MIRAI

Mirai and Kun slipped through the glass, emerging outside the north dome, then soared over Tokyo with a trail of light behind them.

Up and up they climbed.

“Wow, it’s a Mirai airplane!” Kun cried excitedly at the nighttime lights of Tokyo spread out below him. But when he saw what was above him, he was confused.

“Huh?”

For some reason, the sky had a ground. He could see a moonlit meadow through the gaps in the clouds.

“Uh-oh! Are we falling?”

“Yep!”

Kun screamed. “Ahhhhh!”

They plummeted toward a lone tree growing in the meadow.

“Do you know what that is?”

“Um…the oak tree in the garden?”

“It looks like it, but it’s actually the catalog of our family’s history.”

“What’s a catalog?”

Mirai focused on the ground straight below, despite the powerful gusts whipping through her hair and clothes.

“You know the cards in libraries that list all the books? It’s like that. Everything from the past, present, future of our house is written on them and filed away. We have to find the card from when you’re living at the house.”

“We have to find it?”

“We can’t go back.”

“What?”

“Going down!”

“Ahhhhh!”

They plunged down right above the tree, passing through a tunnel of rustling, leathery oak leaves. Suddenly, everything was white, and they were inside an enormous globe. The place was surreal, surrounded by the circular index tree.

“Oh…!” Kun couldn’t form any more words than that.

Branches split off from the circle and then divided again and again and again. There were enough to make their heads spin, and at the tip of each, a single green leaf hung like a sign. At one end of each leaf was a little tab inscribed with what seemed to be an address. It was indeed a catalog. Mirai and Kun dove toward one of the countless leaves, and once again, everything turned white.

A swallow swooped and twirled in circles before them, high up in the sky among piles of clouds drifting slowly by. As the bird tilted its wings to the side, they followed it down. Below the clouds, the evening sun lit up a landscape of rice paddies and farmhouses. Mirai of the future and Kun floated slowly down toward a wooden schoolhouse in the village. A boy stood alone in the large playing field, casting a long shadow as he straddled a small bicycle.

“Can you see the bike?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s our dad.”

“Really??”

As Kun watched in surprise, the bicycle crashed to the ground, and the boy toppled over with it. His small chest heaved, and his face beneath his glasses twisted with pain and frustration. Tears formed in his eyes.

“Dad was actually a weak little kid, and he still couldn’t ride a bike when he went to elementary school. Right now, he’s crying while he practices,” Mirai said.

“Daddy…”

Kun remembered Dad encouraging him when he couldn’t ride, either. Without even thinking, Kun cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted.

“Keep trying!”

Mirai did the same.

“Keep trying!”

They faced the boy, who was crying silently into his hands, and called together.

“Keep trying!”

The shadow of the swallow passed over the boy. As it did, the scene distorted, and before they knew it, Mirai and Kun were hurtling through the index tree with its rows of tagged leaves.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

They dove into another.

Mirai and Kun followed the swallow as it circled above the clouds and then swooped down toward a stream deep in the mountains. Among the woods, they could see a lush grassy area, like a playing field.

Next to the fence in one corner, a little boy with glossy shoulder-length hair and a grown-up woman were gazing up at the sky. The boy was wearing an argyle vest, shorts, and a red scarf wrapped around his neck. He looked just like a little prince from a foreign country. The woman squeezed his shoulder lovingly with a pained expression on her face, but he just kept watching the sky indifferently.

“Who’s that boy?”

“That’s Yukko.”

“Really?!”

“Soon, he’s going to leave the momma dog and come to our house.”

“Yukko…”

The little boy from a moment before suddenly became a puppy. Apparently ticklish, he wiggled as his mother licked him affectionately.

“Yukkooo!” Kun shouted without thinking.

The scene shimmered again, and before Kun knew it, he and Mirai were inside the catalog tree.

“Ahhhhh!”

They flew forward with startling speed and into another leaf.

The swallow wove through gray clouds and dove earthward. The clouds were about to burst with rain at any moment.

“Oh…”

A little girl was standing outside the front door of a house. Kun recognized her right away.

“…Mommy!”

A baby chick lay on the girl’s palm. It was completely still, and drops of blood spotted the ground. The girl’s eyes were swollen from crying as she looked toward the sky. Kun remembered the swallow’s nest above the entryway to her house. Had the chick fallen out?

“That little swallow she’s holding…a stray cat got it. Mom used to love cats, but she’s had a hard time with them ever since,” Mirai said, answering Kun’s unspoken question.

Now that he thought about it, they had a pet dog—Yukko—and not a cat at home. This must have been why.

The shadows of several swallows passed over the little girl. The scene distorted, and Mirai and Kun were in the index tree again. Once again, they dropped into one of the thousands upon thousands of leaves.

