UNDERWATER

The courtyard was drenched in the June rains.

On the oak leaves, each and every drop of water reflected its own tiny little world.

Mom was sprawled on the bed showing him the pictures in her laptop’s photo library. It was a holiday, and she and Kun had decided earlier to spend it together relaxing. She picked a picture and quizzed him on it.

“Who’s this?”

“Um…it’s Mommy!”

“That’s right!”

Unlike the woman next to Kun now, the Mom on the screen was wearing glasses and had her hair in a bun.

“Where am I?” Kun asked.

“In my belly. You were born after this.”

In the photo, she had turned to the side and pulled up her shirt to show her swollen belly. It was October. She scrolled backward through the library from August to July to June. In each picture Dad had taken to record her progress, her stomach grew smaller.

“What was I like when I was born?”

“You were like Mirai is now.”

“I hate Mirai.”

“Don’t say that,” Mom said, frowning tiredly.

They looked at pictures taken right after she married Dad. In one, she had a bunch of violets in her hand, standing in an alley on the Île de la Cité in Paris, where she had gone for an interview. In another, she was striking a silly pose in the kitchen of the old house, a frying pan in her right hand and a wok in her left. And in another, she was sitting on the floor of Dad’s room, eating take-out after coming home late from work.

All of a sudden, they were looking at a picture of her in a sparkling white wedding dress.

“Oh! And who is this?”

“Mommy!”

She was in front of a glass wedding chapel with a green garden, smiling in her makeup. She could have been a princess in a picture book.

“You’re pretty.”

“Sure am!”

“And skinny.”

“Shush!” She snapped the laptop shut and pulled an old-fashioned photo album toward her. “The older ones are in here.”

When she opened it, the scent of old paper mixed with the sour smell of the glue on the backs of the pictures.

“This is when I met Daddy.”

In the picture, she and a writer were interviewing him at a chain coffee shop.

“This is when I first started working.”

She was standing in the editing department leaning over an open magazine, a strained smile on her face.

Next to that was a picture of her dressed in traditional pleated hakama trousers holding a bouquet of flowers with her university diploma tucked under her arm. Beside each photo, a small piece of paper showed the date and gave a short explanation. As they flipped through the album, Mom got younger and younger.

Starting on the next page, the images showed her in the countryside where she’d grown up. In one, she was wearing her highschool uniform for the first time, eyes averted in embarrassment because she had been overly self-conscious back then. In another, she was grinning cheerfully with her friends in the junior high drama club, though in truth, she had been unhappy because she had often been a target for bullies. She had pictures of good times with her family when they went skiing or visited the dinosaur park or took a trip to the amusement park in Tokyo. In one, she was wearing a backpack and standing awkwardly still in front of a wooden school building, nervous about her first day of school.

“Oh, look, there’s Yoichi.”

“Yoichi?”

“My little brother. Remember we went to his wedding last year?”

The pair of siblings was standing next to each other in the front yard of the country house. Mom was wearing a dress and looked a little older than Kun was now. Next to her, Yoichi gripped the handlebars of a bicycle with training wheels.

“You weren’t friends?”

“Of course we were! We were only a year apart, so everyone used to say we looked like twins.”

“There’s a cat.”

“Oh, that’s a stuffed animal. Your great-grandmother gave it to me for my birthday.”

“I want a present, too.”

“What? Why?”

“Um…because it’s my birthday.”

“Your birthday isn’t for months.”

Mom slammed the album shut as if to end the conversation.

“I want a bike.”

“Why are you asking for presents when it’s not your birthday?”

She escaped off the bed to pick up Mirai, now six months old. She marched down the stairs, silently grumbling about how Kun could answer anything she said with a request to buy something these days.

“Sheesh…” Toy trains littered the living room floor, leaving nowhere for her to step. “It’s always so messy in here.”

She looked around in dismay as she stepped over the rails and walked down to the dining room, worrying about what she might find there. As she suspected, half-assembled tracks were under the table.

“Argh, and I just cleaned up, too…” Slightly dizzy, she went back to the living room.

Kun ambushed her with his E353 train. “I want my bike this color.”

“Your granny’s coming, so you need to clean up,” she said, putting Mirai in the bouncer and glaring at Kun. He kept mumbling about colors and pointing at the purple train. Mom raised her voice in warning. “Kun…”

“I’ll clean up with Daddy.”

“Daddy’s working today. He’s not here.”

“Then I can’t.”

Mom put her hands on her hips as if to ask why not. “Little boys who don’t clean up have all their toys thrown away.”

“…I don’t wanna!” Kun refused, shaking his head stubbornly.

Argh. She wouldn’t have bought them in the first place if he wasn’t going to take care of them.

“Then I’m not getting you any more.”

“Nooo!” He shook his head in frustration and jumped up and down on the floor.

“Well, then clean up.”

“NOOOOOOO!!!”

He flung himself to the ground as if he could no longer stand under the weight of such a hopeless situation, wailing and wagging his butt in anguish.

Now I’ve done it, Mom thought, silently regretting her words. I went too far. She closed her eyes, a pained expression on her face. I lost my temper again…

How often did she find herself regretting her actions like this? She wanted to always be calm and gentle, but most of the time, reality wasn’t so kind. Even though she wanted to be a good mother, she hardly ever succeeded.

Suddenly, Kun sprang up.

