Chapter 5

THE TOWER 1 Even in the dream, his forehead was sweaty; it was probably summer. The colors of the world around him looked bleached and faded. Takuya often realized he was dreaming. In fact, it was safe to say that he always realized. But that was always only at the beginning. Before long, he would sink deep into the mud of his subconscious until his objectivity was gone. Once the dream began to progress, he gradually lost his awareness that it was a dream. He was standing in a bookstore. It was the enormous one in the Plaza Building in front of the station, the one that took up half the fourth floor. He was holding technical physics books. By now, the laboratory got all the books and periodicals he needed, and he had almost no use for anything he would find on the street. Thus, what he was doing was impossible. He didn’t notice the contradiction. No, it wasn’t, actually. Right now, Takuya realized, he was in his third year of middle school. Instantly, he was absorbed into his fifteen-year-old self, surrounded by a fifteen-year-old world. Once again, his objectivity faded into the dream. He walked slowly to another shelf and wandered down an aisle between shelves of paperbacks. He spotted a slender girl ahead. Her slim fingers were taking a book off the shelf. A little startled, Takuya called to her. “Sawatari?” Sayuri turned around. “…Takuya.” They left the bookstore and stood together on the Tsugaru Line platform at Aomori Station. They had fifteen minutes left until their train arrived. There was nothing to talk about, and Takuya was uncomfortable. He kept checking the electronic bulletin board, staring at the iron tracks below the platform, and looking at his own shoes for no reason. “Um.” “Hey.” Unable to stand the silence, they spoke to each other at the same time. “Sorry, what?” “Oh, no…,” Sayuri murmured awkwardly. Silence. It’s weird, he thought. Why is it so unsettling to be with someone and have nothing to talk about? When he was with Hiroki, it was totally fine if they didn’t say anything, but… “The thing is, Hiroki—” “Hiroki was—” They’d spoken at the same time again. Why are we overlapping so much? Of course, Hiroki is about the only topic we have in common… He heard a little laugh. “We’ve never talked much when it’s just the two of us, have we?” Sayuri’s smile broke some of the tension between them. “That could be it.” Takuya nodded. “Hey, Takuya, do you like physics?” “Huh?” “You bought some books about it.” “Oh. Yeah, I do.” “That’s amazing…” “What is?” “Physics is only a few steps away from magic. You know, my grandpa was a physicist, too.” “Wow…” He was genuinely impressed. “That’s actually amazing.” “I don’t think I inherited any of his ability, though. I’ve never even met him.” “Because of the North-South split?” “Yeah. He was in Hokkaido.” Families that had been separated during the split tended to avoid using the name “Ezo.” “I wonder if he’s still alive…” “Oh…” “Hey, Takuya, are you two still at that job? Is it fun?” “Hard to say.” He did enjoy earning his own money with his own work, but he downplayed that. “It’s a factory that belongs to this scary old guy, you know. He yells; he works us like dogs…” “Is he that scary?” “He’s like a Nebuta ogre. He looks like he’s wearing tough-guy stage makeup, but it’s his regular face.” “You’re kidding.” Sayuri broke into a smile. “Really?” “You wanna come see him one of these days?” The invitation just slipped out. “Huh? Can I?” Sayuri was clearly delighted. “Won’t I be in the way?” “I’m sure Hiroki will be happy about it, too.” Deep down, he thought Hiroki might not like it at all, but he promptly chased away that thought. Sayuri’s honest emotions made him want to see her smile even more. “Okay! Then I want to go!” There was an announcement that the outbound train for Kanita-Minmaya was arriving. Takuya leaned forward, looking where the train would come, the way he always did. “Hey, Takuya? This may sound kind of strange, so don’t laugh, okay?” Sayuri said all of a sudden. Takuya turned back to her. “What? I won’t laugh.” “Okay,” Sayuri said, agreeing without nodding. “Then I’ll tell you. You see…” The train glided into the platform. “Tall towers? Like the Union’s tower?” Takuya asked from his spot in a box seat on the Tsugaru Line train. Sayuri was sitting silently in the seat that faced his, her hands resting on her skirt. “No.” She shook her head. “The shape is strange, sort of twisted. There are lots of other towers nearby besides the one I’m in.” “About how many?” Sayuri thought hard for a moment. “Ten…twenty… More than I can count, maybe. I don’t know. I’m not sure how I know this, but each of them is a different world. All the towers are dreams that universe is seeing.” Takuya rested his elbow on the windowsill, listening intently. Sayuri gazed out the window at the scenery as she spoke. Or maybe she was watching her own reflection in the glass. “So this tower is broken and twisted. I’m on top of it, and I look around, but all I can see is a faded sky and all these other towers like trees in a forest, and…” She broke off for a little while, thinking about what she should say next. “I can never leave.” Sayuri’s small fists rested on her small knees. “I’m always really lonely there all by myself, and then, just when I’m sure my heart is going to fade completely away…” Sayuri leaned forward and looked at Takuya. “I see a white airplane in the sky.” The train went into a tunnel, and the air pressure buffeted the windows. Takuya sat up straight as if he’d been stung. “A white airplane?” “Yes.” “And then?” There were no other passengers in the car. Takuya and Sayuri were the only ones talking. Even the fans fixed to the white ceiling weren’t running today, for some reason. “The dream ends.” Takuya was quiet. He didn’t know how he should take what she’d said. Joking around would be weird, but a somber reaction wouldn’t be right, either. “That dream is lonely, and painful, and difficult. But when I see that airplane, it’s such a relief. It feels…warm. Whenever I’m in pain, I think of that white airplane. That’s…been happening a lot lately, but I think I’ll be okay. Deep down, I know that white airplane is going to fly to me someday, and then everything will work out. It’s going to carry me away, and then I won’t have to be alone anymore.” “Listen, I—” Takuya spoke before he thought. “Hmm?” Sayuri cocked her head, still smiling. “You need to come visit us at work. I…I’ve got something I really want to show you.” It’s bright, he thought. When his eyes adjusted to the light, the first thing he saw was the ceiling. He didn’t have his glasses, so he couldn’t see that well. When he tried to move, intense pain shot through his left upper arm. He closed his eyes and waited for it to subside. His whole body was sticky with sweat. The air was hot, and the humidity was high. “What a dream…” He moved his head carefully, trying not to trigger any more pain than he had to. He was in an old hospital room. The floor was a wooden one, but the wax had worn off. There was a stand for a tub of antiseptic by his pillow, and a kettle sat on the potbellied stove, hissing. There were two folding chairs. One of them had a handbag sitting on it. He’d seen it somewhere before. There was condensation on the window. Outside, it was white and cloudy, and snow was falling. Takuya watched the fine white flakes soundlessly drift down. He heard the door open. Footsteps came toward him from across the floorboards. “Oh, good. You’re awake, Shirakawa?” “Maki.” Maki Kasahara was wearing a relieved smile. Fine snow clung to her hair. She must have come from outside. “I was worried about you, you know,” she said. “Does your shoulder still hurt?” She shrugged out of her coat and hung it on a chair. “No… Yes.” “Excuse me a second.” Maki approached Takuya’s bed, leaned over him, and set her hand against his forehead. Her palm felt cool and pleasant. The swell of her bosom was right in front of him, and he couldn’t avert his eyes from it. “You’ve got a fever,” she said. She took away her cool hand. “Do you think you could eat something?” Maki held up a shopping bag. “I bought some fruit. I went and picked up some cake, too.” “No… Nothing.” “Really?” She sounded a little disappointed. “Is there anything I can do for you?” Takuya gazed at her white hand, but he finally shook his head wordlessly. He asked a different question instead. “How’s everything at the lab?” “Oh, right! It’s been crazy.” She spoke rapidly, as though she’d suddenly remembered. “The tower’s activity level suddenly jumped. The whole staff is running all over the place trying to analyze it right now.” “Huh? You mean…” “You know, around the tower… The black phase shift circle started to expand while I was monitoring it. It was terrifying.” Maki fell silent for a little while. “Was it that bad?” “The area around the tower was rewritten into a parallel world, out to a radius of twenty-six kilometers.” “That’s triple what it was before. Why would it do that so suddenly? …I want to see the data.” He tried to get up. “Oh, no you don’t.” Maki stopped him with a soft hand on his shoulder. Takuya lay back on the bed obediently. He felt the urge to take her hand, and he nearly reached for it but managed to stop himself. He was aware of how weak he was right now, and he wanted her to baby him. “It’s all right. They’ve got a projected end date for the analysis. Once you’re back in shape, you can take your time and look over the report.” “Tell me what we know now. Please.” Maki gave him a look, as if she was dealing with a recalcitrant little brother, but she told him without hesitating. “It’s that one patient.” “That one… Oh, the one Professor Tomisawa went to Tokyo to…” “Yes, to bring here. Her level of conscious activity rose at the exact same time the tower was active. Basically, she began to wake up. And the more awake she was, the faster the phase shift accelerated. After that, her level of consciousness suddenly started to come down again; she went back to her deep sleep right as the tower’s activity stopped.” “That’s…” Takuya needed a few seconds to process the phenomenon. “It’s just as we thought. The patient’s sleep and the tower’s activity are perfectly linked. I didn’t fully believe it before. After what I’ve seen, though, there’s no way to doubt it.” “Then the patient is acting as the switch that activates the tower…” “Professor Tomisawa says she’s more like a system suppressing its activity than a switch. You’d think the information the tower receives from parallel worlds would be released into this world. Instead, he thinks it’s being channeled into the subject’s brain… Into her dreams.” “Her dreams…” “I wonder how she’s processing the parallel worlds’ information as she sleeps. Does she see it as visual images? Either way, if she’s taking on that much information, she won’t have enough mental-processing capacity to maintain consciousness. Conversely, when she regains consciousness, the parallel worlds will overflow…” “The tower will go haywire…” “And the whole world might get overwritten by that black void.” “Then… What about the patient?” “She’ll…just have to stay asleep like that. Forever. Or that’s the general consensus. I do feel bad for Miss Sawatari, but…” Goose bumps ran across his skin. He stopped breathing. What did she just say?! He wanted to speak, but neither his throat nor his lips would move. His thoughts were too compressed for his body to keep up. Multiple fragments of memory pieced themselves together into a solution, and the vectors of all the information pointed to one conclusion. He understood everything. He felt his temperature rising. His whole body hurt. He exhaled, and the air from his lungs was hot. “Sawatari?” he breathed. “Yes, Sayuri Sawatari.” Maki sighed sympathetically. “She’s your age, I think. She’s a very pretty girl…” He managed to get himself discharged in two days. Driving a car with his left arm in a sling was quite a chore. Once he’d parked in the college’s lot, Takuya went straight to the experimental facility’s neurological ICU. All the doors in the brand-new experimental facility had automatic locks that required card keys. He took off the ID card that hung from his breast pocket by a clip, then swiped it through the card reader beside the door. A small warning buzzer sounded, and the LED lamp changed from green to red. The door didn’t open. He tried again, running the card through slowly from bottom to top. The buzzer sounded. The results were the same. He heard footsteps. The Aomori Army College’s experimental facility had no windows or curtains, so there was nothing to absorb the cold echoes. “You can’t get in with your ID, Shirakawa,” said the owner of the footsteps. It was Professor Tomisawa. “You’re healed up?” “Oh yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. Um…” “Maki was terribly worried. I’d thank her if I were you.” “I will.” “Did she tell you about this, then? Do you want to see her?” Without waiting for a response, Tomisawa took off his own ID card. With a hiss of compressed air, the thick, heavy automatic door opened smoothly. The lighting in the special hospital ward was dimmed slightly. The lights in the ceiling filled the room with a blue-tinged glow, carefully positioned so that they wouldn’t produce shadows. On the bed of a large piece of medical equipment that resembled a CT scanner, a young woman was asleep. Her body was covered with a thin sheet, but under it, she was presumably naked. There was no mistaking her for anyone else. It was Sayuri Sawatari. “Why…?” Takuya murmured. She looked very different from the girl he remembered. Even if she’d been sleeping through them, those three years had changed her. She might have been a little taller. Her plump, soft-looking cheeks were thin now, and her face looked oval. The outlines of her body were clearly visible through the sheet. There was almost no flesh on it. She seemed nearly dead. And yet the woman in front of him was beautiful. No, maybe it was because of the state she was in. Takuya had never considered the human shape so beautiful before. She was perfect. He gazed at her face. Her eyes showed no sign of opening—in fact, they seemed like they had never been intended to open, molded by an artist. Her skin was pale. When he looked closer, he could see the veins in her cheeks. The texture made it seem transparent, and the white color was only due to the slant of the light. She was so lovely it made him shudder. Takuya realized he was on the verge of tears. “We believe she stays asleep because her brain isn’t able to handle the information from the parallel worlds that’s flowing into it,” Tomisawa explained as briskly as he would a lecture. No matter what the topic, his tone never got too heavy. “What happens if she wakes up?” Tomisawa pointed toward the ceiling in an imitation of the tower, then gestured with his other hand to show the black territory expanding with his right. “We think this world will be instantly swallowed up by a parallel world, with the tower at the epicenter.” “How could we…?” “Hmm? Come again?” “How would we wake her up?” “I couldn’t say. We haven’t pinned down the conditions for awakening Sleeping Beauty yet. But…as far as the world is concerned, that may be all for the best.” Takuya fell silent. He was looking at Sayuri’s lashes. “War will break out in the next week or two, so everyone is gearing up. She’ll be transferred to America’s NSA headquarters,” Tomisawa said. “To tell you the truth, Shirakawa, I’d intended to keep this from you until the end. There’s nothing we can do, so knowing would only hurt you… I may be asking the impossible, but don’t stew about this too much.” “How did you know? I mean, about me and…” “When we looked through the records, it didn’t take long for us to learn that you two had been in school together. There were also signs that she’d attempted to contact you, back when her sleep was still intermittent.” “Sawatari? Contact me?” “Mm-hmm. It looks as though she tried to send a letter to you, in care of Oka. She fell asleep completely before she finished writing it, so she wasn’t able to send it.” “Why…?” Why? How? Takuya’s mind was blank except for those words echoing over and over. “Why did this happen to Sawatari?” “We know a