Chapter 4

Chapter Four The Search I move my pencil tirelessly. Carbon particles blend into the paper fibers, lines accumulate, and the once-white sketchbook grows darker and darker. Even so, I haven’t managed to completely capture the sights in my memory. Every morning, I take the train to school during the commuter rush. I sit through boring classes. I eat lunch with Tsukasa and Takagi. I walk through town, looking up at the sky. Somewhere along the way, its blue has grown a little deeper. Bit by bit, the trees lining the streets begin to change color. In my room at night, I draw. On my desk, there’s a stack of mountain guidebooks I borrowed from the library. I search the ranges of Hida on my smartphone. I look for ridgelines that match the ones I remember. I keep my pencil in motion, trying to copy them down onto paper somehow. Some days, rain falls, smelling like asphalt. Some days shine with billowing clouds reminiscent of sheep. Some days, strong winds blow, peppering Tokyo with yellow sand. Every morning, I ride crowded trains to school. I go to my part-time job. Sometimes, Okudera-senpai and I work the same shift. I do my best to look her in the eye, to smile properly, to talk normally. I think, very firmly, that I want to be fair to everyone. Some nights are still as hot and humid as midsummer, while others are chilly enough that I wear my track jacket. No matter the temperature, when I’m drawing, I get so hot it feels like I have a blanket wrapped around my head. Sweat plops audibly onto my sketchbook. It blurs the lines I’ve drawn. Even so, the sights of the town I saw as Mitsuha are taking shape, coming together, bit by bit. On the way home from school, on the way home from work, I skip the train and take long walks. The scenery of Tokyo changes by the day. Before I know it, there are rows of enormous cranes in Shinjuku and the Outer Garden area around Meiji Shrine and Yotsuya, at the foot of the Benkei Bridge and partway up Anchinzaka Hill. Little by little, steel frames and glass stretch up toward the sky. Beyond them, there’s a blank, waning half-moon. Finally, I finish several drawings of the lake town. This weekend, I’ll head out. Having made that resolution, I feel the tension drain from my stiff body for the first time in a long while. Even standing up seems like too much work, so I slump over my desk. Just before I fall asleep, I wish hard, the way I always do… …but I still don’t wake up as Mitsuha. I’ve packed three days’ worth of underwear and my sketchbook in my backpack. Thinking it might be a little cold there, I put on a thick jacket with a deep hood. I wind my lucky friendship bracelet around my wrist as usual, then leave the condo. It’s earlier than I generally leave for school, so the train’s empty, although Tokyo Station is still teeming with people. I line up after some foreigners with wheeled suitcases, buy a Shinkansen ticket to Nagoya from the automatic ticket machine, and head for the Tokaido Shinkansen turnstile. I don’t believe my eyes. “Wha…? Why are you here?!” Okudera-senpai and Tsukasa are standing together beside a pillar right in front of me. Okudera-senpai grins. “Eh-heh-heh. Well, here I am!” …Well, here you are? What are you, the heroine of some cutesy anime?! I glare at Tsukasa. He looks back at me, his expression bland as if to say, Is there a problem? “Tsukasa, you jerk! I asked you to give me an alibi for my dad and to cover my shift at work, remember?!” I berate Tsukasa, who’s in the seat next to mine, under my breath. Almost all the unreserved seats on the bullet train are filled with businessmen in suits. “Takagi’s covering for you at work,” he says smoothly, displaying his phone. “Leave it to me!” Takagi flashes a breezy thumbs-up in the video. “Buy me a meal, though.” “Every single friggin’ one of you…,” I mutter sourly. Asking Tsukasa was a mistake. I was planning to skip school today and spend the weekend—Friday, Saturday, and Sunday—in Hida. I went to Tsukasa yesterday and begged him for help, telling him that something had come up and I absolutely had to go see a friend, asking him to not ask questions and just let me use him as an excuse while I was gone. “I came because I was worried about you,” Tsukasa says without a hint of penitence. “I couldn’t just leave you alone, could I? What are you gonna do if it turns out to be a badger game?” “A badger what?” What’s he talking about? My eyebrows knit, and Okudera-senpai, who’s sitting on Tsukasa’s opposite side, leans in. “You’re going to see a friend you met online, aren’t you, Taki?” “Huh? No, the online thing was just an excuse, and, uh…” Yesterday, Tsukasa was really persistent about asking who I was visiting, so