“I hate Mirai!” he shouted, raising his toy train high to whack her with it. Guessing what he was up to, though, Mom swiftly scooped her up.

“Don’t hit her! You said you’d be her friend!”

The doorbell rang.

“Shoot, Granny’s already here!”

Mom dashed down the stairs, leaving Kun in the living room. Yukko was there with him, barking excitedly. Mom slipped on her sandals, walked through the courtyard where the rain was just clearing, and stopped in the playroom to lay Mirai gently in her bassinet.

“Wait here for just a minute. I’ll be right back.”

The bell rang again impatiently.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming.”

She jogged down to the front door.

After Mom left the room, Kun kept fuming, his cheeks puffed up and lips in a pout.

Mommy’s mean.

If she threw away his toys, how was he supposed to play? Kids had to play. How could she say she wouldn’t buy him any more toys, like some kind of monster?

The more he thought about it, the more his anger boiled.

“…Grr!”

He tried yelling, but it wasn’t enough. What could he do? He looked around and spotted a box full of train tracks on the sofa. Perfect! He upended it with both hands, kicking the contents around the room, then threw the box aside when he spied the other side of the table. A box of toys sat atop the low table. With all his strength, he smacked it to the floor and proceeded to hoist it in the air, shaking out everything inside.

“Grrrr!”

After tossing the box away, he squatted among his toys and yanked out a drawing pad. He grabbed a crayon and scribbled on the white page, venting his rage. He leaned farther and farther forward to get out all his feelings. When he was finished, he pummeled the page with the crayon as if punctuating a sentence with a period.

It was a picture of his mother with horns sticking out of her head. She was a witch.

“Mommy’s a wicked witch!” he said.

But he was still mad.

“I hate Mommy.”

He stomped across the room and yanked the door open as hard as he could, dislodging the raindrops stuck to the glass. He marched down the stairs into the courtyard, where the rain had stopped. When he got there, he heard a fizzing sound, like water churning.

“…Hmm?”

Just then, he felt a cool breeze on his skin. He stopped and looked toward the sound, and what he saw beyond the oak tree took his breath away.

A lush green meadow as vast as the great plains of Asia stretched to the horizon. Several giant, table-like stone mountains towered over him, their rough cliff faces exposed. It was a perfect wilderness, unblemished by a single unnecessary thing. Still, something felt off about this magnificent landscape. Gazing up at the sky, Kun searched for the root of this peculiar unease.

Above him, enormous ripples were spreading very, very slowly across the sky.

“…”

Why were there ripples in the sky? Kun’s eyes went wide. The grass at his feet was waving in time with the sky. I’m in a weird place again…

Just then—

“It’s not true that you hate me, is it?”

—he heard a voice.

It was definitely familiar.

“Mirai of the future?”

She was standing next to the oak tree, but this time she wore yellow rubber boots that stopped just below her knees and a fluorescent lime-green raincoat. It was shaped like a poncho, with sleeves so long they hid her hands. It was cute on her. It was very “Mirai,” in Kun’s opinion.

“My big brother tried to hit me with the bullet train again, didn’t he?”

She seemed somewhat miffed. That was just like her, too. Kun shook his head.

“It wasn’t a bullet train.”

“Bullet trains aren’t for hitting people with.”

“It was a Super Azusa.”

“It doesn’t matter which it was.”

Mirai frowned and shook her long sleeves, then sighed her usual sigh. Before Kun even noticed, a school of red and blue tropical fish had floated down next to where they were standing on either side of the oak tree. The fish were silent, like decorations on a mobile.

“Why aren’t you nicer to Mom?”

“I can’t.”

“Don’t you feel bad for being mean and upsetting her on her day off? She hardly has any, you know.”

“…”

Kun wanted to say he wasn’t being mean but couldn’t. Instead, he just stared down silently. The reason he couldn’t be nice to her was because she didn’t love him. Why wouldn’t she love him like he wanted? Why? Why? Why?

“…Well?”

“…I’m not cute.”

“What?”

“…You and Yukko are cute…but I’m not…”

The sadness swelled bigger and bigger inside Kun. Tears started rolling down his cheeks. He wiped them away with his palms, but no matter what he did, more and more kept coming.

Mirai stood stiffly, as if having done something she hadn’t intended.

“Um, uh, ah…”

She wasn’t sure what to say, but she rushed over to him in a flustered attempt to patch things up.

“Th-th-that’s not true. You are cute!”

Sniffling, Kun turned his back on her.

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. So—”

“Waaaaah!”

He shook off Mirai’s hand and abruptly ran away.

“Wait, Big Brother!”

The startled school of tropical fish changed direction all at once and swam toward Mirai.

“Eek!” she cried, covering her face with the sleeve of her raincoat. “Hey! Big Brother?”

He didn’t turn around.

“Waaaaaaah!”

Kun, too, was pushing his way through the ever-expanding school of exotic fish, but he was so sad, he didn’t even notice his bizarre predicament. The fish formed a tunnel as if to lead him somewhere. They swam in a spiral, which became part of a bigger spiral, which belonged to an even bigger spiral, and on and on. This self-replicating helix seemed to extend forever.

When Kun finally reached the destination to which the fish were leading him, he saw a ray of light. This blinding brightness drew closer and closer. Was it the exit? Was it the end of the spiral? Without warning, he saw foam in front of his eyes, like he’d reached the surface of the sea. And then he burst through…