lot less than we don’t know, but personally, I’m guessing it wasn’t a coincidence. Reading the report on her personal history gave me a jolt. Ekusun Tsukinoe, the designer of the tower…” Tomisawa gave a small sigh, apparently suppressing a flicker of intense emotion. “He’s her grandfather.” Takuya nearly fled the hospital room. He opened the fire door and took the emergency stairs down to the exit. The water from the sprinklers had melted the snow in the parking lot, but there were still mounds of white snow on the bushes and at the edges of the porte cochere. He filled his lungs with the frigid outside air and exhaled it as a cloud of heat. He drew a breath, then another. With each inhalation, the thought grew in his chest like an itch. The tower, the tower. The tower. That word echoed wildly. He caught the scent of something unpleasant. It’s the tower. When he looked up, the tower was overhead—uncommonly, terribly clear. The lens of the atmosphere had drawn the tower right to him. Takuya’s face crumpled. He glared at the great spire with all the hatred he could muster. Three days had passed. “The US Army has concluded that the Union’s quantum tower in central Ezo is a weapon.” Okabe’s clear baritone echoed in the empty workspace at Emishi Manufacturing. In front of him, Takuya and six other men stood at attention. They were the total membership of Uilta, the armed anti-Union terrorist group. They were also all employees of Emishi Manufacturing. Okabe had started Emishi Manufacturing itself as a cover for the group. Takuya was watching Okabe steadily, hugging his left arm in its sling. “Over the past twenty-five years, that tower has become a part of the everyday lives of the Japanese people. We’ve treated it as a symbol for pretty much everything. Nations, war, race…hopelessness, and even our dreams and aspirations. It means different things to different generations, and to people of differing socioeconomic status. But there’s just one thing they all have in common: Everybody sees it as something unreachable and unchanging. There’s even a bunch of crazies who worship it.” Okabe’s voice echoed off the high ceiling. “As long as the masses believe the tower can’t come down, nothing about this country is going to change. Until its spell is broken, Japan will fear the Union, and the world won’t move to reunite the North and South. We’ll be divided for as long as that tower exists. The families that were split up will probably stay that way.” Takuya’s eyes went to the small, toylike airplane behind Okabe. It wasn’t big enough to carry a human being. Its entire nose was a transparent canopy, and it housed a large, mobile camera. It was a Predator drone provided by the US military. The factory staff had already made the necessary modifications. “Early in the morning, three days from now, the US government is going to declare war on the Union. We’re going to take advantage of the confusion at the beginning of that war to bomb the tower.” No murmur ran through the assembly. Everyone already knew the plan by heart. This was no more than a ritual. Even so, Takuya’s hair stood on end. In his own way, Okabe was trying to rewrite the world. “We’ll invade Ezo airspace with the unmanned Predator. We’re using a seeker missile mounted with a PL-coated bomb in the attack.” Takuya looked at the Predator again. In its belly was a red missile. That thing is going to erase the tower, he thought. He reviewed the facts in his mind. He was the one who’d put together the seeker missile’s navigation program. The simulation had been flawless. If it was fired within range, it would automatically seek out its target. It was bound to land a direct hit. I’m going to kill the tower. A shiver of excitement ran through him. “As of today, the Uilta Liberation Front is disbanded. I’m shutting the factory down, too.” Finally, Takuya thought. I’m going to kill that thing and be free. He clenched his right hand into a fist. 2 The tears soon stopped, and they dried quickly. I left the hospital and walked to Shibuya Station instead of taking the bus, speeding up as I went. Standing and waiting at the bus stop meant not making any progress. I wanted to feel that I was at least going somewhere. As I walked, the wind on my skin sharpened my wits. The clouds of sleep were clearing away, and my heart was pumping, sending oxygen all through me. My brain was functioning again, and my mind was becoming aware of something. I kept thinking about what that “something” was. I took the Yamanote Line back to Shinjuku, and as I was walking to the dorm, a click echoed in my head, as though two pieces of iron had engaged. Like the sound you’d get if you manually pushed down a rusty track switch. I stared at the memo the nurse had written for me, the one with the name of the hospital Sayuri had been transferred to, etching it indelibly into my memory. When I got back to the dorm, I pulled all of Mr. Okabe’s letters out from the bottom of the storage cupboard I’d shoved them into. I traced the lines of text with my finger. Aomori Army College, Wartime Special Strategic Information Processing Laboratory, Neurology Department, Neurological Intensive Care Unit. That was what the memo said. I checked it against the letter. There was no mistake. It was Takuya’s university, Takuya’s lab… Sayuri was there. With Takuya. This was a sign, guiding me where I was meant to go. It was a coincidence, of course. But this coincidence was telling me to go back to the northern tip of Japan. Before I did that, though, there was one thing I had to do here in Tokyo. I had to talk to the one person in this city who I’d wanted to treasure. The conversation was going to be hard, and I had hoped I could avoid it. But that wasn’t possible. All the avoiding I’d done until now had only hurt me. Rika and I hadn’t talked since that one night. More accurately, I’d called her several times, but she hadn’t picked up. Rika didn’t play games with people. If she didn’t pick up, it was because she didn’t want to. I also wasn’t the type to forge ahead when I wasn’t welcome, so for a while, we hadn’t shared anything with each other. On top of that, while the private school exams and the first schedule exams for national and public schools were over, the second schedule exams for national and public schools and the secondary exams for private schools were still coming up. There were a whole lot of other things we needed to do. I didn’t have the luxury of pushing this to the back burner. At this time of year, we barely went to school at all anymore, but there was a school day two days from now. I’d just have to catch her there. For two days, there was nothing to do but wait, and I was too antsy to do anything else. When the time came, I went to school thirty minutes earlier than usual and waited for Rika outside the classroom. She got to school five minutes before class began, arriving with a friend who had long, permed hair. When I called her name, she flinched. Then she ignored me and went into the classroom. I might as well have been a pebble. Her friend apparently deduced the circumstances and basically told me to get lost, although she put it more politely. “There’s something I really need to tell her,” I insisted, my voice sharp but quiet. With a light gasp, she turned back very slightly. There was no irony in her reaction, only total surprise. But her expression promptly hardened again. “Save it for later,” she snapped. “It has to be today.” Rika and her friend went into the classroom. For a moment, I considered muscling my way in and grabbing her. People would start asking questions if I did that, though, and I didn’t want that for her. After thinking for a few seconds, I went down the hall, then downstairs. When I came out at the end of the second-floor corridor, I walked straight to the office at its other end. On the counter in front of that office was a green public telephone. I took a phone card out of my wallet, inserted it, then dialed Rika’s cell phone number from muscle memory. After five rings, she picked up. There was no “Hello?” or “This is Mizuno.” Instead, I heard classroom sounds and conversation. And her breathing. “I’m going back to Aomori today,” I said without preamble. The other end of the line was as silent as ever, but I could sense her bewilderment. Just as I was about to continue, she spoke. “But…we still have the second schedule exams.” “Right. If I finish what I need to do over there quickly, I’m planning to come back and take the test. I don’t know how it’s gonna go, though. If I run out of time, I’ll just skip. And that’s probably what’s gonna happen.” “What on earth would be worth…?” “I’m already three years late. I don’t want to wait another day. Rika, I left something undone when I came here.” “I see,” Rika said a bit sarcastically. “Well, I would hate for you to have to run back because you forgot something. And nobody likes people being late.” “You’re right.” I didn’t evade her sarcasm. “I’ve been neglecting something important for a long time. It was really important. If I don’t finish it, I won’t be able to live the rest of my life. There was a misunderstanding, and I abandoned it back then. And I abandoned myself in the process. So for the past three years, I’ve been so out of touch with myself. I was just drifting. I shouldn’t be surprised, really. It’s like I took out my own engine and left it behind…” “So? You’re going to go get it back, then?” “Yeah.” “It’s a girl, isn’t it?” Her voice was wavering. “There’s a girl you like over there.” “No,” I replied instantly. It wasn’t a lie, not even close. “There is a girl involved; that part is true. But it isn’t like that. I’m gonna retake myself. Half of me is asleep in a hangar up on a mountain. I’m going to go get it, then come back.” “Look, I’m not following you. This is really vague.” For the past little while, I’d been hearing the rustle of fabric on the other end of the line. She seemed to be walking somewhere. Then it hit me. I turned around. Rika was coming down the stairs at the other end of the straight hallway, holding her cell phone up to her ear. We were on opposite ends of the building. The corridor was long, and she was far away. She was looking at me. The students walking by between us intermittently blocked our view of each other. I started to go over to her, until the phone cord stretched to its limit and kept me tethered there. I hesitated, considering putting down the receiver, but I couldn’t do it. If I hung up, I knew I wouldn’t ever be able to talk to Rika again. At the very least, we could talk now. I’d try to be satisfied with that. As I gripped the receiver, my eyes never left Rika’s small, distant figure. “Fujisawa, you didn’t like me at all,” Rika said in my ear. “I knew that. I thought I didn’t mind. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been lonely. Sometimes I felt like I was a ghost. Like I didn’t exist. The people around me were all ghosts, too. Hollow and empty. Some part of me was always anxious. When I was with you, though, the ground actually felt solid, and I started to think I could stay connected. That’s why I wanted to be near you. You’re special that way, Fujisawa.” For about five seconds, I couldn’t find any words. “The problem is, I don’t have any of that solid definition, either,” I finally said. There was a break in the crowd, and I locked eyes with Rika, who was standing just before the vanishing point. “I was asleep all this time, Rika. Even when I was awake, I still felt like I was in a dream. Always. For the past three years. It’s my own fault, nobody else’s. Over these three years, my heart has been too empty to feel anything. If I ever had anything special, it was a long time ago. It’s completely gone. Anything special you sensed in me is probably just a memory of when I used to be solid.” “And that’s enough for me.” Frankly, that one remark shook my resolution considerably. “Listen,” I said. “Right now, I’m basically a ghost. If we stay together, you’re probably going to see it sooner or later, and whatever illusions you have about me will be gone. Either way, it’s a dead end, and I can already see it coming. I have to go be reborn. I need the strength to tear down walls and fly over fences. I’ll come back solid.” “Fujisawa, if you go away, I’ll fall apart.” Rika spoke in a monotone. “I can’t make connections without you. You’re still gonna go?” I started to say I’m sorry on reflex, then thought it wouldn’t be appropriate. “Yeah, I am.” Next to my ear, I heard Rika sigh. In the distance, I could see her shoulders rise and fall. She was looking down, so I couldn’t see her face. “And? What are you actually going to do over there?” “Fly a plane,” I said. “Across the strait. To the tower.” “The Union one?” “Yeah.” “Wait just a minute.” She raised her head. “Fujisawa, you don’t pay attention to the papers or the news, do you? They’re saying war might break out this week. Isn’t the area between Aomori and Ezo going to be a battlefield?” “Yes, it will.” I did know that much. “And you’re still going? Why now?” When she asked me that, I realized something important for the first time. “It’s my last chance. The tower may not last the war.” “Why would you even—?” She started to criticize but stopped before she finished the sentence. Instead, she said, “Remember when I said we should go to Aomori together?” “Yeah.” “I was serious about that.” I fell silent. “Did you think I was joking?” “No—” I thought hard. “I don’t know.” “Fujisawa, sometimes it’s like you came here from some faraway land,” she said. “I think that’s what you’re saying.” “Hey, once this is all over… I don’t know when that will be or what life will look like then, but I’d like to see you again. When I do, I’ll tell you all about what happened and what I did. I want to see you. Absolutely.” Rika didn’t answer. The silence stretched for a long time. Neither of us moved. I held my breath, waiting. Finally, she lowered her phone and ended the call. With a muffled click, the line went dead. Even when the crowd and the stairwell had hidden her from view, I held on to the green telephone receiver, reviewing my conversation. She was me. She harbored the same weaknesses I did. The magnitude of what I’d done to Rika hit me, and I spent a long time there like a statue before I could move again. 