“Oh, right!”
The moment I remembered my purpose, I shot up in bed. Through the opened screen door, I saw the ocean past the veranda. I surveyed my surroundings. I was lying in the middle of a room lined with sun-bleached tatami mats, with a hanging wall scroll in the alcove featuring a tranquil mountain scene. It was a room I’d been in before. Many times, in fact… Hang on a minute.
“I’m back at my house…?”
How could that be? I’d run myself half to death trying to make it through the Urashima Tunnel, and now I was sleeping soundly in my own home? I wasn’t wearing the clothes I’d worn into the tunnel either—just a ratty old T-shirt and some shorts. Could it be that…it was all a dream? Had there never been an Urashima Tunnel to begin with? No, that couldn’t be it. I would never fall asleep like this in the sitting room. Besides, there were two huge differences between this room and the one at my house. The first being that you couldn’t see even a smidge of the ocean from my home, just the overgrown backyard and the mountain behind it. The second being that something major was missing from this one: Karen’s memorial altar. It was nowhere to be—
“Oh, hey! You’re awake!” said a voice.
A voice that belonged to my little sister Karen.
She came rushing over to me, her bare feet stamping against the tatami flooring.
“Boy, you just up and passed out all of a sudden! I had to drag you all the way here myself. You’ve gotten pretty darn heavy, you know that?”
She was right here in front of me. Talking, laughing. Neither her face nor her voice had aged a day since the last time I saw her, when she was ten years old.
“You were all covered in sweat, so I went ahead and changed you into a fresh set of clothes too! You owe me big-time, buster!” Karen placed her hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks in her trademark pouting pose. “Hey, are you even listening to me?!”
She brought her face in close to mine, and I finally snapped back to my senses.
“K-Karen? Is that…really you? Y-you’re not just…a figment of my imagination or something, are you?” I sputtered, fumbling over every other word.
“Wow, rude! See for yourself, why don’t you? Here!” Karen plopped to her knees and grabbed my hand, then placed my palm against her cheek. Her face was soft and warm, but most of all, undeniably real. “See?”
Karen smiled and cocked her head, looking for agreement on my part, so I nodded feebly. She definitely wasn’t an illusion, but this was all happening so fast that it still wasn’t quite registering in my brain. Seeing Karen in the flesh, then waking up in this weird alternate-universe version of my house… Having to process all of these impossible stimuli had sent my brain into a nuclear meltdown, and it refused to acknowledge any one of them as real. So I simply sat there, looking at Karen in a daze, until eventually my stomach let out a mighty growl.
“Oh? Are you hungry, Kaoru?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m not, like…”
Just as I was about to say “starving or anything,” I felt an intense pang in my empty stomach and a fierce thirst in my throat. I’d only forgotten them briefly because the shock and confusion at all that was happening had fried my other senses. To be sure, I was absolutely famished, and more than that, I needed water. Desperately. Toward the end there, I’d run for several hours without a single drop.
“S-sorry, Karen…but could you bring me something to drink?”
“Sure thing. We’ve got a lot to choose from, though. What would you like?”
“Anything’s fine, just…bring a lot of it…”
“Anything, you say? Hmmm… Well, okay!” she responded peppily, then got up and headed into the kitchen with a skip in her step. Meanwhile, I was coming down with a bit of a headache, so I vigorously rubbed my temples. This was more of an information overload than my poor brain could handle. I didn’t know where to begin trying to make sense of it all. As I gazed blankly out over the ocean, I heard a high-pitched mechanical whir coming from inside the kitchen. Karen must have been using the blender. What in the world was she mixing up for me?
“Okay, all done!” Karen came into the room with a large cup and the removable pitcher from our old electric blender. There was a thick, whitish liquid inside. Wait, is that…
“Did you make banana juice?”
“You betcha!”
She held up the pitcher triumphantly, grinning from ear to ear as the liquid jostled around in the container and nearly spilled over the rim. Now this took me back—she and I had made banana juice together all the time. However, ever since she died, I hadn’t made it once, using the convenient justification that the blender was too much trouble to clean.
“Here ya go, Kaoru!”
The sweet smell of banana passed through my nostrils as I took the cup from Karen and proceeded to drink it down. At our house, we always added a whole lot of milk per banana, so it came out extra smooth. I downed the entire thing, never once lowering the cup from my lips until it was drained of every last drop.
“Whew…”
All I could do was let out a sigh of contentment. I wasn’t sure a drink had ever left me so satisfied. My throat tingled with sugary goodness. As I went to pour myself another glass, I heard the ding of the microwave going off in the kitchen.
“Oh, yay! The food’s ready.”
“We’re having food?”
“Yep. Or, well, you are, at least. I made it, though! Go wait in the living room, and I’ll have it right out.” Karen dashed off into the kitchen yet again.
Wow, little Karen’s making food all by herself, eh…? I found this extremely bizarre, yet I rose from my futon all the same, bringing the juice cup and pitcher with me into the living room. There on the low dining table, I found a big jumbo bowl of fancy instant soba noodles, as well as three grilled rice balls (microwaved from frozen) sitting in a row. Karen was seated on one of the floor cushions, looking up at me with pride. I couldn’t help but crack a smile. Yeah, that’s about what I should have expected.
“Well, enjoy!”
“Thanks… Will do.”
I sat next to Karen and picked up my chopsticks, clapped my hands together, then dug straight into the bowl of noodles. I dipped the crunchy dehydrated tempura puck into the broth a little bit, letting it soak up the savory shrimp flavor, and took a nibble. Then I tried the noodles. Normally, the flavor would have been a little much for me, but in my current state of exhaustion, it was like the nectar of the gods. My taste buds savored each and every drop of the salty broth. Man, I don’t remember these things tasting so good…