Chapter 3

It’s nearly dawn when I wake up. I draw the curtain back and take a look. It must have just stopped raining, since everything is still wet and drippy. Clouds to the east are sharply etched against the sky, each one framed by light. The sky looks ominous one minute, inviting the next. It all depends on the angle.

The bus plows down the highway at a set speed, the tires humming along, never getting any louder or softer. Same with the engine, its monotonous sound like a mortar smoothly grinding down time and the consciousness of the people on board. The other passengers are all sunk back in their seats, asleep, their curtains drawn tight. The driver and I are the only ones awake. We’re being carried, efficiently and numbly, toward our destination.

Feeling thirsty, I take a bottle of mineral water from the pocket of my backpack and drink some of the lukewarm water. From the same pocket I pull out a box of soda crackers and munch a few, enjoying that familiar dry taste. According to my watch it’s 4:32. I check the date and day of the week, just to be on the safe side. Thirteen hours since I left home. Time hasn’t leaped ahead more than it should or done an unexpected about-face. It’s still my birthday, still the first day of my brand-new life. I shut my eyes, open them again, again checking the time and date on my watch. Then I switch on the reading light, take out a paperback book, and start reading.

Just after five, without warning, the bus pulls off the highway and comes to a stop in a corner of a roadside rest area. The front door of the bus opens with an airy hiss, lights blink on inside, and the bus driver makes a brief announcement. “Good morning, everybody. Hope you had a good rest. We’re on schedule and should arrive in our final stop at Takamatsu Station in about an hour. But we’re stopping here for a twenty-minute break. We’ll be leaving again at five-thirty, so please be sure to be back on board by then.”

The announcement wakes up most of the passengers, and they silently struggle to their feet, yawning as they stumble out of the bus. This is where people make themselves presentable before arriving in Takamatsu. I get off too, take a couple of deep breaths, and do some simple stretching exercises in the fresh morning air. I walk over to the men’s room and splash some water on my face. I’m wondering where the heck we are. I go outside and look around. Nothing special, just the typical roadside scenery you find next to a highway. Maybe I’m just imagining things, but the shape of the hills and the color of the trees seem different from those back in Tokyo.

I’m inside the cafeteria sipping a free cup of hot tea when this young girl comes over and plunks herself down on the plastic seat next to me. In her right hand she has a paper cup of hot coffee she bought from a vending machine, the steam rising up from it, and in her left hand she’s holding a small container with sandwiches inside—another bit of vending-machine gourmet fare, by the looks of it.

She’s kind of funny looking. Her face is out of balance—broad forehead, button nose, freckled cheeks, and pointy ears. A slammed-together, rough sort of face you can’t ignore. Still, the whole package isn’t so bad. For all I know maybe she’s not so wild about her own looks, but she seems comfortable with who she is, and that’s the important thing. There’s something childish about her that has a calming effect, at least on me. She isn’t very tall, but has good-looking legs and a nice bust for such a slim body.

Her thin metal earrings sparkle like duralumin. She wears her dark brown, almost reddish dyed hair down to her shoulders, and has on a long-sleeved crewneck shirt with wide stripes. A small leather backpack hangs from one shoulder, and a light sweater’s tied around her neck. A cream-colored miniskirt completes her outfit, with no stockings. She’s evidently washed her face, since a few strands of hair, like the thin roots of a plant, are plastered to her broad forehead. Strangely enough, those loose strands of hair draw me to her.

“You were on the bus, weren’t you?” she asks me, her voice a little husky.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

She frowns as she takes a sip of the coffee. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” I lie.

“So you’re in high school.”

I nod.

“Where’re you headed?”

“Takamatsu.”

“Same with me,” she says. “Are you visiting, or do you live there?”

“Visiting,” I reply.

“Me too. I have a friend there. A girlfriend of mine. How about you?”

“Relatives.”

I see, her nod says. No more questions. “I’ve got a younger brother the same age as you,” she suddenly tells me, as if she’d just remembered. “Things happened, and we haven’t seen each other for a long time. . . . You know something? You look a lot like that guy . Anybody ever tell you that?”

“ What guy?”

“You know, the guy who sings in that band! As soon as I saw you in the bus I thought you looked like him, but I just can’t come up with his name. I must have busted a hole in my brain trying to remember. That happens sometimes, right? It’s on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t think of it. Hasn’t anybody said that to you before—that you remind them of somebody?”

I shake my head. Nobody’s ever said that to me. She’s still staring at me, eyes narrowed intently. “What kind of person do you mean?” I ask.

“A TV guy.”

“A guy who’s on TV?”

“Right,” she says, picking up her ham sandwich and taking an uninspired bite, washing it down with a sip of coffee. “A guy who sings in some band. Darn —I can’t think of the band’s name, either. This tall guy who has a Kansai accent. You don’t have any idea who I mean?”

“Sorry, I don’t watch TV.”

The girl frowns and gives me a hard look. “You don’t watch at all?”

I shake my head silently. Wait a sec—should I nod or shake my head here? I go with the nod.

“Not very talkative, are you? One line at a time seems your style. Are you always so quiet?”

I blush. I’m sort of a quiet type to begin with, but part of the reason I don’t want to say much is that my voice hasn’t changed completely. Most of the time I’ve got kind of a low voice, but all of a sudden it turns on me and lets out a squeak. So I try to keep whatever I say short and sweet.

“Anyway,” she goes on, “what I’m trying to say is you look a lot like that singer with the Kansai accent. Not that you have a Kansai accent or anything. It’s just—I don’t know, there’s something about you that’s a lot like him. He seems like a real nice guy, that’s all.”

Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I’m dealing with my blushing face. “You’d resemble him even more if you changed your hair,” she says. “Let it grow out a little, use some gel to make it flip up a bit. I’d love to give it a try. You’d definitely look good like that. Actually, I’m a hairdresser.”

I nod and sip my tea. The cafeteria is dead silent. None of the usual background music, nobody else talking besides the two of us.

“Maybe you don’t like talking?” she says, resting her head in one hand and giving me a serious look.

I shake my head. “No, that’s not it.”

“You think it’s a pain to talk to people?”

One more shake of my head.

She picks up her other sandwich with strawberry jam instead of ham, then frowns and gives me this look of disbelief. “Would you eat this for me? I hate strawberry-jam sandwiches more than anything. Ever since I was a kid.”

I take it from her. Strawberry-jam sandwiches aren’t exactly on my top-ten list either, but I don’t say a word and start eating.

From across the table she watches until I finish every last crumb. “Could you do me a favor?” she says.

“A favor?”

“Can I sit next to you until we get to Takamatsu? I just can’t relax when I sit by myself. I always feel like some weird person’s going to plop himself down next to me, and then I can’t get to sleep. When I bought my ticket they told me they were all single seats, but when I got on I saw they’re all doubles. I just want to catch a few winks before we arrive, and you seem like a nice guy. Do you mind?”

“No problem.”

“Thanks,” she says. “‘In traveling, a companion,’ as the saying goes.”

I nod. Nod, nod, nod—that’s all I seem capable of. But what should I say?

“How does that end?” she asks.

“How does what end?”

“After a companion, how does it go? I can’t remember. I never was very good at Japanese.”

“‘In life, compassion,’” I say.

“‘In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,’” she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn’t surprise me if she wrote it down. “So what does that really mean? In simple terms.”

I think it over. It takes me a while to gather my thoughts, but she waits patiently.

“I think it means,” I say, “that chance encounters are what keep us going. In simple terms.”

She mulls that over for a while, then slowly brings her hands together on top of the table and rests them there lightly. “I think you’re right about that—that chance encounters keep us going.”

I glance at my watch. It’s five-thirty already. “Maybe we better be getting back.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Let’s go,” she says, making no move, though, to get up.

“By the way, where are we?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” she says. She cranes her neck and sweeps the place with her eyes. Her earrings jiggle back and forth like two precarious pieces of ripe fruit ready to fall. “From the time I’m guessing we’re near Kurashiki, not that it matters. A rest area on a highway is just a place you pass through. To get from here to there.” She holds up her right index finger and her left index finger, about twelve inches apart.

“What does it matter what it’s called?” she continues. “You’ve got your restrooms and your food. Your fluorescent lights and your plastic chairs. Crappy coffee. Strawberry-jam sandwiches. It’s all pointless—assuming you try to find a point to it. We’re coming from somewhere, heading somewhere else. That’s all you need to know, right?”

I nod. And nod. And nod.

When we get back to the bus the other passengers are already aboard, with just us holding things up. The driver’s a young guy with this intense look that reminds me of some stern watchman. He turns a reproachful gaze on the two of us but doesn’t say anything, and the girl shoots him an innocent sorry-we’re-late smile. He reaches out to push a lever and the door hisses closed. The girl lugs her little suitcase over and sits down beside me—a nothing kind of suitcase she must’ve picked up at some discount place—and I pick it up for her and store it away in the overhead rack. Pretty heavy for its size. She thanks me, then reclines her seat and fades off to sleep. Like it can barely wait to get going, the bus starts to roll the instant we get settled. I pull out my paperback and pick up where I’d left off.

The girl’s soon fast asleep, and as the bus sways through each curve her head leans against my shoulder, finally coming to a rest there. Mouth closed, she’s breathing quietly through her nose, the breath grazing my shoulder at regular beats. I look down and catch a glimpse of her bra strap through the collar of her crewneck shirt, a thin, cream-colored strap. I picture the delicate fabric at the end of that strap. The soft breasts beneath. The pink nipples taut under my fingertips. Not that I’m trying to imagine all this, but I can’t help it. And—no surprise—I get a massive hard-on. So rigid it makes me wonder how any part of your body could ever get so rock hard.

Just then a thought hits me. Maybe—just maybe—this girl’s my sister. She’s about the right age. Her odd looks aren’t at all like the girl in the photo, but you can’t always count on that. Depending on how they’re taken people sometimes look totally different. She said she has a brother my age who she hasn’t seen in ages. Couldn’t that brother be me —in theory, at least?

I stare at her chest. As she breathes, the rounded peaks move up and down like the swell of waves, somehow reminding me of rain falling softly on a broad stretch of sea. I’m the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she’s the sea. The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

The girl wears two rings on her fingers, neither of which is a wedding or engagement ring, just cheap things you find at those little boutiques girls shop at. Her fingers are long and thin but look strong, the nails are short and nicely trimmed with a light pink polish. Her hands are resting lightly on the knees thrust out from her miniskirt. I want to touch those hands, but of course I don’t. Asleep, she looks like a young child. One pointy ear peeks out from the strands of hair like a little mushroom, looking strangely fragile.

I shut my book and look for a while at the passing scenery. But very soon, before I realize it, I fall asleep myself. zAL/QuRas2OtUaVrWFDFQ5P8v44jZxC1tKogg6qWBZ0LGl1uWqKM5Fp8OgZQOQRG