I vagued things up and told him it was somebody I’d met on a social networking site. Tsukasa gravely informs Okudera-senpai, “Frankly, I suspect it’s a dating site.” I nearly do a spit take. “It is not!” “You’ve seemed really off lately, you know.” Looking concerned, Tsukasa extends a box of Pocky to me. “We’ll hang back and watch from a distance.” “What am I, a grade-schooler?!” I demand, lashing out. Okudera-senpai watches me knowingly. She’s absolutely got the wrong idea about this, too. This is gonna be one rough trip, I think dismally. “Approaching Nagoya,” a lazy voice announces over the train’s loudspeaker. The exchanges with Mitsuha started out of the blue one day and ended just as suddenly. No matter how much thought I gave it, I couldn’t figure out why. After several weeks, it got harder to shake the suspicion they might just have been a string of extremely vivid dreams. I’ve got proof, though. I can’t believe that the journal entries Mitsuha left on my phone came out of my own head. That date with Okudera-senpai could never have happened if I’d been myself. I’m convinced Mitsuha’s a real girl. Her body heat, her pulse, the way she breathes, her voice, the red light dawning over her closed eyes, the vibrant sounds in her ears—I felt all of that myself. Experiencing her life was so intense, it convinced me, If she isn’t alive, then nothing is. Mitsuha is real. Because of that, the abrupt way it ended is making me oddly uneasy. Something might have happened to her. Maybe she came down with a fever. Maybe there was some sort of accident. Even if I’m overthinking things, at the very least, she’s bound to be worried about the situation, too. That’s why I decided to go see her in person. But… “…Excuse me? You don’t actually know where she is?” We’re in a four-person box seat on the express train Hida. Okudera-senpai sounds incredulous, stuffing her face with a box lunch she picked up at the station. “…Right.” “Your only clue is what the town looks like? You can’t even contact this girl? Are you kidding me?!” I didn’t ask her to come with me. How come I’m getting blamed? I look at Tsukasa, willing him to say something. He does, swallowing a bite of miso cutlet. “You are an abysmal tour planner.” “This isn’t a tour!” I lose it for a second. These two think they’re on some kind of field trip. I can read their expressions clearly. There’s just no help for this child. Why are they acting all superior, anyway? “Well, never mind,” Okudera-senpai says. Unexpectedly, she smiles, throwing out her chest. “Don’t you worry, Taki. We’ll help you look.” “Eeeee, it’s so cuuuute! Taki, look at this, looook!” At the local station we finally reached after noon, Okudera-senpai gushes over the area’s laid-back mascot. It’s a full-body plush cow costume wearing a station employee cap. The camera on Tsukasa’s phone fires off click after click in the little terminal. “You guys are in the way.” As I glare at the local map posted in the station, I’m even more convinced that these two are going to be no help whatsoever. I’ll just have to find her myself. The plan goes like this: Since I don’t know exactly where Mitsuha’s town is, we’ll take the train to a spot that seems close to the scenery in my memory. From that point, all we’ll have to go on will be the landscape sketches I drew. We’ll go around showing the drawings to residents, asking if anyone recognizes them, slowly working our way north along the local line. There’s a railroad crossing in one of the scenes I remember, so following the tracks should work. It’s a really vague approach, to the point where I can’t really call it a “plan” at all, but I couldn’t think of any other way. Besides, there can’t be that many towns built around lakes. I’m convinced I’ll probably find some kind of hint by tonight, though I’ve got no grounds for thinking that. Psyching myself up, I take a confident first step, heading out to talk to the driver of the lone taxi parked outside the station. “…This isn’t gonna work…” I’m slumped at a bus stop, my head drooping. All the confidence I had when we started asking around has completely caved. After that first taxi driver gave me a blunt “N-nope, dunno,” we tried police boxes, convenience stores, souvenir shops, guest houses, diners, and everyone from farmers to grade-school kids, oblivious to how we probably looked, but our results were solidly negative. The fact that there was only one local train every two hours made it hard for us to get around, so we thought we’d try asking people on the bus. We boarded in high spirits but were the only passengers. I didn’t even feel like asking the driver at that point, and the last stop was way out in the middle