EPISODE 1

Seaside Café

I am extremely intelligent and never slack off on my studies.

That’s why I’ll be very important in the future.

I’m still only in fourth grade, but I already know all sorts of things—every bit as much as grown-ups do. You see, I always take detailed notes, and I read a lot of books. I’m interested in outer space, living things, the ocean, and robots. I like history, too; I love reading biographies of important people. I’ve made robots in my garage, and Yamaguchi at Seaside Café has even let me look through his telescope. I haven’t actually seen the ocean yet, but I’m formulating a plan to go explore it in the near future. It is important to observe things yourself. Firsthand experience trumps any book knowledge.

Losing to others is nothing to be ashamed of, but losing to your former self definitely is. I learn more about the world each and every day. I become better than I was the day before. There’s still a lot of time ahead of me before I’ll be a grown-up. I did the math yesterday, and there are still 3,888 days before I turn twenty. By then, I’ll be 3,888 days better than I am now. I can barely imagine how great that will make me. Possibly too great for this world to contain. I believe it will come as a shock to everyone. Perhaps lots of girls will ask me to marry them. But I already know who I’m going to marry, so I’ll have to turn them all down.

I’ll feel sorry for them, but on this point, I will not budge.

I live in a suburban town. There are lots of rolling hills and little houses. The farther you get from the station, the newer everything is, and you get more cute little bright-colored houses that look like they’re made of LEGOs. On sunny days, the entire town sparkles like it’s stuffed full of sweet treats.

Bus lines start at the station, spreading out through the town like capillary veins.

The last stop of one bus line is near my house, at the front line of the new neighborhoods growing around the station. My neighborhood is laid out in an orderly fashion, and there are still many empty lots that don’t have houses built yet. When the wind blows, the grass growing on these rectangular patches sways, and whenever I see that, I feel like I’m on the savannah. But I’ve never seen the real version, so I can only imagine what it’s like. I’d like to go explore the savannah someday. What would it be like seeing actual zebras galloping across the plains? It must be a sight to behold.

We moved here from a town on the other side of the prefecture line when I was seven years and nine months old. Four of us: my father, my mother, my little sister, and me. At the time, there weren’t many houses around yet. Seaside Café wasn’t there yet, and neither was the shopping mall we go to on weekends. It was like the earth before the origin of life—empty and desolate.

Back then, my father took the train from work, then a bus from the station, and as the bus drove, it would get darker and darker outside, which always made him anxious. When he got off the bus, he would see the lights of our house in the distance, like a single building in the middle of a wasteland. He would walk toward that distant glow down roads with very few streetlights, only feeling safe when he heard my sister and me laughing.

But now the town is much brighter.

Cute homes are filling in the vacant lots, Seaside Café opened (it has good pastries), there’s a shopping mall with lots of parking, a cram school with a good reputation, a convenience store, and a dentist where pretty ladies work. I really like the dentist because it’s like visiting a space station.

I have to walk past the dentist every day on the way to school. That walk takes me approximately twenty-two minutes.

The above was just me practicing writing.

I write a lot of notes every day. So many it surprises everyone. I think I write the most notes of all fourth graders in Japan. Maybe in the whole world. The other day, I was in the library reading a biography of an important person named Minakata Kumagusu, and it said he took a lot of notes. So maybe I don’t take as many notes as he did, but I don’t think there are many elementary school students like Minakata Kumagusu.

This habit of mine has made me a better person and helped me pull ahead of the crowd.

My father knows about this. After all, it was my father who showed me how to take notes. I’m writing this in a lined notebook with a hard red cover that my father bought for me. Whenever I fill a notebook with notes, he’s always really proud. He even gives me chocolate sometimes.

But writing something like this, like a diary, is fairly new to me.

Why did I suddenly decide to start writing like this? Well, yesterday, I was talking to my father in the café, and I realized I was facing a major event in my life.

“It’s good to record your daily discoveries,” my father said.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I first saw the penguins in May.

In my notes, it says, Woke up at 6:30. Father went to work after seeing that me and my sister were awake. Sunny. Humidity: 60%. Gentle breeze.

I took my sister with me, and we left the house at 7:35. When it was 7:40, we met up with local children at the park in the center of the neighborhood—the whole place is laid out like graph paper. We left the park listening to the sounds of shutters opening and dogs howling. The vending machines on the side of the road sparkled in the morning light. The wind brushed past our thighs and made the power lines thrash around.

I really like this time of year. It really clears the mind.

On the way to school, my sister was super-chatty, saying anything that crossed her mind.

I left the talking to her and read my notes as I walked.

We followed the bus route toward Kamonohashi Park, then turned south at the corner with the dentist’s office and walked along the line of zelkova trees. Seaside Café is across the street from the dentist. The café always opens early, so there were people sipping coffee watching us through the windows. I could imagine the warmth and scent of freshly baked baguettes.

It was too early for the dentist to be open. I remembered I had an appointment that afternoon, so I checked my notes. I made my own dentist appointments. There’s a lady there who is always very nice to me, but she was probably still snoring away in the white apartment complex near the water tower. She likes to sleep in.

I looked over my list of things to talk to her about, then added a few more. I was able to write notes while I walked as well as read them.

Then, the sixth grader in front made a surprised noise, and the rest of the group stopped. I was too busy looking at my notes, so I accidentally stepped on the heel of my sister’s shoe. Normally, she would have yelled at me, but this time, she didn’t say anything.

On the road just left of the dentist was a vacant lot. Surrounded by telephone poles and concrete, this one spot had somehow remained a patch of grass all this time. A large group of children were standing in a line beside it, holding their breath. Everyone was looking at something on the other side of the lot. My sister called out to me. She had her hands clasped in front of her, and her eyes were so wide, they looked ready to fall out.

A gust of wind blew past, and the grass, dampened by the morning dew, sparkled. I heard a squeaking noise, like feet sliding across the floor of our school. In the middle of the empty lot, a number of penguins were waddling around.

I had no idea why there would be penguins in our town.

Not one child moved a muscle.

I moved closer to observe them properly. It was important to investigate whether these were actually penguins or a breed of crow that had undergone some sudden mutation that made them very short and stout. The other children simply watched. The only sounds were my feet on the grass, the wind in the power lines, and the comical noises made by the penguin-like creatures.

Even as I approached, the penguins didn’t run away.

I’d never seen real penguins up close, but these birds looked exactly like them. Their wings were flippers, and they moved around whimsically, always looking like they were about to trip and fall. Very odd creatures—like alien life-forms that had come to earth from some distant planet.

There was an abandoned motorcycle lying on its side, and the penguins were standing next to it. Just staring vacantly at the blue sky. Their doll-like eyes barely moved at all. Quite a bit of mud plastered their fluffy white bellies. Perhaps they’d been sliding around on their stomachs. I opened a new page in my notebook, wrote the date and time, and began to sketch them.

Eventually, local grown-ups arrived and chased the children away.

I wanted to investigate them further, but since being late to school wasn’t an option, I reluctantly closed my notebook. I walked away with the others in my group. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw a group of grown-ups just standing there, staring at the penguins exactly like the kids had.

I looked it up later and found out they were Adélie penguins. Their scientific name was Pygoscelis adeliae. The book said they lived in Antarctica and the islands around it.

They do not live in the suburbs.

The morning classroom was filled with chatter about the penguins in town.

I was staring at the penguin notes I’d made, and kids who almost never talked to me came over, begging to let them see. Everyone who’d seen the penguins on their way to school was benefiting from their status as a witness to an astonishing phenomenon. Everybody was making such a fuss about it that Suzuki, who’d missed out on seeing them, got angry. Suzuki started talking about seeing penguins at the zoo, insisting there was nothing special about them. What we found special wasn’t the penguins themselves, but their presence in a vacant lot in the middle of town, so I didn’t think he had a point. But when he got mad, everyone got scared, and the class settled down.

Suzuki took a look at my notebook and snorted. “You like drawing that stuff?”

“You wanted to see them, too,” I said.

“I’ve seen them before,” he insisted. “I don’t care.”

Hamamoto joined us. “You don’t?” she asked. Suzuki stuck to his guns but seemed less sure of himself. Hamamoto was always very confident, and even Suzuki was reluctant to mess with her. She looked at my notes and said, “Interesting. Penguins sure are cute!”

Hamamoto’s skin was really fair, and since her hair was a light-chestnut color, she looked like she’d moved here from somewhere in Europe. We’d only been in the same class since April, so I’d barely spoken to her. It was extremely rare for her to come over and look at my notes. The penguin sightings were simply that astounding.

I spent the entire day thinking about penguins.

Where had they come from? That was the problem.

During classes, I considered six possible hypotheses for the penguins’ manifestation. As I was scribbling with my ballpoint pen, the teacher came over, looked at my notes, and smiled. I don’t think it was obvious what I was writing. I was using a shorthand I’d invented myself.

By the afternoon, Suzuki’s anger had diminished the penguin fever considerably. Hamamoto was playing chess in the corner with some other kids. She spent a lot of time trying to get people interested in chess. Suzuki was making a ruckus in back with Kobayashi and Nagasaki.

While I was reading over my penguin manifestation hypotheses, Uchida came over.

Uchida was also someone I hadn’t been in classes with until this spring. The two of us had formed an explorers’ club. The club’s charter was to explore the town and map its secrets. We’d had to do a presentation like that for social studies and liked it so much, we’d decided it was our mission.

“Wanna check out the water tower on the hill after school?” Uchida asked.

“Not today,” I said. “I’ve got to go to the dentist right after school. But my schedule’s open in the afternoon this Sunday, so let’s do things properly then.”

“Mm, sounds good.”

Uchida drifted back to his own desk.

I wasn’t sure if Uchida was interested in the penguins or not. He could be very quiet sometimes.

Whenever I had a conversation with him, I always felt like I was talking too much. I constantly made up my mind to try to talk less but then got carried away and forgot. I just couldn’t stop myself. I think important people ought to know how to hold their tongues.

On the way home from school, I stopped at the dentist.

The reason I go to the dentist a lot is because my brain is extremely powerful.

My brain consumes a lot of energy, and sugar is the main source of the brain’s energy. That’s why I’m always eating too many sweets. Of course, I should make a point of brushing my teeth properly before bed, but my brain is so powerful that when evening comes, I get too sleepy to hold a toothbrush and don’t have time to stop and brush my teeth.

But I don’t mind going to see the dentist. I really like it there.

The dentist’s waiting room is always extremely quiet, and it smells of medicine. There’s a silver mobile of fish shapes hanging from the ceiling. There are artificial potted plants by the window swaying in the draft coming from the air conditioner. The white couch is cold to the touch, and the white floors are sparkling clean. There’s a transparent magazine rack with lots of big magazines with beautiful photographs.

I always imagine spaceship terminals will be just like this.

There was one other patient in the dentist’s waiting room listening to the whir of equipment from the examination room. It was Suzuki. He looked surprised to see me but quickly recovered.

Like I always did, I took a magazine from the rack, spread it out on the glass table, and started reading.

Suzuki had the loudest voice in our class and was very strong. The boys under his command obeyed him without question. That structure was fascinating, and I had been studying it, recording notes I called Observations of the Suzuki Empire.

Suzuki was sometimes mean to Uchida or the other boys. Stuffing rags in their desks, getting in their way when they tried to go to the bathroom, ordering his minions to give them the silent treatment, or scribbling all over their notebooks. It seemed like that was Suzuki’s idea of fun, but I thought he was wrong about that. In my opinion, inconveniencing others for your benefit requires a good reason and appropriate countermeasures. Suzuki had no justification, though, and never bothered taking any countermeasures.

I shut the magazine with a snap, and Suzuki jumped.

“Suzuki,” I said. This seemed to surprise him even more.

He frowned. “What?”

“You’ve got it, too? I can tell by looking at you.”

“Got what?”

“Stanislaw Syndrome. Your teeth get full of germs, and the only cure is to have them all pulled.”

“What? Never heard of it.”

“Oh? You didn’t know? I already had all mine pulled. If they pull them all at once, you won’t be able to eat, and you’ll die. So they pull a few each week. Then, they replace the ones they pull with artificial teeth. I’m pretty sure you’ve got the same thing.”

“I don’t have that,” he fumed, getting mad. “I only had a filling fall out! My mom said so.”

