Vol 2 Chapter 1 (1/2)

Period 2______14-15 years old

Mission 1

The world within the square container was being completed. During this nice summer break in which he didn’t have to go to school, he clung to and observed the ant farm every day for many hours without ever getting bored of it.

Watching the ants all the time is interesting, isn’t it?

A faceless woman bluntly asked that unpleasant question.

I’m not watching the ants. Idiots shouldn’t say random things.

When he said that without turning around, the faceless woman didn’t say anything anymore, but from that day on he didn’t clean the vicinity of the ant farm anymore. The faceless woman was faceless because she was merely not impressive.

The ant farm’s residents didn’t have a plan and with seemingly meaningless work force they extended their path a bit every day. That path branched without principle, twisted and turned and crossed itself somewhere again so that all was repeated. It seemed like they dug their tunnels randomly, but because the residents didn’t get lost he thought there was surely some kind of system in that world only those who belong to it knew about. At least a system flawlessly completed and unbroken in this closed world. He thought that was an absolutely beautiful thing.

Fus.h.i.+mi-kun, how come you couldn’t bring your independent research project with you?

Huh……?

Why was it again that I couldn’t turn in my observation notebook that I had carefully written every day…..? Something had been in the way….

Gyahahaha, Saruhiko~ did you end up dreaming about this just now?

—cling.

Fus.h.i.+mi could hear the clear sound over his head which washed away the dark memories that had invaded his dreams.

Cling, chimed the refres.h.i.+ng sound. Although the air that came was hot and humid. The air uncomfortably brushed against his hair that stuck to his forehead due to the sweat.

“Mom. Mom!”

The characteristic voice of a child yelling near him spurred the stuffiness and Fus.h.i.+mi frowned, opening his eyes slightly.

“Mom, hey, mom!”

Hot…. Noisy…. With a low groan he wiped off his forehead. He had leaned his head against the frame of the window facing the veranda and had dozed off. Cling, resounded the wind chime over the window.

He looked towards the middle of the room and called out to Yata who was sitting cross-legged on a low table. “You done?”

“Hm, mm, no” mumbled Yata who had stuck his pen between his nose and upper lip while he fanned himself. He was seriously struggling with the math problem in front of him and when Fus.h.i.+mi stretched his neck he saw that Yata hadn’t gotten one question done since the first time Fus.h.i.+mi had checked on him.

“How long are you going to make me wait…” grumbled Fus.h.i.+mi, fed up and leaned his head against the window frame once again.

On the veranda hung the laundry of the five persons family tightly crammed on the clothesline which blocked the sunlight from directly falling into the indoors. But the heat around the window was so high the tatami mats could burn up. Fus.h.i.+mi found it hard to forgive that the window was open in the middle of a hot summer day. Why is only the electric fan on even though they have an air conditioner? On the front side of the electric fan swayed a plastic cord that had been tied to it. The air won’t spread any better with that there, so what’s up with that plastic cord? He didn’t get it at all.

“Mom, hey moooom, Hercules won’t move! Hey moooom!”

Yata’s younger brother Minoru, who was going to be seven soon, lay flat on the tatami mats and yelled again in a whiny voice. In front of Minoru was a plastic insect cage.

“That’s not a Hercules beetle.” The annoyance made Fus.h.i.+mi’s patience run out and he said what he had wanted to point out since earlier.

“Eh?!” Minoru’s expression changed and his body rose abruptly from the floor. “That’s a Hercules beetle! Dad said it’s a Hercules beetle! It’s Hercules!”

‘Hercules, Hercules’ how annoying.

“A Hercules beetle is…”

Fus.h.i.+mi swiftly worked his PDA with one hand. When he looked it up there immediately appeared countless pictures of the rhinoceros beetle with its s.h.i.+ning yellow-green body and the great horn attached to it.

“…this one.”

When he showed him the screen, Minoru leaned forward and stared at it intently. He then took the insect cage with both his hands and gazed at the inside of the clear plastic case and gradually his expression turned aghast. The insect that was clinging to the bottom of the case was all in all five centimeters long and just a normal beetle. I didn’t cling to the branch they had put in together and wasn’t moving much at all.

