Ryotasu tilted her head in confusion as she checked the time on the cuckoo clock on the wall. The little hand was past the four.
“You didn’t eat lunch?”
“I didn’t eat lunch, and I didn’t eat breakfast either.”
Mom had been out working and wasn’t there when I woke up again. My mom’s job didn’t really give her days off.
“Oh, but you don’t really eat a lot, do you, Gamota? Are you just one of those boys who doesn’t eat?”
I could hear Master Izumin’s sarcastic voice from behind the counter. I activated my “ignore” skill to completely shut out the sound of his voice.
“Gamotan, Gamotan! If you only eat one meal a day you’ll get fat, like a sumo wrestler. Plumpy and dumpy! ☆”
“NEETs are either super-thin, or super-fat. I’m the former, so I’ll be fine.”
“I see! ☆”
Ryotasu brought her face up so close that I thought she might be trying to head-butt me. Her eyes were shining as she looked in mine.
“Y-You’re too close.” What was so interesting about what I just said, anyway? I didn’t understand why Ryotasu found that impressive. It was a mystery.
I waited, but Ryotasu refused to move her face away. So I looked down, awkwardly.
I saw my bag near my feet. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a bag. It was a laptop case with a built-in shoulder strap. I’d made it myself.
My Zonko strap, from MMM (Master Must Murder), shook as I lifted it up, and put it on my lap.
Yup. So cute.
Inside the case was my BCL (Broadcast Listener) radio, which I always kept with me. This was a powerful radio that let me listen to international shortwave broadcasts. It was a model called a Skysensor. I didn’t come up with that. I would’ve come up with a less geeky name. That was just the name of the product.
Dad had given it to me when he was still alive. It was quite an antique since it had been manufactured in 1975. But I thought it had a sleek, modern design that didn’t really look old at all.
You didn’t have to be a radio hobbyist to love this design. Any kid would love it. In fact, it had been popular with both kids and adults. I felt like I knew why.
Its body was the size of a large bento box, and heavy. Its main tuning dial and bandspread dials were big and sturdy, like the dials on a safe at the bank. The frequency panel had the numbers carved into it. There were switches to move between AM and FM, and to turn the device on and off.
It was fun just to play with the dials and switches, even if you weren’t actually doing anything.
Ryotasu was watching me as I moved my hands. She was so close I could almost feel her breath.
I turned on the power switch. White noise came out of the speaker.
--PWWEEEWWW-----BZZT
Just listening to the sound of the white noise made me feel nostalgic, and kind of special.
I spun the dial at random.
—Don’t look at the saved settings. Don’t rely on your ears, either. Just feel it with your hands.
That’s what Dad taught me, I think. The sound coming out of the speakers was constantly changing, and you could actually feel it in the tips of your fingers as you touched the dial. That was one of the unique things about radios that used gears instead of threading to connect the dials on the outside to the rest of the machine.
I’d been raised in a single-parent household, by my mom. My dad had died from an illness seven years ago. He was a radio DJ. Not a famous one. He had a mini-FM radio station in Kichijoji, and he had a day job where he was just a normal salaryman. He’d started the mini-FM station as a hobby.
The station was just something he’d done on his own, and he didn’t even have anything you could call “programs.” It was mostly unimportant local information, like local news and the specials the local restaurants were running. But he would tell me with pride that his “Music for Kichijoji” show was actually kind of popular.
And so I’d taken after my dad. In an age when every other kid was on the internet, I’d gotten into radio.
The Skysensor my dad had given me was my treasure. I remember when I used to sit right outside during his broadcasts and listen on it.
I was the only regular listener he had.
I could hear his voice come out of the speaker a moment after he spoke. I always sat just close enough that if I listened carefully, I could hear his actual voice. It made me feel special, like I had my own seat to the show that no one else had.
—If I ever die, I’m going to turn into a ghost DJ, and use my radio to say, "Yuta! Come out and play!" from the spirit world. Remember that. Make sure you keep tuning in and listening.
Dad used to always say that when he was alive.
When I was a kid, it scared me, but I believed him. I never thought I’d see the day when he actually died, though. When he died, I kept searching for his voice. But a week passed, and then a month, and then a year, and I never found it.
And then I finally understood.
The reason that Dad never spoke to me from the radio was—
In this world, there were no such things as ghosts.
So why was I still carrying this thing around with me, all these years later?
“I’m hungry. Let’s have some suta-don today.”
‘”You mean like every day?”
“Garlic-soy suta-don with extra meat is the greatest thing in the world.”
“If you eat nothing but meat, you won’t get enough nutrients, you know.”
“There’s nutrients in meat.”
“Poya? In the Narusawa household, if you don’t eat a balanced diet they get mad at you. Buh.”
Ryotasu puffed out her cheeks like a chipmunk. She was way too old to be doing that. But it was cute, so I would allow it. From a boy’s perspective, it didn’t matter if she really meant it, or if she was just putting on an act.
I put the Skysensor and my laptop in the case, and then stood up to go.
“Master Izumin, put the bill on my tab.” I’d had nothing but water from the faucet, so there wasn’t going to be a bill or a tab, though.
I left the café and went down to the station to get my suta-don to go, and then sat down on a bench in Kichijoji Park. It was a tiny little park right behind the Kichijoji Theater. There was nothing there but a colorful slide for children and several benches.
“Why do you always come here, as opposed to Inokashira Park?”
“A real otaku always chooses the minority over the majority.”
Inokashira Park just had too many people. And on a weekend like today it was swarming with people who weren’t even locals. There were families, couples, middle-aged joggers, old couples with dogs, girls sitting on benches and reading to try and show off their subculture cred, street performers, roadside stalls, drunks wasted on One Cup Ozeki in the middle of the day, kids running around screaming, and more. There were so many people around that it was impossible to sense the minute changes in the Skysensor.
But here in my home base of Kichijoji Park, it was always quiet. It was my secret hideout, you could say. There was usually nobody here but us, and today was no exception.
“So there’s this Japanese-language broadcast called ‘A Message from the Andes.’ That’s our target for today.”
Once I’d finished my suta-don, I took out the Skysensor again and started to explain to Ryotasu how it worked. Well, today wasn’t exactly the first time I’d tried. Ryotasu was the type of girl who just didn’t listen.
“If you’re able to listen to their broadcast, you can send them a listener’s report. And they’ll send you this super-rare QSL card. QSL cards are way rarer than trading cards, you know. Honestly, at this time of day, we should be able to hear it.”
“Bwhom gwihbs ywo tewh cwaado?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Ryotasu chewed her food for a while, and then swallowed it down. “Who gives you the card?”
“The radio station, obviously.”
“Can you pick up radio all the way from the Andes?”
“Well, we’re going to try and find out.”
The winter sky was the color of twilight thinned with water. Compared to the noise around the station, this area was very quiet. Even Kichijoji turned into a quiet residential neighborhood once you got ten minutes away from the station.