“That’s just what mothers tell you to make you relax. I mean, if they said you were going to have all your teeth pulled, most kids would be too scared to go to the dentist. But I think you have the right to know what they’re about to do to you.”

“Seriously…?”

“The only way to stop the disease from progressing is to pull every last tooth. If the germs get past your gums and into your body, your face will puff up like a manju. You’ll get a high fever, and bitter-tasting things like enoki mushrooms will sprout from the gaps between your teeth. Nobody will be able to recognize you. You’ll suffer and then die. It’s a rare disease from Europe, and the government’s in a panic about it spreading. You must have seen it in the papers.”

“I don’t read any newspapers…”

“I definitely recommend asking the dentist to pull all your teeth fast. It’s better than having mushrooms growing out of your mouth, right? If you can put up with the pain for a month or so, it’s easy.”

By the time the receptionist called Suzuki’s name, Emperor Suzuki I’s face was frozen stiff. He went off to the examination room, and a little while after that, the lady came out. Before the door closed, I could hear Suzuki crying softly. I kept reading my magazine, and the lady sat down next to me. She smelled good.

“Hey now, kiddo,” she said, taking the magazine from me. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Something like what?”

“You little liar. You fed Suzuki quite a story. Poor thing.”

“Poor thing? You should be feeling sorry for Uchida.”

“Who in the world is Uchida?”

“I’m not telling. This is between me and him.”

“Oh, you’re evil! You’ve even learned to deflect!”

Shaking her head, she flopped down on the couch, muttering “Such a snot,” and began flipping through the magazine on her lap.

“Hey,” the receptionist prompted.

“Hold on,” she said, not looking up from the page. “I’m busy teaching this one a lesson.”

But she just kept reading the magazine.

I put my hands on my knees, sitting upright. I glanced sideways at her. She was nodding to herself, making noises of agreement, just like she always did when I found her reading at Seaside Café. Like she’d completely forgotten I was there. The clock’s ticking was very loud. The receptionist looked worried. I started to wonder if the dentist was going to come out and yell at her for slacking off at work.

“Maybe it wasn’t very grown-up of me,” I admitted.

“Well, you aren’t a grown-up,” the lady said, not looking up. “So do what you want.”

“Suzuki does mean things to him, but Uchida didn’t ask me to get revenge for him. So I don’t think I have a right to pay Suzuki back in Uchida’s place. I should’ve at least discussed it with Uchida before doing anything.”

“You always make everything so complicated! Oh, there it is. See? Look—right here.”

The page she was staring at was a photo of a rock completely covered in penguins. She snorted. “Penguins are a total mystery. I don’t get it,” she said. It occurred to me to talk to her about the penguin incident that morning. After all, it had happened in the empty lot right next to the dentist. But she said, “I like penguins. I like blue whales and platypuses, too.”

So without thinking, I said, “Ornithorhynchus anatinus, right?”

“What?” she asked, confused.

“Platypuses.”

“What about them?”

“The scientific name is Ornithorhynchus anatinus. I saw it in a book.”

“Huh. Who knew? But that fact is completely meaningless before their bizarre cuteness.”

“True enough.”

“I’d better take this with me,” she announced, and she tore the page right out of the magazine. She looked down at what was now her photo. “They’re kinda like you,” she observed. “Tiny, but with attitude.”

By the time they were done with my teeth, the sun was starting to set, and the town had turned gold.

I left the dentist and went into the vacant lot next door. I wanted to investigate the penguin-emergence grounds once more. The savannah-like grass was still swaying in the wind, but there wasn’t a single penguin left. The grown-ups must have put them on a truck and taken them away somewhere. The vacant lot felt even emptier than before.

I went to the middle of the lot and looked up at the sky, feeling like a pebble rolling around a vast, open plain. But that was only a metaphor. Even I can’t imagine a pebble’s emotional state.

The blue of the sky looked as if someone was mixing cream into it. I’d seen similar skies in the planetarium at the Space and Science Museum. There was a vapor trail slicing across the dome-like expanse and a small passenger plane at the fore of it. As I watched, the plane traced a smooth arc across the sky, slowly expanding its trail.

Watching the little silver fleck slowly drawing a line across the sky was fascinating, so I stood there gazing up for quite a long time. Until my neck started hurting. Every time I see a vapor trail, I can’t help but stare. Uchida and I had agreed we’d go see a space shuttle launch someday, but I felt that if I saw something that amazing, my neck might never go back to its original position.

I wondered what the penguins were doing now. Why had they suddenly come here? I definitely had to investigate this matter further.

I locked my hands together behind me like Sherlock Holmes and began pacing the ground. I could see the windows of the dentist office across the lot. The lady’s face appeared in one, grinning at me.

She mouthed “Snot” at me. She was definitely underestimating me on account of my age. She didn’t know how much the work I put in every day was improving my mind.

“She’ll soon see!” I muttered.

The cool breeze brushing across the grass carried the scent of curry from some nearby kitchen. Maybe it was even coming from my own family’s kitchen. I felt like I could see my mother standing at the back door waving.

I suddenly felt very hungry. And even a bit sleepy.

I asked my mother over dinner, and she confirmed that a truck had come and taken the penguins away. I imagined them all lining up and filing onto the truck.

“Mommy, where’d the penguins come from?” my sister asked.

“I really don’t know,” my mother said unhurriedly. She was never one to rush anything. “Maybe someone abandoned them there. You know how people abandon pets sometimes.”

“Poor abandoned penguins!”

My sister could be nice sometimes.

And with that, the day ended. But the penguin incident was far from over.

The next day, we learned that the penguins had vanished from the truck that had been transporting them. When it arrived at its destination, the staff opened the back and found not a single penguin inside. This was an extremely curious turn of events—curious enough that it made the papers. I cut out the article and pasted it in my notebook.

And astonishingly, the penguins reappeared in town. According to my records, penguins were spotted on both Wednesday and Friday of that week alone.

The Wednesday incident occurred at noon. A line of penguins had come walking out of Kamonohashi Park and were struck by a car while crossing the highway. The penguins were flung away, rolling across the asphalt, but then stood up and ran off as if nothing had happened. It was clear these penguins were incredibly tough.

The Friday incident occurred in the morning. A bunch of penguins entered Yoshida’s yard on the same block as the dentist’s office. Their dog started barking, though, and the penguins ran away. Yoshida’s dog had bitten one of them but then started whining. It was its first time biting a penguin, so it must have been surprised.

On my way home from school, I checked the locations of the penguin sightings several times and looked up information about penguins at the library, but I didn’t find any useful clues. The mystery only deepened.

Saturday started out busy.

Preoccupied with a loose tooth, I sat at my desk trying to collate my research. This involved lining up the notes I’d taken so far on my desk, indexing the entries, and rereading them. Anything that struck me as important I cleaned up and wrote down in a new section of notes. This was my research process. This approach allowed me to make all sorts of discoveries. I had lots of similar indexes—The Suzuki Empire, Project Amazon, The Lady, Selfish Sister Summaries, etc.

That day, I went through my notes, making a new index. I called it Penguin Highway. This was a collection of my notes related to the penguins. I had read in a book that penguins always follow a specific route from the water to the land, and these routes are called penguin highways. I liked that turn of phrase, so I decided to call my research into the appearances “Penguin Highway research.”

In the afternoon, I worked on a space station I was making out of LEGOs, then I studied chess for a while. I’d promised to play chess with the lady from the dentist’s office at Seaside Café that evening.

She liked to joke around a lot, but deep down, she was a hard worker with a lot of potential. After she finished work on Saturday, she always spent the rest of the day studying. I wasn’t sure what she was studying, but she would sit in the café window all night, taking notes and reading books. While she did this, she would narrow her eyes as if the light was too bright, furrow her brow, and often nod to herself.

When I left for Seaside Café, the lady was almost done with her studying. I walked through the neighborhood to the main road, and as I got closer to the brightly lit Seaside Café, I saw her sitting in her usual seat. For some reason, this made me extremely happy.

I spent exactly one hour learning chess from her.

A girl in my class, Hamamoto, was working hard to make chess popular. I’d never played chess with Hamamoto but had been fond of it for some time. I liked the way the pieces lined up perfectly in their squares. I liked picking up the castles and horses and moving them around, and I liked talking to the lady as we played. I told her all about the things I’d written in my notes. She was impressed sometimes, but odds were much higher she’d just say “Hmm” and keep glaring at the board. Sometimes that elevated to a “Huh.” It was extremely rare to elicit a “Wow.”

That day, she was wearing a thin sweater the color of fava beans. I took my eyes off the board and looked at her breasts, admiring the way they rose from her chest like two hills.

“C’mon, kiddo. Eyes on the chessboard.”

“They are.”

“They aren’t.”

“They are.”

“You’re just looking at my boobs.”

“Am not.”

“Are you looking, or aren’t you?”

“I am, and I’m not.”

“I’m seriously worried about your future.”

She won the first chess game, and I won the second. “We’re evenly matched,” she said.

I lectured her on penguins. There were lots of types of penguins. Emperor penguins, gentoo penguins, etc. I told her about the rookeries they formed to warm their eggs. About the penguin highways. The lady said, “Huh.” She knew about the penguin incidents. “Truth is stranger than fiction,” she said, laughing. “What’s your theory? Where do you think they come from?”

“I need more information.”

“I think aliens brought them.”

“I can’t deny the possibility, but I see no reason for them to bother doing that.”

“Invasion, what else. Penguins are adorable, right? They can lure earthlings in, make us let our guard down, and then—poof! They’ve toppled governments.”

“I see. A viable hypothesis.”

She shot me a frightening look. “Don’t mock me. I’ll pull your teeth out.”

If only I could slow down the workings of my brain so I could stay up later. Unfortunately, by eight, I was always really sleepy. The chess pieces were getting blurry. I started nodding off, and the lady said, “Yo! You getting sleepy?”

“Am not.”

“Again with the lies!”

“I use my brain a lot, so I get sleepy easily.”

“I’m jealous. I often can’t fall asleep.”

“What’s it like being up in the middle of the night?”

“Everything gets this really mystical vibe. Well, it’s nothing kids need to know about.”

The lady started putting the chess pieces away, which made me very sad. I wasn’t sure why, but I often got very sad when I got sleepy.

“You’d better get home. They’re late coming to fetch you, huh?”

“I’m still fine. I’m awake.”

“Sleep does the body good. Go to bed, kiddo.” She nodded to herself. “Sleep well and grow up fast.”

Soon, the door rattled open, and my father came to get me. It was dangerous to walk home alone in the dark, so I’d promised to always wait until he came to pick me up. The sound of the door sliding open made me hit peak sadness and peak sleepiness. There was no getting around it, either.

My father bowed his head to my chess mate, and she smiled back. She always acted much more grown-up when interacting with him.

“Hope he wasn’t too much trouble,” my father said.

“Not at all. It was my pleasure. Aoyama’s a bright boy.”

“See?” I said.

The lady said good night, and my father and I walked home through the darkness.

I was so sleepy, I forgot to brush my teeth that evening. How wretched. I really needed to be able to manage myself better. When would I be grown-up enough to handle this sleepiness? Would I ever learn to brush my teeth diligently so I could become a proper adult with shiny-white permanent teeth?

On Sunday, I woke at eight and went to buy breakfast from the bakery at Seaside Café.

It was a very beautiful day, and the bright morning sun shone through the zelkovas. My father bought four pastries and a large baguette. It was my job to carry the loaf of French bread, feeling the warmth of it through the paper bag. We left the top of the bag open so the baguette wouldn’t get soggy. It smelled amazing.

We walked back past the row of trees, and I thought about how the lady was probably at church now. The lady went to the small church next to Kamonohashi Park. I’d been inside it once myself.

Back at the house, my parents got breakfast ready while I went to wake up my sister. If we left her to her own devices, she would never wake up, no matter what. Like she was still a baby. But whenever I tried to make her get up, she was always really selfish and wouldn’t get out of bed. She really baffles me sometimes. But I know she doesn’t mean to.

After breakfast, my father said he had work to do, so he went off to Seaside Café. When he did this, he always took his grid-lined notebook and fountain pen and lots of documents all stuffed into a transparent briefcase. Someday, I want to own a transparent briefcase filled with my own research and go to all kinds of places to study it.