Boooooom… Boooooom…

Every time the low sound echoed in the distance, the air quivered.

As Mirai and Kun drifted slowly downward, they saw smoke from numerous antiaircraft guns hanging in the air above Yokosuka. The vibrations came from exploding shells.

It was three thirty in the afternoon on July 18, 1945, and they were at the Port of Yokosuka. The weather was cloudy. Columns of water flared upward around the battleship Nagato. The young man Kun had met at the workshop was floating near the ship as water splashed down on him.

But before all this…

At eighteen, the young man had been drafted to work at a company on reclaimed land in Isogo that manufactured airplane engines. He was told they were developing a new engine and that he would be helping with the project. In the end, though, after many tests, the engine wasn’t selected for use, and R & D was discontinued.

After that, the young man worked assembling Sakae 21 and 31 engines manufactured by the Nakajima Aircraft Company. As the military situation grew increasingly tense, older employees at the company—including the most experienced and skilled mechanics—were mobilized as soldiers. The younger employees with less experience were called upon to fill their shoes. As the downward spiral continued, the young man was appointed head of assembly at the age of twenty. He worked desperately to fulfill his role.

The state of the war steadily worsened, and in 1945, with no more engines to assemble, the young man was mobilized as a soldier. He was to be a mechanic in an aquatic unit. The role of these troops was to load bombs into small plywood boats powered by repurposed truck engines and to carry out suicide attacks. They were among the many kamikaze units formed to respond to the enemy’s invasion of the Japanese mainland.

The young man went to Omura Bay in Nagasaki for training, then returned to the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal to receive special attack boats under the command of the XXth Special Attack Unit XXth Storm Troop. The day he came back, he gazed up at the bridge of the Nagato, which had returned from the sea and was now moored against the cliffs to serve as a floating antiaircraft battery. It had been painted in a camouflage pattern.

Strangely enough, the US Navy’s Task Force 38 attacked the Port of Yokosuka that very afternoon. The Nagato was its main target.

Boom! Boom!

Low explosions thundered and shuddered in the distance.

“Huff…puff…huff…puff…”

Next thing he knew, the young man was in the water. All around him, fragments of the ship’s bridge bobbed alongside the corpses of soldiers. Not a shred remained of the small plywood boats the young man had received. They had all burned up. Blood seeped into the seawater from an injury to his lower body, but he had no time to figure out what was wrong with his legs. He was already getting groggy.

“Huff……puff……”

He was going to die. He was sure of it. This was the end. He reflected on his short life, and he hadn’t accomplished anything. Not a single thing. Could it be ending all the same? As he teetered on the edge of death, the young man gazed up at the sky, and throwing aside all concern for decorum, he screamed as loudly as he could.

“AHHHHHHHHHH!”

He lifted his right hand toward the sky. Seawater splashed onto his face. Beyond the tips of his fingers, between the gaps in the thick, dark clouds, a beam of brilliant sunlight poured down for just an instant.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

He slapped his hand down on the surface of the water with all his might, generating a tremendous splash. Using only the strength of his arms, the young man swam through the debris and body-strewn sea.

Boom! Boom!

The explosions of the shells vibrated through the water.

The swallow slipped through the clouds and down, wings tilted. Mirai and Kun saw a train running alongside a river with a wide riverbed and the roofs of old-fashioned houses packed tightly around a station. Farther out, rice paddies and farm fields extended as far as the eye could see. A short way off the main road, they could see a house that was bigger than all the others.

Although the general region had been bombed, this particular town had escaped serious harm compared with its neighbors. It was August 1946. The shadow of war had retreated.

Mirai and Kun descended slowly through the evening sky.

Kun had seen the stone wall, pine tree, and distinctive imported tiles outside the house before. The nameplate read IKEDA CLINIC, the same place the little girl had taken him to slip a letter inside the leather shoe of Kun’s great-grandmother during her shift as a nurse.

A man in a sleeveless shirt and a woman in an apron over workpants were standing in front of the gate, their shadows stretched long in the evening sun. The trial motorcycle Kun had ridden on was parked next to the man. In other words, this was the same young man from before. He was pointing to a tree at the end of the road and saying something to the woman.

“How about we go to that oak over there?” Without waiting for her answer, he crouched down and splayed the fingers of both hands on the ground. He looked up at the woman as if to pose the question for which she had been waiting.

She hesitated for a moment out of concern for his leg, but he himself didn’t seem worried. The woman finally gave in to the inevitable with a sigh and took an upright starting position for their race.

