The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

by Yasutaka Tsutsui

  “Fire!” he called out. “There’s a fire!”

  And in an instant, doors and shutters seemed to open everywhere, and people spilt out onto the street.

  “Someone call the fire department!”

  “They just went to do that.”

  “Where is the fire?”

  “It’s in the kitchen in the bathhouse!”

  A few minutes later the fire trucks arrived on the scene, followed by the police, who immediately began herding the onlookers.

  “Kazuko!” came Goro’s voice through the crowds. “You were right. Your prediction came true!” he said, running towards her with an unusually pale face.

  “So Kazuko was right after all,” said Kazuo, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and was now standing behind her with a similarly pale face.

  “Kazuo!” said Kazuko, turning to see her friend. “Wait a minute. I thought you said you didn’t own any pyjamas!”

  “Well I didn’t then,” answered Kazuo. “I used to just sleep in my underwear. But when I got home my mother had bought me these ones.”

  “So Kazuko really does have the power to predict the future!” said Goro with a hint of admiration.

  “Not predicting the future,” said Kazuko. “It’s something stranger than that.”

  “What do you mean?” said Goro.

  “I’m not predicting the future. I’m jumping back through time. But I can never be sure when it might happen. And if I jump back again, I’m going to have to convince you both all over again.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that any more,” said Goro, shaking his head vigorously with his eyes wide-open. “I already believe in your powers.”

  Kazuo burst out laughing. “But if this was today or yesterday afternoon, you wouldn’t have believed it. No matter how much she explained.”

  Goro made a sour face.

  “Well, yeah... I guess you’re right...”

  Although Kazuko found Goro’s confusion amusing, she didn’t feel like laughing.

  “This is horrible,” she said. “There must be some way for things to become normal again!”

  “But that special power...” said Goro, turning to Kazuo. “What’s it called again?”

  “Teleportation,” said Kazuo, in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Yes, teleportation. That’s a special power!”

  “That’s true, Goro,” replied Kazuko. “But I don’t like the fact that I’m the only person who seems to have this power. Even you are looking at me differently now because of it –like you don’t think I’m human any more.”

  “Now you’re just being paranoid,” said Kazuo, smiling.

  “But I’m right, aren’t I? Once people find out about this, nobody will ever treat me like a normal person again!”

  “Now hold on a minute!” said Kazuo, trying to calm the situation. “We still don’t know if you really do have such powers. I mean, you’ve only gone back in time once, right? It could have been a random and isolated happening. Or maybe you did have a special power, but now you’ve used it all up in one go!”

  “You could be right, I guess. But I still feel uncomfortable not knowing whether it could happen again at any moment.”

  As the last of the flames were extinguished and the last of the onlookers turned and made their way home, Ka-zuko and her two friends decided it would be better to talk about everything in the morning, so they went back home to bed. Kazuko tried hard to fall asleep, but her mind was racing with questions. Should she confide in a teacher? And if so, which teacher? Would any of them take her seriously? Or would they just laugh? Eventually her mind grew tired, and she dozed off without noticing. And when she awoke, the morning light was streaming into the room casting lacy patterns on the floor. Oh no! she thought to herself as she scrambled out of bed. Today is Wednesday the nineteenth! The day she and Goro were nearly hit by a truck! Why didn’t I think to warn Goro last night! How could I forget until now!

  Looking at the clock, she decided there was still time to do something. So she threw on her clothes, gulped down her breakfast and sprinted out of the house.

  When she arrived at the zebra crossing, Kazuko let out a sigh of relief. Goro hadn’t arrived yet, so she could stand there and wait for him. But it wasn’t going to be that simple. As she stood there even for a few moments, she could see her classmates passing her, wondering why she wasn’t heading for school too. And what if anyone asked her? What would she say she was doing? She couldn’t tell them she was waiting to save Goro from being flattened by a speeding truck. They’d think she’d done too much studying for her entrance exams and driven herself crazy in the process.

  A few moments later, Mariko came along.

  “Oh, Kazuko. Why are you standing here?”

  Here we go! thought Kazuko to herself. “I’m waiting for Goro.”

  As an explanation it was innocent enough. But Mariko chose to read a little more into it. Maybe it was because she’d always been a little jealous of Kazuko’s friendship with him and Kazuo.

  “Ooh, waiting for Goro, are you?” said Mariko with a cheeky smile spreading across her face. “That’s interesting. I always thought you liked Kazuo more.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” said Kazuko, blushing. “It’s not like that at all.”

  “It’s okay.” Mariko let out a high-pitched laugh and patted Kazuko on the shoulder. “There’s no need to hide your feelings. But you know Goro is always late. Careful you aren’t late too!”

  Kazuko stomped in frustration as Mariko stepped out onto the zebra crossing. Then, just as the traffic light turned red, along came Goro dashing around the corner.

  “Morning!” he said in between deep breaths. “Looks like we’re both running late, huh?”

  I’m only running late because I was waiting for you! thought Kazuko to herself. There was no point in complaining to Goro now. The most important thing right now was for her make sure Goro stayed off the road until the traffic light turned green again.