I holed up in the second-story laboratory (my room) and continued work on my space station. I had studied photographs of the real space station and was building one that looked just like it. I had only a finite number of bricks, though, which caused me no end of grief. I needed a lot more white ones. While I was desperately searching through the bricks, a warm breeze came through the window, and I heard my sister’s and mother’s voices as they worked in the garden.

After the three of us ate lunch, Uchida came over. We’d agreed to go exploring that day.

Like I always did when I went exploring, I had my rucksack with me. It had lined notebooks, a compass, a small blanket, a folding umbrella, a thermos my mother filled with tea (and sugar), and emergency provisions. The emergency provisions had been brought back from America by my father on one of his trips. A small amount of beef jerky—very tasty and extremely nutritious. But no matter how tasty it was, you could only eat the emergency provisions in real emergencies. This was the tragic nature of emergency provisions.

“Be careful,” my mother and sister said as we left.

Our expedition team set off through the neighborhood. The Sunday afternoon streets were very quiet, and the sunlight was warm. A cat stepped out from a hedge and stopped to watch us.

As we walked, we talked about outer space.

Uchida told me about the birth of the universe, cosmic inflation, black holes, and things like that. I talked about the space shuttle and the space station and the space elevator. I liked the water tower on the hill because it looked like an escape pod for leaving the planet. When I started talking about exploring distant stars in a spaceship, Uchida expressed concern that our spaceship would fall into a black hole. He thought about black holes a lot. “When the water runs out of the bath, it’s like a black hole. Scary, huh?” he said. Uchida was very interesting.

The hill with the large water tower on top of it was to the east of the neighborhood.

The area around the hill was all forest not yet marked for development. The forest was filled with little paths, and there was no telling where they would take you. One of our key missions was to make a map of these trails.

We went up the concrete stairs to the water tower. It was a giant round tank surrounded by a tall fence. There were NO TRESPASSING signs plastered everywhere with pictures of drowning children on them. These were always a little alarming.

The deep forest spread out beyond the water tower.

Each time the warm breeze swept over the hill, the forest moved. If a really strong gust hit it, the whole forest would rustle.

Uchida said he wanted to take a photo of the water tower, so we elected to pursue individual investigations. Uchida moved around, looking for a good angle. I began taking notes on the view of town from the hill.

In the distance were the mountains that marked the edge of the prefecture. There were green hills all over the place. The roofs on the tight rows of houses sparkled in the sunlight. Against the side of the hill was an apartment building that looked like shortcake. I could see the pointy steeple of the church where the lady prayed. The eye was naturally drawn to the giant shopping mall. The highway ran through all of this like it was stitched across the neighborhood, and the lights moving along it were cars. From on top of this hill, I could see trees in town and on far-off hills, all swaying in the breeze. The sound of it didn’t travel this far, but I could clearly see the wind’s progress through the entire town.

I wrote all this down in my notes.

At last, Uchida came and sat next to me. We drank some tea.

There were lots of hills in this area. Like a lot of green breasts rising up under the blue sky. I wiggled my loose tooth, thinking about breasts.

Lately, I’d developed the opinion that breasts were one of life’s great mysteries. I often found myself thinking about the lady’s breasts, but why were hers different from my mother’s? They were the same physical object, so why was the effect they had on me so dramatically different? I never accidentally found myself staring at my mother’s breasts, but I often caught myself doing just that with the lady’s. I felt like I could never get tired of looking at them. I wondered what it would be like to touch them. The more I thought about it, the more baffling these feelings were. Was this what it meant to observe yourself?

I talked about all this with Uchida. “What do you think, Uchida?”

“I don’t know anything,” he said, staring up at the water tower. His ears had turned red.

Our rest ended there, and we stood up to go explore. But then we heard a sguishguishguish from somewhere. Different from the sound of the wind in the forest. We looked around, wondering what it was, and saw a bunch of penguins walking along one of the paths out of the woods.

“Hnya!” Uchida choked. A very strange noise.

The trails in the forest behind the water tower were covered in penguins.

Some were running about, wings flapping behind them. Others were sunning themselves in the light drifting through the trees. Uchida and I traced the Penguin Highway backward. I was getting quite excited. I thought we had a chance of solving the mystery of where all these penguins came from. Our exploration’s goal had suddenly become investigating the Penguin Highway. We walked on, forgetting all about the wind whipping through the trees, about our map, about the water tower, and about breasts.

“Seven! Eight!” Uchida yelled.

“Nine! Ten! Ah, eleven, twelve, thirteen!” I yelled back.

The number of penguins soon passed twenty.

We moved faster and faster until we were almost running. We found a place where the path narrowed, and here there were a bunch of penguins, all stuffed together like they were playing oshikura manju, that game where everybody stands back-to-back in a circle trying to squish together. At this point, we gave up counting them. When Uchida and I came running, the penguins scattered, opening a path for us.

From then on, there were far fewer penguins.

We’d been assuming the penguin rookery was deep in the forest, and they were entering town from there, but there was no sign of it. The path we were following suddenly turned and passed behind the nets of the athletic field. The field on the other side of the green nets was deserted. There was a single penguin leaning against a tree, taking a nap, but it was all alone.

“Maybe this is the wrong way?” Uchida suggested.

We persevered, passing along the back of the field. It was very quiet here. Inside the grove, we found the remains of a small truck. How it got there, I have no idea.

At last, we came out in a flat clearing covered in thick grass.

High-tension towers loomed over us, reaching for the sky. The forest deposited us on the east side of the field. We pushed through the grass, headed north, and found a diagonal slope made of concrete. There was a long staircase leading down. At the bottom was a two-lane road, and beyond that was a lot for buses to turn around. This was the last stop on the bus line, the edge of our neighborhood. There were no penguins around.

We gaped across the field, stunned. We felt faintly silly for having chased the penguins like this. A cluster of clouds drifted across the sun, and it suddenly grew much darker. Uchida and I stood next to one of the towers, discussing our next move.

“Where’d the penguins come from?” Uchida asked, staring up at the tower.

I looked back at the forest. “Maybe we stepped off the Penguin Highway somewhere. They might have come from somewhere deeper in the forest.”

We laid our half-drawn map down on the grass and discussed possible penguin origins.

We were so focused on this that we didn’t notice Suzuki and his two minions until they had us surrounded. Uchida heard footsteps, glanced up, and immediately looked ready to cry.

Suzuki came toward us grinning. “Ugh, Uchida’s here,” he said, disgusted. Saying nothing, Uchida just started backing away.

Suzuki glared at me. “As for you,” he said, grabbing my shoulder. He was roughly the same height as me but a little fatter. “You’re a liar. I oughta kill you.”

“A liar? When did I lie?”

“That crap at the dentist.”

“You mean when you started crying at the dentist’s office?”

“Shut up!” Suzuki turned beet red and punched me in the shoulder. “You’re a liar! Drop dead! I’m gonna kill you!”

I staggered a little but managed to hold my ground.

“Do you really hate me enough to kill me? I really don’t think killing me will do you any good. I won’t be easy to kill. Before you manage it, I’ll definitely be able to gouge your eyes out or bite your ears off. I bet that would really hurt. And then you’d be arrested. Your parents would cry a lot. If you hate me so much that you’re willing to lose your eyes and ears and go to prison, then I guess you leave me with no choice. It’s a shame, but I’ll just have to fight back.”

This seemed to stun Suzuki a little.

“Shut up,” he spat after a pause. “You sure talk a lot of crap.”

“I’m just trying to help you understand.”

“Shut up.”

“But I definitely did wrong you the other day. So I apologize. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, and I shouldn’t have done that to Uchida, either.”

I bowed my head. Uchida looked startled. “What?” he asked.

“At the dentist, I tried to pay Suzuki back for a few things. You didn’t ask me to, but I tried to get him back for you anyway. Without getting permission from you to act on your behalf, though, it was inappropriate for me to do anything to Suzuki. It wasn’t fair. I should have asked you first, informed Suzuki of that fact, and then gone for payback.”

“You’ve lost me,” Uchida said.

Suzuki growled “Shut up!” one more time, but then he started grinning. He had one of his minions hand him a long piece of rope. “I’ve got just the punishment in mind for you two,” he announced.

Uchida grabbed my arm.

“No,” I said. “We’re busy.”

Suzuki’s grin suddenly gave way to a much scarier expression. He jumped toward me. Uchida shrieked and ran away. I tried to run, but Suzuki grabbed my hair.

“Hey, Suzuki! That hurts!” I shouted. Suzuki was yelling, “You! Little!” If my follicles were ruined and my hair didn’t grow back, it would be Suzuki’s fault. I grabbed Suzuki’s crotch and squeezed, urging him to let go of my hair, and he squealed. I let go and shoved him back. He rolled across the grass yelling, “Dammit! Kill him! Kill him!”

“Uchida!” I yelled. I shouldered my rucksack, grabbed the map, and ran north across the plain. “Let’s run for it! Retreat!”

We ran down the long, exposed concrete stairs.

Normally, we’d have gotten away clean, but I stepped on an empty Coke can at the bottom of the stairs and tripped. Suzuki and his cronies piled on top of me. “You’re heavy!” I complained. Uchida ran off down the deserted road really fast. At least he got away. The one bright side to this.

They hauled me across the road to the bus terminal. It wasn’t much of a terminal. It was about as big as the park where we congregated on the way to school. There was a single, flimsy covered waiting area in the front and a vending machine selling soft drinks.

Suzuki brought the rope and tied me to the vending machine, arms at my sides. This was one of the Suzuki Empire’s famous punishments, and boys were often found tied to one thing or another. Suzuki also squeezed my crotch once as payback for earlier, so I grunted.

Then, he ordered his minions to dump my rucksack out on the road.

The thermos full of sweet tea was thrown into the forest behind the bus terminal. Suzuki shoved the map Uchida and I had made into his pocket. Then, he put my notebook on the ground, and each of them pissed on it in turn. The notebook was ruined.

“Serves you right.” Suzuki gloated, and the emperor of the Suzuki Empire went away.

I waited patiently, trussed to the vending machine. Suzuki’s lackey Kobayashi had done a very good job tying me up, and I was stuck standing at attention. His skills were impressive.

The sunlight streaming down on the bus terminal was beautiful, but there was nobody there. On a Sunday afternoon, it could be a while before a bus came through. I listened to the sound of the wind and resolved to do what I could while I waited for someone to come and rescue me.

I managed to move enough to get a hand in my pocket. I had a special tiny notebook there and a tiny ballpoint pen my father had bought for me. I’d practiced for this eventuality, and I could now take notes with the notebook still in my pocket.

I glanced over at the notebook on the asphalt. Drenched in the empire’s piss, it gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. Relying on my memory, I began transcribing the contents of that notebook. Copying it.

I looked up at the sky, listening to the soft song of a lark. A warm, gentle breeze ruffled my hair. It was a really beautiful afternoon. With nothing else to do, I became preoccupied with wiggling my loose tooth. It was slightly out of place to begin with, so I started pushing it around with my tongue. The sky was so blue, and here I was all alone, wiggling a loose tooth, climbing the stairs to adulthood. That notion struck me as poetic, so I wrote it down. I’d like to write poetry someday. Maybe I had a hidden talent for it.

I tried singing for a while, hoping this would help me forget the loose tooth. I couldn’t think of any other songs offhand, so I was singing “Jingle Bells,” totally out of season. “La-la-la,” I sang. “La-la-la.”

I heard someone laughing. I hadn’t noticed at all, but somebody was sitting in the waiting vestibule next to the vending machine. I recognized her by her laugh alone.

A minute later, the lady stepped out. She was wearing blue clothes that looked like they’d been cut out of the heavens. She had a purse with her. She seemed sleepy but was smiling. Her hair was a little mussed.

She came out into the sunlight, almost stepped on my notebook, yelped, and jumped sideways. Then, she pretended she’d only just seen me there.

“What are you doing, kiddo?”

“Pretending to be a vending machine.”

“Is that fun?”

“It hasn’t been very fun, no.”

“You are an enigma,” she laughed. “This was Suzuki’s idea of payback? After that lie, you only have yourself to blame.”

“If you were there the whole time, you could’ve rescued me.”

“But you didn’t ask me to, right?”

“I admit you have a point there,” I conceded. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to take a bus to the station, but in the end, it was too much of a pain. I took a rest in the vestibule here and nodded off. It happens.”

The lady untied the rope. Free again, I inspected the damage. My rucksack had been stomped on and was crumpled but intact. I managed to find the thermos they’d thrown in the woods, but the notebook was soaked and beyond salvation.