of nowhere, with no houses anywhere in sight. The whole time, Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai cheerfully made the most of their day trip, playing word games, cards, phone games, variations on rock-paper-scissors, and eating snacks. Eventually, they ended up on either side of me on the bus, leaning against my shoulders and dozing peacefully. Now, as the two of them guzzle cola in front of the bus stop, I sigh. They hear it and react together. “Oh, come on, Taki! You’re giving up already?!” “What about all our hard work?!” I heave another sigh, so deep it almost brings my lungs up with it. Okudera-senpai’s wearing oddly gung-ho clothes meant for serious hiking. In contrast, Tsukasa’s in chinos like he’s just strolling around the neighborhood. At this point, both outfits really irritate me. “You guys have been zero help…” They both look innocent, as if to say, Oh, really? “I’ll have a Takayama ramen.” “One Takayama ramen here.” “Uh, okay, then I’ll have the same, too.” “You betcha. Three ramen!” says the middle-aged lady cheerily. On our fruitless way to the next (abnormally distant) station, we found a ramen shop that was miraculously open and made a beeline inside. When the lady wearing a triangular kerchief told us, “C’mon in,” her smile seemed a beacon, not unlike the appearance of a long-awaited search party when you’re lost. The ramen’s good, too. Contrary to its name, it’s perfectly ordinary ramen (I thought it might have Hida beef on top, but it was regular braised pork), but as soon as I eat the noodles and veggies, I can feel my body recharging. After draining the soup bowl dry and drinking two cups of water, I finally take a breather. “Do you think we’ll be able to get back to Tokyo today?” I ask Tsukasa. “Hmm… I don’t know. We may be cutting it close. Want me to check?” Tsukasa apparently didn’t expect this but nevertheless pulls out his phone and starts looking up how to get home. “Thanks,” I tell him. “Taki, you’re sure that’s all right?” Okudera-senpai asks. She’s across the table from me and hasn’t finished eating yet. I’m not immediately sure how to answer, so I look out the window. The sun’s just barely caught on the edge of the mountains, shining peacefully over the fields along the prefectural highway. “I can’t explain it, but it’s starting to feel like I’m on the wrong track,” I mutter, half to myself. It might be better to go back to Tokyo and rework my strategy. It would be one thing if I had photos, but expecting to find the town with sketches like these might have been asking too much. At least, that’s how it starts to seem when I pick up my sketchbook and gaze at it. It’s a completely ordinary country town, with the sort of houses you see everywhere scattered around a round lake. Even though it felt so solid to me when I finished drawing it, it looks like an anonymous, mediocre landscape now. “That’s old Itomori, ain’t it?” “Huh?” I turn around and see the lady’s apron. She’s pouring water into my empty cup. “Did you draw that, son? Say, can I have a look?” She takes the sketchbook from me. “This is a real good picture. Hon, c’mere a sec!” The woman shouts back toward the kitchen. The three of us watch her, mouths agape. The ramen shop owner comes out of the kitchen and considers the sketch, smiling a little. “Oh, yeah. That was Itomori, for sure. Takes me back…” “My man’s from Itomori, you see.” Itomori? Suddenly, I remember. I start up out of my chair. “Itomori… Yeah, Itomori! Of course, why couldn’t I remember that? It’s Itomori! It’s near here, isn’t it?!” The couple looks mystified, exchanging perplexed glances. The man opens his mouth. “Kid… You know about Itomori, don’t you? That’s where—” Tsukasa interrupts loudly. “Itomori?! Taki, don’t tell me—” “What, wait—? You mean, the one where the comet…?!” Even Okudera-senpai speaks up, eyes wide. “Huh……?” I don’t understand what’s going on and look around at the others. They’re all watching me dubiously. The shadow of something that’s been trying to surface in my mind this whole time rustles stealthily, growing more and more ominous. The cry of a kite trails through the atmosphere, lonely enough to freeze the blood. A row of DO NOT ENTER barricades extends as far as the eye can see, throwing long shadows over the cracked asphalt. A sign with vines tangled around it reads, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DISASTER COUNTERMEASURES BASIC ACT, THIS AREA IS OFF-LIMITS. KEEP OUT.