I thought about what I could say. I thought long and hard, but nothing came. My mind was blank. There was nothing I could think of that seemed a fraction as meaningful as what Anzu had said. I supposed that made sense; she’d probably spent months or years developing this personal philosophy of hers. I couldn’t expect to come up with an equally poignant rebuttal in a mere few seconds… Yet I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge (and thus tacitly endorse) that worldview either. So I floundered, and I said the stupidest thing imaginable.
“Boy, you sure can talk a lot when you’re passionate about something, huh?”
Was I the dumbest man alive? Quite possibly.
“…Wowww. Really? That took a lot of courage for me to say, you know.” Anzu glared at me with narrowed eyes. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“S-sorry,” I apologized in a panic. “It was just kind of a lot, and I didn’t know what to say, so I kinda…”
“It’s fine. Still felt good to get it off my chest. Do you at least see where I’m coming from now? When I say that’s why I want to explore the Urashima Tunnel?”
If I were to answer honestly, I’d have said that yes, I understood her point of view. However, I couldn’t relate to it whatsoever. I felt no desire to be someone special or famous like she did. I mean, the unstated implication of her little philosophy was that anyone who lacked greater ambitions was lazy or a failure, and what was so wrong with being average? Why waste your whole life struggling to leave a lasting mark on the world when you wouldn’t be around to see it anyway? Assuming freedom of choice existed, if people were content to live out simple lives, why should they aspire to be more? Who needed the dramatic peaks and valleys between feeling artistically fulfilled one moment and then being depressed the other ninety-nine percent of the time when you were in a creative rut? Life was too short, and if being one of the sheeple meant you could maintain a stable level of happiness throughout, what was wrong with that?
That said, I obviously had no right to decide whether Anzu’s reasons for wanting to explore the Urashima Tunnel “passed muster.” Regardless of whether I could accept her motives, she doubtless had no intention of giving up the investigation, even if she had to do it without me. Her willpower and initiative were plain to see. To be clear, I didn’t want to part ways with her either, regardless of our opposing values. So I knew exactly what it was I had to say.
“…Yeah. There’s no doubt in my mind anymore that you’re dead serious about this.”
“You mean it?” Anzu pressed. I nodded decisively, and her face relaxed into a smile. “Well, okay then.”
It seemed all was forgiven. Yet a vague sense of guilt ate away at me. I had to really fight hard to resist the urge to break eye contact with her.
We only ended up being able to attend sixth period that day. Needless to say, Ms. H gave us quite the earful when we finally stumbled onto campus. Honestly, I wasn’t sure why we’d bothered showing up. I let out a loud, bellowing yawn in the middle of class, and the math teacher instantly shot me a dirty look, so I ducked my head down in submission. It was 2 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, but as far as my body clock was concerned, it was still sometime in the early hours of the morning after Friday night; trying to stay awake and pay attention to the lecture was an uphill battle, to say the least. I twirled my pen in my right hand as I tried to fight off yet another yawn. None of the lecture material was registering in my brain. All I could think about was the Urashima Tunnel.
Two key aspects defined the legend of the tunnel: one, it affected the flow of time, and two, it could grant any wish to those who enter it. The former we’d confirmed to be true, but the latter still remained to be seen, and it was starting to make me anxious. My wish certainly wasn’t to be reunited with a dead pet, or my sister’s sandal, and if Anzu was to be believed, those sheets of paper weren’t what she was truly after either. That begged the question: On what conditions did the tunnel manifest things like that? Did it grab meaningful objects from a person’s memories and project them at random? No, there had to be a method to the madness. In my case, it was almost like it took my real wish and taunted me by granting me all sorts of things which were closely related, but never the one thing I truly wanted.
I was suddenly reminded of the tale The Monkey’s Paw. It was a short horror story that I’d been assigned to translate for my junior high English class. The basic premise was that whoever held the titular paw would be granted three wishes, but only in a roundabout way that exploited loopholes in the wisher’s phrasing. It was essentially a genie’s lamp but much more devious. For example, a man and woman who used it to wish for a large sum of money would be granted the sum, but only as a settlement after their son was killed in a horrific accident at his workplace the next day. Then when they wished to bring their son back to life, they’d get a knock on their front door from his mutilated, decomposing corpse.
In a way, perhaps the Urashima Tunnel’s wish-granting mechanics functioned similarly to the monkey’s paw, albeit without the evil twist. On second thought, maybe there was a certain malevolence to it. I mean, it had waited until I was about to turn back before it made Karen’s sandal appear in front of me, which seemed a little too perfect. Then the same thing had happened with Kee, our parakeet. It was almost like the tunnel was summoning bait to lure its prey (in this case, me) deeper inside.
Thinking back on it now, from an objective standpoint, it really did seem like I was walking straight into some sort of trap. Though if there were malicious forces at play behind the Urashima Tunnel, then what if it twisted my wish like the monkey’s paw and gave Karen back to me, but only in a strange and disturbing way…? I didn’t want to consider the possibility.
Trying my best to shake that unsettling thought from my head, I glanced up at the calendar written in chalk on the blackboard. Summer vacation was fast approaching.