“Don’t know how they think up such nasty stuff,” the lady mused, sounding impressed. “Suzuki’s kinda cute, but he can be pretty nasty.”

“It’s because he’s an emperor.”

“A what?”

My tooth was waggling, so I stuck my fingers in my mouth.

“Want me to yank that for you?” she asked.

“No, thanks. I’ve decided to get it out myself.”

“I won’t steer you wrong, I swear. Think of it as an experiment.”

“Oh? I do like experiments.”

The lady took a sewing kit out of her purse, snipped off a piece of thread, and looped it around my loose tooth. The wind caught her hair, and it smelled really good. “Now then, kiddo, I’m going to pull on this thread. Marvel as the tooth shoots right out.”

But when she tried to tug the thread, I moved with her, so the tooth didn’t pop out. She wound up wandering around the bus terminal, and I followed, circling her like a satellite.

“Come on,” she snapped. “It obviously won’t work if you follow me around like that. Stand still.”

I wasn’t scared of having my tooth pulled. My body just moved on its own.

The lady stopped in front of the red vending machine and said, “I’ve got an idea.” She put some change in and bought a can of Coke. “Take a look at this,” she suggested, tipping the can in my direction. Holding the string taut, she tossed the can in the air above my head. My eyes followed the red speck across the bright-blue sky, but I didn’t move my head at all. This trick would hardly be enough to get my tooth out, I thought.

The cylinder spun as it arced across the horizon, like a spaceship using centrifugal force to create internal gravity. But just as the red can was about to vanish from view, something white covered it, like it had suddenly frozen. Huh, I thought.

This phenomenon started from the la in Coca-Cola and spread up the side of the can like a tsunami crossing the ocean. The white parts seemed to foam and then turn black. The whole thing swelled, as if it had taken a deep breath. Two black wings seemed to erupt off the sides. At this stage, the Coke had turned into a black-and-white unidentified flying can (large). It continued to expand, still spinning as it began losing altitude. Its tip stretched out, transforming into a beak, and flapping its wings, it landed in the middle of the bus terminal, rolling across the ground. When the Coke can righted itself, it was no longer a Coke can.

Awkwardly flailing two black wings, the former Coke can waddled a few steps before stopping and staring up at the sky as if asking “Where am I?”

I had witnessed the birth of a penguin.

I stared at the penguin a while longer until I tasted blood in my mouth. I turned back to the lady. She was standing in front of the vending machine, drinking from another can of Coke, and holding my tooth between her fingers. “See? It popped right out,” she said. I spat some bloody saliva onto the asphalt. She bought me some mineral water, so I swigged at that a little at a time, washing the blood out of my mouth.

“What was that?” I asked.

“A penguin, obviously,” the lady declared. She plopped the freed tooth in my palm and walked over to the penguin while sipping her Coke. The penguin waddled toward her, almost tackling her legs, then wandering around them.

There was a gust of wind, and the lady put her hand on her forehead, as if warding off the sunlight.

“I’m an enigma, too,” she said. “See if you can figure this mystery out. Think you can do it?”

That evening, I went to Seaside Café.

Sunlight streaming from the mountain on the prefecture border turned the clouds in the dome-like sky above pink. It was like the whole town was inside a giant planetarium. Seaside Café sat on the side of the road like a mysterious laboratory sparkling near the shore.

My father was working at a table by the windows, documents laid out in front of him.

I felt bad for interrupting, but eager to talk to him, I sat down in the seat opposite. I really wasn’t confident in my ability to explain the phenomenon I’d witnessed. The moment I sat down, I felt like maybe it should stay a secret between the lady and me—and that I shouldn’t talk about it with anyone else, even my father.

It was rare for me to sit in silence, so this may have surprised my father. He was busy drawing a diagram with a fountain pen in his grid-lined notebook, but after a while, he looked up, his eyes staring at me through his glasses.

“What? Something happen?” he asked.

“Dad. I’ve witnessed an astounding phenomenon,” I confided. “But I have no objective evidence to prove it was real, so I can’t say anything more. I believe I need to investigate this further before I do.”

“Can you give me a hint?”

“It involves the lady from the dentist’s office.”

“A little more.”

“I don’t know how to put this, but she’s very strange. Fascinating. I am curious to know more.”

“I see,” my father said, nodding. “It seems you’ve found a worthy subject.”

He gave me some chocolate. It was on the bitter side.

I use my brain so much at night that I end up getting sleepy before my little sister. I make up for that by waking up earlier. Sometimes even before the sun starts rising. I’m sure I get up earlier than any kids in my neighborhood.

There’s a large window on the right side of my bed, with an azure blind. In the morning, the sunlight filters through it, creating soft beams of light.

When I woke up that morning, the light in the room was a chilly blue, like I was underwater.

I was lying in bed thinking about what it would be like to be a newly born life-form in the surf.

The first life-form had come into existence four billion years ago in a puddle on the rocks. It had floated there, in that water. The new being was really tiny, but life gradually grew bigger, more complex, and while some creatures went extinct, others flourished, until we got the world we have today.

I was born to my father and mother. My father and mother were born from their fathers and mothers. Blue whales, zebras, and penguins were, too. All living things were born from other living things. But a dizzyingly long time ago, somewhere, a child was born of no father or mother.

I’d talked with Uchida about the origins of life before. Uchida had said, “Just thinking about it makes my head spin.”

How had the Earth’s first, strange child crossed that primordial barrier?

This was an extremely critical problem, I thought. Perhaps in the future, my research would make it all clear, and I’d win the Nobel Prize.

I liked looking around my room, thinking about things on a worldwide scale. I could see the half-built space station. I could see all the books my father had given me and a row of notebooks with all my research in them. On top of the bookshelf was a triceratops skeleton made of paper, a Christmas present. On my desk was a globe my father bought me when I started school. The rucksack for exploring and the backpack for school were both next to the desk. I’d put a new notebook on the desk yesterday so I wouldn’t forget about it.

Downstairs in the living room, I could hear my parents talking. And plates clacking. My father was eating breakfast. I really enjoyed listening to these sounds while forming a plan for the day. This morning, it felt even more fun than usual.

I wonder why? I thought, and then I remembered the penguins and the lady.

I had embarked on a research project of great significance.

That alone made me so happy, I wanted to jump right out of bed. Just then, my sister came running in—rare for her to get up this early—and yelled, “Wake up!” She didn’t know I’d been up for a while now and was all proud of beating me. Even though I’d been here thinking about things of world-scale importance.

My sister jumped on top of me and bounded around like a baby kangaroo. I fought back, and she got all tangled up in the blanket. When she realized she was stuck, she started crying and yelling, “Let me out!” Feeling sorry for her, I undid the blanket, and she started laughing. “You’ve got missing teeth like an old man!”

It is very hard to maintain the dignity befitting an older brother.

Even at school, I continued my research on the penguins and the lady.

I drew a picture of a penguin in my new notebook and wrote as detailed an analysis as I could of the circumstances under which the lady turned the Coke into a penguin. I thought a lot about what her secret might be, but I had only witnessed the birth of a penguin once. I needed a lot more data. I would need the conjurer’s cooperation for that. I should swing by the dentist on the way home and ask her, I thought.

During break, Uchida came over and stood silently by my desk. Uchida was the silent type, but this was a much more significant silence than usual. I wondered why, and he asked, “Aoyama, are you mad at me?” which was weird and really surprised me.

“Why would I be?”

“Because I abandoned you on Sunday.”

“I’m not mad at you. I haven’t been mad about anything since I was five.”

“Still,” Uchida said, staring at his toes. “I did run away. That was bad!”

“It was the smart choice. If you’d stuck around, you’d just have gotten caught, too. Personally, I think you not getting caught was the best aspect of that situation.”

“You do? I was being smart?”

“I think so.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said, cheering up.

In the corner of the classroom, Suzuki and his group were standing with several girls, making a racket. “Hamamoto and Suzuki are playing chess,” Uchida informed me. “Suzuki challenged her to a match.”

“That’s unusual.”

“Suzuki made fun of her, so Hamamoto baited him into it.”

“Whatever will we do with him…?”

I told Uchida how Suzuki and his minions had pissed on my notebook and stolen our exploration map, and Uchida got really upset. “That’s so mean! How could they?!”

“But I made a copy of the notes. Don’t worry. We can redraw the exploration map. I think it would be more efficient to make a new one than to try to get it back from Suzuki.”

“You don’t even get mad at Suzuki.”

“If I feel myself getting mad, I just think about breasts. That always calms my heart.”

“I admire that about you, Aoyama, but I don’t think you should be thinking about that stuff too much.”

“About breasts?”

“I don’t know. I just feel like you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t think about them all the time. Only about thirty minutes a day.”

Every break that day, Suzuki and Hamamoto faced off over the chessboard. Suzuki tried to distract Hamamoto, moving the pieces while she wasn’t looking and generally sabotaging the game, but he couldn’t find a way to beat her. Hamamoto was good. After school, the entire class was gathered around the board. Suzuki was beet red, and Hamamoto was cool as a cucumber. I took a look at the board, and Suzuki’s position was beyond salvation. He thought for a really long time before making any moves, but Hamamoto always made her moves immediately. Her motions were so precise, like a little robot girl lining up pieces of chocolate. I was very impressed.

At last, Suzuki looked up from the chessboard and yelled, “What?” at me.

“Nothing. Just watching.”

“Don’t! Don’t watch!”

Then he claimed I’d distracted him, and he messed up all the pieces. After that, he stormed out of class, dragging his minions with him. I shook my head, but Hamamoto didn’t seem the least bit upset. She just put the pieces away, muttering “Can’t even call that a match,” like she was singing in a pasture. Both Uchida and I agreed Hamamoto was very strong.

On the way home, Uchida and I split up, and I went to the dentist’s office.

I sat on the white couch like I always did, a magazine from the rack spread out on the table in front of me. I’d found one with a feature on cosmology, so I was totally absorbed in reading it. Page after page of beautiful illustrations and text. I definitely think I know a lot about outer space, but even for me, this article was pretty difficult. I have to do a lot more research, I thought. When he was done fixing my teeth, I said as much to the dentist, and he said, “Feel free to take it home.” The dentist was always willing to aid my research.

“Is the lady out today?”

“She called in sick,” the dentist said. “You worried about her?”

“I am.”

He smiled and patted me on the head but said nothing more.

I went back to the waiting room, and the receptionist said, “I’ve got a postcard for you.” The postcard had a photo of a penguin standing in the middle of a field of snow. There was an arrow pointing at the penguin and a note that said You are here. In the lady’s handwriting.

Notes on a dream I had.

The lady was standing on a rocky shore. Nothing else around. Not a single plant in sight. I somehow just knew this was the Cambrian-period sea. Dreams were strange that way. Across the sea, lightning flashed like I’d seen in a documentary about Africa. The sky was a deep blue but with a pale glow. The same sky I saw through the blinds when I woke up earlier than all the other kids in town.

I remember the lady’s face as she stood there on that rocky protrusion. She looked very sleepy and somehow sad. She picked up a stone lying by her feet. The surface of the stone was shiny, like it was made of aluminum. She rolled it around her palm, and it gave off a cold, hard light.

The lady tucked the stone between her breasts, as if to warm it. Eventually, she decided it was warm enough and threw it at the sea. The stone spun in the air, glittering, wobbling like a water balloon…and then inflated. Glowing silver bubbles rose up on the stone’s surface, each pushed aside by the one that came after, swallowed up by it. Like a violent chemical reaction. The stone got larger and larger until it was bigger than me, bigger than the lady. It hit the surface of the water and grew larger still.

At last, it became a giant, silver blue whale.

That blue whale had evolved into us—for some reason, this thought made perfect sense to me. The idea that the lady had made us was very pleasing. And yet, she looked sleepy and sad. I wanted her to tell me why she looked so unhappy.

The school grounds were a square, 180 meters on each side.

When I was in third grade, I spent September and October researching square things. Every time I found something square in town, I made a record of it. I liked squares and thought it was wonderful how the town was laid out like graph paper all the way to the horizon.

Eventually, I began studying triangles and circles and curves, but even now, I still like squares the best. I like graph paper and still get happy when I find a square vacant lot. The school I went to was a square sitting in the middle of a square plot, so it looked like the katakana ro ().

Uchida and I had once walked all the way around the perimeter of the school grounds.

