DADDY

Vroooooom!

Sunlight glittered brightly off the sea as the motorcycle zipped past the Yokohama city tram slowly making its way north. They were following the highway south around the edge of Negishi Bay.

Kun was fastened securely by means of a leather belt to the man driving the bike. The engine—a twenty-four-horsepower 494-cc horizontally opposed air-cooled two-cylinder BMW—vibrated through him as he hunched over the fuel tank marked with a horse symbol. Wait a second, Kun thought, puzzled. I was riding that chestnut horse a minute ago… He blinked several times—which sparked the realization that he was now wearing goggles somehow—and peered up at the driver questioningly.

The man was wearing the leather jacket that had been tied around his shoulders before, along with a pair of thick gloves. The strap of his summer pilot’s cap flapped in the wind.

“Over there.”

Behind his goggles, the man’s eyes flicked to the left, and Kun looked over.

“That’s the aircraft company where I used to work.”

As they sped up the hill into the Sugita neighborhood, Kun glimpsed through the trees the saw-shaped roof of a big factory built on reclaimed land. The fourteen-cylinder airplane engine he’d seen at the little workshop in the woods had probably been made at this factory, but there was no sign of life behind the dark, empty windows. To Kun, the building felt dead. The man shifted gears and sped past. Soon, the industrial corpse was far behind them.

They passed a train on the Keikyu Line and continued south on National Highway 16.

On the unpaved mountain road from Tomioka to Kanazawa-Hakkei, the bike tilted far to the side as the man smoothly rounded the sharp curves. He didn’t slow down, even on the hairpin turns. As soon as the bike was upright after one curve, it tilted the other direction on the next. Kun’s courage was being tested.

They rounded another bend, and the mouth of the Funakoshi Tunnel came into view. The man accelerated toward it.

“Still scared?” he asked Kun in the darkness.

The boy’s face was stiff with anxiety, but he tried to sound as brave as he could. “…No.”

“Can you see the horizon?”

Kun opened his eyes a little. They were near the end of the tunnel.

“…Yeah.”

They flew into the brilliant light. Beyond the town of Tanoura on the other side of the tunnel was the port of Yokosuka. In the past, tall walls had lined the road running along the bay in order to hide the secret goings-on at the harbor. Now the walls had come down, and Kun could see dozens of massive hammerhead and jib cranes beyond the masts of the US Navy ships anchored there. He gaped at the spectacular sight.

To the right, he saw the gantry crane at Berth 2 towering impressively over them. The scale of everything was so huge, he felt as if he had stumbled into a land of giants. They passed foreign military men strolling past the EM Club singing merrily together, as well as long lines of exhausted people hunched over carrying packages. On some corners, they saw children. They were thin and small but having a good time running and shouting.

As the two kicked up a cloud of dust along the Mabori Coast, they passed a battered cab-before-engine truck piled high with machine parts. Kun realized he had seen hardly any other cars or trucks so far. Most of the vehicles were just cows and horses pulling loads. As they passed the rows of old-fashioned houses by the narrow, rocky beach at Hashirimizu and rounded Cape Kannonzaki, even the horse and cow carts became rare.

Instead, Kun saw all sorts of ships on the sea. Every time, he pointed and shouted, “A boat!” He saw a trawling boat with its sails unfurled and the ninth transport ship heading out of Tokyo Bay, and from Kuri Bay, he spotted the silhouette of the Hosho aircraft carrier bound for Uraga with a load of returnees from overseas.

“It doesn’t matter what you’re riding. Once you learn one, you can ride them all. A horse, a boat, an airplane…”

They followed the contour of the peninsula from the Miura Coast on the east to the western coast. The ocean sparkled under the late afternoon sun as the motorcycle clattered over the country roads.

Kun looked up at the man. “Daddy…”

“What?”

“This is cool.”

The man kept his focus straight ahead. “You bet it is. I made this thing myself.”

“No, I mean…” Kun was still staring.

“…”

He wanted to somehow let him know how he felt, to explain to him this unnamed emotion, similar to admiration. But all he could do was stare at him. The man noticed and gave him a brief smile. That was all. When he raised his head again, the sun glinted off his goggles, obscuring the expression in his eyes.

The bike roared on and on past the marshes lining the coast.

Over the growl of the motorcycle, Kun heard another engine. He looked up and saw an airplane. It was so far away, he couldn’t tell what kind it was, but to Kun, the distinctive sound seemed to be coming from an engine like the one he’d seen in the workshop, with two layers of seven cylinders.

It was the next morning.

Mom was in a huff because Dad had told her about a problem he was having just as she was leaving.

“How could you forget to turn in such an important document?”

Dad trailed after her. He was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, like he’d just rolled out of bed. He had worked until late the previous night and woken up only a few minutes earlier.

“Sorry.”

“I asked you to take care of it.”

“I said I was sorry,” he answered pitifully. Kun gazed at him.

“…Daddy?”

“What?”

Kun’s eyes shone with admiration.

“Good morning, please.”

“What’s up, Kun? You’re being awfully polite today,” Dad replied, surprised.

Kun put on his helmet and tightened the strap under his chin.

“I wanna go to the park, please,” he said, trying to imitate the two boys in the barn.

“Huh?”

“I want to ride my bicycle, please.”

“What?”

“Please.”

Once again, they were at the round plaza in Negishi Forest Park.

“You sure you’ll be okay on your own?” Dad asked. He was watching Kun from one end of the bench and bouncing Mirai in the baby sling. Kun turned away, a determined look on his face.

“Uh-huh.”

