a distant high school, but it wasn’t actually that bad. Most of the students were from Tokyo, but there were some from all different areas of Japan, and the school culture was accepting of them. Even though I wasn’t from the city, I hardly ever felt as if I didn’t belong. Still, even if we out-of-towners weren’t rare, we were still passably unusual. People were curious about me, and they’d get jealous of the fact that I was living on my own. For a while, I made a joke out of my completely unenviable, run-down residence to make people laugh. People had always been comfortable around me (and I didn’t realize how valuable that natural gift was until after I’d lost it), and it wasn’t that hard for me to get along well with others. I made several friends that I could hang out with almost immediately. Living on my own didn’t make me particularly lonely, either. Not that I was consciously aware of, at least. The school was smack in the middle of a cluster of magnificent condominium buildings in Nishi-Shinjuku. Even though it was in the heart of the city, it had an athletic field that was actual dirt, not asphalt. From the windows of my third-floor classroom, I had a good view of the high-rises in the new downtown. After I saw the tower, the buildings in Nishi-Shinjuku seemed to be its kin. Looking at those tall, proud buildings, I was restless. I wondered why people built them. Why did they have to be so big? What on earth went on inside those buildings? Every so often, I wondered about it. It wasn’t that I wanted to go inside, per se, but for some reason, I felt as if I was being unfairly excluded. In high school, I was very dedicated to my studies. After all, I’d come to the city for my university entrance exams, supposedly. I had to be dedicated. The thought that I was home free now that I was in Tokyo had crossed my mind, but I got the feeling I should at least study. Besides, there wasn’t really anything else I wanted to do. That being the case, I did prep work and review in amounts that would have been unthinkable in the context of my time in middle school. The work was absolutely no fun at all, but it was a way to kill time without letting my mind wander to depressing things. This was a serious escalator school, so literally no one around me thought I was a loser for studying. That was what you were supposed to be doing here, and it was held in high esteem. I managed to secure a moderately good position for myself in this new environment. My classmates mostly showed me a certain amount of respect, and I had a reputation for making friends easily. I didn’t hit it off with everybody, but not to the point where it was a problem. No matter where I went, there was a place for me, more or less. Objectively speaking, I was really lucky. Blessed, even. For some reason, though…I couldn’t get rid of that vague, uneasy feeling that this place wasn’t right for me. I didn’t want to have a phone at the dorm if I could help it, but my parents didn’t let me get away with that. My dad had an unused phone subscription voucher, and we ended up using it to get a phone installed in my room. Right in the middle of midterms during my first term at school, there was a small earthquake in the Kanto region. It was so tiny that I had no clue it had even happened, but my worrywart mother called me. I just asked her when we’d had this earthquake, and she was scandalized. Two days later, I got an envelope of cash from her. There was a note inside telling me to buy a TV so that I’d have access to disaster information. I stuck the cash into my pocket, envelope and all, and headed over to Yodobashi Camera. When I went to the TV section, the floor was buried in TVs of all types and sizes. I’d always thought it was weird, but the programs you see in home appliance sections always look utterly ridiculous. It’s probably because there are long rows of the same image, all coming at you. It killed any desire I had to buy a television. I didn’t want to watch TV that much anyway. I figured I’d grab something to eat somewhere and go home, and as I was cutting across the floor, my eyes landed on a certain object. It made me think of a huge fish skeleton, but on closer inspection, it turned out to be a violin that was nothing but a frame. A Kawai silent violin. The acoustic structures had been completely eliminated, and it made almost no sound. If you plugged in headphones, the person playing it could hear what it sounded like, but that was all. It was a practice violin, designed to not make noise. On impulse, I bought it. The purchase added quite a few points to my point card, so I used those and bought a pocket radio as well. I asked an employee if there was a store in the area that had a good selection of learner’s books for musical instruments. The employee very kindly told me, so I went to that store and bought several violin textbooks. I began practicing that day. I worked through the exercises as the textbook said to, starting from the very beginning. One by one, I taught myself how to play the practice melodies in it. When you’re pushing yourself hard in school, it’s nice to play an instrument as a change of pace. After a few months, even though I wasn’t good, I’d managed to pick up enough technique that I could play fairly decently for an amateur. The next thing I knew, I caught myself trying to remember the melody that Sayuri had played that summer day. I plumbed my tenuous memory of it and felt my way along, rediscovering the notes one by one. Every time I did, I saw Sayuri’s closed eyes, the slightly awkward movement of her bow, and the way her hair had swung, and I felt a weight on my chest. Naturally, I couldn’t remember the piece completely. Fortunately, I did remember the name of the song: “A Distant Calling Voice.” I went to a big library that was famous for its extensive collection of sheet music, hunted up the score for that piece, and made a copy. And so the days went by. I woke up early in the morning, went to school, passed the time relatively comfortably, studied at the library, went shopping, and returned to the dorm. Then I did the whole thing again. From time to time—only once in a while, really—a clammy, heavy, leaden fatigue would settle over me when I got back to my room and closed the door. At times like that, I played Sayuri’s melody. And close to a year went by. I’d gotten pretty close to several of my classmates. They were all nice people. They’d been brought up well, and they also really knew how to have fun. Most of them had grown up in the city, and they took me all over. Sometimes they brought me to classic entertainment districts like Shibuya and Harajuku and Odaiba, and other times they’d choose Kichijouji or Shimokitazawa. Most of the time, we went to places in the area around Shinjuku. Every so often, we’d go to clubs at night and drink liquor. I don’t know what it’s like now, but club culture was still functioning back then, and there were places that would pretend not to see high schoolers as long as we weren’t wearing our school uniforms. Those times were great. I had my friends and a place where I belonged. It felt good to enjoy ourselves together so openly. And yet sometimes all the things I saw and heard and experienced that way seemed to be made-up. I’d think, Where the hell am I? It was the tension and bewilderment I would have felt standing all by myself on a small stage, where absolutely everything was fake. Sometimes I thought if I closed my eyes, they’d whisk away the backdrop and everything around me would vanish. One day, on the way home at dusk, I looked up at the cluster of buildings in Shinjuku. They seemed completely unreal. Softly, I closed my eyes and imagined the painted backdrop being whisked away in the blink of an eye. But nothing happened. This was reality. Even if it did look like a mirage hovering beyond the ocean. The things I was seeing truly existed on the same ground I was standing on. You’re the illusion here, a skyscraper told me. No, it didn’t; I just imagined it. You’re a ghost, another building said. You’re insubstantial. Maybe so. As I walked unsteadily along, my mind was telling me I’d become a pallid ghost that was wandering the streets. Was it me that was unreal and not the town? It must be. Looking up at all those tall buildings touching the sky, I wondered what sort of people were in there and what they were doing. After all, it’s not as if you can come in here. You’ll never be a part of it. That enormous thought bore down on me from overhead, crushing me. I was being shunned. I wasn’t part of this city. My own voice harassed me, bouncing wildly off my internal walls. Still, I had no choice but to live here. I had to find a way to integrate. No matter what it took. A year passed, and I moved up to the next grade. I didn’t go back home, not even for the Bon festival or for New Year’s. 2 One day, I got lost. It was the day the first-term midterms ended, when we were well into spring. I’d never had a particularly bad sense of direction, but I’d been constantly losing my way ever since I got to Tokyo. I’d get lost in Shinjuku Station, which seemed to have grown organically instead of being planned, but I’d also get lost in the grid of Ikebukuro Station. I was headed out for a party-night-slash-midterm-wrap event a few friends had invited me to, and the world was already getting darker. We’d planned to go home and change clothes first, then meet up at our destination. Unless I really and truly couldn’t make it, it was my policy to never turn down an invitation. I had to accept them. I had to get used to the city and its people, to become a part of it myself. Even when I didn’t feel like it, I’d go along with the rest of them, and I was careful never to let them think I was bored. We were going to a small rock club in a semibasement in Nishi-Shinjuku; it was on the edge of a residential district, a short distance away from the downtown area. I’d been there a few times already. It was noisy and cramped and the perfect place to get loud and blow off steam. That day, though, I couldn’t find it. I wandered all over, turning the corners I was supposed to turn and taking the alleys I was supposed to take, but I couldn’t find the place. I didn’t have a cell phone, so I had no way to get ahold of the friends I was supposed to be meeting. I know it was around here… As I was shuttling between the places it should have been, over and over, a girl about my age who’d come walking up behind me called to me. “What are you doing?” I flinched. My first thought was that she might have been suspicious of my random wandering, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case. The girl’s expression was very friendly. She had on