After school, taking care that the teachers didn’t spot us, we’d walked past the schoolyard fence, the empty grass fields, and the parking lot. This expedition confirmed that the grounds were an exact square. Behind the incinerator, we found a second entrance to the property: a small square door in the concrete-block wall. We also discovered an open drainage canal in the field next to the school.

We’d recorded these findings on our map. Suzuki may have stolen it, but our discoveries were still etched in my brain.

School let out early on Wednesday, so Uchida and I decided to follow the drainage canal. An investigation into where the water came from—its source. I had dubbed this expedition Project Amazon, which Uchida really liked. It was a shame I couldn’t continue my Penguin Highway research, but I was juggling a lot of different research projects. If one reached an impasse, I figured it best to work on another.

After school, we went out the secret door behind the incinerator, climbed the school fence, and cut across the grass. It was cloudy, but I could tell we didn’t need to worry about rain. Every now and then, the sun peeked out from between the gray clouds, lighting up the grass field as if we’d been underwater and suddenly breached the surface. The sun would only stay out for a moment, though, and our surroundings would quickly grow gloomy again. Like someone was flicking the sky’s light switch on and off.

We walked forward, keeping an eye on our compass. Uchida was waving around a stalk of grass he’d yanked up.

“Apparently, they were gonna build a kindergarten here,” he said.

“But there’s nothing here.”

“I wonder if they canceled construction. Or decided to build it somewhere else.”

“I wish it was a train station,” I said. “If there was a station right next to our school, that would be extremely convenient.”

The canal we were exploring ran from east to west. It was about a meter wide and made of concrete. The water itself was deep, probably able to reach up to our chests. The far side of the ditch was covered in broad-leaved bamboo. Searching for the source, our party set out to the north.

“Uchida, make sure you don’t fall in.”

“I wonder what it’s like where the water starts? Is it like a spring? Or a well?” Uchida speculated. “Aoyama, have you ever seen a well?”

“I’m familiar with the concept.”

“A really deep well would be scary. It would be like a black hole.”

The underbrush got thicker and thicker, making it hard for our party to progress. We tried walking on the edge of the canal, but it was so overgrown that we had to push the foliage away to make any progress. Every now and then, we could see fish in the water. I looked back and found I could no longer see the school. Only the fence around the schoolyard.

Eventually, we came to a fence covered in arrowroot leaves. The ditch continued past it, so we hesitated awhile but eventually hopped it. After all, the source of the stream might have been waiting beyond.

The fence surrounded a square piece of land about 250 meters on each side. There was a reservoir shaped like an upside-down pyramid. The drain connected to it. The water was only at the very bottom, so we didn’t need to worry about falling in. The slopes leading to the reservoir were shored up with concrete blocks. There were green plants sprouting from the gaps, and in the water grew what looked like space plants with sausage-shaped bodies. Grass grew thick around the reservoir’s edge. I didn’t think anyone ever came here. It felt like we’d discovered a ruin from ancient times.

Inside the reservoir was a small gray tower. A narrow bridge extended to it from the bank. We went to the end of the bridge, but there was a lock on it that kept us out.

“Does someone live here?” Uchida asked, getting nervous.

“I don’t know, but I think that’s just for storing equipment that measures the water volume. With the grass this high, I bet even the waterworks people have forgotten about this place.”

“Does the water come from here?”

“I don’t think so. There’s another drain over there, right? I think water flows here from somewhere else and then collects here for a while. That way, the river water doesn’t overflow.”

“Aha!” Uchida said, impressed. “Makes sense.”

I spread out the blanket at the edge of the reservoir.

Uchida and I called this blanket our base. My sister had drooled all over it when she was a baby, but having been washed often by my mother, it was safe now. It was far more useful than a hand-me-down from my sister had any right to be. It was bright pea green and square. It could fold up very small, and we could set up base anywhere we liked. Absolutely a necessary item for any expedition.

Sitting on the base, I jotted down some notes on the reservoir. Uchida whistled.

It was quiet here. The school was far enough away that we couldn’t even hear the bell ring.

I mentioned the dentist had given me a magazine about space, and Uchida was jealous. Then he started explaining the theory that “Space was born from nothing.” I remembered the same magazine mentioning that.

“I wonder what nothing is like,” I said.

“I think it’s different from just empty. If your stomach is empty, you don’t say ‘My stomach has become nothing.’”

“It’s a much bigger kind of empty—like, so empty our stomachs no longer exist, either.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty incredible.”

“Definitely. The idea of no time or space.”

“What’s it like having no time or space? That’s a very difficult concept to grasp.”

“If there’s no space, then there’s nowhere for us to sit, and if time isn’t flowing, then we can’t even think, ‘There’s no time here.’”

Uchida considered this for a minute. “Kinda scary,” he concluded. “I wonder if that’s where we go when we die.”

“Maybe that’s where we were before we were born.”

“Oh yeah.”

“But I don’t remember it at all.”

Uchida screwed up his face. “Thinking about this stuff makes my head spin. Like it’s just going round and round.”

While we were sitting on the blanket, the underbrush on the opposite side of the reservoir started rustling. That wasn’t the wind. There was an animal of some kind in the brush. I looked up, closing my notebook. Uchida grabbed my arm, frightened.

There was a squeaking noise, and a penguin appeared. It didn’t seem to care that we were there; it just waddled toward the edge of the reservoir. Then it stood there like a Greek philosopher.

“What’s it doing?” Uchida asked. “Where’d that penguin come from?”

“I dunno,” I said. I was lying to him.

Only I knew where the penguins came from, but I’d decided not to share this discovery with anyone for a while yet. Not even Uchida.

If they found out the lady had the power to create penguins, government laboratories or universities would send all kinds of investigators to our town. They’d study her, uncover the means to create infinite penguins, and inform the world’s penguinologists. If that happened, I’d never be able to see the lady. I wouldn’t be able to research the Penguin Highway anymore. And that would be a real shame.

I didn’t want to lie to Uchida, but this particular research had to be conducted in secret.

We stayed sitting on the edge of the reservoir until the penguin wandered off into the brush again.

Seaside Café had a big skylight, and the owner, Yamaguchi, used a special long pole to open that window. There was a large model of a whale hanging next to the skylight. Sunlight would shine in through the skylight, giving the whale a dull-silver gleam. Its spindle-shaped body would sway from side to side, its wide mouth grinning cockily. It looked like a spaceship from the distant future, so I always paid my respects to the whale.

I asked Yamaguchi what kind of whale it was once, and he just said, “Look it up.” He would let me look through his telescope, but other times, he just gave me homework. I observed the model carefully, took copious notes, and compared those to an illustrated book at the library. Once I’d determined that it was a blue whale, Yamaguchi let me have a cream soda.

Blue whales were of the infraorder Cetacea, the family Balaenopteridae, and their scientific name was Balaenoptera musculus. All whales are large, but blue whales are especially large. They could be longer than thirty meters. It was astonishing that there were animals in the ocean so big they wouldn’t fit in the twenty-five-meter pool at school.

I was very impressed by big things. After all, I was very small.

Even blue whale babies are born seven meters long, and they weigh two tons. A baby whale rolling over in its sleep could easily flatten me. I imagined these babies must have very big poops. Far larger than mine. Everything about them was impressive.

I often talked about blue whales with the lady at Seaside Café.

She always smiled when I talked about baby blue whales.

I woke up early, filled my rucksack with experiment equipment, and set out for Kamonohashi Park.

The neighborhood was always quiet on Sunday mornings.

As I passed Seaside Café, Yamaguchi waved at me through the window, so I waved back. I followed the bus route. A warm breeze blew from the southwest, making the leaves sparkle. The sky was dotted with white clouds, like little sheep. I plucked the stem of a plant from a vacant lot and waved it like a conductor’s baton as I walked.

There were people gathered in Kamonohashi Park for morning exercises. There was fitness equipment placed alongside the benches and the path. There were people out walking their dogs and people sweating on the equipment. The dentist was doing crunches with a towel around his neck, so I said hello.

The church was next to Kamonohashi Park. It held mass every Sunday morning. I knew the lady always attended. The town church was about as big as my house, much smaller than the big European cathedrals I’d seen on TV. But there was a cross on the roof, so it was a real church. I sat on a park bench, writing in my notebook, waiting for mass to end and the lady to come out.

At last I saw her leaving church and waved. “Good morning,” I said.

“Morning,” she said. “Sunbathing?”

She sat down next to me. Her head slumped. She was pretending to sleep.

“Sleepy?” I asked.

“Was up all night. Weird dreams. I’m bushed.”

“That’s concerning,” I said. “Can I ask for your help in an experiment?”

She yawned. “Experiment? What kind?”

I lowered my voice, taking every precaution. “A penguin experiment,” I whispered.

“You solve the mystery?” she whispered back.

“Not at all. That’s why I want to do an experiment.”

“Hmm. Will the experiment lead to a solution?”

“We won’t know until we try. Will you assist me in this matter?”

“Sure. I’m sleepy, but sure.”

For our experiment grounds, I selected the bus terminal where she’d first shown me how she made penguins. There was little chance of being seen there. As we followed the bus route toward the terminal, I tried to wheedle a hint out of her, one that would help me solve the mystery. But she just blinked sleepily and stared up at the sky. “I feel like no penguins will show up today,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she meant this or was just teasing me like she always did.

“Honestly, I don’t know why I can do it. I just find myself in a good mood, get fidgety, and then a penguin shows up. Plop.”

“Is it always throwing a Coke can? Like when you showed me?”

“Not always, no.”

“So you’re not clear what the principle is?”

“It’s your job to figure that out.”

“Can you only produce penguins? I’d like to see some other animals. Like a bat.”

“Greedy! I can’t make bats.” She sighed. “You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

“I have been serious since the moment I was born.”

The bus terminal on Sunday was empty, not a soul in sight. I checked the schedule in the waiting room and discovered we had half an hour before the next bus. The lady stood in the middle of the terminal, squinting her eyes at the sky above.

I set my rucksack down and began lining up the items I’d brought with me. A camera borrowed from my father and a notebook to record everything. An empty jam jar I’d asked my mother for in the kitchen, an empty tin of the hard candy that I’d sucked on between rounds of research, a softball I used sometimes when Uchida came over to play, a small square cushion from the living room couch, and a glasses case my father no longer needed. I set these up in a circle around the lady.

“What are these?” she said, frowning.

“Test samples,” I said. “I want to see if these turn into penguins or not.”

“You want me to stand here and throw all of these?”

“Yes. I was standing over here, right?”

“I forget. It’s been a long while since then.”

The sky was fairly clear, there was a nice breeze blowing, and I could hear the larks singing in the distance. There was no one else in the terminal. I wrote an itemized list of the conditions on the previous occasion, making it so I could check them off. I went through each carefully. All clear. I started our experiment.

The jam jar, candy tin, softball, cushion, and glasses case each flew through the air in turn. I stood ready with the camera, but nothing happened. I bought a can of Coke from the vending machine and had her throw that, with the same results. What was different? I reread my notes and remembered that the can had spun in the air like a spaceship creating internal gravity. I asked her to throw it one more time.

“Again?”

“In the spirit of experiment.”

“Right. You are a science kid.”

But the result was the same. Nothing happened. Just in case, I even had her tie a string to my tooth, made her hold it, and had her throw a can like that. This also ended in failure.

Experiments failing was always sad.

I considered other conditions. My tooth being loose, the time of day being the afternoon, me being tied to the vending machine, my notebook being covered in Suzuki and company’s piss; there were a number of other potential factors. But none of them seemed to have anything to do with the penguin manifestation.

As I scowled at my notes, the lady came over.

“You can’t rush it,” she said. “I had a feeling it wouldn’t happen today.”

“Are you sure you really can’t? Is it possible that you’re only teasing me?”

I regretted this childish outburst the moment I said it. Just because the experiment had failed didn’t give me the right to cast suspicion on the lady when she was helping me out. Before I tried blaming her, I should have reevaluated my hypothesis.

“Then have fun doing this alone,” she snapped, starting to walk away.

While I stuffed the experiment equipment into my rucksack, she went up the concrete stairs that led to the back of the athletic field. When I hastily tried to cross the street after her, she shouted “Look both ways!” so loud it echoed. I stopped dead in my tracks, as if she’d cast a spell on me. I looked right, then left, then right again, and then crossed the street. But by this point, she was already at the top of the stairs.

