“If it’s too hard for you, Aoyama, then it is very difficult indeed.”
Even if the true nature of the penguins was a mystery, Uchida had been awfully close to that penguin, and having a living creature you were fond of suddenly vanish was quite a blow. But I couldn’t think of any way to comfort him. Even worse, I had to keep it secret that the lady was making the penguins.
I didn’t think it was good to keep important facts from friends.
The word vexing described these emotions exactly. But right at the height of my vexation, I got a call from the lady.
“I’m gonna make some penguins soon. Wanna experiment?” she asked.
She’s the biggest mystery of all, I thought.
On Sunday, I went to the church to meet up with the lady. The sky was covered in fluffy clouds, all gray and silver. But patches of blue peeped out from between them. The air still smelled like rain. As I walked down the bus route to Kamonohashi Park, a ray of sunshine made it through the clouds, brightening the town around me. I could see the bright patch moving. It was like someone up in the sky was examining our molecular structure with a laser beam.
The lady came out of the church smiling, clearly in a very good mood. I was always happy to see her in a good mood.
Her hair was shining like aluminum, and I was extremely jealous. I expressed admiration for how straight her hair was, and she rumpled mine, saying, “Yours is having a tantrum!” My hair curled up like this because my hair molecules were bonding. It was not my fault. But I did not argue the point.
“Where should we do this?” she said.
I thought we should definitely keep using the bus terminal for our experiments.
We walked down the bus route. The bus terminal was on the edge of our neighborhood. The closer we got, the fewer houses there were, until there were more vacant lots than houses.
While we walked, it started to rain again. The drops of rain were tiny, like mist. The soft patter of the drops falling filled the air. I pulled out a very modern folding umbrella from my rucksack. All I had to do was press a button, and it unfolded like NASA deploying the antennae on a space probe. The lady took out a large green umbrella, as round as her breasts.
Even with the umbrella, the raindrops were so light, they got under the umbrella, hitting my face and arms.
“It’s like we’re walking inside a can of Sprite,” the lady said.
“The plants are happy.”
“The whole forest is soaking wet. It’s kinda nice.”
“Feel like you can make penguins today?”
“I do. Totally feeling it. I’m itching to make some. Watch closely and discover the penguin-making mechanic.”
“This is a much tougher mission than I anticipated.”
“Do I hear you complaining, child of science?”
While we walked, I explained the Penguin Evaporation I had observed. I also filled her in on the Penguin Energy problem. It was a secret that Uchida had kept a penguin, so I didn’t mention that. The lady listened intently, but her only response was to whisper “Mysterious!” and swirl the umbrella around.
The rain-soaked bus terminal was empty. It felt even bigger today. The forest behind the terminal was foggy, like it was wrapped in cotton. The vending machines were wet from the rain, waiting for someone to buy a drink. Being a vending machine was such a sad job to have. I always felt sympathy for them.
We began our experiment.
The lady bought a can of Coke from the vending machine. I stood next to the machine, observing her actions. When I gave her the nod, she gave a little shout and threw the can. The red can spun through the rain. Then it fell to the asphalt with a clunk, unchanged. I ran over and picked up the can. It was dented, but not at all penguin-y.
We repeated this experiment three times with no penguins created.
“The experiment has failed.”
“It really shouldn’t have, though,” the lady said.
“But the can hasn’t changed.”
“Weird,” she said, spinning the green umbrella.
Then I saw the phenomenon begin.
This time, the phenomenon started on the surface of her umbrella. At first, I thought it was the drops of water on the umbrella surface. They were the same green as the umbrella. But the drops were moving oddly. Drop merging with drop, combining, the drops growing larger and larger. Then they swelled up like a blister and burst, and the fragments turned into pale-pink flower petals. As if the surface of the umbrella was producing them, drop after drop exploded. As the lady spun the umbrella, flowers of all colors raced across the surface, and between them, green stems stretched out in the air. It was like watching a time-lapse video of plants growing.
The rain on the bus terminal was soft as mist, so it was very quiet around us. To better observe the phenomenom, I walked around the lady as she spun her umbrella.
“What do you think?” she said, looking up at the umbrella.
“It’s an extraordinary phenomenon,” I said.
The plants were staking out their territory on the lady’s umbrella. The long green stems formed spirals. I clearly saw a row of daisies running along its edge. Flowers buried her umbrella, like someone had splashed paint all over it, the growing stems tangling together as they reached for the cloudy sky. Small yellow bulbs swelled up from the umbrella’s rim, growing into bright mango-like fruit. At last, large sunflower blossoms bloomed at the end of the longest stems. When the lady shook the umbrella, the sunflowers waved, too. Vines were spilling over its edge, so the lady ran her fingers along them, grinning. The umbrella had become a tiny botanical garden.
“Wow,” she said.
“Have you ever made plants before?”
“My first time!”
A beam of sunlight broke through the clouds like a searchlight, and the bus terminal we were experimenting in suddenly dazzled. Sunny but raining. Sunlight trickling through the flower petals, lighting up the lady’s face, like she was standing in a beam of light shining through a sheet of cellophane.