skinny jeans and a top made of a thin fabric that left her shoulders bare, and she stood with most of her weight shifted onto one hip. Trying not to let my confusion show, I told her, “Uh…I got lost.” “Where are you trying to go?” “Um…” Still unsure what was going on, I groped for the name of the club, found it, and told it to her. Whenever I end up in a strange situation (and being addressed by an unknown girl for no reason was about as strange as it ever got for me), it’s all I can do to keep up with what’s happening. If you ask me a question, I will sound stupid when I answer. “Ohhh, I know that place. If that’s where you’re going, you’re off by two streets,” the girl said. “Leave this street and turn onto the second one. It’s right there.” “Thank…” I was about to say “Thank you,” but the girl wasn’t finished. “No sense of direction, huh?” “Guess so.” I thought she was acting too familiar with me, but I did answer. I wanted to tell her my sense of direction wasn’t that terrible, but the statement wouldn’t have been very convincing right after I’d gotten lost. “I’m surprised, though. I didn’t know you liked hanging out there, Fujisawa.” I looked at her closely. How did she know my name? I didn’t recognize her face. Actually, I didn’t interact with girls all that much in the first place. She picked up on my bewilderment, and she told me before I could ask. “I know you. I mean, we ended up in the same class this year, you know.” “Huh…?” “You don’t recognize me at all?” “Um…” She took her hair, which came to just below her shoulders, and bunched it into pigtails. “I usually wear my hair like this.” “Ohhh.” Finally, I remembered. I did seem to recall a girl like her. “Sorry, I remember now.” “Oh, good. I would’ve really weirded you out if you didn’t.” “Sorry.” After I said it, I wondered why I was apologizing. “You’re not in your uniform, though, and your hair is different.” “You’re right.” She nodded, but she wasn’t done. “But that wasn’t the real reason, was it, Fujisawa? I bet you’re the type who can’t put names to faces for the girls in your class, even at the very end of the school year.” She’d called it in one, but I didn’t want to admit that. Instead, I grunted back at her. She could take that as a yes or no, whichever she preferred. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while now.” “Why?” I was genuinely curious. Frankly speaking, there’s nothing about me to attract interest from girls. “I just did,” she said. “But you’re always spacing out, and I don’t want to interrupt. And then I end up missing the chance to talk to you at school.” “Um, really?” “Yes, really. You haven’t noticed? You space out and stare at nothing sometimes. What do you see?” “Oh, no, I’m not looking at anything. My eyes aren’t even focused.” “What are you thinking about, then?” “Nothing much. My mind’s just blank.” “That’s weird. You should quit if you can. You don’t even look alive.” “Uh, listen…” Inwardly, I was perplexed. What exactly was this girl trying do, and how? More important, I had friends waiting for me. I knew where the place was now, and I had to get going. “Say, do you really, really want to go there?” she asked me. “What do you mean?” “It’s just the usual post-midterm party, right? Can’t you skip, Fujisawa?” “What would I do instead?” “Go somewhere else with me. Somewhere that isn’t all smoky.” Well, this got very weird, I thought. A girl I’d barely even met before had flagged me down on the street, then practically dragged me into a café, where we were now sitting across from each other… Frankly speaking, I had no confidence in myself, so I had no assumptions about the implications of this. To be specific, I didn’t think she liked me or anything. Awkwardly, though, I couldn’t remember her name. Somehow, it seemed a little late to ask at this point. As we’d walked down the street, I’d tried desperately to recall it. The key to remembering names you’ve forgotten are the consonants and its visual image. The image was…cool colors? As for the sounds… Mentally, I went through the Japanese alphabet in order. She’d taken me to a stylish café on the second floor of a building that faced a wide avenue. One side of the café was glass-walled, so you could look out over the street and down at the passersby. We chose a table by the window. When the waiter came to take our orders, I finally remembered her name. We ordered coffee and black tea, and after the server had gone, I ventured: “Um, you’re Mizuno, right?” Written with the characters for water and field. “Well done.” She rested her elbows on the table and smiled. “And? What’s my first name?” Seeing that I was stumped, she laughed a hearty laugh. “It’s Rika.” “Rika?” “Yup. I’m Rika. Don’t forget it this time.” “Okay, all right. I don’t think I can at this point.” “Good.” Rika Mizuno nodded, looking satisfied. I was finally able to sit down and think through what was happening. I’d learned her name. What I still didn’t know was what she was after. “What were you doing, Mizuno? You’re not in your uniform; weren’t you in the area for a reason?” “Mm, well, yes.” Rika glanced out the window, then let her eyes return to me. “I was meeting a friend, but they bailed on me at the last minute. I didn’t wanna just go back home after all the trouble of getting changed and putting makeup on, you know?” “And then you just happened to see me, and you figured no time like the present.” “Pretty much.” Rika nodded; she didn’t look the least bit apologetic. “I was walking along all upset, and then there you were, wandering around and spacing out. I thought you might trip and fall if I left you alone, so I flagged you down.” That was unflattering, but she said it so nonchalantly that I couldn’t exactly protest. Apparently, spacey was the word she was using as a sort of mental shorthand for me. “Do I really space out that much?” “Yes. You do. You were doing it just a minute ago, too,” Rika declared. “You’re like that a lot, aren’t you, Fujisawa? You’re spacey, or dazed, or just not there at all. Sometimes you look like you’re wondering why you’re even here. It’s like…it’s like you’re thinking you’re not where you’re supposed to be.” She’d really hit the nail on the head, and I went quiet. I’d thought I was hiding it so well, too. Apparently, I didn’t hide my opinion of her analysis very well, either. “Oh, are you upset? I’m sorry. I’m good at catching those little things, you see,” Rika explained. She seemed to be a decent, uncomplicated girl. She asked me all sorts of questions about myself. “So what kind of guy are you, Fujisawa?” “That’s a hard question to answer.” “Where do you live, then?” “In Shinjuku Ward. About a fifteen minute walk from the school.” “Wow, lucky! Did you choose the school because it was close to you?” “No, no. I’m living in a dorm.” When I told her I came from Aomori on my own, she was really taken aback. “Why did you come over here for school?” “Because I got sick of shoveling snow.” I grinned, but Rika didn’t buy it. So then I gave the explanation I’d given over and over during the past year. I’d save time by coming to Tokyo and attending a full-fledged exam prep school instead of commuting to a cram school on a series of local trains back at home, and the costs weren’t much different, either, et cetera. “Hmm.” “And I guess I also wanted to go someplace totally new.” “Oh, I completely get that.” “How do you mean?” “I’m from Tokyo and so are my parents,” Rika said, pointing to herself. “We don’t have relatives anywhere else, either. Tokyo is seriously all I know. I dream of getting out of here, seriously.” “Where in Tokyo?” “Us? We’re in Zoushigaya. What’s Aomori like?” “It’s snow country. Famous for apples and sea urchin and squid and the Nebuta festival and Osamu Dazai.” “Geez, what are you, a tour guide? What I want to know is more, you know, about everyday life and how it feels there.” “Okay, but there’s really not much I can tell you.” To be honest, I didn’t really want to think about home. “Am I being too nosy?” “No.” I shook my head. “Honestly, I wish I had more interesting stories to share. Not that I mind the interview from a girl.” “Hey, uh, apropos of nothing…don’t get the wrong idea, okay? I mean, um, basically, I’m not interested in you that way…” Rika’s expression turned serious, and she sat up straighter. “I’m already dating someone.” “I figured you were,” I said. Rika seemed a little put out by that. As for why, I couldn’t tell you. “Why did you figure?” There was really no “why.” One of the things I’d instinctively come to understand over the past couple of years was that if you saw a girl and noticed she was good-looking, it was generally safe to assume that she already had somebody. “I can just tell. What’s your boyfriend like? Does he go to our school?” “Yeah.” She gave a tiny nod. “We were in the same class in year one. We ended up in different classes this year, though.” I recognized the name she gave. He was pretty tall and really handsome. I was fairly sure I’d talked to him once or twice for something or other. I thought back. He’d seemed decent enough. I didn’t really know, but he was probably all right. “What brought you together? Did one of you tell the other you liked them?” I asked her. “More like we just ended up together. I thought it might be nice to leave things ambiguous, but I changed my mind and suggested it myself.” “What made you change your mind?” “Have you seen him?” she answered instantly, and I laughed in spite of myself. From anyone else, it would sound like sarcasm, but she had a knack for delivering it in a way that her listener wouldn’t mind. That was a perfectly fine approach, I thought, liking a guy because he’s handsome. It was simple and easy to understand, and a solid standard. Only problem was, I didn’t belong anywhere near the “handsome” category… “Then guys like me probably aren’t your type,” I ventured. “Nope. You don’t do it for me at all.” Rika Mizuno told it like it was, smiling all the while. Disappointing, of course, but not upsetting. “But I wouldn’t expect you to get any ideas anyway. I don’t have to worry about that with you. Speaking of, it never hurts to ask, so here goes: Is it okay if I invite you to go places for fun with me sometimes?” I was pretty confused. “Why?” I asked immediately. I had no idea why she’d ask me that right after telling me she had a boyfriend. “Kinda boring if the only boy you have to talk to is your boyfriend, don’t you think? We can just hang out for a little while on days like today, when my friends end up flaking out on me. Better than staring into space, right?” That was quite a way to think, but, well, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand. In that sense, Rika must have had pretty good