3 I wasn’t able to fight the current that had begun to form around me. I couldn’t afford to. I changed clothes at the dorm, packed very simply, and boarded the Tohoku Shinkansen from Tokyo Station. I settled into an unreserved seat by the window, and as the train began to move, I took out a paperback I’d shoved into the pocket of my jacket. It was The Collected Poems of Kenji Miyazawa, something I’d bought on impulse at a bookstore in Tokyo Station. I began to read. I hadn’t bought the book for any particularly deep reason, but it moved me far more than I’d expected it to. I hadn’t thought anything of it when I’d read it before, and yet today I was able to feel the texture of the words and emotions as if they were my own flesh and blood. To you, no doubt this view is quite a miserable one, but all I can see is a blue sky, ever lovely, and transparent wind. (Miyazawa, “Said with the Eyes”) I applied that excerpt to the dreamworld in which Sayuri stood. To her, the world of towers was a very lonely place, but I’d always thought the landscape was beautiful. To be more exact, coming in contact with this poem had made me aware of what I’d always subconsciously believed. Compared to Sayuri’s dream, the view in my Tokyo neighborhood might have been even more miserable, I thought. And out of nowhere, something occurred to me. Had Sayuri also been dreaming about my life as she slept? How had the world around me looked to her? Sayuri was prone to loneliness, so maybe to her that strip of sky hemmed in by buildings and covered with power lines was like a sign of life. Surrounded by nothing but sky and wind, maybe she yearned for my noisy, cramped town. Maybe she believed it was beautiful, just as it was… I kept reading. A poem called “Bird” stirred my heart immensely. The feeling was pleasant, as though my emotions were swirling in a convection current. Come to think of it, I remembered something Yoshitsuru had said a long time ago in his fit of literary enthusiasm, about how the birds that appeared in Kenji Miyazawa’s work were intermediaries between this world and the next. When he tried to communicate with his little sister, who’d passed away, he would send his thoughts to her on the wings of birds. I read that poem over and over, again and again. When I got tired, I laid the book facedown on my lap and slept a little. I leaned against the window, and just before my eyes closed, I caught sight of the Union’s tower in the view outside. For some reason, I didn’t sense any of the usual intimidation from it. It’s beautiful, I thought, and fell into a brief sleep. I transferred to the local line, then got off at Tsugaru-Hamana. I had no intention of stopping by my parents’ house. Pushing through the snow, I cut through the Emishi Manufacturing lot just the way I had three years ago, and then I was standing in the field around the good old abandoned station. The blanket of snow reflected the sunlight, and the sight was almost blinding. The snowfield didn’t have a single footprint on it. Sinking up to my ankles in it, I walked toward the hangar. Come to think of it, there weren’t any footprints in the yard at Emishi Manufacturing, either, I thought. When I cut through, I’d gone to say hi to Mr. Okabe, but both the plant and the office had been closed; I didn’t see anyone around. When I cleared away the snow beside the hangar’s back door, then dug up the soil, the key was right where I’d buried it. The lock was stubborn. I gently brushed the dirt off the key, then tried again. The door opened. I took one step inside, then froze when I saw the white-and-silver machine inside. The white light reflecting off the snow streamed in through the open back door, illuminating it from a single direction. It seemed a little smaller than I remembered, as if all the good things it contained had been condensed. Like a snow crystal. It’s the Velaciela. I unstuck my shoes from the floor and walked over to it. With every step I took, my body trembled. I stopped and stood in front of the nose, then timidly touched it with the tip of my middle finger. The texture and smell of the hard, slightly flexible carbon nanonet brought back so many memories I almost cried. I inspected it carefully. Strangely, the plane hadn’t deteriorated at all. I’d left it sitting here for years, so parts of it should have come loose or gone slack. I’d braced myself for all the work it would take to get the Velaciela airborne, but… “It’s almost as if time stopped,” I murmured. The words hung there for a while, as if they’d frozen in the cold winter air. I opened the big doors, sealed with a chain, then fired up the engine to see how it ran. There were almost no issues. The hangar filled with heat and the smell of burning aviation fuel. I turned off the engine and got right to work. All the materials and machine tools were still in the hangar. While my body and my hands were in motion, I lost all sense of time. I hadn’t experienced the rush of fixating on a task in ages. As far as hardware went, the Velaciela had been nearly complete three years ago. There were quite a few fine adjustments left, but they weren’t difficult. The problem was the aviation control software. That, and one more thing… I went over to the violin case that leaned against the wall. It was also exactly where it had been three years ago. The emotion I felt then was difficult to describe; it was similar to sadness but with a slightly different texture. I reached out, intending to open the case, but stopped as I realized the sun had already set. I went down the mountain, emerged in front of Tsugaru-Hamana Station, and used the public phone in front of the general store to call Takuya’s house. I remembered the number, but it took courage to push the buttons. Nobody answered. I went back to the abandoned station, following the same route. I didn’t pass anyone along the way. I took a good look as I passed Emishi Manufacturing, and there were no lights on. When I was back at the hangar, in the pale glow of the halogen lamps, it felt as if I were the only person in the world. I carried the heater over to the bench, curled up in a blanket, and fell asleep. The next day, I went through the motions again. I wasn’t able to get ahold of Takuya. The day after that, my call got through. We’d said we’d meet on the edge of the Ookawadai shopping street. Takuya was there first, leaning against a telephone pole, smoking a cigarette. There was a railway overpass behind him, and a freight train loaded with tanks was trundling by, over the road. He was watching them steadily, but when he heard my footsteps, he looked my way. “Hey,” he said expressionlessly. I’d been nervous, but when I saw his face, I started feeling awkward and embarrassed, and my cheeks rose into a little smile. “It’s been three years, huh, Takuya?” It was after three o’clock, but neither of us had had lunch yet, so we went into a Chinese restaurant on the shopping street and got ramen. Aside from us, there were a couple of US soldiers in the restaurant. A fourteen-inch TV up on a high shelf was showing the news; it said that Tokyo had gone on alert in preparation for the war. Takuya was glaring at the broadcast, his eyes sharp. “When did you get here?” Takuya asked. He kept his eyes on the TV. “The day before yesterday. I’ve been staying up at the abandoned station,” I told him, slurping ramen. “Up there?” “Yeah.” Then I asked him something I’d been wondering about for a while. “Takuya, what happened to your arm?” He glanced at the sling. “Oh… Stuff.” “What do you mean, ‘stuff’?” “I’ll tell you later.” With that, Takuya dexterously ate his ramen one-handed. I swear, the guy’s got class even when he’s injured. Even when he’s eating ramen. That side of him hadn’t changed a bit. It was a little bit funny, and I smiled. Come to think of it, we’d stopped talking after a fight, three years ago. Apparently, he wasn’t planning to bring that up at all. I liked things better that way myself. I did want to ask what had happened with the younger girl he’d been dating back then, but I knew it was a dumb question. “So? What did you want?” Takuya said. I still hadn’t told him anything. I wasn’t sure how to bring up something so complicated. “This isn’t really the place for it,” I said. “Wanna come to the abandoned station?” Takuya closed his mouth, compressing his lips into a thin line. He was silent for quite a while. Then he answered in a low voice: “Sure.” On the way to the abandoned station, we knocked on the door of the Emishi Manufacturing office, but there still wasn’t anyone there. “Maybe they’re off again today… Takuya, do you know?” Takuya didn’t say anything. A cat meowed, down by my feet. It was the half-stray cat that lived at the factory. “Hey, Chobi. How’ve you been? It’s been a long time, huh?!” I crouched down and held out my hand. Chobi rubbed his forehead against it amiably. That made me happy, so for a little while, I petted his head and moved my fingers in front of his nose, teasing him. I heard the scrunch of footsteps on the sandy ground. When I looked over, Takuya had started walking away, his face hard and sullen. “Hey, Takuya.” I petted Chobi one last time, then straightened up and started to follow him. He was striding up the mountain track to the abandoned station, and I hurried after him. When we got through the forest and emerged onto the field around the abandoned station, Takuya walked not toward the hangar but toward the platforms. His strides were sure and determined, as if that had been his destination all along. I followed him. Then we stood together on a platform. The lake was frozen; if I stepped down gently, I might be able to walk on the ice. We stood side by side, gazing at the frozen lake. “What I wanted to talk about is kind of complicated, but…” I started to speak, but Takuya interrupted. “Wait. Let me tell mine first. It’s serious, too. Don’t talk about it with anyone else.” “What? Geez,” I jabbed, but he’d been prickly this whole time. I’d guessed he had a major secret. “Emishi Manufacturing is the Uilta Liberation Front,” he said, getting right to the point. “That’s why there’s no one there. It’s already been shut down.” I was planning to keep my mouth shut, but I had to ask a question. “When did it close?” “This week.” He looked at me, a bit nonplussed. “You don’t seem very surprised. Did you know already?” “No.” I shook my head. “But it seems plausible. Besides, you told me a long time ago that that place wasn’t what it looked like.” “Did I?” he muttered. “Well, whatever; that’ll make this go faster. What I’m about to tell you is… I’m telling you because it seems like the least I can do. I’m sorry, but just listen for a while. Don’t say anything.” Then he began to tell a long story, and I wasn’t ready for any of it. He talked about Uilta’s principles. About Mr. Okabe’s separation and his wife. About the relationship between quantum physics and the tower that he’d learned about at the college. The fact that the Union’s tower was a system designed to detect parallel worlds and give highly accurate predictions of the future. The fact that the system was careening out of control and other worlds were beginning to seep into this one around the tower. The fact that the US military considered the tower a type of suicide weapon. I picked up a rock that was lying on the platform and flung it at the lake as hard as I could. The rock struck the ice and slid away. The fact that Takuya had joined Uilta and had been injured during an operation. And…the encounter with sleeping Sayuri in the hospital ward. He explained that Sayuri’s brain was closely linked to the tower. That the tower’s activity had increased as her level of consciousness rose. That if she woke up, the tower would go into full operation. That the whole world would probably be rewritten when it happened. That when Sayuri woke, this world would most likely disappear almost instantly. The US Army and Uilta had joined forces and were planning to blow up the tower. Takuya crouched down on the platform and laid it all out for me with perfect neutrality. It was proof that on the inside, he wasn’t neutral at all. That’s how people get when they’re keeping themselves under tight control. I threw another rock. The rock slid away again. The ice wouldn’t let it go any deeper. When he’d finished his story, I was still quiet, so he shifted to more technical topics. He talked about the proof that parallel worlds existed and the possibility that they affected human brains. “Do you understand, Hiroki?” he said, probably assuming I would have trouble following the part about parallel worlds. “I get it. I understand everything now,” I told him. I could swallow all the information as easily as spring water. After all, I’d actually seen the world branching. “What do you understand, exactly?” he asked. “‘The phenomenon called “me” is a single blue illumination, a hypothetical organic lamp run by alternating currents (a complex of transparent ghosts)’…” “What?” “It means me, you, and everybody else is a hypothetical phenomenon, doesn’t it?” I said. “The world and humans are no more than potential theories, like ghosts. And Sawatari is standing at the junction that determines which phenomena to activate.” Takuya took a few seconds to process, then seemed to understand the gist of it. “Guess that’s one way of putting it.” “I have one question,” I said. “If the tower is destroyed, what happens to Sawatari?” “Nobody knows.” He dismissed the question flatly. “There’s one hypothesis that seems very probable.” “What is it?” “Right now, Sawatari is an external device for Ekusun Tsukinoe’s quantum tower system. The information processing that the tower should technically be doing—her brain is handling it instead. Meanwhile, part of her conscious activity has been transferred to the tower’s system. Essentially, Sawatari and the tower aren’t transmitting to each other; they’ve been combined into one entity. The tower is Sawatari’s brain, and Sawatari is the tower itself.” “You’re not saying…” A shudder crawled up from my feet to my shoulders. “Probably…,” he said, “if we destroy the tower, Sawatari’s conscious activity will stop permanently.” The air between us went cold. “That’s all I have to say,” he told me. “Your turn.” “Fly the Velaciela?” Takuya echoed. I’d told him everything while we walked. Compared to Takuya’s story, mine seemed poorly defined. We entered the hangar through the back door, and I raised the breaker switch. The floodlights came on, illuminating the white wings. “With Sawatari in it?” he asked again. “Yeah.” I stroked the fuselage. “In another day, I’ll be done with the assembly work. The only issue left is the control software…” “Wait. Were you actually listening to what I said? Sawatari can’t wake up, and the tower—” “Is being targeted by terrorists. I got all that.” I took my hand away from the Velaciela and went over to Takuya, who was sitting in a wooden chair. “That’s why I need your help. Remember what I said? I’ve been thinking, all this time. If we fly her to the tower, Sawatari will wake up.” Takuya didn’t look at me. He was watching the blinking LEDs on the modem on top of the table. “Did you come back for a stupid reason like that?” he finally said with contempt. I stiffened. That was one of the last things I’d expected, and the betrayal created a little bit of anger inside me. “‘Stupid reason’…?” I searched for words, couldn’t find any. Why couldn’t I ever be articulate for once? “I mean, we promised, didn’t we?” The red lights on the modem were still blinking. Takuya was still watching them. Suddenly, the lights pissed me off. Slowly, I moved toward it. I was planning to switch it off, but that would be pointless. Instead, I latched onto the corner of the table with my fingertips. “I dream about Sawatari. Over and over, again and again.” I looked down at the wood grain. “Sawatari’s all by herself in this deserted place, and she said she can’t remember anything. Except our promise.” I looked back at the Velaciela’s wings, under the pale glare of the floodlights. Then I looked at Takuya’s pale profile. He didn’t move. “I promised her again, in a dream. I told her I’d take her to the tower for sure this time. I can’t believe that was just a dream!” I was yelling and out of breath now. Takuya took a cigarette out of the pocket of his duffle coat and lit it. Then he took three short draws on it. He sighed, exhaling smoke. “So you saunter back here after three years talking to me about dreams? Just looking at you pisses me off.” He flicked the cigarette away with his index finger. It was an efficient way to get rid of the worthless remains so that he didn’t have to look at them. His attitude stunned me. Takuya ground the glowing orange butt under his foot. He stood up. “I don’t have time to play kids’ games with you.” He took an object out of the inside pocket of his jacket. At first, I couldn’t really process what it was. “This is happening because you won’t stop obsessing about this thing.” He walked over to the Velaciela, and with frighteningly practiced hands, loaded a cartridge into the grip. He racked the slide. “I’ll make you forget.” He pointed the black, gleaming handgun at the Velaciela. “Don’t!” I yelled. Takuya’s eyes glinted cruelly. That was the last thing I saw while I was in my right mind. Then I completely lost track of what was going on. I was only half-conscious, and my body just moved on its own. It’s strange, sometimes. I wonder why people move automatically like that, before you think. Sometimes my body acts as though it’s somebody else entirely. A shot rang out, and my eardrums stung from the blast. Outside, I heard a flock of startled crows take flight. Takuya was lying on the ground. The handgun was on the floor. I didn’t even have to look to know the Velaciela was okay. The knuckles of my right hand tingled. I’d knocked down Takuya. As I realized what I’d done, my breathing grew rougher. The oxygen didn’t help to quell my excitement; in fact, the blood was only rushing to my head faster. Takuya spat, then got to his feet. My excitement slowed my reaction, and Takuya was instantly in front of me. I felt the blow against my face, and I knew he’d punched me back. My mind grew dim, and I tried to hold on to consciousness as I collapsed to the floor and started coughing. “Takuyaaa!” To my ears, my scream was an equal mixture of rage and pleading and bewilderment. I’d managed to get my upper body off the floor, and I clenched my fists. The muscles in my arms hardened. Apparently, I was planning to use those. By the time I planted my right foot on the ground, there was a black hole in front of me. The muzzle of the gun. I froze. Even before my thoughts got around to Look out or I’m going to die, I’d stopped moving completely. I looked at the bony hand gripping the gun. I knew that hand well. Beyond it, through his glasses, I saw Takuya’s eyes. “It’s either save Sawatari or save the world.