A moment later, the second stage of the phenomenon began.
The plants that had grown so tall suddenly stopped moving and began to wither. Color faded from the petals, and the long stems turned brown. The sunflower blooms drooped, and seeds spilled out onto the asphalt. The mangoes dangling off the umbrella swelled up, sprouted wings, and turned into penguins.
“There they are!” she yelped.
Penguin after penguin was born. They waddled off toward the forest behind the bus terminal. The lady threw the Coke can again, and this time, it did transform into a penguin.
The lady’s umbrella was kind of a mess. Like she’d had plants growing in a hanging basket and forgotten to water them. They were completely brown and looked dead.
“The experiment succeeded!” she said proudly. “I told you it would!”
“It did. And I have a new hypothesis.”
“Oh! Nicely done.”
“We will need some more experiments to confirm it.”
“More?” she said, sighing. “You sure know how to work a girl.”
We did a few more experiments, and I wrote several hypotheses in my notebook.
When the lady is in a good mood, she wants to make penguins.
The lady has 1. The power to make penguins, and 2. The power to make other things (bats, plants, etc.).
When the sun is shining, power 1 is active, and when the sun is not shining, power 2 is active.
When power 2 is active, even the lady has no idea what’ll come out.
When power 1 is active, the lady gets tired. (*Requires further experiments.)
When power 2 is active, the lady feels better. (*Requires further experiments.)
I have no idea why, but my mother loved it when my sister and I wore galoshes, so when it was raining, we always wore them to school. My sister had convinced our mother to buy her red galoshes and was thoroughly satisfied. On rainy days, she could be a real devil. She always shook her umbrella to flin
g water everywhere and jumped into puddles. As her brother, it was my job to rein her in. But I understood the compulsion to jump into puddles when wearing galoshes. It made you feel like a real explorer.
Walking to school in the rain, I looked up, whispering, “Altostratus clouds.” I couldn’t exactly open my notebook in this weather, so I had to settle for reciting the names of each type of cloud I could remember. Cirrus, cirrocumulus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus. Clouds had different names depending on their shape and how high they were. I had memorized a lot of them.
I’d started to regularly play chess with Hamamoto during breaks at school. Uchida joined in.
When the three of us were gathered around the chessboard, Suzuki would try things every now and then. We considered that he wanted to play chess, too, and offered to let him join in, but he refused.
Suzuki spread out the map as if flaunting it at us, making plans for further exploration. Suzuki and his minions, including Kobayashi, were copying us, forming an exploration society.
“How far do you think we can go?” Kobayashi asked.
“I dunno—it’s a big adventure,” Suzuki said, tracing the route on the map like the party leader. When he saw Uchida and me looking, he got mad. “What? Don’t look at us!”
Uchida and I had made that map in the first place, so we had every right to look at it. But I said nothing, merely turning back to my match with Hamamoto. If I didn’t stay focused, there was no way I’d be able to play at her level. Suzuki went back to talking about his expedition plans.
Staring at the chessboard, Hamamoto said, “Did Suzuki’s group make that map?”
“No!” Uchida said quietly. “It’s ours.”
“They swiped it?”
“We stand in opposition to the Suzuki Empire.”
“What’s the Suzuki Empire?”
“Suzuki and his minions. Unfortunately, we have failed to find a way to get along with them.”
Hamamoto snorted like a grown-up. “No need to do that. It’s impossible to get along with everyone.”
She took her eyes off the board, staring into the distance. When she played chess, she was always so focused, it was like she was mechanical and didn’t need to breathe, so it was rare to see her tune out like this.
“You okay, Hamamoto?”
“Aoyama, have you two explored the whole town?”
“Not all of if. Our map is still unfinished.”
“The hill with the water tower?”
“We’ve been there,” Uchida said. “We found a path that leads to the back of the athletic field.”
“But that forest contains many mysteries,” I said. “That’s why we’ve named it the Jabberwock Woods. We intend to fully explore it sometime. Once the weather’s better.”
“But the ghost moon shows up there,” Hamamoto whispered. “If you see it, you’ll die.”
Uchida looked nervous. “…So I’ve heard. Is that real?”
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “There’s no evidence to support it. Do you believe it, Hamamoto?”
“Of course not,” she said, lost in thought again.
I remembered when I was on a picnic with the lady in the grassy area near the back of the athletic field. I’d seen Hamamoto come out of the Jabberwock Woods and been quite surprised. I considered asking what she’d been doing there but decided not to.
I wished to respect her privacy.
Sunday night, I’d agreed to meet the lady for chess, so I went to Seaside Café.
I sat in the seat by the window waiting for the lady to arrive. I had my notebook open on the table and was analyzing the results of the bus terminal experiment. I drew a picture of the sunflower growing out of the lady’s umbrella in my notebook. I needed to practice drawing more so I could record my observations with a greater degree of accuracy. Then I added an index to the notes. By creating an index, I could find out just how many things I’d learned.
After burying myself in research for a while, I took a breather, staring up at the blue whale hanging from the ceiling. There were no other customers that night. Music was playing softly. Outside the window, I could see the darkened dentist’s office and the vacant lot next door. Every time I saw my face in the glass, I always thought I was looking more grown-up and felt satisfied, but then I’d look in the mirror the next day and not look older at all. This was a very strange phenomenon—and a very disappointing one.
Yamaguchi made me a smoothie.
“It happens sometimes,” he said, sitting down across from me.
“What does?”
“You get stood up.”
I wrote stood up in my notebook.
Yamaguchi scratched his bushy goatee. It looked like iron filings stuck to a magnet. I’d once been extremely focused on magnet research and still liked magnets better than anything else in the world. I don’t think there’s anything more wonderful and mysterious than magnets and iron filings together. I thought about the iron filings I had stored in the drawer of my desk back home.
“Wanna play chess with me?” Yamaguchi offered, so we played chess.
He was not good at chess and seemed more interested in scratching his beard than looking at the board. The match played out extremely slowly. I eventually started nodding off, and so did he. The game got even slower and eventually stopped progressing at all.
I heard the door open and thought the lady was there, but it was just my father. “I got a call from her,” he said. “She’s not feeling well so won’t be able to make it.”
It was a shame, but I hoped she felt better soon.
I said good night to Yamaguchi.
“Bonne nuit,” he said sleepily.
My father and I walked through the neighborhood. The streetlights next to a vacant lot seemed like searchlights lighting the depths of the sea. I half expected strange-looking fish to come swimming out of the dark corners of the vacant lot. I’d borrowed a book Hamamoto recommended from the library and learned a lot about the deep sea.
“The deep sea is a world of the unknown,” I told my father. “The water pressure is so high it flattens everything, and sunlight doesn’t reach it. There are creatures down there that look like aliens.”
“Maybe the deep sea is connected to outer space,” my father said. “You know astronauts train in large water tanks, right?”
“I do.”
I walked awhile in silence.
“I hope the lady feels better.”
“…Getting stood up is always lonely. It’s happened to me, too. You get this lost feeling inside, right?”
“I definitely feel a little lost.”
“And nobody likes feeling lost.”
“…Life is full of things you don’t like but have to endure.”
“You are absolutely right.”
“Dad, what does bonne nuit mean?”
“Good night. It’s French.”
“What’s so good about it?”
“In this case, it’s used just like good night in Japanese.”
I would have to write down bonne nuit in my notes. The next time I played chess with the lady, when it was time to go, I’d say good night in French and surprise her. If she said “What’s that mean?” I’d be able to explain that it was the same as good night.
I have already mentioned buying sweets with my allowance to replenish my brain’s energy.
All along, I’ve been buying different kinds of sweets and experimenting with how well my mind functions after eating them. I even tried eating sugar cubes directly. The results of my experiments indicate that the best nourishment for the mind is provided by the Boob Cakes sold at the nearby sweetshop. The actual name was some difficult foreign-language word, but when my sister first saw them, she’d shouted, “Boobs! Boobs!” so I called them Boob Cakes now. They were about ten centimeters in diameter, round, and unbelievably soft. There was cream inside. There were a number of nutrients beside sugar that help my brain function, and Boob Cakes had all of these. And they were far better tasting
than sugar cubes. They were so soft, you had to wonder if anything this soft should be allowed to exist. Were actual breasts this soft? They were wonderful.
Uchida and I bought some Boob Cakes on the way home from school.
“We’re not supposed to take detours,” Uchida said. He was a little grumpy.
“But Boob Cakes are really good. You should try them.”
“Is that the real name?”
“It’s the name I gave them. So when you ask for them at the store, make sure you don’t call them that. They won’t understand.”
“Aoyama, for someone so smart, you sure talk about that stuff a lot. It’s weird.”
“What’s so weird about liking breasts?”
“Nothing, I guess… But it’s still weird.”
On the way home, we crossed a big street with a dry cleaners, a drugstore, and restaurants. If you turn onto that road and then onto the side street that leads to the water purification plant, you’ll get to the candy store.
If you open the heavy door and step in, you’ll find the air filled with sweet scents. There’s a table with a big pile of candy in little bags or wrapped in foil. In a big glass case are rows of little toylike cakes. There’s a small café attached, so it also smells like coffee. The air is so sweet, I feel like it makes everyone sleepy. Just being in the shop is really fun. It cheers me up so much, I feel like I don’t have to be afraid of anything. If I could make a second research laboratory here, my research would progress in leaps and bounds, and I’d get a lot of cavities.
As they were putting Boob Cakes in bags for Uchida and me, the door opened and Hamamoto came in. “Shopping?” she asked.
“Mm, yeah.”
She looked at the candy on the table. Didn’t look like she was buying anything. When Uchida and I started to leave, bags in hand, she stopped us.
“Aoyama, I have a question.”
“What?”
“You know a lot of things, right?”
“Yeah. I like to think I do.”
Hamamoto fixed her astonishingly large eyes on me and brushed back her chestnut hair. Her hair curled up in this weather, too. But it was still softer than mine. She smiled.
Penguin Highway Page 8
