“I knew it was a mistake to bring you back to Tokyo with me.”
That single line hit me so hard, it felt like I’d been bashed over the head by a baseball bat. After two or three seconds of dumbfounded silence (maybe it was longer, actually—hard to say), I stomped off to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Ignoring my dad’s incessant yelling, I crammed a few changes of clothes and some bare necessities into an overnight bag, and as soon as I woke up the next morning, I ran out the front door. More than half a day had now passed since the altercation, yet thinking back on it still made me grind my teeth in frustration.
“…Stupid asshole,” I cursed under my breath, the hot air fogging up the window pane.
I knew it wouldn’t do me any favors to keep reliving these events on a loop inside my head, so I chose to abandon this line of thought and gaze out at the open ocean, its waves shimmering brightly beneath the midafternoon sun. The deep blue waters were fairly choppy today, causing the little ferryboat to rock back and forth and teeter from side to side. It was actually beginning to make me feel a little bit seasick, though it was possible the turbulence had nothing to do with that. I might have brought the nausea on myself by way of anxiety alone.
I stood up from my seat even so and headed toward the front of the ship to get some fresh air. The moment I stepped out onto the deck, a blustery wind snatched up the hood of my sweatshirt and sent it flapping furiously against the back of my neck. The early spring air felt slightly icy against my skin, more so than it would without the added wind chill, but it gave me exactly the refreshing jolt I was looking for. The frigid breeze snapped me right out of my depressive cycle; I was already feeling more alive again.
I looked around, but there were no other people standing out on the windswept deck. With measured steps, I made my way toward the bow, where I leaned over the railing at the front of the ship. Straight ahead of us, I could see our destination: the tiny remote island I once called home, yet hadn’t even visited for two entire years. Sodeshima.
We soon made port at Sodeshima Harbor. I slung my overnight bag over my shoulder and prepared to disembark. As soon as I stepped off the ferry and exited the harbor, however, I spied someone I recognized walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Though his hair was a bit longer than it had been two years prior, I could have recognized that dusky crew cut and imposing stature anywhere. I’d spotted Akito Hoshina.
Back when I lived in Sodeshima, he was about the closest thing to a celebrity the small island could claim. With his extraordinary athleticism and baseball skills, he single-handedly led our no-name high school’s baseball team to nationals at Koshien—an achievement that made him the talk of the town for quite some time. He was the guy that every young boy on the island wanted to grow up to be, myself included. Considering he was three years my senior…he must be twenty years old by now. I wondered what he was up to nowadays. We’d had a couple of very brief interactions in the past, so I considered calling out to say hi, but by the time I made up my mind, he’d already disappeared into the ticket office for the outbound ferry. I’d officially missed my chance.
“…Oh well. Maybe next time.”
I’d make a point to be more assertive in approaching him if another opportunity arose, I decided. I turned away from the ticket office in the direction of the one place I knew would put me up for a while: my grandmother’s house.
After passing through the few blocks of tourism companies and traditional-style inns that centered around the harbor, I headed inland up the steep and narrow residential streets. Though I was born in Tokyo, I’d spent the majority of my life in Sodeshima. I now lived a life indistinguishable from any high-school-aged Tokyoite, but it was here in Podunk Sodeshima that I attended elementary and junior high, my most formative years. Sodeshima was more of a hometown to me in that respect than Tokyo would ever be. One could practically say that this wasn’t a case of me running away from home but a kind of homecoming…not that that distinction changed anything.
Speaking of things not changing, I thought to myself as I glanced up and down the streets of Sodeshima, noting the surprising lack of much development over the past two years. Everything was for the most part exactly how I remembered it. Nothing but old Japanese-style houses lined the streets of these neighborhoods, with nary a modern building in sight. This was a level of eerie stasis that went way beyond evoking nostalgia, straight into the realm of mind-numbing stagnation.
After hoofing it uphill for close to ten minutes, I came to a stop before a two-story wooden house with the nameplate reading FUNAMI posted on its gate. I was home. As I struggled like always with the rickety door that fit poorly in its jamb, I called into the house, and my grandmother quickly walked out from the living room to greet me.
“Welcome home, Kanae,” she said, the deep wrinkles in her face stretching and shifting into the form of a broad and soothing smile. She was already in her late eighties but stood upright as ever, arrow-straight. By all accounts, she was extremely spry for her age; her excellent health was the one thing I was grateful to see had stayed the same over the past two years.
“Hey, Grandma,” I smiled back. “Long time no see.”