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it seemed to reverberate all through the hangar. Maybe the echo was in my head. I couldn’t move. I didn’t care about the gun anymore; the shot he’d just fired was more terrifying than that. Not even my eyes could move. What he’d just put into words was something I’d known and tried to ignore. He lowered the gun, but I could still feel the choice aimed between my eyes. Takuya turned on his heel and walked across the floorboards toward the back door. I listened to his footsteps; they marked a precise rhythm. Inside me, the rhythm brought certain phrases to mind. Bird— Beneath a pale-blue heaven in the reflected light from the highland snow wind is blowing, transparent. “It hurts too much,” I said. Burning in ultraviolet rays, a single bird rests on a heart stretched thin, “I could never bring myself to stop thinking about Sawatari.” trying to remember, with desperate impatience, “When I try not to think about her, it just hurts.” an ancient, pale-blue dream “Time is stopped for us. For our feelings. We’re getting left behind; if we don’t do anything, we’ll just fall farther and farther.” Like a boat, the bird… Abruptly, Takuya yelled angrily, “That’s why we’re destroying the tower!” The rhythm of his footsteps stopped. “Takuya, you’ve changed,” I said without looking at him, still unable to move. “Of course I have,” he shot back. “But you’re still a kid, Hiroki.” The back door closed with callous finality. Even so, the snow sculptures here and there are far too still. 4 He was asleep. Save the world? Takuya didn’t care about the world. He couldn’t have cared less what happened to it. “Sawatari or the world” was no more than a phrase he’d said to keep his own resolution from being blunted. All Takuya wanted was to wipe that tower off the face of the Earth. He wanted to kill the childishness inside himself. By destroying the tower, by letting Sayuri fall as an unfortunate casualty, he believed he’d be free from who he used to be, free to be who he wanted. “Oh, wow… An airplane?!” In his dream, Takuya was in the hangar at the abandoned station. Sayuri was there. She was her younger self, in her third year of middle school. She ran up to the Velaciela, turned around, and said those words to him. It was summer. The abandoned station was surrounded by deep green. The air was hot. Takuya woke up. He sat up in bed. He’d been grinding his molars, and the cheek where he’d been struck hurt. “Dammit!” 5 I was asleep. The flesh of my cheek tingled. My cheekbone hurt. I felt awful. The sound of the bell echoing through the school meant we needed to head home. The spring air clung to my skin like a lukewarm bath. In the dream, I was walking down a hall at my middle school, in the smaller form of my fifteen-year-old self. Outside the windows, pale-pink cherry trees swayed in the wind. There were quite a few leaves on them. Even now, flowers fell, dancing on the breeze. When I reached the spot under the carved wooden plate that said YEAR 3, CLASS 3, I opened the wooden sliding door. As I stepped into the classroom, I spotted a human shape. Was one of my classmates still there? It was Sayuri. She was there by herself, sitting at her desk. When she saw me come in, she hastily wiped away tears. I pretended I hadn’t noticed she’d been crying. Sayuri was wearing her PE tracksuit; it was weird that she was dressed like that when she wasn’t in a sports club and it was time to go home, but I decided not to think about that, either. I was somewhat uncomfortable, so I said something that sounded like an excuse. “I forgot something, so…” “I see.” Sayuri was trying hard to seem calm, but her voice shook. Aside from my footsteps, there was no sound at all. As I crossed to my own desk, I had to fill the silence. “You’re not going home, Sawatari?” “N-no, I will…” Sayuri averted her eyes, tugging on the hem of her sweatshirt as if her appearance bothered her. Her violin case was sitting on her desk. Still looking away, I felt around in my desk and pulled out two magazines. I was hyperaware of Sayuri, so my movements were stilted and unnatural. I could feel her eyes on me. “Hiroki, what happened to your cheek?” she asked. My heart skipped a beat. “I sort of fought with Takuya…,” I said, stowing the magazines in my bag. “Are you okay?” “Oh yeah, it’s fine. I’m sure we’ll make up again soon. Probably.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Okay, Sawatari. Good night.” “Oh, wait, Hiroki.” She stopped me, and I turned back. She had partly risen from her chair. “Are you going to the station?” “Well, yeah.” “Can I go with you? I’ll get changed right away.” Sayuri went into the girls’ locker room and shut the door. I waited in the hallway, leaning against the wall. To avoid the embarrassment of focusing on the door, I looked to the side, out the window. Warm light from the slanting sun streamed in through the glass. The school was completely empty and quiet. Beyond the door, I could hear the faint sound of rustling fabric, and I’d imagine what was going on in there, then try to stop imagining it, then imagine again. Before long, Sayuri emerged, dressed in her sailor uniform. She was hugging her violin case to her chest. “I’ve always felt like…,” Sayuri said as we cut across the dusky athletic field, side by side. The words were more for her sake than mine, I think. “Like what?” “Like I was going to lose something. As beautiful as this world is…” We left the school grounds and made our way down a narrow road that ran beside the forest. “Everything in it…” We walked along a road between farm fields and sparse houses. “…feels so far away.” By the side of that road through nothing, there was one solitary vending machine. In the dim evening light, its pale fluorescent glow seemed terribly forlorn. I stopped in front of it, dug some loose change out of my pocket, and bought two cans of hot coffee. I pushed one of them into Sayuri’s hands. I didn’t really pay attention to her reaction. Three years ago… No, almost four years now. Back then, I didn’t really understand why I’d done that. Thinking about it now, I have some idea of why. I wanted to tell her something. You may be all alone, far away from most of the world, but I know there’s light inside of you. Even with no one around you, you hold something warm inside you. Even I wasn’t really clear on what I wanted to say, though, and it was really hard to express the emotions to someone else in words. I started walking, but Sayuri stayed where she was. I looked back. The sky was a warm color. Directly behind Sayuri was the tower, dyed red. Colored by the setting sun, Sayuri stood in the middle of the low, crimson sky. The tower was behind her; the violin was against her chest. She was smiling faintly. Just then, in my eyes— Sayuri was the center of the shining world. The wind blew, and her hair streamed with it. She was looking at me. I looked at her. “Oh, I see…” I woke up in the hangar at the abandoned station. My face was flushed from the heat of the stove. As my mind woke up, the dream slipped away. I sat up, one hand to my forehead. I’d been sleeping on the sofa bed in the Velaciela’s hangar. “Something really important just…” I tried to retrieve the vanishing traces of the dream. The sights I knew I’d seen had to lie deep in the labyrinth of my memories, but they didn’t come back. The faint echoes of the emotion made me restless. “Just when I thought I had it figured out…” Why do the important things show up only in dreams? Why do dreams slip out of reach the moment you wake up? I kept stubbornly groping through the abyss of my mind. My fingertips never found anything. I was really on my own. No one would come to help me. I’d just have to do it all myself. I’d come back here to do what had to be done, even if I had to do it alone. My resolution was set. I turned off the stove and dashed outside. I was feeling aggressive. A pleasant blue sky spread over the drifts of white snow all around me. Nearby birds took flight, startled by the sound of the door opening. I stopped for a moment, taking in the view for a few seconds. Then I set off down the mountain at a run. As I ran, I thought about what I’d have to do. If I ignored the question of specific methods, what I needed to do was simple: Either cancel Mr. Okabe’s terrorist bombing or postpone it. Get Sayuri out of the college’s hospital ward. Finish the Velaciela, put Sayuri on board, and get to the tower before it was destroyed. I just had a few more things to do than before, that was all. Would it work out somehow? Of course it would; I’d make it work. Stopping or backtracking wasn’t an option. I got through the broken fence and entered the Emishi Manufacturing lot. Ordinarily, I would have cut straight through the courtyard, but this time I went around, following the fence, to make myself less obvious. Then I reached the plant. It was completely closed, shutters down, like an enormous box with no lid. Naturally, it was locked. I walked all the way around it, but there didn’t seem to be any way to sneak in. I went over to the prefab office building. The plant and the office were linked on the inside. That building was completely locked up as well, but of course, there were no shutters on the windows. I held my breath, taking a good look at the place. I couldn’t sense anybody inside. Walking softly, I climbed the steel stairway overlooking the yard. The entrance to the office was at the top of those stairs, on the second floor. There was an aluminum door whose top half was made of frosted glass; I flattened myself against it, watching and listening for a little while longer. When I was sure the coast was clear, I broke the glass with an empty can. I stuck my hand in through the broken pane, twisted the lever on the knob, unlocking the door, and opened it. Of course, no lights were on inside. I stepped into the darkened building. I’d decided that there was a fifty-fifty chance the drone they were planning to use in the terror attack was being stored at the plant. A simple trick would do; something they wouldn’t find until it was time to fly it. I just had to delay their plan for half a day—or even a full day, if I got lucky. I walked down a corridor so narrow two people would barely have been able to pass each other. I’d been careless. At a corner in the hallway, somebody grabbed my arm. By the time I realized I’d been caught, they’d hauled me forward, shoved me down, and pinned me in a painful grip. My shoulder was twisted the wrong way, and if I moved around too much, I’d dislocate the joint. Something hard was pressed against the back of my head. I thought it was probably the same thing I’d seen yesterday. Sweat beaded on my skin, and I felt the humidity rising. “So it’s you, Hiroki. Thought so. You’ve grown… Is this how you’re thanking me for those letters? Helluva way to return a favor.” I knew Mr. Okabe’s voice, although I couldn’t see his face. All I could see was the dust on the floor. “Mr. Okabe!” I shouted. “If you destroy the tower, Sawatari’s going to die!” “Huh?” Mr. Okabe didn’t let up on my shoulder, and the gun stayed pressed to my head. “It’s the tower’s fault that Sawatari is asleep! She’s connected to it! Please call this off! Or at least wait! I’m going to bring Sawatari back, so just hold off until then.” “I don’t know what’s going on, but, Hiroki…” His deep voice sent vibrations into the back of my head. “It’s too late to change the plan.” “Please! Mr. Okabe!” “No dice. It’s already settled— And I can’t let you leave here.” My sweat went cold in an instant. The gun pressed against my head, pushing my face into the floor. I was going to die— It was the first time I’d ever really felt my own mortality. Mr. Okabe’s weight was on top of my legs, and even if I’d tried to fight him, I couldn’t move. I squeezed my eyes shut. “Wait!” I jolted at the sharp cry; for a second, I thought I’d been shot. Then footsteps approached. Very familiar footsteps. “What?” Mr. Okabe said. “Let us destroy the tower,” said Takuya’s voice. I forced my head up. The gun’s cold muzzle touched the back of my neck, and I shuddered again. Takuya, his left arm still in a sling, was standing at the corner of the corridor with his arms folded. “He and I will do the tower. We’ll carry Sawatari and the seeker missile in the Velaciela. If she goes to the tower, she might wake up, and then we can drop the missile.” “Oh yeah…?” “Either way, the tower has to go, for Sawatari. Once she’s awake, it won’t matter what happens to it. This is for her… Well, it was. We’re going to the tower for ourselves.” “…” “Please, Mr. Okabe.” “Takuya!” I called, from the pit of my stomach. “I can’t let you guys do that.” The muscles in Takuya’s arms twitched. A cold silence filled the room. The only one I could see from my position was Takuya, but he and Mr. Okabe were staring each other down. Takuya’s shoulders rose and fell several times. “I wanna tell you kids not to, anyway, but…” Mr. Okabe’s weight rose off me. “If I’m being honest, I’ve got a damn soft spot for stories like yours. The whole goal of Uilta is to put broken pieces back together… Make sure you bring that thing down.” I drew a breath. “Mr. Okabe!” I called his name for the zillionth time. He smacked the back of my head. “I’ll give you the seeker data. Load it into your plane.” Then Mr. Okabe spoke to Takuya. “Hurry up and put that thing away.” Takuya slipped the handgun he’d been gripping under the cover of his sling back into his jacket. Then he wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans several times. 