I ran up the long stairs to the back of the athletic field and looked around the overgrown patch between the field and the stairs. This was where Uchida and I had fought the Suzuki Empire. High-tension towers loomed over the wasteland. A gloomy forest lurked on one side. It was the same forest that was behind the hill with the water tower. Exploring a forest this size was dangerous, and Uchida and I had not yet managed to map it.

The wind carried a pleasant aroma, and the plants swayed like waves in the sea. The lady was standing on the shore of this sea. Holding her hair in place, looking around. “There’s nothing here,” she murmured.

I went over to her and said, “I’m sorry. That was childish of me.”

“You’re a child, so that’s just fine.”

“I’m scheduled to be a grown-up in another three thousand eight hundred and eleven days.”

“Good lord, you’re actually counting?”

Not far from us, a lark took off from the field, singing. It flew straight up and vanished into the sky like it was riding on a space elevator. The lady watched the lark go, one hand on her forehead. The lark was quickly out of sight, but we could still hear it singing. My neck hurt.

“This lot’s vacant,” the lady said, looking around. “Wonder if they’re planning on building something here.”

“Maybe a new station.”

“A railroad going all the way to the sea?”

“Yes.”

“Nice. Close to the office, too.”

“If that happens, the Seaside Café really will be near the sea.”

“Cool. Let’s explore a bit!” the lady said. It seemed she was no longer mad at me.

We walked across the field. She pointed at the forest on our right. “You been in there?”

“A little, but we haven’t explored the depths of it. Forests can be dangerous, so precautions are necessary.”

“You might meet a Jabberwock.”

“What’s a Jabberwock?”

“A monster from a book.”

As we got near the towers, the lady said, “Let’s rest here,” so I decided to make a base. I took the pea-green blanket out of my rucksack and spread it on the ground.

“This is our base,” I said.

“Kiddo, this is a blanket.”

“It’s a base.”

The lady sat down on the little blanket. “Feels good,” she said, looking up at the sky. “A base, hmm? I can dig it.”

I thought this every time, but by making a base with this blanket, the scenery was completely transformed. The sky and land both seemed wider than they did on foot. I took the science magazine the dentist gave me out of my rucksack and read it. While I was passionately studying an article on black holes, the lady leaned against my back. Her back was a curious temperature, both warm and somehow cool.

“Sorry I couldn’t make any penguins.” Her voice carried over my shoulder.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

“Maybe I’ll never make another. Maybe I just got lucky that time.”

“I’m sure there’s a rule somewhere.”

“And you think you can figure that out when I can’t?”

“I am very intelligent.”

“You’re very confident anyway.”

The wind brushing across the grass was pleasantly warm. Listening to the sound of the wind, I felt like I was conducting a survey from a base at the ends of the earth. The lady turned her head, peering over my shoulder at the article I was reading.

“Even the boss was struggling to get through that one. I’m amazed you can read it.”

“I understand some parts of it, and I don’t understand other parts of it. I have to consult other books sometimes to get through it.”

“Anything interesting written there?”

“The event horizon is really cool.”

“The what now?”

“When a really big star gets old, it becomes unable to withstand its own gravity and collapses. Once that happens, the gravity keeps pulling everything toward the center, so it keeps shrinking. It shrinks so much all the matter gets compressed, and the gravitational force gets even stronger. If this keeps going, the gravity gets so strong that even light can’t escape. At that point, you can no longer observe what’s happening from the outside. The boundary between what can be observed and what can’t is called the event horizon.”

“Hmm.”

That was all she said. She wasn’t very interested in outer space.

Then she made a surprised noise, looking toward the forest. I jumped, wondering if the Jabberwock had shown up, but there was a little girl standing at the edge of the forest.

“Hamamoto,” I said. “She’s in my class.”

“A girl shouldn’t be walking alone around here.”

Hamamoto seemed to be thinking about something. She was treading slowly along the border between the field and the forest. Then she walked off toward the athletic field. I couldn’t tell if she’d seen the lady and me sitting there.

Notes on classroom rumors.

A silver moon appears over the hill with the water tower. This is not the real moon, but a ghost moon. The penguins go in and out of the surface of the silver moon. Any kids who see this happen get sick.

So don’t look at the water-tower hill at night.

And don’t ever go in that forest.

The next week, after school, Uchida and I went to the city library together.

I liked the city library better than the school library. The collection was much more varied, and they had comfortable brown couches to sit on. I always sat on the same couch. It was hidden in the bookcases like a secret lair, and if I looked up from the book I was reading, I could see the garden through the picture windows. In the garden was a big, silver, shiny statue like a giant egg. When I’d used my brain too much, and it got tired, staring at this silver egg was a great way to rest it. I felt like staring at the shiny silver egg made my mind work better.

I had a notebook on my knee, and I was making notes in tiny handwriting about anything interesting I found in the book. This way, I could remember the important points without having to borrow the book.

I was sitting on the couch reading a book on the theory of relativity that the librarian had recommended. I hadn’t really understood the magazine the dentist had given me, so I was reading other books as further research.

As I read, I wrote E = MC² in my notes. A strange equation.

My father had taught me about the principles of equations, so I understood what this equation meant. Until second grade, I’d thought = meant “The answer is?” Like, “2 + 2 is ?” But this was incorrect. = meant that what was on the left and what was on the right were the same value. When my father told me that, it was like my world was turned upside down. I remember it clearly—a very strange sensation.

Uchida was on the couch next to me reading a book on penguins.

“Penguins definitely do eat fish,” Uchida said.

“Penguins are great at swimming in the ocean,” I said. “They go off like space rockets.”

“I wonder if our penguins eat fish, too?”

Uchida was talking about the penguins that had appeared in our neighborhood. I thought about this. After all, these penguins had started out as Coke cans. Did Coke cans eat fish?

“I don’t know, but I guess they probably do,” I said. I wasn’t at all certain, though.

“There aren’t a lot of fish around here.”

“There were a few little fish in that drain. But it’s possible the penguins are hungry.”

“Do you think those penguins are ghosts?”

“Why?”

“There’s a rumor going around. About a ghost moon. Have you heard it, Aoyama?”

“I made a note of it. But that’s just a rumor. We’ve seen the penguins a number of times, but nobody’s gotten sick. Without solid evidence to back that rumor up, I’m not scared.”

“Right. Good point.” Uchida looked a little relieved. He glanced at my notebook. “Is that English?”

“It’s a formula. Math.”

“You know a lot about math, huh? That’s amazing.”

As I was telling him about E = mc², Uchida suddenly looked surprised. Hamamoto was standing in the aisle between the shelves. I’d never seen her at the library before. Her chestnut hair was sparkling. She had a book clutched to her chest. She wasn’t a grown-up yet, so she didn’t have any breasts.

Hamamoto came down the aisle toward us.

She looked down at my notes and whispered, “The theory of relativity?” I was very surprised. I didn’t think anyone else my age knew about the theory of relativity.

“I’ve read that book. You understand it, Aoyama?”

“It’s a little difficult. I don’t have a full grasp of it yet.”

“Me, neither. It’s very hard.”

The book in Hamamoto’s arms was about oceanography.

She pointed at the book Uchida was reading and said “Penguins!” with a grin. Then she walked away. Uchida and I watched her go. Just before she vanished around the edge of the bookshelves, she glanced back and stuck out her tongue like that photo of Einstein. Of course, she didn’t stick her tongue out as far as he did.

“Hamamoto is very strange,” Uchida said.

“Yes. She’s strange, but in a good way.”

“Mm. I agree. I meant it like that. Just saying strange sounds mean.”

I was reading books and taking notes and exploring, and there were other people like Hamamoto doing their own research. I regretted thinking I was the most knowledgeable child in town. Hamamoto might actually be more knowledgeable than me. I’d better be more careful, I thought.

Not letting my pride get the best of me was one of my better qualities.

On my father’s three principles.

When my father showed me how to solve problems, he taught me three useful ways of thinking about them. I’ve written these on the back cover of my notebook so I can check them anytime. They’re very helpful when solving math problems. This list is below.

I think we can divide the Penguin Highway research into two main areas of consideration. The Lady and The Penguins. I like the lady, so I’d been focusing all my research efforts on her. That’s why I’d gotten stuck. If I changed how I looked at it, this was really a mystery about the penguins. I should have been researching the penguins.

And I needed to look for a similar problem.

This was an extremely unusual problem. Was there anything like it?

Project Amazon.

Uchida and I followed the drain canal behind the school back to that reservoir. It was a humid day and quite hot, as if summer had suddenly arrived. It seemed like the plants along the drain were getting bigger.

Uchida was particularly silent that day. On days like this, I practiced being silent myself. Being silent all day was actively painful, but I could manage about two hours without much issue. I pushed past the broad-leaved bamboo without a word, thinking about my lack of progress on the Penguin Highway research.

We made it to the reservoir again. It had rained the day before, so the water level was a little bit higher. We walked around the perimeter of the reservoir to the drain that emptied into it. There was another fence on that side.

Last time, we had called off our exploration here. Today we were pressing farther on.

We climbed the fence and followed the narrow path next to the drain. The broad-leaved bamboo grew high here, as well, and it was rather dark. At last, we emerged from the broad-leaved bamboo and found ourselves in an area with a number of rice paddies surrounded by bamboo groves. Paved roads and drains snaked between the rice paddies. Every now and then, there was a small metal sluice gate. There was water in the paddies, but nothing growing yet.

“Like we’ve gone back in time,” Uchida said, breaking his silence.

“But the shopping mall’s just over there,” I said, pointing past the bamboo grove. We could just catch a glimpse of the huge mall we sometimes went to on weekends.

We walked through the paddies. The humidity had us sweating.

Along the way, we found a strange path branching off from the paved road into the paddies. There were pine trees on either side. At the end of the road was a Shinto shrine on the verge of being swallowed by the bamboo grove. Uchida and I made a base on the stone stairs under the shrine’s traditional-looking gate, drank some cold tea, and wiped away our sweat. The thermos sparkled like a device used for experiments in outer space. We made a note of the shrine on the new map we’d started.

“See, this one’s already more detailed than the one Suzuki stole.”

“Yeah,” Uchida said happily.

“They won’t find this shrine looking at that map.”

Our break finished, we started walking through the paddies again. Beyond the paddies and the bamboo groves, we could see a road. We saw big trucks and family sedans passing by.

“Aoyama, you should defeat Suzuki once and for all,” Uchida said. “And then establish a new Aoyama Empire.”

“I won’t create an empire. I don’t want to be an emperor. And if there was an Aoyama Empire, the two of us wouldn’t be able to explore freely.”

“True,” Uchida said after thinking this over. “Maybe we’re better off the way things are.”

The road had two lanes for traffic in each direction, and there were a lot of cars on it. This was the national highway. The drainage canal went through a tunnel under the highway and out the other side. The tunnel was very dark, so we were very careful going through, but thankfully, the walking path continued the entire distance.

We came out the other side of the tunnel and discovered that the drain hit a parking lot and made a hard turn to the right. We stopped and made some observations about the abandoned parking lot. There was a large broken-down car still sitting there. It looked like this lot once belonged to a restaurant built along the side of the highway, but the restaurant had gone out of business. This place may have been here long before our neighborhood was started. The building had an impressive roof, like a Japanese castle, and it was covered in crows.

“We’ve come a long way,” Uchida said, looking nervous.

The drain kept going past the parking lot and restaurant. There were plants growing thick on both sides. Every time the crows squawked, Uchida tugged at my clothes.

“I wonder how far the drain goes,” I murmured. “Maybe to the ends of the earth.”

“That far?”

“I always feel like that’s the case. When I’m in the car with my father, I feel like if we follow this road, it would take us all the way to the ends of the earth.”

“I wonder what that’s like.”

“I don’t know. But I bet there’s absolutely nothing there. Maybe a little research laboratory dedicated to observing the ends of the earth. Beyond that point, none shall pass. That’s how I imagine it anyway.”

“Sounds scary.”

“I don’t really think so. I’d really like to visit a place like that.”

When we first moved to this town, I was still only seven.

Now I’d done a lot of exploring with Uchida and driving with my father, and I knew more about the world. But back then, my world had still been very small. My house had been built in the middle of a huge vacant lot, and to my eyes, it was like my house was a laboratory observing the ends of the earth. To seven-year-old me, it had felt like we’d come a very long way from the town in the next prefecture I’d grown up in. We were at the edges of the world, and if we crossed that next hill, there’d be no more world left. I felt like I had a duty to explore the world’s furthest reaches.

