THE DAY THE BABY CAME

White clouds blanketed the sky over Yokohama, promising snow at any moment. Up on the hill, the Yokohama Prince Hotel had long ago been torn down, and in its place stood a row of new apartment buildings. The trains on the Negishi Line had changed from E209s to E233s, and the new long rails for the tracks had silenced the clicking and clacking as the cars passed. Everything was changing little by little, very quietly, so as not to be noticed.

In the space once inhabited by the little house with the little tree in its little yard, a new house now stood. The yard had been reborn as a courtyard, sandwiched between the main house and a detached wing. Repurposed orange tiles were now firmly attached to the roof of the new house. And there in the courtyard, surrounded by the new roof, was the little tree.

It was a cold December day just before Christmas. The little boy was stretching up to look out the window of his playroom. He hadn’t even taken off his preschool name tag yet as he rose to the very tips of his toes atop a small table. The name on the tag read KUN OTA.

On the walls of the playroom, pictures he had drawn at preschool hung alongside photographs from his birth all the way up through the present. Each showed him with his mother and father, smiling. One of the photos was from his birthday this past September. He’d turned four just two and a half months earlier. The half-assembled remnants of the toy trains and plastic tracks he’d received as gifts covered the floor.

The boy watched the cars passing by outside the window. He was waiting for Dad’s red Volvo 240, but there was no sign of it. His breath turned the window white, blocking his view, so he wiped it clean with the palm of his hand. But when he pressed his forehead against the glass, the warm air rushed out of his nostrils to cloud it again. Why? he wondered as he gave it another wipe with his palm.

“I wonder if Daddy’s coming soon.” He sighed, fogging the window yet again. Outside, a Prius clattered past.

Kun’s grandmother stepped down from the living room, her smartphone pressed to her ear.

“Really? That’s good…”

A small Christmas tree stood on the dining room cabinet, and twenty-two windows had been opened on the Advent calendar. She slid the glass door to the side, slipped on a pair of sandals, and walked across the courtyard.

“Mm-hmm, we’ll be waiting for you. Right. Drive carefully, now.” She hung up and opened the door to the playroom. “Kun, your mom is on her way home.”

“Really?” Kun asked from his perch on the table. His eyes sparkled happily.

His grandmother squatted down in front of him so they were the same height.

“Yes, really. Are you excited?”

“Uh-huh.”

Kun spread his arms wide and jumped off the table with a great leap, planting both hands on the ground.

“Woof! Woof, woof. Woof. Woof, woof. Woof!”

He scampered around his grandmother on all fours, kicking toy trains and tracks every which way. He was so happy Mom was coming home he could hardly stand it.

“Ah-ha-ha, just like a puppy,” his grandmother chuckled wearily before offering a suggestion. “Kun, babies love clean rooms. Would you like to tidy up for the baby?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can you do it yourself?”

“Uh-huh!” he said, scooping up the toys in both hands and putting them into the box one after the next.

“I’ll let you take care of it, then, okay?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Granny’s gonna be upstairs, then.”

“Uh-huh!”

Kun was so busy putting toys away that he didn’t even look up. She left the playroom and slid the glass door closed behind her.

“Woof! Woof, woof!”

Yukko, the miniature dachshund, barked at the vacuum cleaner and wagged his feather-duster tail.

Kun’s mother had gone into labor early, and her own mother had come in from the countryside to help out for a week while she was in the hospital. While Kun’s father was getting the house ready for the new baby, Granny had been looking after their dog and son, who had caught a cold. Now she was giving the dining room one last round of vacuuming. Just to be sure everything was clean, she rolled the pet-hair remover over the living-room rug, then counted the clean underwear to make sure there was enough and neatly refolded each pair. As she did, she took another long look around the house, which still smelled new.

“They sure did build a strange place to live,” she remarked.