judgment to find me. She’d seen me and thought, I won’t have to worry around that guy. She wasn’t far off the mark, either. Frankly, I didn’t really have much of a desire to date girls, unusual as that is for a teenage guy… “Sure,” I said. “As long as neither of us gets any weird ideas.” “Right. No weird ideas,” she said. When we split up outside the café, and she’d set off toward the station, I replayed the rambling conversation in my mind. She was strange, I thought, and I meant it. The way she thought, the way she felt, the way she talked—nothing about her was conventional. I hadn’t always even been able to follow what she was saying. To each their own, though, and for me, meeting her had been a small change in my boring life spacing out. In short, it had been rather novel and interesting. That night, I dreamed about Sayuri. In the dream, Sayuri was in a strange, mysterious place. The sky was dull as an old photograph. I’d seen a sky that color before, but I couldn’t remember where. Below it, there were many twisted towers, literally innumerable. Their shapes were nothing like the modern design of the Union’s tower. These were more primitive, ethnic, organic. They were a warm color that reminded me of unglazed pottery, shaped like conch shells that had been stretched out like candy until they were as long as spears. Their tops had been cut off sharply on a diagonal, like the tips of bamboo spears, to expose the interiors. Since there were no roofs, those places were like observation platforms that looked out over the sky. All you could see from those platforms was the sky. Both up and down. Sky both above and below. There was no land in this place. And that was where Sayuri was. She looked just a little older than she had when I’d known her. Probably a year or two. She was hugging her knees, looking down. She was insubstantial, and I could see through her, like a ghost. She was sobbing. Her shoulders trembled every so often, but other than that, she didn’t move. She only wept. I heard the wind, and I heard her cries. The two sounds formed a harmonic chord that echoed mournfully across the endless sky. When I opened my eyes, a hopeless feeling nearly overwhelmed me. As if some buglike thing was squirming around in my chest. Why wasn’t Sayuri there with me? Why had she disappeared? Something was wrong. Something was proceeding down the wrong path. Something was off, as if I’d wandered into some other world. Why had Sayuri been somewhere so desolate? I couldn’t sense any life in that place. The idea that Sayuri might already be dead and gone from this world flashed through my mind like lightning, and my vision went black. Over the past year and a half, the possibility had never crossed my mind. Or maybe I’d subconsciously held it at bay. I went to school, and as I set my bag on my desk, someone thumped me on the back. I turned around to find Rika Mizuno. She looked me in the eye and smiled in a meaningful way, but apparently she wasn’t planning to talk; she slipped away, over to where the girls were gathered. Following her briefly with my eyes, I thought for just a moment how great it would be if she were Sayuri. Then I realized how wrong that was, how rude, how twisted, and I hated myself for it. 3 The next week, on Saturday, I was walking down the hall at school when Rika called to me. Officially, the school was closed two days a week, but there were exam prep drills on Saturday morning, and there was a tacit understanding that all students would attend them. That was over, and I was just on my way back to the dorm. Rika asked me if I had any plans after this. “Not really. Going home, getting something to eat. I’ll think about what to do later after that.” “You have no plans on a Saturday? Why? Who doesn’t have plans on a Saturday in this day and age?” “Does it matter?” “No, of course not. It’s not my business.” “So what are your plans?” “If you’re free, do you want to come get lunch with me? And then hang out with me for a bit afterward?” “Sure,” I said. “After all, I’m an anomaly in this day and age.” Rika and I left the school and walked to Shinjuku Station. “So where are we going?” I asked her. “Let’s take the Yamanote Line to Ikebukuro.” She and I got off at Ikebukuro Station, and she took me to a bento shop that had dine-in seating. The place was known for its use of organic ingredients; you picked three side dishes, and they brought them to your table with rice and miso soup and pickled vegetables. It tasted better than I’d expected, and it was pretty cheap. “This place is great. If there was one in Shinjuku, I’d go every day.” “I know, right? If you go to Nakano, they’ve got another location there, but it’s a little far to stop by on the way home from school.” “So what next?” “Right.” Rika looked at her watch. “Let’s kill another twenty minutes or so. Then we’ll go see a show.” “A show?” “Right. A play, to be specific. Do you see plays a lot?” “No… I’ve never gone to one of my own accord.” “When was the last time you saw one?” “Um…” I thought hard. “When I was in grade school, I took a trip to Osaka with my grandpa, and we went to see Shinkigeki. I think that was it.” “You have a grandpa?” Rika asked. “Lucky…” “Maybe. Why a play, though?” “I like small theaters. Amateur plays and things like that. I don’t have anybody who’ll go with me, though. If I take them once, they turn me down when I ask again. They never tell me why, but I guess they get bored.” “I see…” “It’s a theater group with about five members, run by a friend of mine. I like it a lot, but it’s kind of unique, and people either love it or hate it. You’re weird, Fujisawa, so you may actually end up liking it.” “I’m not weird, though,” I objected for no particular reason. “I’m as normal as they come. Nobody’s ever even told me I was weird before.” “Hmm, well, if you want to keep thinking that,” Rika said dismissively. “Anyway, let’s hang out a little longer.” I’d never been to a small theater before, and the place was indeed small. It was a rented space on the third floor of a mixed-use building, which it had apparently remodeled by force. Rika and I got there about ten minutes before the play would start. When we climbed the narrow staircase and stepped into the venue, the audience seating turned out to be rows of wooden crates, topped with thin seating cushions like the sort you’d buy at a hundred-yen shop. A packed house here would have been fifty people, and only half the seats were actually taken. The audience seemed to be mostly college students and people in the same line of business: individuals in casual clothes who were involved in theater themselves. The only ones in high school uniforms were Rika and me and two other girls. The only theaters I’d ever known were ones that had been built with real seating, like in a movie theater, and the idea that this cheap theater existed and actually attracted audiences struck me as pretty novel. Before long, a cheap-sounding buzzer went off twice, and the house lights abruptly dimmed and went out. We could hear the clattering of work being done onstage, and finally, the lights slowly came up. The set resembled a studio apartment with minimal furnishings. The sound effect of a steel door opening played, and a young woman appeared onstage. Wearily, she took off her coat, spoke to her cat, petted him, and fed him…except there was no cat onstage. But the story progressed as if there was a cat present. The woman was an office worker who lived by herself, and she was exhausted by the usual problems for women. She talked to the cat about this and that, and the conversation was used to develop a variety of background stories. The invisible cat had no lines, but he was kind to the woman, and he loved her. The woman acted in ways that showed this clearly. From time to time, he would run away to be with his feline girlfriend, or get into accidents so he couldn’t come home, and every time it happened, the woman would be upset. But the cat ultimately got her on her feet again, and she had a better outlook for the future. “That was a lot better than I thought it would be,” I said to Rika, after the play had ended and we were lined up in the modest crowd that was making for the exit. “It wasn’t too cramped for you?” “It was,” I told her honestly. “But the play itself was good. I liked the way the whole thing felt handmade. Like the props. You think the actors made everything themselves?” “Probably. None of them have money. I think they use stuff they already have.” “I like it.” “What about the story?” “The plot was a little hard to follow with all the time jumps, but it was good.” “They don’t have many actors, so they have to get creative. I heard that’s why it turned out like that.” When we left the building, the actors were outside, greeting the audience members. A bespectacled man who’d played a supporting character spotted Rika and called to her. When I asked her later, I found out he was the leader of the troupe. “Rika! Thanks for coming. How was it?” “He says it was really good,” she said, pointing at me, “and he’s picky.” “Hmm? He’s not the one who was with you last time. New boyfriend?” “No, it’s nothing like that. Well, maybe a little like that.” Rika’s tone made it clear that she was joking. “You look good together, though. More than the earlier guy,” the leader said. Then she and I started for the station. As we walked, I thought of something. “Have you actually been in a play before, maybe?” “Why?” “Dunno, just seemed like you had.” “Mm-hmm.” Rika nodded. “I was in an amateur theater group like that one from my third year of middle school until summer last year. I quit, though.” “Why?” “Stuff happened. The relationships between cast members can get intense—and that can make things complicated. Then the group broke up, and the members got absorbed into other little groups they were already on good terms with. Me, I was just tired. I had offers, but I didn’t go. I do show up at performances like this one today, though, because of my old connections.” “Hmm, I see,” I said. I didn’t understand all of it, but apparently plays made for deep relationships, which brought hardship with them. I could definitely sympathize with that. We reached Ikebukuro Station. Rika said she was tired, so she was going to take the subway to Higashi-Ikebukuro. “Okay,” I said, and when I started to head toward the Shinjuku-bound platform on the Yamanote Line, she grabbed my sleeve and told me to come see her off, at least to the ticket gate. I did, because I had to, and she used her card to get through the gate, then went up the stairs to the platform without so much as a backward glance. I think she’s the weird one here… She’d told me to come say good-bye, but then hadn’t looked back or waved once. I had no idea what was going on in her head. My own mood was decidedly so-so, and I boarded the train and headed back to my apartment in Nishi-Shinjuku. After that, I went on several dates with Rika Mizuno, just a couple a month. I never used the word date myself; Rika would invite me to go places by saying “Let’s go on a date.” Sometimes we just drank tea, and other times she’d take me around shopping with her from noon through the rest of the day. She was probably coming to me when her other friends couldn’t make it; did that mean she was constantly going around like this with all kinds of people, to all kinds of fun places? How did she have so much energy? When she asked me out, though, she always looked a little tired. Every so often, she’d go quiet all of a sudden, biting back a wave of fatigue as it worked its way up. She was probably buzzing around at random in an attempt to free herself from weariness. I liked that mindset, and I could sympathize. I kept her company as much as I could. “I wonder if he’ll get the wrong idea, though.” We were at a self-serve coffee stand when I asked her something that had been on my mind. “Who? About what?” “You know: ——.” I said the name of the classmate Rika was dating. “If we’re meeting on our days off like this.” “What? You want to talk about that?” “Not really. Can’t help wondering, though.” “Well, I mean, if he knew, he probably wouldn’t be happy,” Rika said nonchalantly. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks, though. We’ll just let him be.” “You’re sure?” “Yeah. I’ve decided to ignore him for a while.” I didn’t know how far it was okay to pry, so I just agreed noncommittally. Next, we chatted about this and that, but then she said, out of nowhere, “The thing is, he’s really into my body.” At first, it seemed like a complete non sequitur, but I finally realized she was talking about her boyfriend. “Well, of course he is,” I said. “You think?” “Yeah, that’s normal. You don’t think so?” “I see…… Well, you may be right.” She paused, then said, “But I don’t want that.” Taking great care not to project any implications, I ventured, “Do you mean you don’t like him all that much?” Rika suddenly straightened up and looked at me squarely. “Don’t say things like that.” I broke out in a cold sweat. “Sorry,” I muttered. “He seems like a good guy. That’s all I meant.” “I know that.” “Yeah.” “I do like him, you know. But those are two different things. You can understand that, Fujisawa. He doesn’t.” “Hmm.” As I grunted inwardly, I sympathized with both of them. Some things just don’t go the way you want. “I do understand the feeling, though…” “Whose feelings?” “His, of course.” “Huh? Seriously?” She was surprised in the most annoying way possible. “So you’ve got sex on the brain, too, huh?” “Wait, wait, what do you mean? What do you think I am?” “Ew, don’t. You can’t.” Rika leaned forward as she spoke. “Don’t get into that stuff, Fujisawa. Don’t let your mind go there. I don’t want you to get trapped. It’s fine. Just do your thing and space out.” “Now you’re talking crazy…” What on earth did she think I was? Not that it mattered what she thought of me, but… Maybe most guys would get mad or embarrassed in this situation, complain about not being treated like guys, but one thing I’ve got going for me is that I don’t sweat the little stuff. Casually, I looked at Rika’s slim fingers, which were wrapped around her glass of iced tea, and suddenly, I remembered Sayuri. The last day I’d seen her, at the abandoned station, when she’d started to fall and I’d grabbed her hand. Come to think of it, that had been about the only time I’d really touched Sayuri. I looked at my own hand. It had almost forgotten that sensation. Still, it had startled me—and thrilled me. I’d been surprised at myself, successfully grabbing her hand at the very last second, and also at the thinness of her wrist, the coolness of her temperature, the softness. The feat had been nothing short of a miracle, if I did say so myself. Straight out of a Hollywood movie. I was sure I’d never be able to do it again. No… That was wrong. Back then, in the summer of my third year of middle school, I’m sure I could have done that as often as I had to. Or at least I would have believed so. I’d been bursting with strength then, and I wondered where it had gone. Right… I’d probably given it all to Sayuri on that summer day. Was I trapped by the memory of when I’d tried to keep Sayuri here with all my might? Did I want to treasure it? That was a dumb idea. Sayuri was gone, and I had no reason to hope I’d ever see her again. Still, it was a while before I could look away from my palm. It was smooth and soft and uncalloused. 4 The vestiges of summer evaporated without a trace, and autumn came. On that day, Rika was more restless than usual, and she looked depressed. She didn’t appreciate it when others caught the finer points of her moods, so at first I pretended not to notice. However, as she drummed her fingers on the table and looked around for no reason, it did start to make me curious. “What’s the matter?” We were in Ikebukuro at the time; we’d gone a little farther afield on our way home from school. I stopped in the middle of the street to ask, keeping my tone as gentle as I could. “Mm.” She gave a nod that wasn’t really an answer and left the question unaddressed. Guess she didn’t want to tell me. Well, whatever. Everybody had things like that. However, before long, she started sighing frequently. It was less like an expression of melancholy and more like how she needed to breathe, almost like panting. Like she was desperately trying to put something to rest inside her. Her color wasn’t good, either. I leaned in to take a closer look at her. “You’re not feeling well, are you?” She nodded wordlessly. “You should go home. I’ll take you back to your place.” “No.” She shook her head slightly. “There’s nobody at my house. I don’t want to be alone today.” “Something happen?” She gave a small nod. I think it was just because she didn’t have the energy to deny it, not because she’d decided to be open with me. At my urging, she leaned against the brick wall of a nearby pizza restaurant. I leaned against the same wall, waiting for her to calm down. “My friend.” “Hmm?” “I had…this friend.” Slowly, in a little voice, Rika began to talk. I realized it might be easier for her if I didn’t make her do all the talking. “A girl?” “Yes.” “Someone I know?” “Probably not.” “Okay.” “Basically, we had a fight. Well, we fought a lot, but we’d never had one this big before. We haven’t talked to each other for the past several months. Even if we run into each other at school, we don’t speak. Because, I mean, just seeing her makes me mad.” “What was the fight about?” “…I don’t want to say.” She scuffed the sole of her shoe against the tiled pavement. “It’s not my fault. There is literally no way to spin it where it’s not her fault. Just remembering what happened pisses me off. I’m constantly angry about it. I’m never forgiving her until she admits it.” At that point, she stopped talking. But it doesn’t always matter who was right; it hurt you a lot, and sometimes the sadness is too much. I considered prompting her to go on but decided against it. “Sounds like you’d been friends for a long time.” “Yeah,” she said, although her voice was no more than a breath. “We met when we started middle school, so it’s been four or five years.” It took a little effort for me to avoid recalling my own time in middle school. When I spoke, though, my words were completely heartfelt. “…That really sucks.” “It’s the Netherlands.” The conversation derailed again. “The country with all the tulips and windmills and things. It’s ridiculous.” “What?” “She’s going there. On a plane. Because of a ‘family situation,’” she said mechanically, keeping each phrase separate. “When?” “Well, today, like I said.” “Are you going to go say good-bye?” “No. Obviously. I don’t want to go. I’ll just be all like ‘What’s with her?’ again… I mean, I have been thinking about it and all. I don’t have her contact information over there. I think relationships tend to be like that, though. And that’s that. But I’m all mad and antsy, so I wanted to be with somebody who’d help take my mind off it. Just stay with me until night comes, Fujisawa. All right?” As I listened to her lengthy explanation, I was getting more and more upset myself. Liquid anger worked its way up until I could feel it reaching my head. I’m impressed I managed to hold it in until she was done speaking. The moment she finished, I shouted. “You idiot! What are you doing?!” Rika flinched and shrank back. “What time is the flight?” “I don’t know…” “Yes, you do!” “Um, it was seven or something, I’m pretty sure, but… Hey!” I’d grabbed her wrist and started walking, pulling her with me. As I walked, I unfolded the metropolitan railway map in my head. During my first month in Tokyo, I’d studied that map and pounded the transfers into my head until I was used to the city. From Ikebukuro, we’d take the Yamanote Line to Nippori, transfer to the Keisei Main Line, then spend an hour on an express train. We could get there in ninety minutes. We’d make it in plenty of time. And I was pissed. “That hurts, okay? Hey! Where are we going?!” “To Narita, where else?!” “No! I’m not going.” “I’m not letting you run away.” My voice was low and sort of strangled and scary, even to me. I didn’t let go. I couldn’t let her get away here. I marched toward the station, dragging her with me. When we were just a few steps inside Ikebukuro Station— “Hold on a minute—I mean it! I’m not going to run; just let go of my hand.” She sounded serious, so I finally released her. “Let’s talk about this, all right? You’re mad. Why?” “Yes, I’m mad. Very,” I said. “I can’t let you do this.” “Do what?” “This is an important time, and you’re leaving this huge thing unresolved.” “Look, I’m confused,” she said. “I mean, it’s just going to say good-bye. She’s not going to be overseas forever, either. I know her address and phone number here. You’re blowing this way out of proportion.” “No, I’m not. You don’t get it,” I snapped. “This could be the last time you ever see her. What you don’t understand is that this happens. Some little accident could make you forget how to contact her. Class directories and address books can go missing. Memories fade. That’s all it takes to lose track of somebody forever. If you don’t go today, I promise you’ll regret it. Today may turn out to be a crossroads for you. If you decide you want to see her later, you may never get another chance. This is no time to nitpick about dumb stuff that doesn’t actually matter.” “It’s not