6 As he drove through the dark streets, Takuya kept running through methods. He didn’t have the time to try anything complicated, which meant there was only one way. He’d have to ask for Maki’s help. But Takuya didn’t want to drag her into this. In fact, he wanted to avoid it at all costs. There was no other way, though. No time, either… Still irresolute, Takuya went to the college. He parked the car in the underground garage, which he didn’t normally use, then went into the grad students’ room at the Tomisawa Lab. “Shirakawa. You’re starting work this late?” It was two in the morning, and yet Maki was sitting at her desk, in front of her computer. Takuya had planned to phone her and have her come over, and the fact that she was already here unsettled him a little. “What about you, Maki…?” “I have a patient here, you know. I’m on night duty today.” “Oh…” “They didn’t get her transferred to the mainland in time.” Maki swiveled her office chair and stretched. “Even though the war’s starting today or tomorrow.” Takuya went over to the desk beside Maki’s and leaned against it lightly. The latest edition of Newsweek lay on the desk, so he picked it up for no particular reason. “I wonder. Maybe it’s actually because war is so close. They’ve, um… Maybe they don’t have time for the patient right now. If the war expands beyond predictions, the tower research itself may end up being pointless.” “That’s a scary thought… I wonder if the rumor about the terrorist bombing is true.” “What’s the target?” “The tower. You hadn’t heard that one?” “No. There’s a rumor about that?” “This lab may be targeted, too…” Maki picked up a stick of Pocky and nibbled on it. “And the riskiest times will be today and tomorrow. Wonderful.” “It’s all right,” Takuya said dispassionately. “What makes you say that?” “This place is only researching the tower; it has nothing to do with the split. The terrorist group is fighting the ones who are keeping the country apart.” “Hmm.” “Ultimately, the whole problem is the split. It’s wrong to break up a whole country, Maki. Lately, I’ve been wondering whether Tsukinoe was trying to do the same thing the terrorists are.” As Takuya spoke, he paged through the magazine. It was a special issue about the pending war crisis. Feature: The Threat of Terrorism. Countdown to the Final Line. The Nightmare Scenario of a Prolonged War… All the headlines were full of fear. “That inversion phenomenon around the tower… We treat it as if the cause is unknown, and it’s assumed to be the result of a function going out of control, but I think it might be a trap that Ekusun Tsukinoe incorporated on purpose. He was from Honshu. It’s likely that it was a type of terrorist bomb meant to counteract the North-South division: ‘If you keep doing this, then I’ll drag in Ezo and Honshu and the Union mainland and make it all disappear.’” Maki was watching Takuya, her eyes round. Her hand stopped carrying Pocky to her mouth. Abruptly, she looked away from him. “Shirakawa, you’re a little hard to figure out. I bet you have a lot of secrets.” “No…that’s not…” Maki rose from her chair, breaking up the frozen atmosphere. “Sorry; I’ll go make some tea. And then…” As she passed him, she pointed to her own cheek. “Let me treat that for you.” Maki put two servings’ worth of beans in the coffee maker, then took the first aid kit out of the shared locker and came back. “Sit,” she said. Takuya sat down in an office chair, as he’d been told, then submitted to her treatment of his cheek. “You’ve been getting hurt a lot lately, Shirakawa.” “I’m sorry.” “Having a hard time?” “No, it’s fine.” Maki stood in front of Takuya, applying a bandage to his cheek. Her modest chest, with its ID card, was right in front of his eyes. Takuya was aware that Maki’s kindness tended to make his heart fragile. Was this what big sisters were like? It probably wasn’t quite the same thing, but he guessed he wasn’t too far off the mark. “I’m sorry,” Takuya said again. Abruptly, Maki looked pained. It was only for a moment, and then the expression disappeared. She began clearing away the leftover gauze. “He was my best friend,” he murmured. “Huh?” Maki turned back. “The guy I fought with. We wanted the same thing, worked toward the same goal.” “Right.” Maki nodded kindly. She was always kind. “But we moved on to different places, and our goal disappeared… I don’t know how to put it. I lost sight of where I should be heading. All this power, these impulses I couldn’t understand, kept bubbling up and overflowing inside me. I couldn’t get anywhere. I felt locked up, somehow.” “Mm-hmm,” Maki said, encouraging him to continue. “When they let me join this laboratory, I was so relieved. Like I’d found the thing I needed to do. I was also happy about getting to meet you.” He looked up at Maki. Maki’s cheeks were flushed. “So”—Takuya stood up—“I didn’t want to get you involved. I didn’t want to do it this way.” He walked over to her, close enough that he could have pulled her to him and embraced her. He considered doing that but didn’t. She was looking up at him. He reached out—and removed the ID card from her chest. She was bewildered, but she didn’t resist. She looked at him questioningly. Takuya slipped the ID into his pocket, glanced at her, then headed for the door. He could feel liquid rising inside his face; he was on the verge of tears. Maki seemed to have sensed something unusual about him, but she was still just standing there. Takuya worked the console beside the door. “There’s something I have to do. When this is all over—” He turned to look at her. “I’d like to see you again, Maki.” Maki came to herself with a jolt, finally processing that he was saying good-bye. She seemed to have realized that he was suggesting they’d never see each other again. “Shirakawa!” She ran toward Takuya. Before she reached him, Takuya opened the door, made a swift exit into the hall, and closed it again. Then he locked it, using Maki’s ID card. Without an ID, that door wouldn’t open. In the corridor, Takuya gazed at the door. He stayed that way for quite a long time. She was probably pounding violently on the other side of the locked door. It was thick and airtight, enough to block the sound. Finally, he started down the hall, his expression determined. Carrying a sports bag with his personal items, Takuya stood in front of the door to the neurological ICU. He slid Maki’s ID through the card reader. With a hiss of compressed air, the heavy door slid open. Sayuri’s body lay there, exactly as it was the last time he’d seen it. She was beautiful, the sort of beauty that accurately navigated the complicated twists and turns of his heart to strike right to its depths. When he touched her, he felt something like reverence, even awe. “Sawatari.” He put an arm behind her, raising her to a sitting position. He quickly dressed her in his own spare clothes, then wrapped her in his coat. “This time, we’ll go to the place we promised.” With Sayuri on his back, he walked through the deserted halls. The idea that this was the last time he’d see the college filled him with emotion. The smooth hallways, like clean rooms; the pale, inorganic lighting. Intellectual, logical people. He hadn’t disliked being here. He hadn’t disliked it at all. Now that he was carrying Sayuri, his footsteps echoed differently. He’d probably never come back here. He felt his heart ache. There was somewhere he needed to go. Someone was standing in the passage that led to the underground garage. “It’s not too late, Shirakawa.” Tomisawa’s expression was sterner than he’d ever seen it. “Too late for what, Professor?” “We can make it so this never happened. Return that girl to her hospital room, then take a week off at home. I’ll forget this. You forget it, too. I’m sure Maki will forget as well. Will you do that?” “No, Professor. I don’t want to be any later for this. It’s too important.” Tomisawa gave a theatrical sigh. Sighing was a habit of his. “Shirakawa, be reasonable. Right now, she’s the US-Japan alliance’s most important specimen. Exactly what do you think will happen if you take her? Forget research; you won’t even be able to show your face in the West again.” “Probably not,” Takuya replied stiffly. “But she’ll be saved…I think.” “Frankly, I’d rather protect you, Shirakawa. You’ve got talent. If possible, I’d like you to continue your research and achieve greatness in your field.” “I’m very sorry. That’s all I can say.” “There’s the phase shift as well. If you wake her up, the world itself may vanish.” “We’ll handle that. We do have a chance.” “Uilta, hmm?” Tomisawa knew about that, too. “Will it really go so well? Are you planning to stake the entire world on this?” “Yes.” Takuya nodded. “I am.” He and Tomisawa glared at each other. “This won’t do you any good,” Tomisawa said. “No, Professor. This is for my own good. I have to, or my soul will die.” Takuya was just reacting to the other man’s provocation with a retort of his own, but the moment the words left his mouth, he was certain they were true. “Professor, don’t you have anything like that? Something you’d throw away everything for? That’s what this is now. For me, anyway.” Confusion raced through Tomisawa’s expression. He seemed to have connected with something vital inside him. “To tell you the truth, up until a minute ago, I was torn. Talking to you has helped me make up my mind. I’m going. Please move, sir.” “…” “Please move.” Finally, listlessly, Tomisawa yielded the way. Takuya walked straight by, and Tomisawa followed him with his eyes. “Professor…,” Takuya said without turning around. “Thank you very much.” Then he resumed walking. He never looked back. He drove through the darkness. Most of the traffic signals were blinking, ordering caution. Every so often, he came up against a red light, and then he’d check on Sayuri, who was lying in the back seat. He didn’t smoke. There were no cars in front of him, and he didn’t pass any going the other way. He reached Emishi Manufacturing in an hour. Okabe was waiting alone, leaning against the railing of the projecting balcony on the second floor of the office building. When he saw Takuya’s car pull in, he went down the stairs and into the courtyard to meet him. Takuya got out of the car. “Is she really going to wake up if you do this?” Okabe asked, after he’d peered into the car and seen Sayuri wrapped in a blanket. “I doubted it myself at first, but…I’m sure now.” Seeing that Okabe had lit a cigarette, Takuya put one of his own between his lips. “That’s probably what’s tethering Sawatari to reality. Even now, she keeps waiting for the Velaciela in her dreams. Even before she fell asleep, she had visions of the future, and she asked us for a favor. She asked us to rescue her… I think Hiroki and I both sensed that on some level.” Takuya tossed his cigarette away, grinding it under his foot. He’d hardly smoked any of it. For some reason, his body hadn’t really wanted tobacco. He’d looked down, but then he returned his gaze to Okabe. “The Velaciela seats two, and I can’t pilot it with this arm. I’m going to stay here and watch what happens to the tower… And, Mr. Okabe, can I ask you something?” “Speak.” “Why are you letting us do this?” “Uh…” “Frankly, I didn’t think Uilta would ever choose to introduce more uncertainty into the plan at this stage. Why did you do it?” “‘Why,’ huh?” Okabe smirked, the cigarette still in his mouth. “A long time back, see, there were these two kids who were making an airplane… Not you two; this was further back than that.” “Huh?” “It was a hydroplane with a reciprocating engine. There was this one girl, and they were desperate to get her attention.” “…” “I just happened to remember those guys.” “I assume these are both people I know?” Takuya asked. “Dunno… Can I ask a question, too?” “Yes.” “Is that your reason? Wanting to save the girl?” “That’s part of it. Sawatari asked us for help, and we said we would. We owe it to her now. That isn’t the whole reason, though; it’s for us, too. We had to keep that promise. We can’t live our lives in debt. We have to prove to ourselves that we follow through.” Okabe grinned with the cigarette still dexterously between his teeth. “You were a kid tryin’ to act like an adult, and then you actually started growin’ into one… Hmm?” He glanced at the sky. “I thought it was getting colder. Sure enough, it’s coming down again.” Snow had begun drifting down. When Takuya tilted his head straight up, it looked as though there was a canopy of countless snowflakes radiating out from a central point, sometimes sketching spirals. “I’m gonna go now, before it starts really coming down,” he said. “Right… Well, you know.” Okabe walked up to Takuya and gave him a hearty whack on the back. “You haven’t worked together in a while. Play nice.” That was the last thing he wrote about in his journal. I never saw those sights, but I dream about them often. 7 The pallid atmosphere unique to snowy nights crept in silently. In the hangar at the abandoned station, I was at work on the laptop computer I’d been using for the past three years. The Velaciela used a fly-by-wire system. Essentially, it was completely controlled by computer. It took a complicated program to work the appendages of the aircraft accurately, with no errors whatsoever. The work was like running nerves through an artificial body, linking the mental to the physical. I was only putting the finishing touches on something Takuya and I had made together three years ago, but my instincts for programming were very rusty. I brought up the list of BIOSes, examining it and picking out what I needed. The flickering green characters were hard on my eyes. “Which is it…? This one?” I entered a file name. There was an audible response from the monitor in the cockpit. It was an error. A string of red characters showed on the LCD screen of my computer as well. The error message read Wrong BIOS version! Be careful, idiot! For a second, I was genuinely annoyed, and I squeezed my eyes shut. I sighed. What the hell, man? The sound of the back door opening startled me. Takuya walked in slowly. He was carrying a person on his back. When I saw her long, black hair, finely dusted with snow, both my breath and my mind stopped. Returning to my senses, I picked up the stove that I’d set by the table, without turning it off, and carried it over to the sofa bed. Takuya lowered Sayuri to the sofa, then tucked a blanket around her. Takuya and I gazed wordlessly at the sleeping girl. She was eighteen now, and her appearance had changed by three years. She looked exactly like the Sayuri I’d seen in my dream. That really was more than a dream… She was breathing quietly. The heat of the stove melted the snow, and water droplets fell from her hair. Sayuri was here. This wasn’t a dream. Something was welling up inside my chest. If I stayed quiet, I might end up staring at her forever, so I forced myself to speak. “Takuya, what BIOS version am I supposed to use? We changed the rudder position partway through, remember? I don’t have anything after that.” After I said it, I realized this was the first time we’d spoken to each other properly since we’d come to blows here two days ago, and I wanted to cringe with embarrassment. Maybe Takuya felt the same way. He was blushing faintly. He took a case with a disc in it out of his pocket and tossed it to me. I caught it, then looked at it closely. There was nothing written on it. “It’s on that. So is the stuff for the seeker missile… What’s left to do?” “There’s a little wiring for the superconducting motor. And then the software’s…” “I got some US Army intel from Mr. Okabe.” Takuya took his laptop out of his bag. “We’ve got five hours until they declare war. Our only chance is to fly under the confusion right after the declaration. I’ll handle all the software, so you finish up the wiring.” “Okay.” After I responded, I remembered what I’d been planning to say earlier and groused at him. “Hey, Takuya, what’s up with that error message?” “Huh?” “The one for the version check. Don’t make fun of me.” “The version check?” He cocked his head. “…Oh. Isn’t that one of the parts you put together, three years back?” “Huh?” I felt like I’d just fallen on my face. “I did?” I started to suspect that maybe I had. Takuya gave a lopsided smirk. “That’s the kind of guy you are. Idiot.” Takuya finished up the software in no time flat. He’d apparently had all the necessary components on his computer, but getting it done in a few hours was astounding. “Stuff like this is easy,” he said. “Once you know what you need to do, you just have to move your hands. The hard part is deciding what to do.” He’s got that right, I thought. I finished up the motor, hauled in the generator and charged the battery, hooked up the pump, and filled the tank with aviation fuel. Come to think of it, we’d left a whole lot of kerosene sitting up here for several years. That was not safe… The vibrations of the generator and the pump reverberated noisily, and I got more and more psyched up. There was energy here. A sense of life. Outside, it was almost imperceptibly lighter. The sun hadn’t come up yet. I got into the cockpit and inspected the monitor and switches. I stepped on the pedals, checking the condition of the rudder, and moved the flaps and ailerons by turn. I heard the pleasant sound of the actuators. This’ll work, I thought. It’s done… Still gripping the stick, I sat there dazed for a little while. From below me, I heard Takuya’s voice. “Hiroki, c’mere a second.” “What?” I leaned over the edge of the cockpit. “They’ve issued combat situation predictions for the Tsugaru Strait.” I climbed down from the plane and went over to the desk where Takuya was sitting. “They’re about what we predicted they would be.” His laptop displayed a map of Aomori and Hokkaido, with the Tsugaru Strait at its center. I peeked at it over Takuya’s shoulder. It was shown with force deployment predictions displayed as percentages. “The front line extends to the vicinity of the forty-second parallel, huh…?” Both the US-Japan alliance and the Union seemed to be assuming a scenario in which they’d intercept the enemy over the water. “The interior of Ezo, and the