It was indeed different from an ordinary house. Usually, when a structure is built on a hill, it’s common practice to create retaining walls and level the ground so it has a flat place to stand. This house, however, was built to follow the slope of the ground, and the five rooms and courtyard were connected to one another like steps in a staircase. The room where the grandmother was folding laundry contained the bath, sinks, and washer-dryer, and it was actually at the top of the house. About three feet below that was the bedroom, and farther down was the living room, and then the kitchen and dining room. Out the sliding glass doors and down another level was the courtyard and its little tree, and one level below that was the playroom. The three-foot drops took the place of partitions between rooms. This meant a person could stand in the bedroom and see all the way down to the playroom or stand in the playroom and see up to the bedroom.

The fact that it was missing walls, a standard component of any ordinary house, made Granny uncomfortable.

The entryway was down a set of stairs from the courtyard. Unlike an ordinary Japanese foyer, however, there was no lowered area beyond the thick wooden door. And instead of removing shoes there, as was customary, the rule of the house dictated they leave their shoes on all the way up to the courtyard and take them off on the mat in front of the glass doors to the dining room. This odd policy, too, irritated her more than a little.

The designer of this “strange” house was Kun’s father, an architect.

“I suppose marrying an architect means you can’t live in a proper house,” the grandmother commented as she swept the foyer. “Isn’t that right, Yukko?” she added conspiratorially.

Yukko had followed her downstairs and was now staring up at her.

“Woof,” he replied.

“Phew.”

Granny climbed the stairs from the entryway to the courtyard again with Yukko, then looked up through the house to make sure all was as it should be. Yes, everything appeared ready to welcome the new baby. With a sigh of relief, she walked back down toward the playroom and slid open the door.

“…Huh?”

She peered around in astonishment. It was so thoroughly crisscrossed with train tracks, she couldn’t even take a step.

“Oh, Kun… This room is even messier than before…”

He had promised to clean it up!

Amid the tracks and tunnels, Kun was holding a train in each hand as if to compare them.

“Hey, which one will the baby like? The E233 or the Azusa?”

“Well, I just don’t know.” Granny sighed. She put her hands on her hips and gazed out at the courtyard. Making sure Kun overheard her, she remarked, “Oh? Yukko looks like he wants to play in the garden.”

“Really?”

“Why don’t you go join him?” She ushered him toward the courtyard with both hands.

“Okay!”

Kun threw down the trains and dashed outside.

“Time for Granny to clean up,” she said, closing the glass door softly after him.

A train with a sky-blue stripe chugged through a crossing, climbed an elevated track, and traversed a railway bridge.

The baby would be here any minute. There was no time to waste on grumbling. Granny planted her feet on both sides of the bridge and snatched up the whistling train with both hands.

“Gotta hurry, gotta hurry…”

The two googly eyes on the egg-shaped rubber ball stared at Kun.

Beyond them, Yukko, wearing his red collar, stared at Kun.

“Heff, heff, heff,” he panted eagerly.

“Ready? Go!”

Kun hurled the mustard-colored ball. Yukko chased after it as it arced through the air, his breath escaping his muzzle in white puffs. He whined in apparent confusion at the ball’s erratic bounce off the courtyard wall, but he determinedly chased it down all the same. Grabbing it in his mouth, he ran back to Kun and jumped into the boy’s arms.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

The courtyard was about ten long strides across for Kun. Grass had grown naturally on the square patch of ground, and in the very middle stood the oak tree. It wasn’t much of a yard.

This particular kind of tree was called a bamboo-leaf oak. Its trunk was a little too big for Kun to reach around with both arms, but it wasn’t very tall because it was pruned regularly. Its topmost branches reached just above the roof. Yukko liked to run circles around it and, ever since he was a puppy, had loved it as much as he loved his rubber ball.

Kun gripped the ragged, well-worn toy in his hand.

“Ready? Go!” He threw it again.

Yukko pounced on it as it ricocheted, picked it up in his mouth, and ran back to Kun, taking a turn around the oak tree along the way.