—RECONSTRUCTION AGENCY. And below me lies Itomori, devastated by some unimaginable force and mostly swallowed up by the lake. “…Is this really the place?” Okudera-senpai walks up behind me, her voice trembling. Without waiting for me to respond, Tsukasa answers, sounding desperately cheerful. “It can’t be! Like I’ve been saying, Taki’s confused.” “…This is it.” I tear my eyes away from the ruins below me, scanning my surroundings. “It isn’t just the town. I remember this schoolyard, the mountains around us, the high school… I remember all of it perfectly!” I have to shout the words to convince myself. Behind us is the school building, black and sooty, with some of its windows broken. We’re standing on the grounds of Itomori High School, looking out across the lake. “So you’re saying this is the town you were looking for? The one where your friend online lives?” Tsukasa shouts, that parched smile still clinging to his voice. “That’s not even possible! That disaster was three years ago. Hundreds of people died! You remember it, right, Taki?!” At that, I finally turn toward Tsukasa. “…Died?” I meant to look at his face, but my gaze goes right through him, then through the high school behind him, only to dissipate into the distance. I know I must be looking at something, but there’s nothing there. “Three years ago…she died?” Abruptly, I remember. The comet I saw over Tokyo three years earlier. Countless shooting stars falling through the western sky. I thought it was beautiful, like something out of a dream. I got all excited about it. That’s when she died? Don’t. I can’t acknowledge that. I search for words. For proof. “That can’t be true… I mean, look, I’ve got the journal entries she wrote.” I retrieve my phone out of my pocket. Spurred on by the inane fear that the battery will die forever if I take too long, I flip through it in a panic and pull up Mitsuha’s journal entries. They’re really there. “…!” I rub my eyes, hard. For a moment, the letters seemed to writhe. “Wha…?” First one letter, then another. The words Mitsuha wrote begin dissolving into meaningless symbols. Before long, the text flickers like a candle flame, and then it’s gone. One by one, her entries disappear entirely. It’s as though an invisible man is holding down DELETE. As I watch, all her sentences vanish. “Why…?” I ask very quietly. The kite’s cry echoes again, high and distant. Three years ago in October, right around this time of year, Tiamat, a comet with a solar orbital period of twelve hundred years, made its closest approach to Earth. It was a satellite on a grand scale; its super-long orbital period put Halley’s Comet’s seventy-six to shame, and it had an orbital radius of 10.4 billion miles. Not only that, but it was projected to pass within roughly seventy-five thousand miles of Earth—closer than the moon. The tail of this shining blue comet would stream across the dome of the night sky for the first time in twelve hundred years. The mood of the entire world was festive as it welcomed Comet Tiamat. Until the very moment it happened, no one anticipated that the comet’s nucleus would split in Earth’s vicinity. Or that a rocky mass about 130 feet in diameter was buried in its icy core. The comet fragment became a meteorite, plummeting to Earth at the devastating speed of almost twenty miles per second. Tragically, it struck Japan—a residential area called Itomori. The town happened to be holding its autumn festival that day. The collision occurred at 8:42 PM. The point of impact was near Miyamizu Shrine, which must have been lined with festival stalls and teeming with people. The meteorite instantly destroyed a wide area, centered on the shrine. The destruction wasn’t limited to houses and the forest. The impact gouged a huge hole in the ground, forming a crater nearly half a mile across. One second later, magnitude 4.8 tremors rocked locations three miles away. Fifteen seconds later, the blast wind tore through, inflicting enormous damage on the greater part of the town. The final death toll was more than five hundred, a third of the town’s population. Itomori became the site of the worst meteorite disaster in human history. Since the crater had formed right beside Itomori Lake, water rushed in, ultimately creating a gourd-shaped body of water, New Itomori Lake. Damage to the southern side of the town was relatively light, but even the thousand or so residents who escaped injury moved away, one after another. In less than a year, the town was having trouble functioning as a municipality. Fourteen months after the meteorite fell, for all intents and purposes, Itomori was gone. —These are textbook facts, and of course, I knew most of them already. Three years ago, I was in middle school. I remember actually watching Comet Tiamat from a hill in my neighborhood. …But that’s weird. It doesn’t make sense. I lived in Itomori as Mitsuha, several times, right up until last