  “You know, most accidents happen when someone is running late,” said Kazuko.

  “Don’t say that. You’ll put a jinx on us.”

  “But it’s a fact.”

  “Well, we don’t need your facts or your worrying maternal instincts right now, thank you.”

  “Fair enough. Just don’t go jumping out into the street the moment the lights change.”

  “Okay, okay!”

  A few seconds later, the light changed, and Goro made an exaggerated look to the left and right before getting ready to step out.

  “Wait!” screamed Kazuko.

  Surely enough, a large truck was hurtling towards them from the other side of the intersection, and Goro jumped back in panic.

  “Wow! What’s up with that truck!” said Goro incredulously, and the two of them stood transfixed as the truck careered past them and mounted the pavement, causing the screams of terrified pedestrians to fill the air.

  From the crowd, a voice called out, “The driver’s asleep!”

  Then, just a moment later, the truck slammed into a large trash bin on the street, sending it flying into a man walking nearby and knocking him to the ground. From there, the truck continued, sending a young housewife flying too, before finally smashing into the front of a store selling western clothes – hurling shards of broken glass in all directions. Once it came to a stop, Kazuko could see that the windscreen was broken, the front half of the truck was twisted beyond repair, and smoke was beginning to rise from the engine.

  “Help!” Came a shout, as a middle-aged man came limping out of the shop – his clothes covered in blood and his face frozen in shock. Then came another voice – the scream of a woman from inside the shop. And as all of this unfolded before their eyes, Kazuko and Goro could do nothing but stand and watch.

  THE CONSULTATION

  Following the crash, the intersection descended into chaos. People from all over the neighbourhood were rushing to the scene, and the piercing sound of police and ambulance sire
ns grew louder and louder. More onlookers seemed to come from out of nowhere, and Kazuko and Goro remained where they stood in a daze.

  Goro turned to Kazuko, his eyes wide with amazement. “So many weird things happen when you’re around.”

  “How dare you say that!”

  “What? Don’t get hysterical because of what just happened!”

  “You don’t even know what just happened!”

  Since Kazuko and Goro were now very late for class, they stopped their bickering and started to walk quickly. And as they went, Kazuko explained everything to Goro.

  “So if I hadn’t hung around waiting for you. If I hadn’t stopped you, then both of us could have been—”

  “Hit by that truck!” said Goro, jumping in to complete her sentence as a shiver ran down his spine.

  “That’s right.”

  When they eventually got to school, class had already begun.

  “Ah, late together, eh?” said Mr Fukushima as the two of them walked sheepishly into the room, causing all their classmates to laugh. But when he saw how pale they both looked, he decided to stop teasing them and get back to teaching.

  Goro and Kazuko quietly took their seats, but since their hearts were still racing they were in no mind to concentrate on their studies.

  That’s it! thought Kazuko as she glared at the blackboard, I can ask Mr Fukushima about it. He’s been teaching me since the first year, he’s kind and he’s a science teacher, which could be handy for a problem like this. I’ll ask Goro and Kazuo to come with me and ask him.

  Kazuko discussed the idea with her friends at break time and in the hallway between classes, attracting eyebrows raised in curiosity from Mariko and some of their other classmates. Then, after the day’s classes had finished, they nervously went to knock on the door of the staff room – hoping they could catch him out of earshot of the other teachers. Luckily, they found him sitting alone in the corner, so they crowded around him for a private discussion, with Kazuko speaking first.

  “Mr Fukushima?”

  Their teacher looked up in surprise and put down his science magazine.

  “Ah, it’s you lot,” he said, cracking his characteristic smile. “Have you come to apologize for being late this morning?”

  “Well, it does have something to do with being late,” said Kazuko. “But I also want to ask your advice.”

  “Is that right? Well, take a seat.” Mr Fukushima casually dragged three chairs over and invited them to sit, then he lit a cigarette. “So, what’s this all about?”

  Kazuo was the best at speaking, and his friends had agreed he should speak first. “Well first of all, it’s important for us to ask you to hear us out to the end without laughing. I say that because any normal person may well think our story sounds stupid or like a dream or make-believe, and so most people might just shrug it off. We weren’t even sure if we should tell anyone at all, but in the end we decided you might understand.”

  “I see,” said Mr Fukushima, the smile disappearing from his face. “Seems like a complicated situation.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’ve come to me in confidence. Right. I will listen to the end without laughing.”

  “Thank you,” said Kazuo with a relieved expression. “It’s actually about Kazuko here...” And so Kazuo began telling Kazuko’s incredible story.

  A LEAP IN TIME

  When Kazuo finished his long monologue about what happened to Kazuko, Mr Fukushima heaved a sigh and remained lost in thought.

  “Hmm. I see,” he said quietly.

  Kazuko watched Mr Fukushima’s every move with pleading eyes and felt extremely impatient. Please believe us! she pleaded in her mind. If you don’t, there’s no one else we can turn to!

  Goro couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “So Mr Fukushima, do you believe us?” he blurted out, his voice betraying his urgency.

  Mr Fukushima looked at each of them slowly, then nodded slightly.