dumb…” “Fine. It’s not dumb. But now isn’t the time to be nitpicky about it.” I was as obstinate as an iron wall. “…Let me think for a little.” “Sure. Take your time and think. On the train.” I could see the tension on her face when she realized I wasn’t budging. “I’ll go buy our tickets.” She had a prepaid card, but making her take a ticket would settle the issue faster. I bought two, and when I went back, she was still there. I handed her a ticket and nudged her forward, and she drifted listlessly through the ticket gate. I hadn’t really persuaded her; I think she was tired of fighting. We boarded the Yamanote Line and got off at Nippori. When we transferred to the Keisei Main Line, we finally got to sit down. We were silent on the train. She put her hands on her knees, balling them into fists and then relaxing them The express pulled into Narita Airport and stopped. “We’re here.” She was still in her seat. “Right.” I’d started to get up, but then I sat back down again. “Want to think about it a little more together?” “No, it’s fine. I’ll go.” Her voice was barely even a whisper. She had already been feeling bad; had I been too harsh? The idea began to worry me. Slowly, she stood up. She seemed tremendously unsteady, so without any ulterior motive, I took her hand. I felt her fingers softly squeeze mine back. Holding hands, we walked toward the lobby. She didn’t know the exact flight number or time, so I asked at a nearby counter, then confirmed the gate. I also asked an employee about how to have someone paged. Then I took Rika over to an airport floor map. Pointing at the map, I told her that they’d probably go from this meeting spot to that counter, so she should check that area; if she really couldn’t find them, she should use this excuse and ask to have them paged. She nodded meekly. “All right, go for it. You can do it.” If I stayed with her any longer, I’d probably just get in the way. I waved, then turned on my heel. “No. Wait.” She caught the back of my shirt, and I stopped. “What’s wrong?” “Please wait here.” “But…” “Just wait.” With that, she went off without waiting for me to respond. I leaned against the wall and waited for her to come back. The hall looked like it might be bigger than the athletic field at school, and it was filled with crowds of people coming and going, wheeling suitcases. I closed my eyes and shut all the noise out of my mind. Rika Mizuno is lucky, I thought. I was jealous. The ability to connect with someone you trust is a truly fortunate thing. You’d think it’s normal to have someone you can call and talk to whenever you want, but it was hard to come by. I thought of Sayuri, and my chest ached. I didn’t have a single way to connect with her. Had Rika managed to meet up with her friend? I hadn’t heard the page, so she probably had. I was as happy as if I was the one who’d gotten this chance. I should probably call Takuya Shirakawa right this minute. I knew that. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to. When it was about me, I was completely hopeless. I was in no position to talk down to Rika about these things. I don’t know how much time went by. When I looked up, Rika was standing there. She’d been crying, and she looked awful. Her eyes were bright red. Rubbing at her eyes and under her nose, she thanked me over and over, like a child. “Thank you…thank you…” I touched her thin shoulders—and then realized I wouldn’t be able to abdicate the responsibility I’d just taken for her. On the train on the way home, Rika rested her head on my shoulder, exhausted. “You know, Fujisawa, I thought you were a much colder person.” “Yeah?” “Uh-huh. You’re friendly to everybody, but I got the feeling you didn’t really care what happened to anybody at all. I thought you weren’t interested in people. That they didn’t matter to you, and that’s why you were able to get along with everybody. You were just too good at it for others to pick up on what you were doing.” “You might be right about that.” “No, I wasn’t.” The weight on my shoulder rose slightly, shook from side to side, then came back down. It felt less like she was leaning against me and more like she was pushing her head into me. “You see, I do have a dad and mom, but…” And she began to talk about herself. The way she referred to her parents as if they only technically existed was telling. “I mean, it’s not uncommon, but they’re busy with work, and they’ve got their hands full with their own problems. That’s probably not why, exactly, but they’re not all that interested in me. They never have been. I’m used to it; they’ve been like that since I was little. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, though.” “Yeah.” I agreed without nodding, so that I wouldn’t jostle her. “And it’s not really because of that, I guess,” she said, “but I have a hard time believing in friendships, and connections, and trust. That’s how I am.” “Uh-huh.” “When I was younger, I hated it when they shuffled classes. As soon as they were in a different class, people I used to get along with would avoid me and drift away. It happened several times, and I always took it really hard. It hurt. And it seemed to hurt me so much more than them.” I just kept on agreeing with her. “I always wondered why they were immune to it. And then I figured it out—they didn’t really let anything affect them. That was the key. The idea came as a surprise, but I was so sure it was the right move. If you don’t want life to hurt too much, you can’t afford to get too involved with anyone. It’s important to just let things flow past you. And that realization made everything so much easier. I was finally a real member of the group. That’s what made me notice you, Fujisawa. I thought ‘There’s a guy who’s doing what I do, only really, really well,’ and I assumed you were doing it as consciously as I was. That’s what made me want to talk to you. I thought I could keep it super easy and casual with you. What do you think?” “That’s a really interesting mindset.” “I was wrong, though. You really believe in connections. I wasn’t ready for that.” “Do I really?” “The girl I went to today was the only exception. She was the one person I’d actually let myself get attached to and vice versa. We’d been in the same class all the way through middle school, until last year. She meant a lot to me. But our relationship got all messed up, and then she was going to be moving overseas, and I gave up. I thought, ‘Oh well, that’s just how things are. We just happened to be together for so long that I made assumptions.’ I was this close to just letting her go.” She started crying softly again. I held very still, listening to her. Through me, Rika was trying to resettle herself in the place where she really should be. She probably needed me. She was looking to me for help. Just the way Sayuri had tried to tell the two of us something, long ago. Did I have the strength now, though? She had me pinned. Right now, I was just letting life wash over me, riding everything out. The power bubbling inside me during the last hot summer of middle school was nowhere to be found now. I had failed to fly the Velaciela. Back then, Takuya and I had the power to take to the skies, but it was gone. It had gone with Sayuri. I didn’t even have the strength to save myself now. But practically speaking, I’d already gotten too deeply involved with Rika to turn back. I owed it to her to be responsible. Apparently, I’d managed to point her in the right direction today. At least I could manage that. In that case, I’d just have to start from there. I put a hand on her hair. It was faintly warm from the heat of her body. She closed her eyes and rested more of her weight on me. I chased away the image of that dream—of Sayuri sobbing in the forest of towers in an alien place. I tried to, anyway. 5 The enormous forest of towers rose like stalagmites made of a material like unglazed pottery. Sayuri was there, on the very top of one of them. There was no one around but her. She was all alone. Aside from her, the only sound was the wind. She was standing forlornly on the edge of the tower. Above her was a faded sky. Below her was more sky of that same color. The towers stretched on forever. The farther away they got, the thinner they became, until finally they disappeared into a haze. Most likely, they continued on forever. She crouched down, hugging her knees. All she could hear was the wind. She was unbearably discouraged and lonely. “Somebody…” Her voice was barely audible. “I’m lonely… I don’t want to be… I don’t want to be alone… Somebody, anybody…” The wind nearly drowned out her faint cries. “Somebody stay with me.” There was no one to listen to her request. “Hiroki, Takaya, I’m so alone. There’s nobody here. Why am I here?” Sayuri kept talking to herself. “I don’t want to be here. I feel like I’ve always been here, but I’m not sure why. Please…” Sayuri spoke as though she was writing a letter to a friend, a letter she had no way to send. “Please help me…” In my dream, I listened to her. A letter arrived from Mr. Okabe. One night, when I got back to the dorm and opened my mailbox, there was a crisp white envelope inside. After I went into my room and put down my stuff, I opened the envelope and read it, but to be honest, I didn’t want to. He’d written about what had been happening lately back at home. Tensions between the US-Japan alliance and the Union had risen sharply over the past few years, and Emishi Manufacturing had gotten really busy. He grumbled that they were shorthanded, since Takuya had stopped working there part-time. Takuya had apparently thrown himself into his studies. He was the type who could handle schoolwork without actually caring about it, so he was doing some sort of independent study, not regular high school stuff. The letter said I’d be allowed to help out with all the work I wanted, so come back anytime. He didn’t mention either Sayuri or the Velaciela, which was a huge relief. He said to send a reply. I didn’t feel like it. I let the hand with the letter fall limply. I drew a deep breath. It had taken quite a lot of effort to read through two sheets of stationary. Every time my mind turned toward my hometown, my body started feeling heavy, and my mood soured. I didn’t want anyone to make me think about it. It hurt to remember what I’d lost. That letter had been written to a different version of me, a strong boy who feared nothing. More than anything, I wanted them to spare me that. The light and power I’d had within me years ago were long gone. The place that had held them was packed with a weight far too heavy for its size. I leaned against the wall and slid down it, into a crouch. I started wanting to let the tears well. I wanted to