area around the tower in particular, seems to be a blank zone for the Union army.” “The erosion from the tower has taken out a lot of the land. That’s probably why. How do you want to go in?” “Let’s see…” I thought for a little while, then told him, pointing at the screen as I spoke. “I’ll use the jet engine and fly ultralow until we’re over the strait. Then I’ll slip through the battlefield, cross the forty-second parallel, and climb when I get to these mountains. Then cruise. How does that sound?” “Not bad… Except you’re going to be cutting right through an air combat hot spot.” “Yeah.” “Maybe it’s a little late to mention it now, but if you get downed, it’s all over. Are you sure about this?” “They’ll be on high alert before the fighting starts. We really can’t fly then. We have to go while there’s fighting going on around us. Use it as cover. There’s no other way to do it, right?” “Right,” Takuya said immediately. “I’m impressed you’ve already got the guts for it.” “I may just be numb.” Takuya pointed at a different screen. “When you reach the tower and Sawatari wakes up, the phase shift should reactivate. As soon as that happens, get out. Once you’re ten kilometers from the tower, launch the seeker missile. All you have to do is let it out of the bay; it’s programmed to fly to the tower autonomously… And then it’ll all be over.” I remembered we’d grudgingly added the bay to the design a long time ago, when Mr. Okabe demanded it. He’d said he wanted to drop fliers from the sky, but thinking about it now, the intent was glaringly obvious. Takuya pulled his chair back and gazed at the Velaciela, illuminated by the floodlights. From there, he could see the entire completed aircraft at once. “We’ve got two whole hours left until the fighting starts. We got it done faster than I thought we would,” he said. I looked at the whole Velaciela, then examined each section separately. Each component contained the memories of the hard work spent on it. We were just a little late, but we were keeping the promise we’d made to ourselves. Now we just had to fulfill the promise we’d made to her. Suddenly, the strangeness of it welled up within me. “Don’t you think it’s weird? Ordinarily, you’d at least wonder if it’ll really fly, right? But I’ve never once thought that.” Takuya replied coolly. “We designed it to fly, and we built it to fly. Of course it’s gonna fly.” “I do feel better hearing it from you.” “Says the guy who’s never been nervous. What are you even talking about?” We built it to fly, so it would. What a wonderful sentiment. We never thought that what we’d made might not fly. It wasn’t possible. That’s what it means to have power—it means there’s nothing to fear. “Hey, Hiroki, can I ask you something? This is a wild guess, or a hunch, but…” “What?” “You can play the violin, can’t you?” “What, I called it?!” Takuya cackled. With his laughter in my ears, I sullenly took out Sayuri’s violin and tuned it. Incredibly, it barely needed tuning at all. Its sound was pure and sweet. Just a few little tweaks was all it took. The violin had been suspended here as well. Time had stopped for it, too. Takuya sat down on the floor, letting the stove toast his left side. I stood halfway between the Velaciela and Takuya, looking toward the Velaciela as I warmed up. “Do us a favor and look over here.” “Shut up.” When I turned around, Takuya was wearing a very sunny expression. “Do you want applause?” “Just zip it and listen.” With that carefree smile on his face, I briefly saw him as he’d been three years ago. I inhaled, exhaled, and then, with my back to the Velaciela, I started playing. First I played “When You Wish Upon a Star.” It was a simple tune, but a good one. I liked it. That was enough to let me get to know the quirks of Sayuri’s violin. It was the first time I’d ever played a violin that wasn’t silent. Then I played a few recent J-pop hits. I listened to quite a lot of FM radio, so I was surprisingly familiar with them. While I was at it, I played an old British rock song, too. Nocturne no. 20 in C-sharp Minor, chosen from Chopin. I started wanting to try a playful piece, and I switched over to jazz violin. The atmosphere changed dramatically. The melody was complicated, and I could feel my own fingers working vigorously. It felt good. I was completely absorbed. There’s something wonderful about live sound. You radiate it with your whole body, and it becomes waves echoing in the atmosphere. I could feel the sound issuing from my chin. I became sound itself. Finally, I played that piece. Sayuri’s melody. “A Distant Calling Voice”… It was a tune I’d played over and over. By now, I could play it perfectly. I’d grown far better than Sayuri had been on that day. It was a little sad, actually. For some reason, it felt like I was playing it for the first time. Was this song always so beautiful…? Light from outside had begun stealing in through the gaps between the badly fitted boards in the roof and walls. The sun wouldn’t show itself for a little while longer, but the sky was probably glowing already. Suddenly, Takuya’s face crumpled. Back then, I didn’t know what had happened to him over the past three years. On the sofa, Sayuri was still asleep. Memories of the three of us walking through the field replayed on the screen of my mind. Sayuri was carrying her violin case on her back, walking cheerfully in front of Takuya and me, turning to look back from time to time. “I’ve always felt like…like I was going to lose something,” she’d said. Right now, dimly I had the same feeling. I played. I closed my eyes. Outside, I was sure it was still snowing. White flakes were falling over the platforms of the abandoned station. Over the station building. Morning light lanced in through the holes in the rotting walls and floor of the pedestrian bridge. I visualized the scene I knew lay outside. Beautiful. Beautiful. I love you. Then we heard the first report of the declaration of war. 8 We settled Sayuri into the back seat of the Velaciela, securing her with the seat belt. The two of us pushed the aircraft along. We’d built the plane on top of a wheeled trolley, and the trolley was on a set of tracks that ran all the way into the hangar. That meant moving it was relatively simple. We were going to use the trolley in lieu of a catapult. We opened the hangar’s big doors as far as they’d go, exposing the plane to the dawn air. As we moved the plane along the tracks, we looked at the sky. It was red near the horizon. Higher up, it was nearly dark gray. At the track switch, we executed a switchback, turning completely around. We moved the Velaciela to the end of the straight set of rails we were using as a runway, then locked the wheels. Leaning my upper body into the cockpit, I turned on the ignition. The engine came to life, filling the air with its distinctive blend of a shriek and a roar. It seemed as if that alone might be enough to wake Sayuri. By that point, we weren’t talking much. Neither of us was in the habit of engaging in unnecessary chatter to reemphasize our solidarity or whatever. I climbed into the cockpit. The back seat, where Sayuri was, had a backrest, but the front seat didn’t. We’d meant to put one in, but when we’d moved the back console up to join the front and have everything in one place, we’d taken the backrest out to facilitate the work. The g-forces during takeoff might make my balance a bit unstable. In exchange, if I glanced over my shoulder, Sayuri’s face was right there. Takuya and I took one last wordless look at Sayuri: me from the seat, and him standing on the boarding ladder. He closed the sliding canopy. Then he climbed down to the ground, removed the ladder, and moved away from the plane. He was just watching now. He didn’t say “Go,” and he gave no signals. I looked ahead. The straight rails stretched away. And at the end of that line, the tower loomed. On the ocean in front of the tower, there was a swarm of intermittent flashes of light. Combat. I looked up. A formation of fighter jets was etching contrails across the round sky, like claw marks. I couldn’t tell the difference between the vibration of the engine and my own trembling. Feeling the numbness of anxiety in my palms, I pushed up the throttle. The engine throbbed. I needed a signal for myself. “Let’s go,” I said, though my voice was drowned out by the roar. I unlocked the wheels. Its strength unleashed, the jet engine howled. There was an abrupt initial lurch, a bit like a roller coaster. Since there was no seat to catch my back, I leaned forward. We taxied down the rails. The scenery flowed past me, ahead of me one moment and behind me the next. We put on speed, and my field of vision narrowed. Momentum was pulling my body backward. The cliff was right in front of us— I squeezed the right-hand lever as hard as I could, and there was a jolt underneath us: The blast devices had activated, separating the trolley and the aircraft. I knew instinctively that the ground was gone. The Velaciela left the rails and began running along the transparent tracks of the atmosphere. I could physically feel the overwhelming vulnerability. The ridgeline of Mt. Hakamagoshi sank below us, and the clouds came down from above. Everything I could see seemed to be descending. A mighty wind buffeted the canopy from the front. Once again, I had that feeling I might never be able to go back to the place I’d left; a sense of relinquishing, a sense of liberation. We were flying. The flight of this jet wasn’t elegant at all. I bore up under the rattling as best I could, but my whole body was being scrambled. My guts were being shaken around so bad I felt like I might throw up. I started worrying that my brain might break. The worst part was the vibration in my eyeballs. I gripped the stick so hard I couldn’t feel my hand. Of course, that made the vibration that much worse, but I couldn’t afford not to. The plane seemed ready to fall apart at any moment. The joins in the canopy rattled audibly. I thought of place after place, wondering whether our work had been sloppy on any of them. If even one of them was loose, we’d break apart starting there. I fought the impulse to pull back the throttle, and the Velaciela kept flying at full speed. We crossed the mountain. The land ended, and the sea spread before us. The sea, huh? It took me time to register that we were over the ocean. Mist hung over the water. I wanted to cross this sea— Gradually, I pushed the stick forward and down, and we lost altitude. I flew just above the surface of the water, low enough that the plane’s belly might graze the water. I didn’t have the leeway to look behind me, but I was sure we were sending up waves. The kickback from the water hit us, and the Velaciela tried to buck up again. Without slowing our speed at all, I kept the Velaciela’s head down by force. On reflex, I leaned forward. The plane grew wet with the vapor from the water. I looked ahead. In the distance, I saw several black ship silhouettes. Since we were so far away, they looked small, but the battleships were enormous. Lines of fire were flying around them, this way and that. Lights that looked like sparks streaked toward the sky in diagonal lines in rapid succession. I imagined Gatling guns spitting fire and missiles launched slowly from fixed rocket launchers. From a distance, though, they looked like the lights of small domestic fireworks. I consulted the display on the monitor, then flew along a route that would let me avoid them. A terrible feeling raced through me, and I looked up. …Right into the middle of a dogfight. Gray and navy-blue fighter jets were locked in aerial combat. A swarm of fighter jets were zipping around like flies in the summer. I ducked involuntarily, and I might have made some sort of noise. The Velaciela’s stealth was pretty good. As long as they didn’t physically spot us, we’d be fine. Besides, the planes would be too busy to bother with the Velaciela… That was what I told myself. Two jets plunged toward us from the sky’s zenith, plummeting straight down. A MiG was glued to the tail of an F-23. The F-23 flipped right in front of me, climbing rapidly. The MiG followed and launched an air-to-air missile. It looked like one carnivorous fish taking aim at another fish, then biting into it. Just before the missile struck, the targeted “fish” flapped its rudders frenetically, like a living thing in the throes of death. The F-23 exploded right over my route. The explosion was heavy and thick, and the thin threads of smoke looked so solid it seemed as if you could touch them. It looked like the video of the space shuttle explosion I’d seen once. I flew, avoiding the scattered fragments of the plane that pelted down like hail. Still, fine bits of wreckage knocked and clanked against the fuselage. Just then, our nose struck something. The canopy went red, blocking my view. Only after that did I register the sensation that the plane had struck something soft. That time, I screamed. My eyes were squinted nearly closed, and I cringed down, but even so, I kept flying. I just kept going. The wind pressure gradually swept the thick red liquid away until I could see again. Even after the wind had rinsed off all traces of the blood, I couldn’t breathe normally. I shouted a wordless cry and let its power raise my head. Something nostalgic came into view. “It’s land…” By the time I murmured the words, we’d already crossed the coastline and were looking down over the terrain of Hokkaido. I raised the stick. Fixing it in that upright position, I gazed at the air currents absently, but with a sense of reverence. The Velaciela continued to rise into the distant upper reaches of the sky, above the clouds. We’d reached what lay beyond the end of the world. 9 I was surrounded by pure blue. I love that color. If there was an omnipotent designer who created the world, they were a genius for coming up with the idea of having white clouds floating in a blue sky. There was no haze or smoke now. All that was around me was perfectly clear air. There was no noise or shaking anymore, either. I’d cut the throttle. Without a pause, I squeezed the other throttle lever, the one that controlled the superconducting motor’s output. I released the lock, then slowly pushed it up. The long blades that were diagonally above the cockpit split in two. At a glance, they looked like the main wings, but they were hardly involved in lift generation at all. With a clack, the two blades twisted, forming pitch angles, then began to rotate in opposition to each other. It was a double-layered counter-rotating propeller. I’d switched over from jet propulsion to the reciprocating engine. This is what I wanted to do… The propellers spun slowly, by turns, stirring the air and pushing it behind us. The motor made almost no sound. Unless I listened very carefully, I couldn’t hear it. It was so quiet up here, in the midst of a stunningly blue sky. If I shifted my gaze to the side slightly, I could peek down at the world below. There was nothing there. I wasn’t on the ground. All that was under my feet was transparent air. It was a perfectly natural thing, but the realization frightened me. The land of Ezo was far, far below; it spread out smoothly, like an aerial photo. On the rudder pedals, my feet grew cold. There was nothing underneath me. Or under this seat carrying all my weight… I suddenly couldn’t take it anymore, and I looked behind me. Sayuri’s chest was slowly rising and falling. I could hear her soft breathing. I sighed with relief. For some reason, the mere thought that I wasn’t alone calmed me down. I opened a map on the monitor and confirmed our current position. Wiping my palms on my jeans, I got a better grip on the stick. Then I slowly tipped it to the right. The Velaciela gradually banked that way, and I raised the nose to change directions. Toward the tower. It was right there, so close I almost reached out for it. It was the tower. It grew bigger and closer without giving me a chance to rein in the feelings welling up. It was far, far more enormous than I’d imagined. The little Velaciela reached the round, pitch-black phase shift territory, and it looked just like it had in the aerial photograph Takuya had shown me. I flew over the blackness, trying to get even closer. I had come to the tower. It was huge. Gargantuan. I hadn’t been able to tell from a distance, but the tower was shaped like a square pillar. An octagonal one, technically—the corners were beveled off. Its surfaces were mirrored, too, reflecting the clouds and the blue of the sky. Something worked its way up from the neighborhood of my throat. The inside of my nose began to hurt, and I looked down. The liquid that had pooled in my eyes shifted, trickling out. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold it back, but that was when the liquid began flowing in earnest. What was this? What could it be? The tower was right there. I’d flown here. I pushed the stick down to the left and circled the tower, again and again. When the Velaciela entered the tower’s shadow, it got pitch-black, while the tower became a clear mirror, reflecting the white clouds and the white Velaciela. We came out into the sunlight, and the tower turned pure-white. Even the cockpit filled with the bleaching light, and my mind was scorched white. We kept circling. Traveling around the tower. Little by little, darkness. Mirror. A pause. Little by little, light…then darkness. I climbed, little by little, sketching a spiral. As I circled, I looked at the plane, at myself, reflected in the mirror. We’d reached maximum altitude, and yet the tower still rose higher. The Velaciela didn’t give a good view above me, so I raised the nose, letting myself get a look that way. I still couldn’t see the top of the tower. It went on and on, into the sky. It grew thinner, hazier, and finally disappeared into the vanishing point. I wanted to keep circling the tower like this forever. I didn’t think I’d ever get tired of it. I wanted to show it to Takuya, too. …And to Sayuri. “Sayuri.” I turned toward the back seat. Sayuri was sleeping quietly. In her sleep, had she found these white wings among that forest of brown towers? Sayuri. We’re here. We made it to you. “Look, Sayuri,” I said. “It’s the place we promised.” Sayuri didn’t respond. I took my left hand off the throttle, folding it over my right hand, which was on the stick. I looked down. I closed my eyes. And I prayed. “Gods…” I prayed. Religion had never really resonated with me. Here, though, in the sea of blue, before this white monument, I couldn’t have been more reverent. The word gods had slipped out naturally, but it didn’t have to be gods. I prayed to something with strength far greater than my own, visualizing something huge. Something even bigger than the tower. I pictured the round blue Earth, then the black space in which that Earth floated, all alone. I envisioned the enormous gears impassively driving the movement of a host of celestial bodies, creaking in their revolutions, then I moved my imagined eyes behind those gears to a different universe beyond. I prayed to all these things. The eyes of my heart became a pointed obelisk piercing through multiple universes. A tower. “Please make Sayuri wake up… Please.” The Velaciela continued to circle the mirrored tower. The tower reflected the sky, the clouds, and occasionally the Velaciela. The tower’s surface. Its angles. Surface. Clouds. Sky. Velaciela… Suddenly, I felt dizzy. The Velaciela reflected in the tower changed direction, flying toward me. It filled my field of vision. White… I was buried in that white. I was… I was drawn inside the tower, Velaciela and all. What I’m going to write next is something I didn’t remember until much, much later. Several years afterward, something brought the memory back to me, like a rusted lock that had unexpectedly opened. I’m not even certain whether I can call it a physical experience. Whatever it was, I forgot it right after it happened. I was flying through a dull-colored sky, like sun-bleached wallpaper. It reminded me of the walls in the dorm where I’d lived for three years. There was a forest of towers. Their designs weren’t elegant, like the Ezo tower’s. They were twisted in complicated ways, formed of a material like unglazed pottery or sun-dried brick. But there were no seams. They were all one piece. Complex patterns were drawn on their surfaces with red dye. The air smelled a bit like a tightly sealed library. Gradually, the towers were losing their color. They were turning translucent, like holographs, and disappearing. The forest of towers was on the verge of vanishing, as if it had never been anything more than an illusion. At some point, I’d left the cockpit. I wasn’t anywhere. No—right now, I was Sayuri. I was both myself and her. Our dreams mingled; the towers mingled. This was a place where countless towers met, a terminal station for parallel worlds. All the worlds were human dreams, and those dreams converged at this singularity. In this land of origins, I was Sayuri, and Sayuri was me. Because of that, I could understand her with crystalline clarity. Sayuri was standing on top of one of the towers. In the faded sky, her eyes found the double counter-rotating wings. “Those wings,” she murmured. “The Velaciela…” She could feel that she was about to wake up. It wouldn’t be long now. The towers were losing their opacity more rapidly. They lost more and more color. They turned translucent, then clear, then vanished. “The dreams are disappearing… Oh, I see…” She understood. “I know what it is I’m going to lose.” It was… “This feeling. These feelings, right now.” That was… “…No!” Her emotions burst. Denial. Refusal. She rejected it with everything she was, and the tower’s color began to return. The color of earth grew more vivid, into the color of baked clay. “Sayuri!” I yelled. I was trying to stop her. She couldn’t do that. That was what I thought, but at the same time, I was her. I was the one who was rejecting this. If it meant losing these feelings, the me who was Sayuri didn’t want to wake up. She didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t want to lose this miraculous dream. “Hiroki came for me. I understand everything about him. That’s enough. I can lose anything else, just not that,” she pleaded. “There’s nothing here, but this place has everything. If you’ll stay, Hiroki, I want to stay here forever.” Her voice was thick with emotion. It was my voice as well. “I was always alone. Even before I was trapped in here, I was always on my own. The world is so beautiful, but it always seemed like I was the only one who couldn’t experience the happiness and comfort. “Sometimes I thought the world might be wrong somehow. Like maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe there was a world out there where everything was as it should be. I wasn’t left out; I was a part of all sorts of things. Maybe I wanted to rewrite this world. “Hiroki, listen,” Sayuri said. “This place has every sort of dream there is. I don’t want to go back to where I was. I want to go somewhere new. I don’t want to forget the dream.” All the towers began to sing—loudly and powerfully. Sayuri had the towers at her command. They served her. The shape of the world was at her fingertips. The color of one of the towers grew even brighter. Then it began shining as a bloom of piercing light grew bigger and bigger at its top. White light covered my vision. And the world was remade. That world was nearly the same as the one Sayuri and I had been in before. Meaning it was a little different. Japan wasn’t divided and ruled by the United States and the Union. There was no Union superstate in that world at all. A federation had been built around Russia at one time, but it had already collapsed. Hokkaido was, and always had been, Japanese soil. No one had been separated from anyone. Mr. Okabe lived with his wife. When we went to Emishi Manufacturing to visit, his wife served us tea. There was no National Railways, either. It had been split up and privatized, and it was now known by the cryptic name “JR.” A multitude of unprofitable lines all over the country had been closed, but luckily, the Tsugaru Line was still running. I loved the rural landscapes of the Tsugaru Peninsula that you could see from that train. I gazed through its windows at the view. Of course, there was no tower. I spent my boyhood without it there to inspire me. At the abandoned station that beautiful summer, Takuya and Sayuri and I built an aircraft—a hydroplane with a reciprocating engine. I took the front of the two-seater cockpit, and Takuya took the back. The propellers pulled the plane, and the pontoons rose lightly from the surface of the water. Sayuri was running along the bank of the lake, happily chasing after us. No one was excluded. There wasn’t a trace of sorrow to be seen. There was no tower. Sayuri wasn’t forced to go to sleep. The airplane flew. The three of us could stay ourselves forever. I didn’t go to Tokyo. Takuya didn’t need to join the Aomori Army College. And so… I didn’t meet Rika. He didn’t meet Maki Kasahara. “This isn’t right, Sayuri.” I climbed out of the reciprocating plane and took off my helmet. Then I looked straight at Sayuri. I was standing in front of her. We were at the top of the clay tower. The gritty sky undulated, acquiring stripes like marble. Sayuri’s small hands were clenched tightly, pressed to her chest. She always did that when she was struggling to accept that she couldn’t win a battle or when she was contemplating pain. The Velaciela wheeled soundlessly around us. It was banking, so its smooth back was constantly turned toward us. Sayuri and I were in the center of a circle drawn by the Velaciela. “I know your pain,” I said. “And you know mine. That’s exactly what gives this place value. Don’t you agree? Everything—the good and the bad, the pain and the hardship and the bad luck and the sadness—it all belongs to us. We can’t erase the pain we’ve suffered, or that we’ve inflicted on others. All of those things brought the two of us here.” “But…” “It’s awful to be forgotten. Isn’t it, Sayuri?” “But then—!” Sayuri said. “If I wake up, I’ll forget how I feel now! I know everything about you, Hiroki, and you know all about me. You’re in me; I’m in you. We’re everything; we’re a part of each other. We don’t need anything else… And that’s all I ever wanted. If I wake up, this will be gone. Here, I don’t need anything but you. I know you feel the same. Out there, we can’t hold on to this. You’ll forget, too, you know.” “Well, it is a dream, after all.” “No…” “Sayuri, you know it, too. I am you. That’s why I think you should wake up.” “But…” “It’s all right.” I smiled at her. “We’ll find it all again, piece by piece. It’ll be fine.” The towers around Sayuri vanished one after another. They didn’t fade away the way they had before. They turned into sparks of light, bursting and vanishing instantaneously. “But please, gods…” At the top of the lone remaining tower, Sayuri prayed. “Please, after I wake up, even if it’s just for a moment…let me keep this feeling.” The Velaciela sketched a larger circle, coming toward us. “I have to tell Hiroki. He has to know how special our connection was in the dream. He has to know how much I longed for him in this deserted world and how much he longed for me… Please!” I was in the white Velaciela. “I don’t need anything else. I just want to tell Hiroki how much I’ve loved him until now.” The Velaciela grew until it was all she could see. “I’m begging you, even if it’s just for one moment.” Everything was white— “Let these feelings—” And our memories of the events inside the tower were wiped clean. “Gods…,” I prayed. “Please make Sayuri wake up… Please.” The Velaciela continued circling the mirrored tower. The blue of the sky was reflected in its facets. The morning sun emerged from the pure-white clouds, casting intense light over Sayuri’s face. I felt a little premonition, almost like fear. I locked the stick and twisted around to gaze at Sayuri in the back seat. She was all I saw. The strong morning light was melting her. And slowly… She opened her eyes. My eyes widened, too. My heart stopped. Started. Stopped again. I put a hand out toward Sayuri and touched her cheek very lightly with the tip of my middle finger. “Sayuri.” Light bloomed from the center of the tower. It was a piercing silver light, like a blade. Powerful and savage. “Hiroki…” The whole tower began to shine. The light swelled in seemingly infinite intensity, and then it emitted a shock wave all along its length. It had absolutely no effect on the plane, but the quality of the air changed. The tower had awakened, too. I didn’t care. I gazed at Sayuri. I noticed her slightest movements. The trembling of her eyelids. Her constricting pupils. Her fingertips. Her breath. On the ground, the black hole was growing darker. The tower shone brighter and brighter, and a spiral of light particles began twining around it. I could physically feel the black area expanding rapidly as it eroded the earth. Another universe was creeping out from the base of the tower before our very eyes. It crumbled rock, melted soil, building up vast power. Hokkaido was on the brink of being swallowed into the void opening in its heart. The rest of the world probably wouldn’t be far behind. We kept circling around the rumbling tower. I’d fallen still, with my hand on Sayuri’s cheek. Had her mind returned? I felt uneasy. I didn’t know what effect three years of sleep had had on her awareness. Did she even recognize me? “Sayuri,” I said, calling to her. She gave a little sob. Then tears began to spill and overflow like water pumped from a well. Her cheeks were so wet I worried she might get dehydrated. “I…” She took my hand. “There was something I had to tell you… Something very important…” She clung to my hand. She held it as though she thought I’d disappear if she didn’t…but apparently she couldn’t muster much strength yet, and I felt almost no pressure from her grip. “It’s gone…” Her chest and shoulders spasmed. She began to cry out loud. Her sobs wouldn’t stop, and neither did her tears. “It’s gone…,” she said again. Her own words seemed to torment her, and she cried even harder, like a child. “It’s all right,” I told her. “You’re awake. We’ll find it all again.” Sayuri raised her head. The Velaciela was flying soundlessly. We were there, she and I, on our promised wings, in the promised place. I thought, I should smile. “Welcome home, Sayuri.” 10 I brought the plane down. As we got closer, the darkness below us grew. Once we were low enough, I stopped the propellers and switched over to jet propulsion. We flew south, away from the tower. I didn’t fly at full speed, the way I had on the way in. We were in a hurry, but I wanted to disturb Sayuri as little as possible. The navigation assistance program told me it was time. The alarm that meant we were more than ten kilometers from the tower sounded quietly, twice. One button. It was an operation so simple it was almost anticlimactic. The bay in the plane’s belly opened, and a red-painted cylinder dropped out. The seeker missile free-fell for about a second. Then there was a flash of light from its tail, and it began to fly, trailing a white thread of smoke. It made fine adjustments to its direction, then sketched an arc toward the tower we’d just left behind. A new light was born in the tower’s middle. The explosion was a warm gold color. In an instant, the tower was in flames. Fire spread up and down it, expanding from the spot where the missile had struck. The burning tower was a deep crimson. There was a roar, and the shock wave swept through while I wrestled the plane under control. I felt a weird sense of déjà vu, but I had several more important things to think about. Sayuri had her forehead pressed against my back. She was clinging to my jacket, still crying silently. Maybe her fingers were still weak; she kept grasping at my jacket, trying to get a better grip on it. We reached the strait. Fighter jets were still streaking every which way. Lines of fire from the ships still created orange stitch marks in the sky. We flew right through the middle of it, without trouble. The tower was a pillar of fire for quite a long time, but eventually, it burned out. The soft, spiral structures in its interior were laid bare, then rapidly scattered by the wind. The black area had stopped growing, I believed. The world wouldn’t be swallowed up by the void. To me, what was more important was that Sayuri would never be trapped in that unnatural sleep again. When we got back to the abandoned station, Takuya was gone. 11 That’s the end of my story. I’ve written everything I wanted to write, at least. In the beginning, I’d planned to leave everything after this point unwritten, but I won’t be able to do that. Once you’ve taken flight, you have to land somewhere. That’s true for planes, for people, and for writing as well. I’ve already told you that Takuya disappeared. In the ten-plus years since then, I haven’t seen him once. Five years ago, he sent that journal I mentioned, but that’s all. Like the cautious type he is, he’d used a box knife to neatly cut out all the pages that talked about anything except those three years of high school. The parcel had been sent from the Union. By chance, I had an opportunity to meet Maki Kasahara, just once. She was lovely. I could imagine a smile would suit her well, but she never smiled around me. We exchanged polite greetings and parted civilly. She told me she hadn’t seen Takuya since then, either. I got in touch with Rika Mizuno first thing. I called her cell, but it was turned off, so I dialed her home phone. Rika answered. “I’ve decided to try going it alone,” she said. “I’ve been taking this time to think, and I believe I’ll be able to land. I need to learn to get by on my own, without depending on someone else to keep me connected.” She fell silent for a little while, considering what to say next, then spoke again. “But, Fujisawa, I can thank you for that way of thinking. Watching you made me want to tackle my own world head-on. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.” She actually thanked me. I was the one who owed her thanks. Rika had been the one who’d reclaimed me. Her presence had shown me the way to my rebirth. Even after she hung up, for about five minutes, I listened to the muted tone of the dead line. I couldn’t bear my feelings, so I directed them at the phone. I think that’s probably when I developed a decisive hatred of those devices. In a world where our promised place no longer existed, Sayuri and I began to live our lives again. I got the results of the entrance exams I’d taken before going to Aomori. I hadn’t made it into the national university that had been my first choice, but I’d gotten into my second choice, a private school. I went back to Tokyo, got my stuff together, and moved out of the dorm. Then I enrolled at the university, immediately submitted a leave-of-absence form, and returned to Aomori. After that, Sayuri and I began living together on our own. Both Sayuri’s mind and her body were as fragile as they came, and her family had vanished without a trace. We heard a rumor that they were in America, but we couldn’t find out any more than that. The only option was for me to protect Sayuri myself, and I didn’t want to let anyone else touch her. Although I won’t go into details, we had no trouble covering our living expenses. I guarded Sayuri, soothed her, talked with her, held her. Nothing else really mattered much. Sayuri didn’t remember a single one of the dreams she’d had during her long slumber. For two years, we lived on our own. Aomori was cold, but living there felt right. However, for a fairly long time, the absence of the tower seemed odd to me. Every time I looked north and found that empty spot in the scenery, I felt perplexed. “Why?” I murmured sometimes. In the third year, I moved to Tokyo with Sayuri and started school again. By then, to all appearances, Sayuri had recovered completely. When we first began living together, she’d been terrified of falling asleep, but lately, even that symptom had cleared up. Now she was just a beautiful twenty-one-year-old woman whose sleep was a little irregular. Twenty-one… For some reason, I couldn’t seem to get used to the fact of her age. I’d turned twenty-one myself, so it only made sense that she had reached that milestone as well. There was nothing odd about it. And yet the sense of wrongness just wouldn’t go away. It was an adult age. I was an adult and was becoming more of one. I’d begun to acquire enough power that calling me a grown-up was perfectly accurate. It happens to everyone. It’s completely fair. For some reason, though, the fact that she’d turned twenty-one seemed like a grave injustice. She was kind enough to love me. She always made sure to be there when I got home. When I walked through the door, she’d come to meet me, hug me gently with her fragile strength, and just stay there for a little while. It was as if she was trying to confirm something that couldn’t be put into words, then give it to me. Every time, I’d put my hands on her shoulders and stand there until she was satisfied. In our everyday life, she was mine alone, and I was hers. It was utter bliss, a quiet, tranquil, calm happiness. The storm of emotions she’d stirred up in me once on the train, a long time ago, never awoke again. We fulfilled each other in very quiet ways. Every so often, the fact that our lives were so peaceful frightened me. Maybe it was because before now, I’d always been pushed into motion by one thing or another. Sometimes I felt as if I was slowly drying out. Either that or like ice cream, melting… Every time I got that feeling, I’d touch her, pull her close, and bury my face in her hair. I’d lost many things on my way here. Now, Sayuri was all I had left. She was the one tiny snow crystal left in the palm of my hand. I protected it there, treasuring it gently so as not to break it. A few odd things happened. One had to do with airplanes. It was a Sunday, and Sayuri and I were out for a walk in a certain park in Kouenji. The weather was fine, and the park was crowded with people. We strolled down paths through the greenery and leaned against a fence, watching the turtles swim in the pond. Then we sat on the lawn, basking in the sun. Three grade-school boys were flying paper airplanes. One of them just couldn’t get his to fly. Even when he tried to catch a breeze with it, the nose would tilt down every time and plunge into the ground. The plane came down right next to me, and I picked it up. “Hiroki, can you fix it?” Sayuri asked. I suspected the problem was just that its center of gravity was off, but I didn’t want to deal with airplanes much anymore. After the day of the war, I’d lost all interest in them. The time to fly had passed, and now it was time to stay where we were. I just shook my head, then tried to give the plane back to the boy. From beside me, Sayuri reached out and took it. She spent a little while examining it from different angles. Then she took a wire clip out of her hair and slipped it onto the center of the plane. She raised it and softly sent it riding on a breeze. Catching the air current, the plane flew magnificently straight. “Well done…” I was impressed. Suddenly, Sayuri looked taken aback. From her expression, she couldn’t seem to believe what she’d done. She considered the matter seriously, pinching her fingernails between her fingertips. “How did I know to do that?” she asked. “I’ve never even made a paper airplane before.” Another thing was the cat. The apartment we’d rented was on the first floor of a five-story building, and it had a small garden. It was so tiny that a few potted plants were enough to fill it entirely. At the beginning of autumn, a cat started to visit the garden. It was a gray-and-white cat, with patches of gray that came down on either side of its nose like a mask, and it was very young. We guessed it had been born that spring. When I tossed a peeled chestnut to it, just to see what it would do, it timidly approached, sniffed at it, then began to eat it, delighted. Then it started coming by for a visit once every couple of days. It wasn’t long before it got used to us and began coming into the apartment through the patio door. Sayuri doted on the cat. Before long, we had a new resident. The building didn’t allow pets, but we ignored that. The cat got attached to her but never really took to me, for some reason. It seemed to me that the two of them had formed some sort of understanding. The cat would flatten itself on the ground in the garden and stare at a little winged insect that had come to rest on a flowerpot, watching for its chance. Then it would try to pounce on it. Sayuri often watched fondly. The cat generally failed, and then she’d laugh like a little bell. After about two months, the cat disappeared. One day, Sayuri and I went to a nearby supermarket to do some shopping. We were planning to be gone for only an hour, so we locked up without putting the cat outside. When we got back, it was gone. We searched the whole apartment. We thought it might have gotten itself trapped in a corner somewhere, so we moved all the furniture and checked. We even dragged everything out of the closet. But we found nothing. I insisted that that wasn’t even possible, but Sayuri easily accepted the reality. “It was just that time,” she said. She seemed a little lonely, but considering how fond she was of it, I thought she was awfully calm. A few days later, I woke in the middle of the night and realized she was silently crying. I rolled over and pulled her into a hug. She was trembling. “I’m frightened,” she said. I told her there was nothing to be afraid of. She didn’t say anything. “Hiroki.” One day near the end of that year, she told me, “I need to tell you good-bye.” “Good-bye?” Our parting jumped out of nowhere. “I don’t think it’s right for me to stay here with you like this. I think I need to be on my own.” “Why?” I asked, stunned. “Because I lean on you. I let you handle so much. When I’m with you, even if I can’t walk on my own, you’ll walk for me.” It was so sudden that I was confused. “Listen, if there’s something I need to change…” “No, it’s not your fault. Not at all.” She shook her head, and her long hair rippled. “I’ve started wanting to make my own decisions, to live on my own.” I was still confused, but dimly I realized that I was about to lose her. “Over these past few years, you’ve always protected me,” she went on, speaking as if she was carefully untangling a thread, then laying it out. “And it feels wonderful to be so cherished, but it also means you are the only point of contact I have with the world now. You’re strong, and you can do everything; I can’t do anything. I don’t think that’s okay. I need to expose myself to the world instead of keeping myself shut away inside you.” “Listen, though,” I said. “Even if that is true, do you really have to go so suddenly? If we think it over together…” “No, I’m sure that wouldn’t work. For me, I mean.” Gently, quietly, she laid out her thread for me. “I think I need to become my own person. Somewhere else, without you. I have to choose on my own and move ahead on my own, without relying on you. I think it’s just that time. Unless I spread my wings and go now, I’ll take the easy path and keep leaning on you forever. I want to become myself. I have to redeem those three years I was asleep…get back all the things I put on hold during the past six years. I have to take my time.” I was silent. There was a time when I’d resolved to reclaim myself that way. I couldn’t say anything else. I knew how she felt. “I understand,” I told her. My voice was hoarse. I didn’t want to understand. “I was so happy for the past three years. They were like a dream.” She smiled, although she looked as if she was about to cry. “I never wanted to wake up.” She didn’t let me help with all the tasks that needed to be done in order for her to leave. She took care of everything by herself. She’d been getting ready to do this for a while. “Please don’t ask for my contact information,” she said when she’d gotten her things together and was about to leave the house. “Why?” “Because if I see you or hear your voice, I’ll fall apart. That’s what happens when you’re alone.” “What are you going to do now?” I asked her. Sayuri’s face held faint traces of anxiety and a smile that was just as subtle. “I’m going to be reborn,” she said. “Listen. Don’t think I don’t love you. I’ll always love you. When life hurts, I’ll think of you. I’ll imagine you walking, living on, under a distant sky, and it’ll give me the strength to keep going. You do that, too, all right? I’m sure you’ll never find it impossible to go on—but I hope you’ll think of me living under my own strength every once in a while, somewhere in the world.” Every so often, I look up at the sky and think of her, living somewhere I don’t know. And that’s how I ended up on my own. Everyone walks alone. It isn’t just me. No matter how often you claim you’re not lonely, it’s certain you’ll be lonely again. That’s all right, though, here in this place. Burning all loneliness and grief together, people advance down a transparent track. (Miyazawa, “Koiwai Farm, Part 9”) Finally, I’ll write about Mr. Okabe. The year after Sayuri left, I got a single letter from him, as if he’d finally remembered. It was covered with multiple forwarding labels. The stamp was from a country whose name I’d never even heard of. No doubt he wasn’t there anymore. There was a photograph of Mr. Okabe and his wife in the same envelope. I don’t really understand why; he probably wanted to brag about her. Sheesh, what a lovable dork. Mr. Okabe’s wife was about his age, of course. She wasn’t exactly young, but she had aged with grace. In fact, she was startlingly attractive. After the war and the fall of the tower, Ezo had been returned to Japan. On that winter day when we’d flown our plane, what we’d done had helped reunite this couple. There had been some meaning to it. The idea was a comforting one. Speaking of photographs… I was cleaning up, preparing to move out of the apartment where I’d lived with Sayuri. The place was saturated with memories we’d made together, and staying there would have hurt. Sayuri had left a tremendous number of books in the apartment, so I’d decided to call a tradesman and have them take them. I was separating the books I’d leave from the books I planned to take when I found it. Between the pages of one volume, there was a photo. It was a picture of me, Takuya, and Sayuri, all together, back in middle school. It had been taken at the abandoned station; the tumbledown station building was behind us. The moment I saw it, everything that had happened inside the tower resurfaced in my mind. Why had I forgotten something so important? Sayuri and I had been one then. We’d had each other, had been everything to each other. That miracle was gone now. Actually, the miracle was the fact that I’d remembered it at all. Sayuri probably hadn’t, even now. This memory was one we hadn’t been able to take with us. There was no need to make her remember. In fact, it would have been detrimental to her. When an event has been completely forgotten, it may as well have never happened. I was the only one remembering this nonexistent event. It shattered me. It was awful to be forgotten. As I gazed at the photo, I felt unsettled. When had this been taken? I had no memory of posing for it. Had I simply forgotten? The photo showed the three of us. Who had taken it? Had we used the self-timer? Maybe. I thought of every object that had been around that abandoned station. Even the piled-up railroad ties and old bus tires and things like that. Had there been a place to set and stabilize a camera? I couldn’t remember… Still, the photo was here now. I decided not to think about where it had come from. Instead, I gazed at the three figures depicted there. The indescribable joy on their faces struck right to my core. It wasn’t that they were smiling. Sayuri had her head tilted to one side and looked a little troubled, while Takuya was looking away, acting as if photos were stupid. My expression was patently stiff. (I’ve always had trouble figuring out what to do with my face.) However, there was a certain contentment in that picture. The world inside it was gentle and strong and full of nothing but good. There was nothing that could threaten them. Those three had nothing to fear. I held on to that picture as tight as I could, unable to move a muscle, and let that moment from a bygone summer stay with me for a long, long time.