The studio was in a small town I’d never heard of. It would take a lot of changes on trains and buses to get there, which raised the risk of connections being canceled or thrown off schedule by heavy snowfall. The weather forecast wasn’t predicting anything right now, but that could change.
I checked the bus schedule. The one we needed arrived in twenty-five minutes. Though the skies were clear, it was unbearably cold outside. We’d stay in the warmth of the station until the last moment.
“Yoshio, are we going in one of those horseless carriages again? Um, a…car?”
Her pronunciation of “car” sounded a little off. She must have attempted to say it in Japanese. We were watching TV yesterday, and I explained to her about cars, which had to have been where she learned it.
“That’s right. We’re going on a big car. It’s called a bus. It’ll be a while until it arrives, so let’s wait here until then.”
“Um, Yoshio, can we wait outside? I wanna see more of the snow,” she asked me sweetly, tilting her head to one side.
I couldn’t say no when she was looking at me like that.
“It’s really cold outside,” I warned her.
“I know, but I wanna make a snowdoll!”
A snowdoll must have been what they called snowmen in the other world.
When was the last time I made a snowman? Probably when I was in junior high. With this much snow, you could create a whole snow village.
“Okay then. Let’s play in the snow until the bus comes.”
“Yay! I love you, Yoshio!” Carol cheered, throwing herself at me.
Sayuki used to do that, too—clinging to me and calling “Oniichan! Oniichan!” Of course, there was no way she’d do anything like that nowadays.
I followed Carol as she dashed out of the station.
“It’s freezing!”
I’d prepared myself, but I still wanted to turn right back around. My nose stung, and my breath came out as white smoke. I followed Carol as best I could on my shivering legs. She was running around happily on top of the snow.
“It’d be nice to be a kid again.” I sounded like a middle-aged man, but I truly meant it.
“Wanna make a snowdoll together?” Carol ran up to me, grabbed my hand, and dragged me out into the plaza.
Welp, it’ll be better to move around with her than to stand still and freeze to death, I thought, hyping myself up to play with her.
“Take this!” Carol giggled, throwing a snowball at me.
“Ah! Nice hit!” I tossed one back at her underhanded.
Carol jumped behind our snowdoll to dodge and restock her ammo. We still had time after making our masterpiece, so we were having a snowball fight and playing tag until the bus arrived. A year ago, I would’ve run out of energy after three minutes, but my physical job had built up my endurance. Carol was a kid, meaning she never got tired. I was trying to channel my inner child and keep up with her, but it wasn’t long before I started to drag.
“Truce, Carol,” I gasped. “The bus’ll be here soon.”
“Okay!”
I brushed snow off her, pausing to open up the zipper on her backpack. Destiny was wrapped in two towels and clinging to three hand warmers at once. It looked cold.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
It blinked twice in response before rummaging around deeper in the backpack, pulling out another hand warmer, deftly opening the packaging, and activating it with its hands. It curled up into a ball with its back to me, holding the hand warmer carefully to its body.
Looks like it’s doing okay for now.
“Let us know if it gets too bad.”
It turned its head back to me and nodded.
I looked up at the sky. It had become overcast, like it was about to snow. If it did, it would only get colder.
I checked the big clock on the station wall. The bus was due in five minutes. Time to start lining up for it. I looked over at our stop to see there was already a bus waiting. There weren’t any other passengers about—they probably got on already. If we missed this bus, it would be nearly an hour until the next one, so I took Carol’s hand and led her toward it at a jog. My legs seemed to get gradually heavier as we went, and soon they stopped moving all together.
“What’s wrong, Yoshio? Aren’t we getting on the bus?”
“Um, yeah…”
We needed to get on that bus and make it to our next destination before the weather took a turn for the worse. So why weren’t my legs moving? Was it instinct? Looking at that bus was making me uneasy. Something was off.
The bus doors were closed. Why wasn’t anyone waiting to get on? This was a bus stop at a big station; there should have been a lot of passengers who needed to go in this direction. Had they really all continued their journeys by car or train? Were we the only ones planning to take this bus? Maybe I was just paranoid at this point, but I couldn’t shake the feeling. The bus aside, the fact that Carol and I were alone in the plaza was weird in itself.
“Yoshio? The bus.”
I put a comforting hand on Carol’s head and told her to wait a second. The bus was due to depart in less than three minutes. Our bodies had warmed up while we played, but I felt completely frozen now. Any longer out here and we’d risk catching a cold. I needed to make a decision.
I pulled out my phone to check alternate routes. This bus was the fastest no matter how you cut it. I put my phone away and looked back toward the station. There were several people inside, but none of them were coming out. This was the front entrance, but everyone seemed to be making use of the other exits instead, which were farther away.
“We’re going back inside the station for now, Carol.”
“O-okay.”
Carol followed me obediently, but she was clearly confused. I couldn’t blame her. The decision whether to take a bus shouldn’t have been this big a deal.
Just as we were about to go into the station again, I realized the glass door was gone, replaced with a concrete wall. We’d used that door less than half an hour ago. I couldn’t have forgotten its position. It should be here.
“Where’s the door gone?”
Carol remembered it being here, too. I took her tightly by the hand, turned around, and called out the name from the business card I’d picked up on the bullet train.
“Why don’t you show yourself, Habatake-san?”