month. That means that what I saw, the place where she lived, wasn’t Itomori. The comet and my swapping with Mitsuha had nothing to do with each other. It’d be normal to think that. It’s what I want to think. However, paging through books in this city library near Itomori, I’m hopelessly confused. For a while now, in the deepest corner of my mind, someone’s been whispering, This is where you were. Vanished Itomori—Complete Records Itomori—The Village That Sank in a Night The Tragedy of Comet Tiamat I flip through tome after tome with titles like these. The photos of bygone days in Itomori unmistakably show places I’ve been. This is the grade school Yotsuha goes to. Miyamizu Shrine is where their grandma is the chief priestess. This pointlessly big parking lot, the two snack bars right next to each other, the convenience store that looks like a barn, the little railroad crossing on the mountain road, and of course Itomori High School… At this point, I recognize all of them clearly. Seeing those ruined streets with my own eyes has sharpened my memories. It’s hard to breathe. My heart is struggling, beating irregularly, and refuses to calm down. It feels as though the vivid photos are silently absorbing the air and any sense of reality. Itomori High—Final Sports Festival The photo above the caption shows high schoolers in the middle of a three-legged race. The pair on the end seems familiar. One has straight-cut bangs and braids. The other girl’s hair is bound up with an orange cord. The air gets even thinner. I feel as though hot blood is oozing down the back of my neck, but when I wipe it away with my hand, it’s transparent sweat. “—Taki.” I look up. Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai are standing there. They hand me a single book. Foil letters in a weighty font are stamped on its thick cover: Itomori Comet Disaster List and Catalog of Victims I turn the pages. The victims’ names and addresses are given by district. I run my finger down them. I keep turning pages. Finally, my finger stops on names I recognize. Teshigawara, Katsuhiko (17) Natori, Sayaka (17) “Teshigawara and Saya…” As I murmur, I hear Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai suck in their breath. Then I find the names that prove it all. Miyamizu, Hitoha (82) Miyamizu, Mitsuha (17) Miyamizu, Yotsuha (9) The other two peer over my shoulder at the list. “That’s her……? It has to be some kind of mistake! I mean, she’s—” Okudera-senpai sounds as if she might burst into tears. “She’s been dead for three years.” Trying to deny her words, I shout, “Just two or three weeks ago, she—!” It’s hard to breathe. I inhale desperately and continue. This time, it comes out as a whisper. “She told me we’d be able to see the comet……” I somehow manage to tear my eyes away from the letters that spell out Mitsuha. “So…!” When I raise my head, my face is reflected in the dark window in front of me. Who are you? I think, out of nowhere. From deep in my mind, very far away, I hear a hoarse voice. “…My, my. You’re—” “You’re dreamin’, aren’t you?” A dream? I’m drowning in a wave of confusion. What… …in the world… …am I doing? In the next room, I can hear the sounds of a dinner party. Someone says something, there’s a burst of laughter, and then applause echoes like a downpour. It’s been happening over and over for a while now. I strain my ears, wondering what sort of group they are. No matter how hard I listen, though, I can’t make out a single word. All I can tell is that they’re speaking Japanese. Thunk! There’s a loud noise, and the next thing I know, I’m slumped over with my head on the desk. I must’ve hit my forehead; a dull pain follows a little later. I’m dead tired. No matter how much I read the reduced-size editions of old newspapers and magazine back issues, I can’t seem to get the text into my head anymore. I’ve checked my phone several times, but not one of her journal entries is on it. Every trace is gone. With my head still down, I open my eyes. Glaring at the desk a fraction of an inch in front of me, I try putting into words the conclusion I’ve reached over the past few hours. “It was all just a dream, and…” Do I want to believe that or not? “The scenery looked familiar because I subconsciously remembered the news from three years ago. Meaning, she was…” What was she? “…A ghost? Or, no… It was all a…” All…my… “…Delusion?” With a start, I raise my head. Something’s disappearing. Her— “What was her name…?” Tap, tap, comes a sudden knock, and the thin wooden door opens. “Tsukasa says he’s going down to take a bath.” Okudera-senpai enters wearing one of the inn’s light robes. The atmosphere in the room, which had seemed cold and