So as often as I could, I woke up early on Sunday and went out exploring the town. Even now that I knew the ends of the earth were a lot farther away, I was still exploring with Uchida.

“Aoyama, do you really think this water is flowing from the ends of the earth?”

“I don’t really think so,” I said. “I just think it would be nice if it was.”

“The earth is round, after all,” Uchida said. “There isn’t any end to it.”

“True. The real end of the world is at the far reaches of the universe.”

But there was another version of me deep inside that didn’t feel that way. Even though I knew the earth was round, I felt like there was an end to the world that I could walk to. I don’t know why. Uchida and I knew each other well, so it’s a shame I couldn’t explain this properly.

We fell silent again, following the drain.

Suddenly, we came to a clearing where the trees overhanging the drain peeled back, and it got very bright. There was a new green fence built along the drain. The forest there had been cut away and cleaned up recently, leaving vacant lots ready for new houses. Just like our neighborhood looked before it filled up. The most surprising thing was that the back of the mall we always went to was quite close by. It felt like we’d arrived back in civilization after a long journey in the wilderness.

Uchida and I went to the mall’s food court. We sat down on a bench and drank some soft drinks. Buying a can of soda after a big expedition made us feel really grown-up.

While he drank, Uchida was thinking.

“Aoyama,” he said. Then for a long time, he didn’t say anything else. When he did this, I never tried to rush him. I didn’t like having anyone rush me when I was trying to think, and if I didn’t like something, I wouldn’t do it to anyone else.

At last, Uchida said, “Mm, okay, I’m gonna say it.”

“What?”

“I’ve been researching penguins in secret. Like you do.”

“Oh? You have?”

“And I’ve discovered something very odd. I’ve been keeping it a secret, but my research isn’t getting anywhere with just me. I didn’t want to ask for help, but I’ve decided I don’t mind if it’s you, Aoyama.”

“What research have you been doing?”

Uchida lowered his voice and said quite proudly, “I’ve been keeping a penguin.”

Uchida had moved from the other side of the prefecture line this year, in March.

Every day, his father got on a train that passed through tunnels running underneath a mountain on the prefecture border to get to work. The place Uchida’s dad worked was on a small island between two canals. Like my father, he waited at the bus stop early in the morning and got back home after it was dark. I thought it would be neat if our fathers rode the same bus.

When I moved to this town, the apartment complex Uchida lived in hadn’t been built yet. The town had developed at a fearsome pace after I moved here. Back when I used to go out searching for the ends of the world every Sunday, I might have seen Uchida’s apartment complex being built against the side of that hill.

I went over to Uchida’s apartment.

So he could show me his secret.

On the roof of the apartment building, the wind smelled like rain. There was a tall fence all around the roof to stop people from falling off, but through it, I could see the entire neighborhood. The sky was a patchy gray, with glimpses of blue through the gaps in the clouds. I could see my house and Kamonohashi Park and the hill with the water tower.

While I was admiring the view, Uchida went somewhere and came back walking very slowly. A little penguin was following after him, as if it had mistaken Uchida for its mother. The penguin stopped along the way, as if it had just remembered something. Uchida turned around and wriggled his body at it, and the penguin wriggled back. It clearly liked Uchida.

After a little while, the penguin started walking again. It stood next to me and puffed out its chest.

“I found it in the building parking lot and hid it up here,” Uchida said, clearly very proud of himself.

“I’m surprised nobody found it.”

“It hides if people come.”

“What a smart penguin.”

“Yes. It is my penguin, after all.”

Uchida knelt down, facing the penguin.

Even when he touched its belly, the penguin just moved its beak a little. It didn’t cry out or purr like a cat. Only stared into the distance. Maybe it was thinking about Antarctica. This must be a very strange place to a penguin. If I found myself all alone on Antarctica surrounded by penguins, I’d be pretty lonely. Also, I doubt I could survive the cold.

But then I remembered that this penguin had once been a Coke can. This penguin had never been to Antarctica. Their mother was the lady, and this was their only home.

“So the thing I’m worried about…,” Uchida said, staring down at it. “…is this penguin doesn’t eat anything. It hasn’t eaten a single thing since it came here.”

“That’s not good.”

“Yeah. The book in the library said they eat fish, but I gave it fish, and it didn’t eat them. I tried ham and cucumbers and onigiri, but it didn’t eat any of them. No matter what I put in front of it, it just stares off in the distance.”

“But it seems pretty plump and healthy.”

“What should I do…? Aoyama, do you know?”

Uchida’s experiment flew in the face of expectations. The penguins the lady made flapped their wings and waddled all round. They definitely needed some form of energy to keep that up. If the penguins didn’t eat food, then we had to assume they were deriving energy from some other source. Some unknown energy source. E = Penguin Energy. I took out my notebook and wrote Penguin Energy in it.

Soon the penguin started waddling around us. In a big circle, like it was orbiting Uchida. Uchida looked happy. “It’s a mystery, right?”

“Penguin Energy. A very curious mystery. I’ll have to research it.”

“You think it has something to do with the theory of relativity?”

“Too soon to say.”

Uchida put his hand on the penguin’s head. “Promise not to tell anyone there’s a penguin here?”

“I promise. I can keep a secret.”

Saturday evening, I went to Seaside Café.

At night, the lights of the café spilled out through the windows. There were no other customers, only the lady sitting in the window, resting her face on her hand. I could tell she’d already finished her studying.

I went in the café, but the lady’s eyes stayed closed. The café lights shone on her cheek. She seemed even paler than usual. On the table was a book called Through the Looking-Glass. This was the book the Jabberwock appeared in. Until she woke up, I sat and read. I saw the picture of a boy with a sword fighting the Jabberwock for the first time. If something like this was really living in the forest like the lady had suggested, even I would be at my wit’s end. I could see no path to victory. I opened my notebook and copied the drawing of the Jabberwock. I think I did a pretty good job.

At last, the lady’s eyes fluttered open.

“Sorry, kiddo. Guess I nodded off.”

“Are you still sleepy?”

“I definitely need more sleep at night. Keep having scary dreams.”

“What sort of dreams?”

The lady’s dreams are detailed below.

She was sitting on the couch in the dentist’s waiting room, like always. There was a light on at the reception desk, but no one was there. The waiting room was dimly lit, only the pale-blue light of dawn streaming in through the window. There was something wrong with the potted plants in the corner of the room. It was like a plastic tube was growing out of the pot. The end of the tube widened like a trumpet. For some reason, the lady knew this was a plant that had long ago gone extinct. There was someone else sitting with her on the couch. At first, the lady thought it was me. But the person sitting there was taller, like a grown-up. Their body was pale, wet, and glistening. She couldn’t make out their face. The lady said it was a Jabberwock. The Jabberwock was muttering something. It sounded like tiny bubbles popping, and she couldn’t work out any words. The lady thought she wanted to leave the waiting room, but she couldn’t because no one would call for her.

“Dreams like that. Nasty, right?”

“What are you waiting for, there?”

“I don’t know.”

I remembered dreaming about the lady. The dream where she was standing by the Cambrian-period sea, where she turned a stone into a blue whale.

“You’ve got some weird dreams, too. I can’t make blue whales.”

She fell silent for a while, eyes focused on nothing.

“You look sleepy,” I said.

“Mm. I am.”

Then we played chess. I talked about what I’d read in Through the Looking-Glass.

“It’s a world all about chess.”

“That’s why I thought you should read it. Alice starts out as a pawn but ends up as a queen.”

“I’d rather be a knight.”

“Scheming to leapfrog yourself into adulthood?”

The lady was the one teaching me to play chess, but she was also unfortunately prone to making wrong moves. Whenever she picked up a piece, I had to watch carefully. For the sake of her honor, let me state for the record that she was not trying to cheat like Suzuki did. She could just be careless sometimes.

The lady did not seem to be in great shape tonight, so I was concerned. I wondered if her state of mind was connected to the penguin emergence. One potential hypothesis was that producing penguins made the lady’s well-being deteriorate. Especially considering the question of the Penguin Energy discovered through Uchida’s experiment. The exact process was a mystery, but perhaps the penguins were living off the lady’s energy.

“Maybe you shouldn’t make any more penguins,” I said softly.

“Why not?”

“Maybe that’s making you feel like this.”

“Oh? I dunno. But I really like making penguins.” She smiled. “What was it you wanted me to make?”

“Bats. Blue whales would be too big.”

“They’d crush us.”

“But I’m serious. I’m worried about you.”

“Thanks.”

Just then, the lights in the Seaside Café went out, plunging us into darkness. I didn’t know what was happening. The lady whispered, “What’s going on?” It was dark in the street outside. Yamaguchi had been behind the counter, cleaning up, and I heard him say, “Power outage?”

“Are you scared, Aoyama?” the lady asked. Her voice in the darkness felt extremely comforting.

“I’m not scared of power outages. But they do make me sleepy.”

“Humans can’t handle darkness.”

“If I were a bat, I’d be fine. I would be able to see with sonar.”

I tried to make out the lady’s face through the darkness, but no matter how hard I strained my eyes, I saw nothing. I peered patiently into the darkness, not moving, and felt a faint breeze brushing against my face. I slowly looked up. The wind appeared to be originating from above the chessboard.

“There’s a strange phenomenon occurring,” I said.

“I noticed that myself.”

The wind from above the chessboard was getting stronger. Eventually, there was a popping sound, like a bunch of large bubbles bursting. This made the wind get even stronger, and something came out of the chessboard, flapping its wings. The lady yelped and bent over backward, and Yamaguchi yelled, “What the…?!” I just sat there stunned, feeling one black gale after another fly out of the chessboard.

The power outage ended, and the lights turned on. There was not a single piece left on the chessboard. But there were a ton of bats on the ceiling around the model of the blue whale. “How’d they get in here?” Yamaguchi exclaimed.

The lady seemed equally surprised. “I did it!” she whispered.

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know! It’s your job to figure this out!” she said.

“I see.”

She reached out and hooked her pinkie in mine.

That was the first time I’d ever touched her fingers. They felt totally different from when her fingers were in my mouth at the dentist’s office. They felt so thin and fragile, like they could break at any moment, and as cold as glass.

On Sunday, my whole family went to the mall.

The shopping mall was built after we moved here. On weekends, it filled with people from all over the neighborhood, like an amusement park. It was always shiny, like LEGOs. And it was very large. There were cafés, restaurants, boutiques, electronics stores, bookstores, even a movie theater. It was like an entire town in one building. I bet future space stations will be like this.

We split into two pairs, my sister with my mother and me with my father. We agreed to meet at the restaurant on the top floor in one hour. My sister was excited about getting some new clothes.

My father and I went to the stationery store.

I liked stationery supplies. We came here about once a month. I’d stare at compasses and rulers, notebooks in all colors, and completely lose track of time. My father always had a large notebook at hand, in which he wrote all manner of things. Sometimes he just doodled. My father really liked that notebook and would even look through it in the living room at home. He always took it with him when he went to Seaside Café. If I wanted to be like my father, I should always have a notebook with me. That’s why I was so happy when he first bought me a grid-lined notebook and taught me how to use it. I was sure this meant I would one day be as important as he is.

I used a spiral-bound notebook with a grid printed in light-gray lines. It was smaller than the one my father used, which made it easier to carry everywhere. The paper was slightly thicker than average and very smooth. I could write a lot of words in ballpoint pen without my hands getting tired. It was a lot of fun to write things in a good notebook. That’s why I took notes on everything. This notebook is the reason I’m so much smarter than your average elementary school student.

“Which do you want?”

My father always bought the same notebook. So I did, too.

We checked the bookstores, then went to the restaurant on the top floor. While we waited for my mother and sister to arrive, I took the new notebook out of the bag and flipped through the empty pages. These pages would soon fill up with discoveries and research and ideas. I was excited thinking of all the research results that would soon be recorded here, in my handwriting. I wanted to write something in it right away.

I looked out the restaurant window. The woods behind the shopping mall had been cleared away, and there were plots of land laid out. I could see the drain Uchida and I had followed. I’d seen it every time we left the mall, but if Uchida and I hadn’t followed it, I would never have noticed it was there. I still had a lot to learn.