cry. Get it all out of my system. No tears came, though. The lead weights stayed inside me. I was reexperiencing what a heavy blow Sayuri’s loss had dealt me. I’d failed to fly that plane to that tower. It was pathetic. I knew just how much that had hurt me. All the things I’d tried to bury were shaken awake by Mr. Okabe’s letter. Once again, I was reminded with certainty that I’d never be able to go back there. I couldn’t live looking up at my torn dreams and the remnants of former possibilities. I threw the letter to the ground, left my apartment, and locked the door. I wanted to keep the letter locked away in there. I wandered aimlessly through the dark, old residential streets. Wood-framed plaster apartment buildings stood in rows, ready for a decent earthquake to flatten them. The houses were mostly finished with darkened plaster as well. Every so often, the light from vending machines illuminated the street. When I peeked into alleys, I’d see abandoned, decaying street stalls. Being out in the cool night air helped me relax a little. I caught the smell of dirt, and I glanced that way. A chain-link construction fence had been put up along the road to keep people out. A backhoe was parked behind it, and the earth had been dug up just a little. When I looked beyond the construction site, the futuristic high-rises of Nishi-Shinjuku glittered and shone far in the distance. There were lights in almost every window, and their outer walls, which had mirror finishes or were coated with expensive tiles, were lit up from below. Who was inside those and what were they doing? I couldn’t imagine it. It didn’t seem real at all. Were all those high-rises truly part of this world? It looked like a mirage of an inhuman city from some other world. That’s not real. Can’t be. It felt as counterfeit as a hologram projected on the sky. I gazed at those inorganic, soaring towers for a while, squinting and scowling. I only exist here. How can I become a part of that view? I stayed like that until my neck got tired. When I looked away, the vision of the group of stalagmite towers I’d seen in my dream of Sayuri was superimposed on the buildings. It was just a fleeting illusion, but it affected me far more than I thought. Oh. It’s real. 6 Over about a month or two, Rika broke up with her boyfriend. I wouldn’t have minded the fact that she was dating someone else, but she said she wanted to do this right. “I decided I’m going to be purposeful with my relationships.” “Wow, sounds like you’ve got it together now.” “Doesn’t it?” She gave an offbeat answer, then laughed. “Still, I couldn’t tell you how things turned out like this. I didn’t take you seriously at first, Fujisawa. Like, at all.” “You didn’t?” “Nope. That’s why I thought I could just randomly drag you places when it was convenient. It’s so weird. Maybe you’re just a very special kind of person.” “What do you mean, ‘special’? I don’t have any redeeming features. It’s a real headache.” “You’re playing dumb again.” Rika gave a closed-lipped and vaguely reproachful smile. “I notice these things. You know you’re extraordinary, and so do I. I think about myself that way, so I know.” I said nothing. Qualitatively, the way Rika and I spent time together didn’t change all that much. We’d have lunch together once in a while, and we’d started spending the time after school let out with each other, but that was about it. One day, the first clear one after several straight days of rain, Rika asked me to slip out of school with her at lunch, and we went to eat at a diner on the second floor of a nearby building. She ordered gratin, and I asked for a chicken-and-veggie rice porridge set meal. Everything I ate came from convenience stores, and I was sick of pasta and fried foods, so when I ate out, I ended up ordering things a boy my age doesn’t normally. “You’re like an old man,” she said, laughing. “Well, what do you usually eat, since you live on your own?” “In the morning, I have coffee. Bread for lunch. For dinner, I go to the convenience store.” “Wow, those are classic terrible eating habits. You’re going to wreck your health.” “Yeah.” “Don’t just agree with me.” “I do take a multivitamin, technically. Besides, I’m just not that interested in eating.” “That’s definitely weird. How can you not be interested in eating?” Rika looked at me uncertainly, as if she was unsure whether to say what was on her mind. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Oh, I was just thinking how great I’d look if I could tell you I’d start making lunches for you.” I laughed. “It’s fine—you don’t have to do that.” “I know. I won’t. You hate gushy stuff like that, don’t you?” “Yeah, well. I wouldn’t know what to say when you gave one to me.” “I am so not a morning person. Even if I change my mind, seriously, don’t get your hopes up.” “It’s okay—I won’t.” “But I also wish you would, just a little.” Again, I didn’t know how to react to that. She thought for several moments, then went on. “Okay, so I’ve been making all my own meals for a while now. That means I’m pretty good at cooking, even if I may not look like it. You should keep that in mind. Technically.” “I never said I doubted you.” I remembered the family issues she’d told me about earlier. “So if you have any requests, I can go over and cook you something. How about it? And this is a serious question.” “Huh…?” That had come up with bewildering abruptness. After giving it some thought, I told her, “No, don’t worry about it. I’d feel bad.” Come to think of it, I’d never had any friends over to my apartment. “The place is really dirty. I’d be embarrassed.” “I wouldn’t care.” “It’s probably way worse than you’re imagining.” I told her about my dorm, exaggerating how run-down and gloomy and damp it was. Rika laughed out loud. “Now I’m intrigued. What do you usually do at home?” “Nothing really. I do my homework, prep for lessons or review, and listen to music or read books… Sometimes I play the violin.” “The violin? You play?” Apparently, that was a surprise. “Well, a little.” “Huh? Why?” “What do you mean, ‘why’? I can play because I’ve been practicing, but…” “I wanna hear!” Rika leaned over the table, pushing her face closer to me. “No, no way.” I shook my head emphatically. “I’m lousy at it.” “That’s fine—I don’t care if you’re good or bad. Let’s go to the music room right now.” “Nooo, c’mon, give me a break here. Really! Anything but that.” “Awww. That’s no fun.” Feeling a sense of déjà vu, I discovered I didn’t intend to let anyone else hear me play the violin. Being with Rika was fun, and I was able to relax when I was around her. And yet for some reason, I didn’t want to let her see me holding an instrument. It was bizarre, wrong somehow, and yet… And the seasons changed. Winter came, then spring, and I started my third year of high school. When they shuffled our classes, Rika and I got separated, but it didn’t change our relationship much. We took the same supplementary lectures as often as possible, and we sat next to each other. We never talked it out, exactly, but we had a system of alternately picking each other up at our separate classrooms and then walking home together. What had changed was that I’d started to dream about Sayuri frequently, once every few days. The peculiar space she was in, the one that looked like a faded photograph, felt very familiar to me, although I didn’t know why. Conversely, the waking world felt less and less real. The colors of the sky and the roadside trees and the townscapes looked like painted pictures. Every time I peered at the view, I just felt alone. When I was with Rika, I was able to forget the unease for a few moments, but the mismatch between myself and reality was still there inside me. Every so often, I’d go out at night and head over to a nearby station. I’d go down the stairs and stand in front of the ticket gate at Nishi-Shinjuku Station, on the Marunouchi Line, or Shinjuku-Nishiguchi Station, on the Ooedo Line, and stay there for an hour or so, acting like I was waiting for someone. If I mingled with strangers that way, maybe I could blend into the surrounding scenery. It didn’t happen. I was as out of place as ever, but with sore feet now. Just because I was waiting there, that didn’t mean anyone would show up. Of course they wouldn’t. This wasn’t like the local train, where if I waited patiently at the station on the way home from school, I was bound to run into someone I knew. Everyone going through the ticket gates, in or out, looked the same to me. Anonymous currents flowing past. It looked like a crowd scene in a low-budget movie, nothing like reality at all. Partly unconsciously, I began wanting to pick out a specific person I knew from the sea. I wanted to go greet them. But I couldn’t visualize the specific face I should be looking for. The people continued on their way, toward the trains or out of the station, and I stayed immobile. I wanted to become a faceless, anonymous person. I wanted to be part of the colony. I wanted to become ghostlike. But, of course, I couldn’t. I didn’t belong in this city. 7 I’ll stop here for a moment to talk just a little about something that happened long after everything was over. It’s about a letter. I started grad school after graduating from university, and this happened the year I finished, so I was twenty-six. That spring, I got a letter from Takuya. To be accurate, it wasn’t exactly a letter. It was a small parcel. There were no seasonal greetings or postscripts to rekindle old friendships, or anything of the sort. He hadn’t even written a residential address or contact information. It was the first I’d heard from him in eight years; he’d been gone for all of them. He hadn’t written his address because he didn’t intend to tell me what it was. Takuya Shirakawa would never accidentally forget to write one. The parcel held a daily journal. That was when I first found out he’d been keeping it. The one he’d sent me held the three years of his time in high school, no more and no less. I read it, and it detailed the events and thoughts and feelings during those three years we’d been apart. I understood exactly why he’d sent me that journal. He was telling me not to forget—about himself, about Sayuri, about that extraordinary summer in our third year of middle school, and about the subsequent three-year ice age. About everything that had given decisive direction to Takuya and me during those few brief years. About the extraordinary people we’d once been. Don’t erase those from your memory. Don’t let time wash them away. Don’t pretend they never existed, he was warning me. Of course, I have no intention of forgetting. Sayuri once quietly told us she didn’t want to be forgotten, and I still remember. That’s why I’m writing these words. 8 That day, it had been drizzling since morning. Inside the military college, temperature and humidity were both perfectly controlled, but Takuya could feel something like the suggestion of rain seeping in through the concrete. In his third year of high school, Takuya Shirakawa frequented the US Army College in Aomori City as an external researcher. He was affiliated with the Wartime Special Strategic Information Processing Laboratory, commonly known as the Tomisawa Lab. They’d scouted him during spring of that year. The previous year, Takuya had entered several essay contests in academic quantum physics journals, and won. Apparently, that had gotten their attention. He didn’t learn until much later that Okabe had covertly recommended him through his connections. The offer had come with the bonuses of an enrollment recommendation and tuition exemption, so Takuya had jumped at it without thinking twice. Then, aside from taking the minimum number of credits, he’d stopped going to high school. He’d seen almost no value in his classes or student life there. Once he joined the lab, he began attending seminars with grad students. He had to write papers frequently, and when large-scale experiments were conducted, he assisted as part of the staff. Practically speaking, he didn’t have the time to spare for high school classes. At the Tomisawa Lab, he used computers to analyze quantum physics; it required sophisticated programming skills, but that was his specialty. For the first time in his life, he was learning somewhere that didn’t bore him. They were conducting a large-scale experiment that day, and the preparations had had them running all over since morning. The laboratory building, constructed just two years ago, was a concrete structure with no windows at all, and the experiment was being conducted on its eighth floor. Takuya was seated in front of a console along with two grad students, and each of them was facing an LCD monitor and keyboard. Takuya had brought in his own keyboard and hooked it up; he got stressed when he couldn’t keep up his usual speed on the lab’s. Behind the monitors was a glass wall, and beyond it was the core of the laboratory. The space was a little over three hundred square feet in area, and it was completely airtight. In its center was a pillar so thick that three adults holding hands might have been able to form a circle around it. The pillar’s shape was quite complicated; from its design, it could have passed for a modern art sculpture. In actuality, it was an antenna used to pick up parallel worlds. There was another glass wall behind Takuya. On the other side of glass, one tier higher, were the central monitoring seats, occupied by Professor Tomisawa and his assistant, Arisaka. Behind them, a uniformed US Army officer and a man in a suit had come to observe. “Don’t let our guests bother you. Carry on as usual,” Tomisawa said through a speaker to Takuya and the others. “First phase finished. Let’s move on.” “Yes, sir,” Takuya and the grad students responded. They all began typing at once. “Next: filtration stage. Beginning second phase,” Takuya said into the mic. “Directivity resolution increased by twenty-five percent from previous attempt,” added one of the graduate students. Tomisawa seemed satisfied. “Very nice. Let’s see if we make it this time. Choose those algorithms carefully.” Arisaka was checking Takuya’s work from over his shoulder. “Shirakawa, what is that algorithm?” “I revised the group sampling filtering, based on a paper by Ekusun Tsukinoe…” “What…?” “The sampling efficiency should be improved.” “Well done, Shirakawa,” Tomisawa praised him heartily. The uniformed soldier asked a question in English. “Who’s Ekusun Tsukinoe?” Tomisawa answered, also in English. “The Union researcher who first proved the existence of parallel worlds. He’s said to have been the designer of the Ezo tower.” “And that spiral”—the uniformed man indicated to the laboratory antenna—“is a model of the tower?” “Exactly. We’re about to replace a few square inches of space around that pillar with space from a different universe.” An alarm sounded. Everyone tensed. “Got it!” Takuya cried. They all stared at the monitor. “Exposure response confirmed in directions XA, YC, and ZC. Five…no, six branch universes present.” Six curved lines squirmed on the graph on the monitor. “Six, hmm? You’ve found quite a few.” Tomisawa clasped his fingers together. “Begin synchronization stage. Come on, connect for us…” Arisaka responded, issuing orders. “Beginning third phase. You three, each of you approach the closest parallel universe and attempt connection.” Takuya and the two grad students typed away, connecting the system to the branch universes they’d discovered in a frantic clacking of keys. The grad student who was sitting on Takuya’s right looked at his hands and murmured, “Dang, he’s fast…” “Shirakawa is the closest,” Arisaka muttered. “Twelve exas left to potential connection territory. Eleven, ten, nine-point-four, nine-point-two…” The alarm sounded again. The uniformed man leaned forward. “Connection established!” Takuya was speaking rapidly now. “Successful connection to one of the neighboring branch universes. Exposure response is also stable.” Tomisawa, who’d stood up without thinking, sat back down. “Good, shift straight into the conversion stage.” Then he turned to the uniformed man and explained. “Now we’ll switch space with the branch universe.” “Fourth phase. Begin spatial replacement with the parallel world,” Arisaka ordered. One curving line was displayed on a red graph. The alarm changed pitch. “Spatial phase replacement with a radius of sixty nanos confirmed. Expanding rapidly. It will be visible to the naked eye shortly.” One of the monitors cut to a camera feed. In its center was a blurred, dark area. “That one spot is composed of matter from a different universe,” Tomisawa explained, in English. “Can the Ezo tower do the same thing?” “That’s right. The principle is exactly the same. However, the scale is much larger over there and far more precise. We only succeed once every few tries, and we’re just barely able to replace an area the size of a grain of sand.” Takuya and the grad students continued inputting their complex commands without pause. Then Takuya’s hands stopped. “Outta luck…,” he murmured. “It’s no good. Exposure response attenuating. We can’t hold the connection with the parallel world any longer,” Arisaka reported anxiously. The oscillations of the curved line on the graph weakened. Before long, a buzzer sounded, and the word Disconnected was displayed on every monitor in red letters. The black spot in the camera feed had also vanished. Takuya sighed, letting his tension drain away. He leaned back in his chair. At almost the same time, in the monitor room behind him, Tomisawa sighed, too. However, his sigh was a satisfied one. “Wave function converging. The branch universes have been lost completely. Phase replacement of space with a radius of one-point-three millimeters was successful for one minute and eighteen seconds,” Arisaka reported dispassionately into the silence. “Maki.” When Takuya got his materials together and left the laboratory, Maki Kasahara was standing there, talking with Tomisawa. Maki was a doctoral program researcher who was acting as Takuya’s tutor. She specialized in brain science. Since they specialized in different fields, Takuya hadn’t received any direct instruction from her, but he was supposed to report facility usage and progress on submissions to her in detail. After smiling at Takuya and telling him “Good work,” Maki turned back to Tomisawa. “Professor, may I take Shirakawa along?” “Sure, he’s free now. You two are always together, aren’t you?” “You were the one who told me to stick with him for the year, Professor.” “Was I…? I’ll be in Tokyo on business starting tomorrow, so thanks in advance for your help.” “For the research findings report, right?” “That, too, but it sounds as though they’ve found the key we were discussing. You and the rest of the brain science team may be about to get extra busy…” Takuya didn’t know what they were talking about, so he listened quietly. Takuya and Maki walked side by side down a corridor with a glossy floor and walls. Maki always walked relatively quickly. Takuya usually took the habit to mean someone was confident. Many researchers were like that, and so was he. The laboratory building was large, which made speed especially helpful. They passed a pair of men, one in a military uniform and the other in a suit. They were the ones who’d observed the experiment earlier. “Military personnel have been coming by quite a lot lately,” Maki said. “The one in the suit is probably NSA,” Takuya told her. “NSA?” “The National Security Agency.” “Is that like the Public Safety Commission?” “More like military spies.” “Hmm.” Maki didn’t seem to have much to say about that. “There have been a lot of rumors about covert terrorist activity lately, I suppose.” Takuya looked down. Year by year, he’d grown worse at hiding it when he was troubled. Fortunately, she didn’t notice. They stood in front of the elevator, watching the floor numbers count up. “Did today’s experiment go well?” “We got some data, but there’s still a long way to go. We just barely managed a replacement big enough to be seen with the naked eye. It’s nowhere near the Union’s tower.” “That was inevitable. They learned the basic physics first, and they have a huge lead on us. That aerial photo of Ezo… I saw it, too.” Takuya remembered the shudder he’d felt the first time he’d seen that photo. The image had been shot and transmitted by a US military recon drone, and it showed a view of the Union’s tower from the sky. It wasn’t the tower itself that was abnormal, but its surroundings. A discolored, pitch-black area spread out from the tower in a concentric circle. It looked as if the ground had been painted black, but that wasn’t it. There was nothing there—or perhaps what was there was a void in the truest sense of the word. Takuya thought a black hole might look something like it—a dark abyss that constantly sucked in light. The feel of it bore a striking resemblance to the black stain they’d created in the laboratory. An inversion of the world. Around the tower, the world had been turned inside out. The space that belonged there had vanished, and another world had encroached on this one. A chime pinged, and the elevator doors opened. “What I don’t understand is why the phase conversion is stopped at a radius of two kilometers around the tower,” Takuya commented, watching the floor numbers as they ticked down. It was a habit of his. He’d catch himself