“Moooooooom!” Holding the insect cage Minoru dashed to the kitchen. “Moooom, moooom, moooom! This isn’t Hercules!”

“Minoru! I told you before, you can’t cling to me when I’m handling the fire!”

Minoru started to cry with a monstrous voice when he got scolded by his mother. “But, but! Saru said this isn’t a Hercules beetle!”

“Dad said it’s a Hercules beetle, isn’t that enough?”

“But Saru knows much more than dad! Saru doesn’t lie! Dad lied to me!”

Why are you deciding by yourself that I don’t lie. I do lie.

Somehow an unpleasant feeling emerged in Fus.h.i.+mi and he clicked his tongue, turning his face to the window. Even though he had just corrected a mistake, he was annoyed by his own behavior without knowing why.

“……I’ll go buy something to drink,” he told Yata and as he stood up he could hear the mother’s voice from the kitchen, drowning out the little brother’s whining.

“Saruhiko-kun, we have barley tea here if you want?”

That she had caught what he had mumbled in this tumult truly proved her frightfully keen hearing.

“It’s okay. I’d rather have something with carbonic acid so I’ll go buy some.”

“Bam!”

Something with a squeaky voice came rus.h.i.+ng at Fus.h.i.+mi from behind him. It hit him in the knee back the moment he stood up and brought him down facilely.

“Uwah- d.a.m.n brat…”

Grimacing in humiliation Fus.h.i.+mi turned around on all fours when the two-year old Megumi yelled another “Bam!” with her squeaky voice before she clashed with the post of the alcove (1), fell on her b.u.t.t and started to seemingly randomly laugh. In the kitchen the younger brother yelled “Hercules, Hercules” over and over while stomping on the floor in frustration though there had to be other tenants living under them in the house (2). By the window the wind chime was ringing with every swing. The younger sister had resumed her “Bam!”-game and ran around the small living room, cras.h.i.+ng with the walls and the post.At the table was Yata struggling with the math exercise and with an expression that he wasn’t only tormented by math but by all life and his shoulders started to tremble.

“Ahhhh! So noisy!” Yata flipped the low table over. “I can’t concentrate! Minoru! Megumi! Can’t you two shut up for a minute?!”

And one more angry voice came from the kitchen, slightly excelling the whiny voices of the younger siblings: “Misaki! You’re the loudest one!”

†

When Yata hadn’t made any progress they decided to go to the library upon his suggestion.

“…geez. Why did we have to leave; we’re trying to prepare for our entrance exams. Kids should play outside anyway.”

It was late into August and they ended up going outside during a time where the suns.h.i.+ne was harsher than the lingering heat of an early afternoon. The thirty minute walk from the Yatas’ house to the neighborhood’s library felt like torture, worse than being in the desert, wis.h.i.+ng for an oasis.

“A minute pa.s.sed. Give me the fan.”

“Ah, already? Here.”

When Fus.h.i.+mi reached out after checking the time, Yata handed the fan he had used for himself (which had been randomly lying around in the living room with a shop’s name written on it) over.

“Ahh, it really sucks to not have a bicycle. And I can’t think of a new suitable vehicle.”

In early spring this year Yata’s bicycle that had always been standing in a thicket next to the school gate had vanished. They didn’t know if it had been stolen, or if it had been spotted and thus removed. Whichever it was, commuting to school by bicycle was against the regulations anyway so he had not been able to properly search for the culprit and he had ended up never finding his bike.

“Looks like my bike already graduated. Another vehicle would be good.”

“Like a motorbike? Though you can’t get your license yet.”

“It just was my birthday so one more year and I can get one.”

“Ah, an ice cream vending machine. Let’s buy some.”

“You really love ice cream, huh? You’ll spoil your stomach, y'know?”

“I decided until summer ends I’ll live on ice cream and carbonic acid.”

“You won’t live long like that. Eat some other stuff, too.”

“Well then, if I don’t live any longer than this then it shall be so.”

“No, no, you need to live. If you die as a student right before his exams you won’t ever have gotten to enjoy life. Ah, one minute pa.s.sed. Fan.”