  “Of course. I will believe you. I don’t think you three would go to the trouble of telling such a lie as a prank – and, besides, I can tell that something shocking has happened to Kazuko just by looking at your faces.”

  Already, Kazuo and Goro began to feel a little relieved. As for Kazuko, she could hardly contain her happiness at the thought that Mr Fukushima was on their side.

  “By the way, Kazuko,” Mr Fukushima said, his eyes unfocused as though he were still lost in thought. “Since this has started happening to you, or even before it started happening, how is your health?”

  “Well I’m glad you asked. I actually don’t feel quite the same as before. I can’t explain it well, but I have this ‘floating’ feeling.”

  “When did this start?”

  “It started, I think, on that Saturday after classes, when I smelt that chemical in the science lab.”

  Mr Fukushima brought his hand down on the desk.

  “Ah, I remember that. That was the time you said you saw someone suspicious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait, so that makes it four days ago...”

  Mr Fukushima wrote down the date in his notebook and went back to his thoughts.

  “Mr Fukushima, do such mysterious things happen from time to time?” Goro asked timidly. “Even though it’s happening right in front of my eyes, I’m still having trouble believing it. Is this something that happens often?”

  Mr Fukushima nodded slowly.

  “It’s no surprise you’re having trouble. Anyone would. Any ordinary person – when faced with such a mysterious set of events, things that can’t be explained by science as we know it – would be so bewildered that they would rather forget about it quickly without investigating properly. Our instincts tell us to fear this kind of phenomenon. Goro, I assume you are no exception?”

  Goro hesitated a little before vaguely nodding. “Yeah, well, I guess...”

  “But science is a discipline that gives us the tools to analyse things that are mysterious and discover the facts that make them normal. So for us to make discoveries, we must first be faced with mysteries. No mysteries, no new discoveries!” added Mr Fukushima with a sparkle in his eye.

  Kazuko had never seen Mr Fukushima like this. Kazuo and Goro were also drawn in by the passion with which he was speaking, and were listening closely.

  “So, incidents like the one experienced by Kazuko could be happening more often than we think. Indeed there are similar occurrences reported from all around the world. There are people who collect these stories and are investigating them. For example, Francis Edwards is one of them, but because he’s a researcher and not really a scientist, he simply records such facts.”

  “But how would you explain what’s happened to Kazuko?” Kazuo asked.

  “I would say, teleportation and time leap.”

  “Time leap?”

  “Yup. They are not as clear as in Kazuko’s case, but there are similar phenomena happening around the world. For example on 23rd September 1880, on a farm near Gallatin in Texas, a man named David Lang vanished in front of his wife, two kids and two friends. Simply disappeared while five people were watching. Also, in a small area off the south-east coast of the US, over twenty airplanes have mysteriously vanished. In these cases, the ones who disappeared haven’t been found, and the theory is that they leapt through time and ended up far in the future or far in the past. As an example of teleportation, there was a case of a person who one day disappeared from Tokyo and reappeared around the same time in Kimberley, USA. There are many stories like this from way back.”

  RETURN TO FOUR DAYS AGO

  Kazuko and her friends were awestruck. They’d never heard such stories in their lives.

  “So in my case both teleportation and time leap happened simultaneously,” said Kazuko.

  “That’s the only plausible explanation,” nodded Mr Fukushima. “When the truck was about to hit you, in addition to thinking of yourself in bed, you were also wishing to be far away in terms of time. That’s
why you leapt through time to a place way before the incident.”

  “But why was I able to—”

  “Do such a thing? Well, that’s the thing,” said Mr Fukushima, jotting more things down in his notebook. “I think it was triggered by that chemical you smelt in the science lab four days ago. If I remember correctly, you fainted after smelling that lavender-scented chemical?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “The problem is that chemical. That chemical probably gave you these powers. By the way, don’t you like having this power?”

  “No, I don’t!” blurted Kazuko. “I don’t like being the only one with powers.”

  “I understand. And that’s a normal reaction. You don’t want others thinking you’re not a normal human, right? I understand how you feel. But what you need to do now is to use this power of yours to return to that science lab four days ago when this incident started.”

  “What! Why?... And how?”

  All three of them were surprised by his suggestion.

  “By leaping through time, of course!” said Mr Fuku-shima, sounding even more surprised than Kazuko. “I mean, you have the powers, and you’ve already done it once, right?”

  “But I was terrified of being hit by that truck and...”

  Mr Fukushima raised his hand and stopped her.

  “I know. And by looking into what psychological and physical state you were in at the time, we should be able to recreate the same conditions.”

  “But Mr Fukushima, even if Kazuko can leap back in time by four days, what will she do when she gets there?” asked Kazuo, looking worried.

  “She will need to meet that mysterious person who made the chemical,” explained Mr Fukushima, beaming at Kazuko. “She will have to get to that person before he or she makes the chemical. I think that will solve the problem. It might be a little risky, but I think Kazuko can do it.”

  Kazuko fell silent, lost in thought. That’s right! she thought. If I can prevent that person from making the chemical, maybe I can make everything go back to normal.