“Dad. Imagine there was a really hard problem.”

“Mm, okay,” my father said, smiling. “I’m imagining a really hard problem.”

“In this case, we want to use your three principles.”

“Right. Break the problem into smaller pieces. Change the way you look at it. Look for a similar problem.”

“Right. But after you do that, are there times you still don’t understand?”

“Of course. There are more ways to think about things. Lots of approaches.”

“For example?”

My father thought about it, then took out his new notebook. He flipped through the pages like he was reading something important written in it, saying, “For example, if you go home and try to turn on the light. You flip the switch, but nothing happens. That’s a problem. If that happened, what would you think?”

“The switch was broken.”

“Maybe it is. If you think that, then the problem becomes ‘The switch is broken.’ But what if there’s actually a power outage, like last night? Then the problem has nothing to do with the switch. Yet, because you think the switch is broken, you can investigate the switch all you like and never find an answer.”

“Because the problem isn’t with the switch.”

“So first, you need to identify what the problem actually is.”

“I’d check to see if the lights in other rooms work.”

“That’s one method. If the other lights don’t turn on, there might be a problem with the circuit breaker. But this still might not solve the problem. In that case, you’d have to check the neighbor’s houses… And as you continue looking into it, you get a better idea of what the problem actually is.”

“That makes sense.”

“This is the most important thing but also the hardest. With math problems, you have the problem written down in front of you. But in most cases, you have no idea what the problem really is. It’s easy to end up accidentally investigating the switch while having no idea there’s a power outage.”

“You make mistakes, too?”

“Of course I do. Everyone does,” my father said softly. “When you try to figure out what the problem is, you’re often wrong about it several times. But the more practice you have, the better you get at finding the real problem.”

I wrote this down in my new notebook.

I had to get to know the problem better.

June arrived with no significant progress on my Penguin Highway research.

School was peaceful. There were no standout conflicts with Suzuki and his friends.

It seemed like his group had gotten interested in exploring, using the map they stole from us. They talked about the map in class as if the things on it were their discoveries. When he heard Suzuki had formed an expedition party and followed the drain just like we had, Uchida was dejected. But after listening a little more, we discovered that Suzuki’s party had headed in the opposite direction of where we had gone.

“No problem, then. They went downstream. No risk of running into them.”

“But it isn’t fair! We’re the ones who found that stream.”

“Uchida, we are searching for the source of the water. We can’t explore in both directions at the same time. Suzuki’s party can explore all they want to.”

“You really don’t get mad, Aoyama.”

“Not if I think about breasts.”

I definitely wanted to find out where the drainage canal led for myself. But I had a lot of other research projects on my plate already. No matter how smart I was, it was a mistake to take too much on. Handling both Project Amazon and the Penguin Highway research was more than enough for someone my age. And I was also doing research on the Suzuki Empire. I was better off leaving them be for now. I chose to believe that if we could make friends with them later, our map would be enriched as a result.

Hamamoto played chess with everyone in class and defeated every challenger but me.

She was extremely smart and good at chess. And I was extremely smart and good at chess. So when we played, the entire class gathered around. Even Suzuki was secretly watching us. My knights were very active. When Hamamoto’s hands stopped moving like a chocolate factory robot and actually paused, the entire class gasped. I heard Suzuki whisper, “Get her, Aoyama!”

“Shh! Be quiet!” Hamamoto said, holding up a finger. Suzuki shut up.

She glared down at the chessboard. Her cheeks were always pale, but today they were flushed. She brushed her chestnut hair out of her eyes. She was like a chocolate lover given a chocolate assortment, hovering over the chessboard as if trying to decide which piece to eat first.

To be strictly accurate, I only won because Hamamoto made a careless mistake. Either of us could easily have emerged victorious. That’s how tense a match it was.

I really enjoyed it, and I think Hamamoto did, too. After all, when the match was over, she didn’t look frustrated. Instead, she smiled, her face still red, and held out her hand for me to shake. We were worthy rivals.

“Aoyama, we should play again.”

“Okay,” I said.

When I was playing chess with the lady at Seaside Café, I told her about our battle. After all, she was the one who had taught me to play chess, so I thought she might praise me for it. But instead, she said, “You should have let her win. Not very grown-up of you, kiddo.”

“Well, I’m not a grown-up,” I argued.

“Don’t pretend to be a child only when it suits you. You’re letting me win right now.”

Every time we met up, she asked how the Penguin Highway research was going, just to mess with me. She teased me so mercilessly about it that I found myself suspecting she really did know all the answers and was just keeping them from me. But even if I thought that, I never said it out loud. I knew if I did she’d definitely get mad.

“Kiddo, can you solve this mystery?”

“You sure you’re not just having fun at my expense?”

“I totally am. Is that a problem?”

“This is a very difficult matter. My research will take time.”

“Oh, but please try to hurry!” the lady said. “If you don’t solve the mystery, I won’t take you to the beach.”

The lady came from a town on the coast.

It was right up against the water, with mountains crowding behind it, so the whole town was built on a hill that sloped down to the sea.

The lady had grown up looking down at the ocean from a house high above it. A sea breeze coming in the window, her bookshelves and clothes always smelling like the ocean. That’s why, she said, her body smelled like the sea. I once got her to let me sniff her arm. It smelled good, but I couldn’t be sure if it smelled like the sea. Unfortunately, I’d never been there.

“I’ll take you someday,” she’d said. Her father and mother still lived in that coastal town, and apparently, they’d love it if she brought me. So we had promised to go one day. Life was born from the sea, so as a representative of humankind, I wanted to research the ocean someday.

This year, I’d heard about a new railroad line.

The train route was being extended across the mountains on the prefectural border. There would be a new station in our town. It was still in the planning stages, and there was no telling when it would be completed, my father said. But when I had heard this railroad would also connect to the town where the lady was born, I was very happy. It would make going to the sea with her a lot easier.

When we were playing chess one time, I’d told her about the new railroad.

“If we take that train, we’ll be at the sea in no time,” the lady had said. “That’ll make this a seaside town.”

It would, I’d thought.

At the time, I’d only just started playing chess with the lady, and the café we played chess in wasn’t yet named Seaside Café. Back then, Yamaguchi had given it a difficult name in some foreign language that I couldn’t even pronounce. The lady couldn’t pronounce it, either, and neither could my father. That’s how hard it was.

If the train came here and this became a seaside town, then this café would be a seaside café, and because of that, the lady changed the café’s name to Seaside Café. At first, it was just me and the lady who called it that. After he heard us calling it that, Yamaguchi hung the model of the blue whale from the ceiling, making the new name seem more appropriate.

Everyone in town started calling it Seaside Café. The sign outside the café still showed the really hard foreign name, but by now, everyone had forgotten about that sign.

“Why Seaside Café?” people sometimes asked, and I would tell them about the new train that would make us a seaside town.

Logically, that meant this town was also by the sea, I’d insist.

Uchida had moved here from a town across the prefecture line, but he still had a friend back there. He sometimes called that friend or wrote letters. I looked it up, and to get where Uchida used to live required crossing the prefecture border on one train, then transferring to a different line. It was over an hour away from where we lived.

Uchida said he wanted to show the penguin to his friend in that town.

Uchida had never taken a train alone, and carrying a penguin all that way alone would be a challenge. So I decided to help him. On Sunday, I went to Uchida’s apartment building and found him waiting with a dog carrier he’d borrowed from someone in class.

The penguin was waddling around the roof. It was hot and humid, but the penguin seemed fine. I knelt down, observing it, and it didn’t seem to be losing strength at all. Uchida said the penguin hadn’t eaten anything in over three weeks. The mystery of the Penguin Energy only deepened. If I could discover a way to make use of Penguin Energy, I would likely win the Nobel Prize. I’d be the first person to win a Nobel Prize in elementary school.

Uchida spread out his hands, and the penguin came waddling over. It really liked Uchida. We put the penguin in the pink carrier. I touched the penguin’s black wings as we did this. They were as hard as asphalt, which surprised me. The penguin’s back was covered in down, much softer and less slippery than I’d imagined. Penguins are clever, so it didn’t struggle in the carrier. It just sat still.

“I’m sure this is gonna be great!” Uchida said.

“For your friend?”

“Mm. It’ll be awesome to see a penguin. My friend’s in the hospital, so even going to the zoo isn’t possible.”

“Is it because of an illness?”

“Yeah. I don’t know with what. But my friend’s been in the hospital a long time.”

“If this makes them that happy, I’ll be glad.”

On the bus to the station, Uchida kept putting his fingers into the carrier. The penguin would peck his fingers with its beak. Maybe this kept it relaxed. “Don’t worry! Just hang in there,” Uchida said.

It was my job to buy tickets at the station. When I bought the tickets and gave Uchida his, he was impressed and said, “You’re like my dad, Aoyama.” But I just knew how to do it and had never ridden a train on my own before.

It was a clear day, and the train interior was well lit.

“What’s your friend like?”

“We used to live in the same building. Like you, my friend read a lot of books and liked researching things. Knew a lot about all kinds of things. Not just penguins.”

“Perhaps also interested in space? Like black holes?”

“Yep. I hope the two of you become friends.”

“Were you lonely when you moved?”

“I was. Until I started exploring with you, I really wanted to go back.”

“And now?”

“Part of me still wants to, and part of me doesn’t.”

We watched the town go by through the train windows. We were moving away from home at incredible speeds. Japan is really big, I thought. My father and Uchida’s father both rode this train to get to work. The town around the station petered out, and I could see rice paddies and bamboo groves. The train stopped at two stations and then went into the tunnel under the mountains on the prefecture border. The tunnel was really long and dark. It amplified the noise of the train.

Uchida peered into the carrier, worried. “Aoyama, the penguin’s lying down.”

I looked, too. The penguin was curled up at the bottom of the carrier.

“Is it train sick?”

“What do we do, Aoyama?”

“Let’s get off at the next station. If you get carsick, you get better if you get out of the car and lie down awhile. Let’s give it some time and see if it’s all right.”

We got off at the next stop.

I’d never gotten off at this station before. The platform was elevated, and we could look down at a bus terminal surrounded by small buildings. Behind the bus terminal was a small shopping area and then houses. I could see cumulonimbus clouds forming. There was a green forest to the north of the platform. The forest’s green seemed to be tumbling toward the station. The train pulled away, and the station was empty.

We put the carrier down on the edge of the platform and monitored the penguin’s condition.

“I hope it’s okay,” Uchida said, worried. “It seemed so happy before.”

“Sorry. I don’t know what could have caused this.”

“It’s okay. This isn’t your fault, Aoyama. I’m the one who insisted we should bring it…”

Uchida’s voice got smaller and smaller. His eyes never left the penguin.

As he stared down at the carrier, his bangs were fluttering. The wind was blowing. That’s weird, I thought. There was no wind on the platform, and none of the trees north of the station were moving at all. Only Uchida’s bangs. I licked my finger and tried to confirm the wind’s direction. I moved my finger all around until I was sure the wind was coming from the carrier.

“Uchida.”

“What?”

“Back up a bit.”

When Uchida moved back, I made sure the station attendants weren’t looking and opened the carrier. The penguin staggered out, looking very unhappy. The black of its back was all wrinkled. Its wings hung limp at its sides, like it was too tired to flap them. As though all it could manage was to stand upright and keep its balance.

The penguin’s beak turned toward Uchida, and it squeaked.

A moment later, all the shiny down covering it stood on end, starting from its feet and rising toward its head. Like a tsunami lifting the feathers, a spiral running around its body. The penguin raised its beak so high, it made it seem like it was swallowing a fish, stretching its body toward the sky expectantly.

The wind resembled a tiny tornado.

I grabbed Uchida’s head, shielding him from the gale.

The next thing I saw was a Coke can with wings flying through the air. The wings shrank like deflating balloons, vanishing completely by the time it landed on the platform. The wind was gone in an instant. The Coke can made a heavy clunk as it landed, echoing across the deserted platform. The penguin was nowhere to be seen.

I was stunned.

Uchida said nothing.

I walked over, picked up the Coke can, and investigated it. It was cold, as if it had just come out of a vending machine. Cold enough the drops of water on the outside moistened my fingertips.

Only then did I finally remember what had happened to the penguins on the truck, the first time they’d appeared in town.

I named this phenomenon the Penguin Evaporation.

I added the following line to my notes on the subject: