The bearded man with tanned skin opened the Kettle’s hood and looked in. He opened the back door and looked in. Then he spoke.
“Can’t fix it here. The joints from the boiler have melted apart. Whoever drove it wasn’t used to it and ran the thing too hot. The steam leaking from here’s ruined three of the fuel lines too.”
I gave a sigh, and he continued.
“There’s problems with the combustion chamber as well, the crank’s too noisy, and the whole chain needs replacing.”
I gave another sigh before his sharp look made me straighten. It felt like being hit by a brick.
“It’s your car, listen up,” he scolded.
“R-Right.”
“I’ll tow it back to the workshop. I need to get it open.”
He waited, his gaze boring into me.
“Please do.”
It’s not like I could have said, “Actually, no thanks.” I didn’t want to say that either, but even if I had, the way he spoke left no way to argue.
“So, what about the other one?” he asked, this time fixing his gaze on Nito.
He probably wasn’t angry or anything, but the look in his eyes was still plenty sharp. Nito jolted before scurrying around behind me. Don’t use me as a human shield!
The man glared at me for an explanation instead, so I helplessly pointed at the side of the station.
“Right,” he said, before taking his toolbox in hand and roughly wading off through the water.
“Come on, he’s gone now,” I told Nito, who was still behind me.
“Thanks...” came her reluctant, murmured reply.
“Were you scared?”
“I was not!”
She moved away and followed after the man. It was adorable how she was purposefully standing up straight. I trailed along after the pair of them.
As I went, I looked at the huge truck beside the Kettle out of the corner of my eye. Apparently this was Reboil Traction. Whatever it was, it was huge. Just in terms of width, you could probably fit three of the Kettle across it. Curled metal pipes, spare tires, and similar items hung off its sides, and a platform with a rusted yellow crane and winch made up the rear. It was more of a mobile workshop than a recovery vehicle.
When I rounded the corner, I saw another small set of stairs and a side entrance. Nito’s little vehicle that she’d called an auto-trike was there too. It was a literal trike—three wheels and everything—and had a pretty spherical shape. It had a driver’s seat and one passenger seat, with space for luggage behind them. At the moment, there was a canopy stretched over it. The tires were small too, and its simple design reminded me of a mini pickup.
The man had his head under the hood, but the noise of our approach prompted him to lift his head. Once again, Nito skittered around behind me.
“Hey, you’ve been driving this ’round without any real maintenance. You’ve got old mana stone ash baked into it,” he said as he shut the hood with a crash, then put his tools away and lifted the tool box. “We’re going to need to take this one back as well.”
That was all he said before he walked straight past us.
“He said it needs to go back to the workshop.”
“I heard,” she said at length.
“That’s fine then,” I answered.
I retraced my steps back to the Kettle with her glaring at me from where she was hiding behind my back. The mechanic had set about loading the car with efficient motions, and all we could do was watch. The only thing I actually did do was put my camping gear back into the Kettle.
The man hooked a thick wire to the underside of the Kettle. He climbed a ladder up the side of the recovery truck into the driver’s seat and gave us a look before he shut the door.
“What’re you spacing out for? Hurry up and get in it. We’re leaving.”
I did as I was told and got into the driver’s seat of the Kettle, putting the luggage from the passenger’s seat into the back. Nito was still standing alone. A puff of smoke came out of the recovery truck along with a shrill whistle.
“Come on, get in,” I said, sticking my head out of the window. She straightened and came over, then opened the passenger door after some hesitation.
“Umm... May I intrude?” she asked.
“’Course. Come on, or you’ll get left behind.”
The truck had started slowly moving off like some lumbering mammoth. She frantically slid into the passenger seat.
“Ah, whoa.”
The wire had gone taut, and the Kettle lurched into motion. Nito used both hands to pull the door shut and I gripped the wheel, just controlling the direction. The truck ponderously swung around to the side of the station and came to a stop next to her auto-trike.
We both craned our necks to see what he’d do, and the man climbed out onto the platform. He put his hand on a lever nearby and then the loading arm started moving, venting steam. It looked almost like a claw machine in an arcade. Once it hung directly above the trike, he climbed down and fixed cables from the arm to each of the trike’s four corners. He finished in a flash, and then used the levers again to hoist it up.
“Wow, that’s something,” I breathed.
“Huh... Won’t that fall? I don’t like it.”
“It’ll be fine. Probably.”
“Probably? You just said probably, didn’t you?”
She fretted as she watched the auto-trike float through the air. Contrary to her worries, it reached the platform without a sign of faltering, and the man bolted it down before slipping back into the driver’s seat. We kicked back into motion. I was holding the wheel, but all I had to do was match the steering when we came out onto the road, and after that our path was just a straight line.
Nito had her nose pressed up against the window as she watched the station grow distant. The station stood quiet on the water, and the ripples trailing behind us died out before they reached the building. The whole scene was ethereal when you looked at it from a distance.
“I want to paint it...” came a longing murmur from beside me.
I remembered the look on her face when I’d first seen her on that platform, devoted to her painting. We couldn’t stop our progress as the station on the water eventually shimmered into the distance. Once it was completely invisible, she moved away from the window and sat back against the seat.
Her expression was composed, but the slight downturn of her eyebrows spoke to her regret.
“Once your trike’s fixed, you can visit it again, right?”
“That’s true,” she answered, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.
It was the type of “that’s true” that you used when you knew the person you were talking to wouldn’t understand even if you explained, or when you couldn’t bear talking about it in depth, or when you weren’t even sure where to begin talking. It didn’t signal approval or agreement, and it was a fairly indirect way of speaking. She sounded like someone from Japan—like a real modern girl.
The truck in front of us groaned and let out a blast of steam which engulfed us like a thick fog. Our vision went white, and we couldn’t see anything. We didn’t know where we were going, or what would happen to us.