isolated, suddenly softens. I feel terribly relieved. “Uh, Okudera-senpai?” I get up from my chair. She’s crouched down in front of her backpack. “I’ve been saying all sorts of weird stuff… I’m sorry about today.” Zipping her backpack as if carefully sealing something away, Okudera-senpai stands. Somehow she seems to move in slow motion. “…It’s fine,” she says, shaking her head with a faint smile. “I’m sorry we could only get one room.” “Tsukasa said the same thing to me downstairs,” Okudera-senpai chuckles. We’re sitting facing each other across the little table by the window. “I don’t mind a bit. They say a group just happened to be staying here tonight, so they don’t have any rooms to spare. The man who runs the inn said it’s a teachers’ union social.” Then she laughingly tells me how they treated her to Asian pears in the lounge after she got out of the bath. She’s the sort of person who makes everyone want to give her something. The scent of the inn’s shampoo reaches me, like a rare perfume from a distant, foreign land. “Look at that. Itomori used to make braided cords. How pretty,” Okudera-senpai murmurs, flipping through a volume of local Itomori materials. It’s one of the books I borrowed from the library. “My mother wears kimonos sometimes, so we have several of these at home. Oh, say…” Lifting my teacup, my hand pauses. She’s examining my right wrist. “That one on your wrist, Taki. Is that a braided cord?” “Oh, this is…” I set the cup down on the table and consider my arm. This is my good-luck charm: a vivid orange cord, thicker than a thread, wound around my wrist. …Huh? Isn’t this—? “I think somebody gave it to me a long time ago. I wear it sometimes, for good luck…” The deepest part of my mind prickles again. “Who was it?” I murmur. I can’t remember. Still, if I follow this cord, it feels like I’ll find something. “…You, too, Taki.” The gentle voice makes me raise my head to see concern on Okudera-senpai’s face. “Why don’t you go take a bath?” “A bath… Right…” But almost immediately my attention returns to the braided cord. I feel as though I’ll lose something forever if I let go here, and I desperately ransack my memories. The dinner party is over, though I don’t know when it ended. The quiet song of autumn insects fills the room. “Somebody who made braided cords told me something once.” Whose voice is that? It’s kind and hoarse and tranquil. Like something from a folktale. “They said that cords are the flow of time itself. They twist and tangle, come apart and reunite. They said that’s time. That’s…” A mountain in autumn. The sound of a brook. The smell of water. The taste of sweet barley tea. “That’s musubi—” The scene bursts into my mind. The body of the god on top of the mountain. The sake we offered to it. “…That place…!” I pull a map out from under the pile of books and open it. It’s a map of Itomori from three years ago that I found in a small independent shop, covered in dust. The topography from back when there was just one lake. The place where we offered the sake should be far outside the area the meteorite destroyed. If I go there… If that sake’s there… I pick up my pencil, searching for a landform that looks likely. It was way north of the shrine, a place like a caldera. Desperately, I try to find something along those lines. I might be hearing Okudera-senpai’s voice, distantly, but by now, I can’t tear my eyes off the map. …ki… Taki. Somebody’s calling my name. It’s a girl’s voice. “Taki, Taki.” Her voice is earnest, pleading, as if she’s about to cry. A voice trembling with loneliness, like the glimmer of distant stars. “Don’t you remember me?” I wake up. …That’s right. I’m at an inn. I’ve been sleeping slumped over the table by the window. I can sense Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai beyond the sliding door, asleep on their futons. The room is strangely quiet. I can’t hear any insects or cars. The wind isn’t blowing, either. I sit up. The rustle of my clothes is loud enough to startle me. Outside the window, the world is just beginning to shake off the darkness. I look at the cord on my wrist. The faint echoes of the girl’s voice linger in my ears. —Who are you? I ask. I don’t even know her name. Naturally, there’s no answer. But, well, that’s all right. Okudera-senpai and Tsukasa— There’s a place I need to check, no matter what. Please go back to Tokyo ahead of me. I’m sorry for being selfish. I swear I’ll come back later. Thanks. —Taki I write a note. As an afterthought, I take a five-thousand-yen bill out of my wallet and put it under a teacup along with the memo. We’ve never met, but I’m about to come looking for you. He’s gruff and doesn’t say much, but he’s a really nice guy, I think, studying the sinewy hands on the steering wheel beside me. It’s the man from the ramen shop. He’s the one who took us to Itomori High School yesterday, and to the city library. I called him really early this morning, and he still did me a favor and brought the car over. If this hadn’t worked, I was planning to hitchhike, but I can’t imagine any cars would’ve given me a ride to a ruined, abandoned town. I’m seriously lucky I met this guy in Hida. From the passenger-side window, I have a view down to the edge of New Itomori Lake. Half-demolished houses and broken asphalt languish in the water. Even a good ways offshore, I can see telephone poles and iron beams jutting out of the lake. It should be a very disconcerting sight, but I must have gotten used to seeing it on TV and in photos, because I start feeling as if the place has always been like this. For that reason, I don’t really know how to process what I’m seeing. Should I get mad, grieve, get scared, or lament my own helplessness? The reality of losing an entire town is probably too much for ordinary people to get their heads around. I give up searching for meaning in the scene and turn my eyes to the sky. Gray clouds hang over our heads, as if the gods have set an enormous lid there. We travel north along the lake, and when the car can’t go any higher, the man sets the parking brake. “Looks like rain,” he mutters, glancing up through the windshield. “This mountain ain’t real steep, but don’t push your luck. If anythin’ happens, you call us.” “Yessir.” “Also, here—” He holds out a big lunch box to me. “Eat this up top.” Automatically, I accept it with both hands. It’s heavy. “Th-thank you very much…” …For everything. Seriously. Why would you do so much for me? Oh yeah, and the ramen was super good. I can’t make any of the words come out the way I want them to—all I manage is a tiny “Thanks. Really.” The guy smiles slightly, takes out a cigarette, and lights up. “I dunno what’s goin’ on with you,” he says, exhaling smoke. “But that picture of Itomori you made. That was good.” There’s a lump in my throat. Distant thunder rumbles softly. I’m walking up a path to the shrine that’s as vague as a deer track. Sometimes I stop to check the destination I’ve marked on the map against the GPS on my phone. It’s all right—I’m getting closer. The surrounding scenery looks sort of familiar, but I’ve climbed this mountain only once, in a dream. I’m not very sure about it. That means, for now, all I can do is follow the map. After I got out of the car, I bowed low and stayed that way until my ride was completely out of sight. As I did, I thought about Tsukasa and Okudera-senpai, too. In the end, this guy and those two came all the way out here because they were worried about me. I must’ve looked really pathetic. I bet they thought I was about to cry the whole time. I was probably so aggressively distracted that, even if they wanted to ditch me, they couldn’t. I can’t keep acting like that forever. I can’t keep taking advantage of the help people offer me, I think firmly, gazing at New Itomori Lake through the gaps in the trees. Suddenly, a big raindrop hits my face. The leaves around me start to rustle and shake. I pull up my hood and break into a run. The rain keeps falling, pouring down with enough force to carve the dirt away. The temperature’s falling rapidly, absorbed by the rain. I can feel it on my skin. I eat my lunch in a little cave while waiting for the weather to let up. There are three big rice balls the size of my fist and lots of side dishes. The thick-sliced braised pork and bean sprouts stir-fried in sesame oil make it look like such a stereotypical ramen-shop lunch that it’s funny. My body shakes with cold, but as I eat, I gradually warm up again. Chewing the grains of rice and swallowing, I can sense exactly where my throat and stomach are. This is musubi, I think. “Putting anything in your body, whether it’s water, rice, or sake, is also called musubi. What you put in your body binds to your soul, you see.” That day, I decided I’d remember those words even after I woke up. I say it aloud: “…They twist and tangle, sometimes come undone, and reunite. That’s musubi. That’s time.” I look at the cord on my wrist. It hasn’t worn through yet. The connection is still there. Before I know it, the trees have vanished, and I’m in a mossy, rocky area. Below me, I can see fragments of the gourd-shaped lake through gaps in the thick clouds. I’ve finally reached the peak. “…It’s there!” Sure enough, beyond me, there’s the crater-shaped basin and the giant sacred tree. “It’s really there! It wasn’t a dream!” The rain has subsided to a drizzle, dripping down