“Ready, set, go!” the man shouted, taking off. While the woman jogged lightly with her apron fluttering, he limped clumsily, his right foot dragging behind him and his upper body lurching forward and back. His hip had been injured in the explosion, and he was clearly at a disadvantage in the contest. After a short time, the woman stopped, stood still, and waited for the man to catch up. Only when he had heaved himself past her with all his strength did she start running again. The man flopped down in the middle of the road under the shade of the oak tree, panting with his arms and legs spread wide. The woman stopped running and walked the rest of the way to the tree. She pushed down the cuffs of her pants and squatted beside him as the man sat up and caught his breath.

“You sure are fast. I thought I might lose,” he joked, grinning.

The woman blinked in surprise and covered her mouth softly with her hand.

“…Ha-ha. You’re funny.”

Mirai watched the scene from high above.

“If Great-Granddad hadn’t swum so hard back then…and if Great-Granny hadn’t run slowly on purpose now…then we wouldn’t be here,” she said quietly.

As the woman doubled over and giggled endearingly, it seemed she was already in love with the man.

“You see, all these little things add up to create who we are today.”

“…”

Kun looked up slowly at Mirai.

“Today…?” he asked. Today for who?

No sooner had he spoken than the scene wavered and distorted…

It was a brilliant summer day.

Beneath the summer sky, it was just a regular morning in Isogo.

But regular compared with when? For example, the E233 train with the sky-blue stripe had already been retired and replaced by a new model. Several new office buildings and high-rise apartments were visible on the horizon. And quite a few other things looked almost the same but with a slightly different texture to them. But what was the point of listing them all? Everything changes little by little, very quietly, so as not to be noticed.

The stepwise house still stood on the south-facing slope. The orange tiles still covered its roof.

The little tree in the courtyard was a bit bigger than before. No one had realized, but its leafy branches reached above the roof and beyond the house now.

A tall, slim boy was standing in front of the tree. It was the same high schooler Kun had met in the unmanned train station. He was holding a sporty backpack in his left hand.

“Hey, Big Brother!” someone called to the back of his white T-shirt.

It was Mirai, dressed in her summer school uniform as she climbed the stairs from the front door to the courtyard. The high schooler deliberately ignored her.

“…”

“Mom and Dad are calling you!”

“You know…”

“What?”

“You should at least sit down and eat some breakfast,” the boy said, eyeing the banana in Mirai’s hand.

“Want some?” Mirai held out the fruit.

“No way,” he answered as he jogged down the stairs to the front door.

Mirai watched him absently, then suddenly looked at Kun as if she’d realized something.

“…?”

“…Mirai of the future,” little Kun called quietly from below the courtyard.

Mirai giggled and shook her head.

“Uh-uh, you’re wrong. The me here right now is living in the present. Which means…,” she said, pointing with her banana to the place where the high school boy had been standing a minute earlier, “…do you know who that was a minute ago?”

“…Yeah.”

“Hee-hee-hee. That’s what I mean.”

“…Oh.” Kun’s eyes widened, as if he’d just realized something.

Mirai waved at him, still holding the banana between her fingers.

“You can get back on your own, right?” she added, raising her eyebrows. “Don’t get lost, now.”

Kun frowned. “…Are you saying good-bye?”

Mirai almost burst out laughing at her brother as tears started forming in his eyes, but instead, she just smiled and tilted her head.

“What are you talking about? We’re gonna be together so much from now on that you’ll be sick of me.”

Suddenly, Kun was looking down from high above, and as he floated away, the figure of Mirai waving in the courtyard shrank to a speck. When he looked up, he found that he was moving through the catalog tree at lightning speed.

Finally, he reached the place where all the branches met.

Kun saw a huge circle. The past went back so far it made him dizzy, and so did the future. From where he was standing, he could see clearly that the present was just one small dot. All the different types of emotions—from happiness to sadness to suffering to anger—were only tiny points within the now, and as soon as he felt them, another present would be waiting for him. Time moved infinitely on, and new presents sprang up without end.

Kun dove toward his own present.

The brilliant sunlight blotted out everything before him.

Da da da daaaa!

The washer-dryer sang the melody announcing the clothes were dry.

Kun hopped onto the mat on the bathroom floor in his bare feet. The door to the washer-dryer opened automatically with a click, and a pair of very dry yellow pants tumbled softly out at his feet.

“…”

He put his hands on his navy shorts and pulled them down. He’d been saying he wanted to wear the yellow ones all morning.

“…”

For some reason, though, his grumpiness of the morning felt like no more than a distant memory. He thought for a moment, then pulled the navy shorts back up.

The door of the washer-dryer swung shut with a bang, as if marking the end of that episode. Kun took a deep breath and looked down through the house contentedly.

“…”

He had finally found his way back to the everyday world he had missed so much.

