– Was there anything unusual in the air?
I was concerned about that myself, so I took several deep breaths to see if I could detect any unusual odor. But it was just the ordinary smell of a woods in the hills. It was a bracing scent, the fragrance of trees. Nothing unusual about the plants and flowers around there, either. Nothing had changed shape or been discolored.
One by one I examined the mushrooms the children had been picking. There weren't all that many, which led me to conclude that they'd collapsed not long after they began picking them. All of them were typical edible mushrooms. I've been a doctor here for some time and am quite familiar with the different varieties. Of course to be on the safe side I collected them all and took them back and had a specialist examine them. But as far as I could tell, they were all ordinary, edible mushrooms.
– You said the unconscious children's eyes moved back and forth, but did you notice any other unusual symptoms or reactions? For instance, the size of their pupils, the color of the whites of their eyes, the frequency of their blinking?
No. Other than their eyes moving back and forth like a searchlight, there was nothing out of the ordinary. All other functions were completely normal. The children were looking at something. To put a finer point on it, the children weren't looking at what we could see, but something we couldn't. It was more like they were observing something rather than just looking at it. They were essentially expressionless, but overall they seemed calm, not afraid or in any pain. That's also one of the reasons I decided to just let them lie there and see how things played out. I decided if they're not in any pain, then just let them be for a while.
– Did anyone mention the idea that the children had been gassed?
Yes, they did. But like me they couldn't figure out how it was possible. I mean, no one had ever heard of somebody going on a hike in the woods and ending up getting gassed. Then one of the people there-the assistant principal, I believe it was-said it might have been gas dropped by the Americans. They must have dropped a bomb with poison gas, he said. The homeroom teacher recalled seeing what looked like a B- 29 in the sky just before they started up the hill, flying right overhead. That's it! everyone said, some new poison gas bomb the Americans developed. Rumors about the Americans developing a new kind of bomb had even reached our neck of the woods. But why would the Americans drop their newest weapon in such an out-of-the-way place? That we couldn't explain. But mistakes are part of life, and some things we aren't meant to understand, I suppose.
– After this, then, the children gradually recovered on their own?
They did. I can't tell you how relieved I was. At first they started squirming around, then they sat up unsteadily, gradually regaining consciousness. No one complained of any pain during this process. It was all very quiet, like they were waking up from a deep sleep. And as they regained consciousness their eye movements became normal again. They showed normal reactions to light when I shined a flashlight in their eyes. It took some time, though, for them to be able to speak again-just like you are when you first wake up.
We asked each of the children what had happened, but they looked dumbfounded, like we were asking about something they didn't remember taking place. Going up the hill, starting to gather mushrooms-that much they recalled. Everything after that was a total blank. They had no sense of any time passing between then and now. They start gathering mushrooms, then the curtain falls, and here they are lying on the ground, surrounded by all these adults. The children couldn't figure out why we were all upset, staring at them with these worried looks on our faces. They seemed more afraid of us than anything else.
Sadly, there was one child, a boy, who didn't regain consciousness. One of the children evacuated from Tokyo. Satoru Nakata, I believe his name was. A small, pale little boy. He was the only one who remained unconscious. He just lay there on the ground, his eyes moving back and forth. We had to carry him back down the hill. The other children walked back down like nothing had happened.
– Other than this boy, Nakata, none of the other children showed any symptoms later on?
As far as any outward signs at least, no, they displayed no unusual symptoms. No one complained of pain or discomfort. As soon as we got back to the school I brought the children into the nurse's room one by one and examined them-took their temperature, listened to their heart with a stethoscope, checked their vision. Whatever I was able to do at the time I did. I had them solve some simple arithmetic problems, stand on one foot with their eyes closed, things like that. Physically they were fine. They didn't seem tired and had healthy appetites. They'd missed lunch so they all said they were hungry. We gave them rice balls to eat, and they gobbled them up.
A few days later I stopped by the school to observe how the children were doing. I called a few of them into the nurse's room and questioned them. Again, though, everything seemed fine. No traces remained, physically or emotionally, from their strange experience. They couldn't even remember that it had happened. Their lives were completely back to normal, unaffected by the incident. They attended class as usual, sang songs, played outside during recess, everything normal kids did. Their homeroom teacher, however, was a different story: she still seemed in shock.
But that one boy, Nakata, didn't regain consciousness, so the following day he was taken to the university hospital in Kofu. After that he was transferred to a military hospital, and never came back to our town again. I never heard what became of him.
This incident never made the newspapers. My guess is the authorities decided it would only cause unrest, so they banned any mention of it. You have to remember that during the war the military tried to squelch whatever they saw as groundless rumors. The war wasn't going well, with the military retreating on the southern front, suicide attacks one after the other, air raids on cities getting worse all the time. The military was especially afraid of any antiwar or pacifist sentiment cropping up among the populace. A few days after the incident the police came calling and warned us that under no circumstances were we to talk about what we'd seen.
The whole thing was an odd, unpleasant affair. Even to this day it's like a weight pressing down on me.
Chapter 5
I'm asleep when our bus drives across the huge new bridge over the Inland Sea. I'd seen the bridge only on maps and had been looking forward to seeing it for real. Somebody gently taps me on the shoulder and I wake up.
'Hey, we're here,' the girl says.
I stretch, rub my eyes with the back of my hand, and look out the window. Sure enough, the bus is just pulling into what looks like the square in front of a station. Fresh morning sunlight lights up the scene. Almost blinding, but gentle somehow, the light is different from what I was used to in Tokyo. I glance at my watch.6:32.
'Gosh, what a long trip,' she says tiredly. 'I thought my lower back was going to give out. And my neck's killing me. You aren't going to catch me on an all-night bus again. I'm taking the plane from now on, even if it's more expensive. Turbulence, hijackings-I don't care. Give me a plane any day.'
I lower her suitcase and my backpack from the overhead rack. 'What's your name?' I ask.
'My name?'
'Yeah.'
'Sakura,' she says. 'What about you?'
'Kafka Tamura,' I reply.
'Kafka Tamura,' she muses. 'Weird name. Easy to remember, though.'
I nod. Becoming a different person might be hard, but taking on a different name is a cinch.
She gets off the bus, sets her suitcase on the ground, and plunks herself down on top, then pulls a notebook from a pocket in her small backpack, scribbles down something, rips the page out, and hands it to me. A phone number, by the looks of it.
'My cell phone number,' she says with a wry expression. 'I'm staying at my friend's place for a while, but if you ever feel like seeing somebody, give me a call. We can go out for a bite or whatever. Don't be a stranger, okay? 'Even chance meetings'… how does the rest of that go?'
''Are the result of karma.''
'Right, right,' she says. 'But what does it mean?'
'That things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there's no such thing as coincidence.'
She sits there on her yellow suitcase, notebook in hand, giving it some thought. 'Hmm… that's a kind of