my cheeks like tears. I scrub roughly at my face with my sleeve, then start down the slope into the caldera. In front of me, what was a little stream in my memories is now a decent-size pond. Is it swollen from the rain, or has enough time passed since that dream that the landscape changed? Either way, the great tree stands several dozen yards away on the other side. This is the edge of the next world. I remember somebody saying that to me once. Does that make this the Sanzu River? I step into the water. There’s a big, echoing splash, as if I’ve stuck my foot into a bathtub, and I realize, belatedly, that this basin is unnaturally quiet. The heavy water is above my knees, and every step I take makes a loud sloshing sound. I start feeling as if I’m tromping all over something pure and white with muddy feet, defiling it. Until I arrived, this place had been perfectly silent. I’m not welcome, I think instinctively. My body heat is being sucked away again, into the cold water. Before long, the water’s up to my chest, but I manage to get across somehow. The massive tree stands with its roots twined around a big slab of rock. I don’t know whether the “body of the god” is the tree, the rock, or whether the shape of the two of them tangled together is what people worship. There’s a little stairway in the gap between the roots and the stone, and when I go down it, I find a yawning space wide enough for about four tatami mats. The silence here is even deeper than it was outside. I unzip my jacket with freezing hands and take out my phone. I check to make sure it didn’t get wet, then turn it on. In the darkness, every single movement sounds violently loud. With an electronic vvum that seems completely out of place here, the phone comes alive, and I use it as a flashlight. This place is wholly devoid of color or warmth. The tiny shrine the light reveals is completely gray. On a small stone altar, two four-inch urns sit side by side. “It’s the sake we carried up here.” Gently, I touch the surface. I don’t know when it happened, but I’m not cold anymore. “This is her little sister’s…” My hand closes around the urn on the left, confirming its shape. When I pick it up, there’s a slight resistance and a faint, dry tearing noise. The moss had put down roots. “And this is the one I brought.” I sit down where I am, bring the urn close to my face, and shine the light on it. The porcelain was shiny before, but now it’s thickly covered with moss. It must have been a very long time. I put a thought that’s been inside me all this time into words. “…Then I was swapping with the Mitsuha from three years ago?” I untie the braided cord sealing the lid. Underneath, there’s a cork stopper. “Were we three years out of sync? Did the swapping stop because she died three years ago when the meteorite fell?” I pull out the cork. The faint scent of alcohol rises. I pour the sake into the lid. “Half of her…” I bring the light closer to it. The sake is clear, with several tiny particles floating in it. They reflect the light, glittering in the liquid. “Musubi. Twisting and tangling, sometimes coming undone, then reuniting…” I raise the lidful of sake to my lips. “If time really can ‘come undone,’ then… Just one more time…” Take me to her! I wish and down it in one gulp. When I swallow, the sound is so conspicuous it startles me. A lump of heat travels through my body. As it hits the bottom of my stomach, it bursts, scattering through me. “……” But nothing happens. For a little while, I sit very still. I’m not used to alcohol, and I feel a little warm. My head feels slightly vague and dizzy… But that’s all. It’s no good. It didn’t work. I put one knee up, then stand. Abruptly, my feet tangle. My vision spins. I’m falling, I think. …That’s weird. I’ve fallen over backward, but no matter how much time passes, my back doesn’t hit the ground. My field of view rotates, slowly, up to the roof of the cave. My phone is still in my left hand. The light illuminates the ceiling. “The comet…!” Involuntarily, I say it out loud. There’s a drawing of an enormous comet up there. It’s a very old picture, carved into the rock: a giant traveling star, trailing its long tail across the heavens. The red and blue pigments catch the light and shimmer. Gradually, the picture begins rising away from the ceiling of the cave. I stare. The image, the illustrated comet, is falling toward me. Slowly, it bears down until it’s nearly on top of me. It blazes with the heat of its friction against the atmosphere, and the lump of rock fuses into glass, shining like a jewel. Even those details are clear to me. I fall back, and my head hits the rock at the exact moment the comet strikes my body.