Just then, Yukko looked up at the sky in surprise.

“?!”

Kun did the same. Something white and fluffy was drifting down onto him.

“Oh!” he gasped.

Little white flakes were falling silently through the air. He stretched out his hand, but a light wind blew them between his fingers. He tried standing on his tiptoes, but this made the flakes even harder to catch. Reaching up, he hopped, finally managing to get one.

This time, he was sure he could feel it in his hand. He carefully brought his fist close to his chest and slowly opened it. But the white flake was gone! Only a drop of water remained. Where had it gone? He searched the sky for it.

“…”

The expanse above was filled with countless white fragments, all falling toward him. How many were there? One, two, three, four… It was impossible. Just trying to count them made him dizzy.

Squinting, he could see they weren’t all fuzzy white balls but translucent, six-sided ice crystals. He didn’t need a magnifying glass or a microscope to know that. He’d seen on TV that even though all the tiny flakes appeared identical, each was actually unique. It was hard to believe that of all those millions of crystals covering the entire sky, no two had the same shape.

Kun kept staring upward in a daze. He couldn’t find the right word for what he was feeling, so he whispered the only one he could think of:

“…Weird…”

Suddenly, the vroom of an engine jolted him out of his trance.

“Oh!”

It was Dad’s car.

As Yukko howled like a bugle heralding their arrival, Kun raced down the steps and flung open the door to the playroom.

“Kun!”

Ignoring his grandmother as she prepared the bassinet, he climbed onto the table and stood on tiptoe to peer out the window. His breath fogged it up, so he couldn’t see outside.

“Hey!”

Quickly wiping away the steam with his hand, he could make out the roof of the Volvo 240 as Dad parked it. It was backing up and inching forward over and over again. Yes, his dad was definitely driving.

“They’re here?” Granny asked.

Without answering, Kun flew out of the playroom and across the courtyard to the stairs leading to the entryway. Six months earlier, he would’ve had to ease down the stairs backward, but now he could reach the banister above his head and take the steps facing forward, one at a time.

“Mommy!”

Descending as fast as he could, he called toward the entryway.

“Mooommy!”

The door opened with a bang.

“The princess has arrived!”

Dad was carrying a bag and holding the door open like a chauffeur. A flurry of snow blew into the house.

Kun stopped midway down the stairs and gazed at the door.

“Oh…”

“Hi, Kun.”

Mom was cradling a baby swathed in the same pure white as her clothes, and she smiled at him like a goddess.

“Hi, Mommy,” Kun replied. “I missed you!” Tearing up, he hugged her legs tight.

“Is your cold all better? I’m sorry I was gone,” she apologized gently.

Kun’s head suddenly snapped up to get a look at the white baby blanket.

“Is that the baby?”

“Hee-hee.”

“Show me! Show me!” He started hopping up and down.

It was indeed the baby.

A week ago, Mom had told him she was going to the hospital and then hadn’t come back. Granny had stayed in her place, giving Kun his medicine when he coughed and applying medicinal patches to his back. Dad had taken pictures of the maternity ward on his phone and sent them to his son. Still, Kun hadn’t really understood what it all meant.

A snow-white blanket lined the wicker bassinet.

Mom gently laid the sleeping infant into it, then slowly withdrew her left hand from under the baby’s neck so as not to wake her.

Kun gazed at the newborn as if something were pulling him toward her.

She was fast asleep, swaddled in clean white clothes trimmed with delicate lace.

She was surprisingly small, like a piece of pressed-sugar candy that would crumble at a touch. He could see her little chest rising and falling ever so faintly as she breathed. Her head was tilted at a very unnatural angle. Looking at her felt so strange. Babies were dangerously delicate things. All he could do was hold his breath and stare at her in a trance.

“…”

Dad looked over at him and whispered, “That’s your little sister.”

“Little sister…”

It was practically the first time Kun had ever said those words.

