That Wraps It Up (Part 1)

"I'll be back tomorrow. Around twelve. You'll have your answer then."

That was the note I had left for Mikoko-chan on her tea table. Getting to Horikawa Oike took less than ten minutes by Vespa, so I still had an abundance of time.

I awoke at eight in the morning. I did a little jogging to kill some time, and after that I regretted it. Miiko-san invited me to breakfast, so I went to her place and was fed. It wasn't just Japanese-style food, but full-blown Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. As a result, the flavor left something to be desired, but there was certainly a lot of it, so it at least took the edge off my hunger.

"Well, I have to go to work," she said around ten o'clock and left her apartment.

I returned to my own room to kill more time. I tried playing a game of Eight Queens, just as I had done earlier, but my brain didn't seem to be functioning properly, and I gave up by the fifth queen. I moved on to the Cannibals and Missionaries problem, but again I got sick of it midway through. If only I had owned a computer; I could have passed the time playing video games. Maybe it was time I went and got one from Kunagisa. But then again, it didn't seem like a great idea to decrease the amount of space in my room just for the sake of having a way to kill time. Besides, time passes just the same, whether you kill it or not. And like I had said to Mikoko-chan, I didn't particularly dislike being bored, and I was plenty used to waiting.

...

As any child won over by shallow wit is oft to do, I read The Little Prince at a very young age. I didn't get it. The people around me at that time told me, "You'll get it when you're a grown-up." Recently I had recalled this and tried reading through it once again. I still didn't get it.

"Zerozaki's gone from Kyoto... There's no way to contact Aikawa-san... And Kunagisa's a shut-in."

I truly didn't have a single normal acquaintance. Of course, I never particularly wanted one. Still, sometimes it occurred to me. I was just a single, lonely guy trying to live, but rotting away in a cage instead.

"It's a hopeless situation."

In the end, there was no way for a guy like me, just a single character in this great big world, to view my situation with any kind of bird's-eye perspective. Especially when, as Aikawa-san had said, I wasn't the main character or even a supporting character, but merely the comic relief. I was just sitting off in some corner away from the world, clumsily babbling about the story.

And something this factual couldn't even be written off as self-deprecation.

"Well, I suppose I'll get going."

The time was currently eleven o'clock. It was still way early, but I doubted I could be faulted for showing up ahead of time. With that in mind, I left my apartment and made my way out to the parking lot. I started up the vintage Vespa's engine and put on the helmet. It was the stylish, half-size number Mikoko-chan had left in my room the previous day. There was nothing I could do to make it suit me, but the size was right, so it would at least uphold its role as a helmet, for what that was worth.

Blast off! I rode down Senbon Street and turned east on Maruta-Machi Street. I broke east again onto Horikawa Street and rode the Vespa straight ahead from there.

The sweet sensation of slicing through the wind. I could almost forget about the fact that I was alive.

As expected, I reached Oike within ten minutes. I parked the Vespa in the apartment's underground parking lot and locked it up, exited the lot, and walked around to the front of the building.

"Did I really waste over an hour here last time?"

It was a pretty embarrassing memory. My brain had a knack for remembering only this kind of thing. I guess the best thing I could do was learn from these memories and not repeat the same mistakes.

This time I entered the building without stopping. I gave a quick greeting to the security camera and entered the elevator.

At this point.

At this point, I still hadn't thought of anything.

How to reply to her confession.

What words I could use to respond to her affection.

I hadn't thought of anything.

"Just kidding."

In reality, I had made up my mind long ago. I only had one word to say to her. There was nothing to deliberate over. If you thought about the kind of person I was and the kind of person Mikoko-chan was and added them together, an answer would emerge naturally, just like a mathematic equation. Of course, reality never turns out like an equation. It's more like trying to figure out if the last digit in pi is odd or even. Mean-while, I was standing at the height of stupidity, off in outer space with my equations and formulae and calculations, trying to find the area of a triangle by multiplying the height and dividing by two.

I was the kind of person who changed his opinion in the end anyway, no matter what he had decided, so what I thought about now was essentially irrelevant.

I got off the elevator on the fourth floor and walked down the hall.

"Room three, was it?"

My memory was fuzzy, but that sounded right. I wondered if she was awake yet. She certainly didn't seem like she was the kind of person who had low blood pressure and would have trouble waking up, but considering how bad she was at keeping time, I doubted she was much of an early riser.

I pushed the button on her intercom.

No reply.

It wasn't simply that there was no reply through the inter-com; there was no reaction whatsoever. No noise coming from the inside. Nothing.

"How odd..."

I pushed the button once again.

No change.

I couldn't sense anyone moving about inside.

Restless. Restless. Restless.

My heart throbbed.

My bodily functions grew abnormal.

I continued pushing the intercom button without speaking a word.

Once, twice, three times, four times.

I quit counting after the fifth time.

I could feel it.

Not suspicion, but a premonition.

But closer still to precognition.

"It was like watching a nonstop stream of movies where you already know the ending."

Wasn't that how that prophet had described it?

Like something you could never touch on the opposite side of the boob tube.

Suddenly I understood her feelings, and I'd never even wanted to.

Aoii Mikoko.

My classmate.

Always cheerful, sometimes sad.

The girl who said

She liked me.

Here now was an image.

A scene I had left behind somewhere.

A nostalgic view.

One that had been all too close to me for some time.

That I had forgotten somewhere along the way.

One that was unnecessary to recall.

A terrible,

Detestable

View.

Death.

Nothingness.

...

I mumbled a curse and opened the door to Mikoko-chan's room.