The hatchback door of the Volvo 240 was open. Mom and Dad were loading up the car with a tent, a gas stove, a cooler, an LED lantern, a butterfly net, a box for the bugs they caught, a bag full of clothes for Kun and Mirai, and all the other things they would need for camping and visiting family.

Yukko had been sprawled lazily across the passenger seat but suddenly turned his head toward the back seat, perked up his ears, and started listening to their conversation.

“Is your headache gone?”

“Finally.”

“Take care of yourself.” Dad smiled as he heaved a bag into the back of the car.

Watching him, Mom commented, “…You’ve gotten nicer lately.”

“Me?”

“You didn’t used to be like that.”

“Used to as in when?”

“Before Kun was born.”

“Oh, that long ago?”

“You were always anxious about work.”

“So what about you?”

“Me? How have I changed?”

“You don’t get upset as easily.”

“Really?”

“You used to be on edge all the time. You’d get worried about everything.”

“Okay, stop. Don’t make me remember.”

“I never thought we’d end up like this.”

“It’s gotta be the kids.”

Mom and Dad stopped loading up the car and peered past the luggage to the back. Mirai’s car seat and Kun’s booster seat were lined up next to each other. Beside one lay a toy train, and next to the other was a toy bee. Filled with emotion, Mom and Dad quietly looked at the little playthings. Suddenly, Dad asked:

“Do you think I’m more of a father now?”

“A little.”

“Just a little, huh?”

“What about me? Am I more of a mother?”

“A little. But you’re not perfect yet.”

“A little is fine. As long as I’m not the worst.”

They sidled up to each other and gazed into each other’s eyes.

Dad gave Mom an unaffected, honest smile. “Hee-hee-hee-hee.”

Mom gave Dad a beautiful, sunny grin. “Ha-ha-ha.”

Yukko lolled on the passenger seat. After listening to them for a few moments, he turned back around and sighed.

“Haah.”

It wasn’t relief, but it wasn’t contempt, either.

They sure are close.

When Kun came downstairs, he saw that someone had put the mess of train tracks on the floor into the toy box. Mom and Dad had tidied up the whole house.

Suddenly, he looked down into the playroom and stopped cold.

“…?”

His eyes met Mirai’s as she sat all by herself in the middle of the deserted room.

“…”

Kun walked over and stared down at her. She stared right back up at him.

“Goo,” she grunted, crawling toward him. Kun took off his backpack, searched through it, and pulled out the banana.

“Want some?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he peeled it.

A very interested Mirai reached out a hand. “Gah.”

Kun broke the banana in half. “Here you go,” he said, extending one half toward her.

She grabbed it from him. Bananas were Mirai’s favorite as she was being weaned. She smooshed it between her fingers, opened her mouth wide, and took a bite.

Kun looked up slowly toward the courtyard.

“…”

The leaves of the oak tree were lush and vibrant. It appeared to be an entirely ordinary tree, but now that he knew it was a library containing the entire past and future of his family, it felt special to him. He was sure he had seen in a book that trees lived much longer than humans. It’s been watching us for a long time, and it’ll keep watching us for a long time, too, Kun thought to himself. What was going to happen far, far in the future of the future? He tried to imagine.

Then…

“Kun! Mirai!”

“We’re ready to go!”

It was his mom and dad, shouting from the entryway. Kun took a deep breath to give a hearty call back. But before he could…

“Goo!” Mirai answered cheerfully.

“…?”

Kun peered into her face, his head tilted. He wondered if she had seen him getting ready to answer their parents and imitated him.

Mirai noticed the attention and looked back at him. For a minute, they stared at each other. And then…her face broke into a huge smile.

Kun caught his breath in surprise. It was the first time he had seen her make such an expression. It wasn’t a smirk or a little grin. It was a magnificent, humongous smile. It charmed him utterly, and for a minute, he just stared at her in an affectionate trance.

“…”

As he watched her beam, he felt all the hard, tense feelings inside him melting away. At the same time, he didn’t want to let her beat him. He decided he would return the gesture in spades.

“Yaaaaaay!”

He grinned as wide as he could, shaking his head and showing all his teeth like a lion. Mirai froze for a moment in shock, then erupted again.

“Gaaaaah!” she squealed, shaking her head and smiling even wider in an imitation of Kun. Of course, she was a baby, so she had no teeth to show.

No, wait… A closer look revealed two little teeth popping up on her bottom gums.

“…”

The sight filled Kun with happiness and left him completely content.

Mom and Dad called again.

“Time to go!”

“Let’s get on the road, everyone!”

Kun took a deep breath, smiled broadly, and shouted back joyfully:

“Coming!”

(The End)