Mom glanced at him.

“Do you think she’s cute?” she asked.

Kun didn’t know what to say. To be honest, he didn’t find her cute at all. But how should he answer? He started to reply, stopped, tried again, and snapped his mouth shut. Finally, he opened it again and thought for a moment before eventually mumbling two words.

“…She’s weird…”

Snow silently drifted down onto the oak tree in the courtyard.

The baby was snoring softly. Kun timidly extended his index finger toward her tiny palm, poked it, and then withdrew in a panic.

“Gently, now,” Mom chided.

He summoned his courage one more time, brought his finger close, and softly touched her hand. It was smooth and bouncy, like jelly. He left his finger there in her palm. Her fingers were so little. The nails and wrinkles were tiny, too. He felt like he was touching a miniature version of a delicate, complex human. Who in the world had created this creature?

Just then, the baby’s hand jerked.

“…!”

Kun pulled back in surprise and shrank away from her.

The baby had woken up. She opened her eyelids ever so slowly, like night turning into dawn. Dad whispered to Mom.

“She’s awake. She’s watching Kun.”

“She can’t see him yet.”

“But she’s staring right at him.”

Under the baby’s gaze, Kun felt frozen in place. Her eyes looked vacant, but there he was in their reflection. This strange being was looking at him. It was so weird he could hardly stand it.

“Kun, I want you two to be good friends,” Mom said.

“…Uh-huh.”

“I want you to always look out for her and keep her safe, okay?”

“…Okay,” he replied absently. It was the only way he could say it.

Still, Mom seemed reassured. “Thank you, sweetie,” she said, smiling brightly and glancing at Dad and Granny. They were smiling with relief, too, as if their tension had melted away.

Dad sat down on the floor. “Kun, what do you think we should name the baby?” he asked, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

The question snapped Kun out of his trance. “Name?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Um, well, um…” Kun peered into the wicker basket. “Nozomi.”

Dad crossed his arms, contemplating the name.

“Hmm, Nozomi… Interesting. That’s not bad.”

“Or…,” Kun said, peering into a corner of the room, “…Tsubame.”

“Tsubame. Hmm, Tsubame…” Dad turned the word over in his mouth and studied the ceiling. Something about the name seemed to be bothering him. “Tsubame?”

“Those are bullet train names, aren’t they?” Mom asked, pointing with a little smile. Peeking out of the toy box were a Nozomi, the high-speed train connecting Tokyo with Osaka, and a Tsubame, which ran in Kyushu.

“Aha, I get it now.”

Dad smiled as he stood up.

Granny, wearing a down coat, was tying her shoelaces in the entryway.

“I wish I could stay a little longer, but I have to go visit your great-granny in the hospital.”

She knew this was when the family needed her help the most, but she couldn’t leave her mother—Kun’s great-grandmother—alone in the hospital forever. When her father was still alive, he had gone to the hospital every day to look after his wife. After he passed away unexpectedly early the previous spring, though, her mother’s subsequent lack of energy made her anxious. She had asked her husband, Kun’s granddad, to stop by the hospital while she was gone and bring changes of clothes, but she was still uneasy. Maybe if she brought a picture of the baby, that would cheer up her mother.

Her daughter smiled. “It’s okay, Mom. You’ve already done so much.”

“Let me know any time you want me to come.”

“Thank you so much.” Dad dipped his head.

“Say hi to Dad for me.”

“Kun, I’ll come again on the bullet train,” Granny promised.

“Bye-bye,” he said.

“Bye-bye to you, too, baby.”

Mom turned the baby’s head in her direction. “Say bye-bye.”

Granny boarded the train with the sky-blue stripe. Lights sparkled from the windows of the houses on the hills of Yokohama as the train rolled through the hustle and bustle of the city toward Tokyo. In a little while, she would transfer to the bullet and probably arrive home after eight.

Through the cold, clear air of the winter’s dusk, she could see far into the distance.