staring at the remaining time on his computer counter or at defrag screens. “The US military thinks the tower is a powerful weapon that inverts space. If it was made with offense in mind, though, it’s pretty worthless right now. They just randomly put a hole in their own country.” “I wonder if there was an accident that made it stop functioning. Maybe it’s an experimental facility for that and nothing else.” “Either that or the phase conversion itself is a side effect that ran out of control. Professor Tomisawa says he suspects there’s some external factor that’s keeping the tower in check.” When they left the laboratory building, rain was falling through the gloom. Takuya had left his umbrella in his locker in the lecture building. Maki had a collapsible umbrella, so they shared it, walking through the college’s outer gardens together. “Say, Shirakawa? What are you doing tomorrow? You don’t have school, do you?” The next day was a Saturday. “There’s something I’d like to look into, so…” As Takuya spoke, he was conscious of Maki’s shoulder touching his own. “The library?” “No, a factory. I know a guy there.” “A factory?” Maki said that as long as she wouldn’t be in the way, she wanted to come with. Takuya tried to tell her it was a long drive and there was nothing out there, but Maki wouldn’t be dissuaded. He’d left his cell phone in the grad students’ room, so he asked Maki to wait, went into a telephone booth, and dialed a familiar number. “They want to see it? Look, kid, we don’t do company tours here.” Okabe sounded cross on the other end of the line, but when Takuya told him a little about Maki, his attitude did a one-eighty. “What?! A girl? How old is she?” “I don’t know. But, I mean, she’s pretty. I think…” Maki was idly looking away on the other side of the glass. Her profile was at least twice as lovely as the average face. “Oh-ho. Okay then, we’ll be waiting,” Okabe cheerfully agreed. The next day, Takuya and Maki drove to Ookawadai. Takuya was the one driving the dark-colored sedan. As soon as he’d turned eighteen, he’d begun attending a driving school and had gotten his license. He picked up Maki in Aomori City, then sped up Route 280 along the coast, reaching Emishi Manufacturing in an hour and a half. The weather was fine. Black kites called, and a formation of loud US fighter jets was etching contrails across the sky. They stopped the car beside the big tree in the courtyard. When they got out, the steel towers installed on the factory lot attracted Maki’s attention. “Wow… Those antennas are incredible.” “A few of ’em are just a bit illegal, though,” Okabe explained, hands stuck in the pockets of his slacks and a cigarette between his teeth. Takuya knew that most of them were illegal, not just a few, but he kept quiet. “They let us listen to some interesting places.” “How about that. Is it a hobby? Or for work?” “Well, about half and half.” Maki Kasahara was beautiful, just as he’d been told, and Okabe looked satisfied. The semi-stray cat that had taken up residence at the factory put in an appearance, and Takuya went over to give it a scratch behind the ears. With all the shutters in one wall open, Emishi Manufacturing looked like an immense garage. The autumn breeze blew into the plant. The factory wasn’t operating today, and the only other employee there was Satou. Maki had brought some cake as a present, so Takuya went to the kitchenette and made tea. An aluminum table had been placed under the eaves, and the four of them sat down. “So, Miss Maki, your specialty is brain research?” Okabe asked. “Yes. I work with memories, sleep, and dreams.” “But you’re at the same lab as Takuya, right?” said Satou. “Takuya, weren’t you researching the tower?” “Yes. I’m focusing on the tower…” He thought for a minute. “Our fundamental objectives are the same, though. I’m not sure how to put it. For both of us, the research involves parallel worlds.” “Parallel worlds?” Satou echoed. Maki dug her fork into a piece of cake. “The universe dreams, you see, just like people dream at night.” “It does…?” said Satou. “Or maybe it’s easier to picture if I say ‘the world,’” Maki went on smoothly. “The world’s dreams hold various possibilities, all sorts of different ways history might have gone. We call them parallel worlds, or branch universes.” “That sounds like sci-fi,” Satou said. “I read about something like that in a book, ages back. Parallel worlds…” “Do in fact exist,” Maki said. “We’ve learned as much over the past fifty years or so.” “Are you serious?” Okabe asked. “Yes. This is a well-known example, but…” Maki mimed flipping a coin with her thumb. “You know the game where you flip a coin and guess which will come up, heads or tails? Before you flip it, the possibility of tails is equal to the possibility of heads. Then you actually flip it, and it turns out to be heads. Before you flipped it, there was a fifty percent possibility that it would be tails. Where did that go?” Both Okabe and Satou listened attentively. “Wasn’t it always one hundred percent heads, and people just didn’t know?” Satou asked. “Wave function collapse,” Maki said. “Yes, for a long time, that’s how we thought about it. However, that fifty percent really is fifty percent. It isn’t that one possibility was one hundred percent from the beginning. The way we think about it now is that when you flipped the coin, the world split into two worlds, one where heads came up and another where tails came up. In other words, even now, at this very moment, the world is moving through a kind of reverse tournament bracket, splitting more times than you can count.” “Huh…” “That’s the basic background, anyway. My research is investigating the influence these parallel worlds have on human brains and dreams.” At that point, the conversation returned to the original topic. “The theory that the Union’s tower is observing parallel worlds is a persuasive one. Shirakawa is working from that angle, the technological approach. My approach is from the angle of brain science. Have the brains of living creatures been unconsciously intercepting information from parallel worlds since antiquity? Could the source of human premonitions and precognition be information from branch universes traveling through brains? …Those are the kinds of questions I’m investigating. It does sound rather occult, though, doesn’t it?” “No, no, not at all.” Okabe shook his pack of cigarettes and put one between his lips, speaking in an exaggerated way. “You mean people are seeing the dreams of the universe. Damn, ain’t that romantic?” “‘Romantic’?” Takuya and Satou muttered in unison. Few men who used that word were as bad a match for it as Okabe. “…You got somethin’ to say?” “No.” “Not really.” Satou and Takuya both played dumb. “So you mentioned premonitions and precognition. Does that mean that your research could make it possible for humans to make predictions artificially?” Satou asked. “No… I doubt that’s possible. At least, I don’t think we’ll ever realize anything like a supernatural ability.” “Why not?” “Because humans don’t have an antenna for that,” Takuya answered. “We have ‘antennas’ to receive a certain type of electromagnetic wave that allows us to perceive shapes and colors. That’s our eyes. We have ears that pick up vibrations in the air. But we don’t have an organ that can receive information from other worlds. Even if it happens, it’s just a coincidence. Like a disconnected speaker picking up radio waves for a second, once in a blue moon.” He cast a casual glance around at the numerous radio antennas in the yard. “Let’s see. If we wanted humans to detect them, we might need to connect man-made antennas directly to their brains…” “Blargh, sounds like a horror movie.” Satou reacted with disgust. “There are people doing animal experiments along those lines.” As she spoke, Maki was nonchalantly eating her cake. “But at present, the research isn’t exactly promising.” “I’m impressed, Miss Maki,” Okabe commented with a puff of smoke, although the flattery sounded a little contrived. “That Aomori college isn’t like your average university. It’s a governmental advisory body. Working on staff there at your age…” “Oh, no, I…” Maki sounded embarrassed. “But I’ve always been fascinated by that tower, so the work feels very worthwhile.” In spite of himself, Takuya glanced at Maki. He’d never heard this before. “Shirakawa’s the really incredible one!” Maki suddenly declared. “He is?” Satou said. “Of course! He’s an external researcher at eighteen; it’s unprecedented. He’s more enthusiastic about the work than anyone else, and some of the older staff members are nowhere near as smart as him. I never knew someone like him even existed; he’s incredible.” Stealthily so that Maki wouldn’t see it, Okabe grimaced, and Satou smirked with sympathy. “No, that’s not… I’m really not…” Takuya demurred quietly. The cat rubbed up against his ankle, so he gave it a little of his cake. Delighted, the cat pounced on it. “Huh?! You’re kidding! What’s that cat doing?!” Maki’s eyes went round. That evening, Takuya drove Maki back to her house in Aomori City. Okabe said he had business in the city, so he ended up riding with them. Satou had been surprised to hear it when Okabe had brought it up, and Maki had looked disappointed, but Takuya had easily agreed. As far as he was concerned, Okabe’s presence was very welcome. They dropped Maki off in front of her house, waved, and watched her until she disappeared inside. Okabe refastened his seat belt. “Would you drop me at the station?” “Where are you going now, Mr. Okabe? Hachinohe?” “No, the Shinkansen. I’ve got business in Tokyo starting tomorrow.” “Which line of work?” Okabe blew smoke into the air instead of answering. Takuya’s sedan was driving down a two-lane road in a residential district. When they hit a red light and stopped, Takuya tried again. “Mr. Okabe, did you think about that request?” Gazing up at the ceiling from where he’d reclined in his seat, Okabe mumbled an answer around his cigarette. “What was it again?” “I asked you to let me work with Uilta.” Uilta was the name of the indigenous people of Sakhalin, and also of the most active anti-Union armed terrorist group in Japan. “Oh, that.” He blew more smoke. “Kid, you don’t know when to quit. Sounds like you’re working your ass off at that lab. You’re researching the tower, right? Then you can’t exactly afford to help us out, can you?” Okabe always dodged him this way. “That’s not true. As a matter of fact…there’s something I need to take care of.” Just then, Takuya realized he could see a thin, perpendicular white line through the windshield. He glared at it as he spoke. “The tower—I want to get rid of it. The sooner the better.”