He jauntily lifted up one leg to straddle the bike.

“Oof.”

His stubby limb caught on the seat.

“Errgh…”

The same four boys he’d seen riding their bikes the other day were watching him from a distance.

“Oof…ergh…”

He finally managed to get on, set his feet on the pedals, and pushed down hard. As soon as he did, the bike started wobbling, and after a few feet, it crashed.

“Uh-oh,” blurted Dad.

Kun picked up the heavy bike.

“Look way out ahead… Look way out ahead…,” he whispered to himself, mimicking the young man with the motorcycle.

He kept his head high and pushed down on the pedals. The bike lost balance, and he put both feet back on the ground. He tried pedaling again. He wobbled forward a little farther than the last time, then fell over.

“Ooh… Keep trying, Kun!” Dad leaned forward instinctively, as if he wanted to run over to his son.

Kun fell again and again. Soon, he was covered in mud. Every time, he pulled the bike back up and got on again, panting.

“Way out ahead… Way out ahead…”

The four boys held their breath as they watched him. They thought he might have gotten a little farther than the last time, but immediately after, he crashed to the ground. All of them flinched.

“Ooh…,” Dad groaned, putting a hand to his head in sympathy. Only Mirai watched still as a statue from inside her sling.

Kun was drenched in sweat and starting to get tired. He did his best to haul up the bike, but it was getting harder and harder each time. He gathered all his strength.

“Way out ahead… Way out ahead…”

Sweat pouring down his face, he caught sight of something. His eyes widened.

It was the dilapidated, vine-covered grandstand.

He leaned on the pedals, his eyes fixed on the old building.

“Mmph… Rrgh…”

He kept his gaze fixed as he shakily advanced.

“Nngh…”

He jerked back and forth, on the verge of tipping over, but somehow, he managed to stay upright.

Dad shivered and tightened his hands into fists.

“Go, Kun, go!”

Kun kept looking ahead. The front wheel of the bike was still shimmying all over the place, but strangely, it didn’t fall.

The vivid image before his eyes wasn’t the decrepit ruins; it was the First-Class Horse Viewing Stand he’d seen from the top of the windblown hill with the young man.

“Ahh!”

Another wobble, but he kept pedaling. He still hadn’t fallen.

“Wow—great job!” Dad shouted, waving his fist in the air.

The bike was still upright. Unsteady but upright. Kun advanced incrementally as long as his feet worked the pedals.

In other words, Kun had learned to ride a bike.

“You did it, Kun! You did it! Yeah!” Dad cheered, happily waving at him and jumping up and down beside the bench. He didn’t stop for a long time.

Kun planted his feet on the ground and stopped. “Whew,” he panted.

The other boys rode over to him and screeched to a halt.

“You sure can ride now!”

“It’s easy, right?”

They smiled at Kun, who was still a little stunned.

“Let’s play,” one of them suggested, rolling off before Kun could answer.

He realized he could ride just like them now. A wonderfully pleasant feeling of accomplishment spread from his chest throughout his entire body.

“C’mon!” the boys called. Kun smiled and pedaled forward confidently.

“Coming!”

“It was like I actually saw him move to the next stage of development, y’know?”

Dad was still riding high as he related the afternoon’s events to Mom.

“Wow, Kun! That’s amazing!” Mom ruffled his hair as she showered him with compliments.

“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Kun laughed, flopping down on the floor and paging idly through the photo album with a tickled grin.

“I bet you tried hard because your dad was there cheering you on,” Mom speculated, to Dad’s surprise. He looked at his son again.

“Was that it?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“…”

As Dad watched him innocently flipping through the album, his chest suddenly became awash in a flood of competing emotions. When this image of Kun blended with his own childhood memories, he felt tears pricking at his eyes. He managed to hide them by blinking rapidly a few times.

“…Kids are so amazing. All of a sudden, one day, they’re just able to do things without anyone teaching them how,” he said, sniffling and wiping away a stray drop with his finger.

“Speaking of which…,” Mom said, looking at Mirai nestled in her father’s arms.

“What?”

“Mirai doesn’t cry anymore when you hold her.”

“Really?”

“She looks like she feels secure. I think you’ve gotten better at holding babies!”

Dad gazed at Mirai’s face, then shook his head as if he’d thought better of accepting the compliment.

“Hey, hey, I’m not the one who matters here. Kun’s the star right now!” he boasted with a grin.

“Ha-ha-ha. All right, all right.” Mom conceded the point with a wry smile. If her husband was more absorbed in Kun’s big step forward than his own little one, she would let him be.

“Look, it’s Daddy,” Kun commented over his shoulder.

“Hmm? Where?” Mom asked, peering at the album. Kun was pointing at one of the older photographs.

“This one.”

“Oh, no, that’s not your dad. That’s your great-granddad.”

“No, it’s Daddy.”

“No, it’s your great-granddad. The one who died last year.”

“Great-Granddad?”

The picture showed goggles, a motorcycle, a leather jacket, and a workshop in the forest, along with the young man Kun had called Daddy. He had seen everything in the picture with his own eyes.

“Great-Granddad made engines for fighter planes during the war. After that, he was drafted into a corps of kamikaze boat drivers, but luckily, he survived and started developing motorcycles with that company…”

“…”

Mom’s voice faded away as Kun stared at the photograph. The young man was looking back at him as if silently telling him something.

“…”

Finally, he nodded in acknowledgment.

“…Really?” Kun smiled a little. “Thanks, Great-Granddad.”

He thought he saw the young man in the picture smile back.