Page 29 of Water Moon
Chapter Twenty-nine
Spicy Pork or Chicken?
College. Marriage. Kids. These were the big decisions that people believed mattered. They were wrong, of course. In reality, it was the choices that people didn’t even realize they were making that set the course of their lives. The shifts were small, even minute, but, by the tiniest of angles, they pointed one in the direction of what was going to happen next.
In Keishin’s case, everything that was going to define the rest of his life was decided the second his eyes shifted from the instant spicy pork ramen to the chicken-flavored one, then back to the pork. He reached for the bright red pack and dropped it into a green plastic basket. This was not the time to experiment with new flavors. His long-haul flight to Tokyo was the next day, and the last thing he needed was an upset stomach during his trip.
He wrinkled his nose at his instant ramen dinner and swore to get himself some real ramen as soon as he landed in Japan. He took a step back from the ramen shelf, planting the thick heel of his boot squarely on top of something that was clearly too soft to be the convenience store’s tiled floor. A sharp yelp shattered any hope that he’d wronged a wayward pastry instead of a stranger’s foot. He twisted around, an apology tumbling from his tongue ahead of him. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”
“Where are we?” the woman said in Japanese.
“Oh…hello…” he said, shifting to Japanese. He scoured her small, heart-shaped face, searching for anything that might tell him who she was. He had never been good at names, but he doubted that he would have forgotten hers. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
Hana frowned. “It’s me. Hana.”
“Were you in one of my classes?”
“What? No. Don’t you remember? We jumped into a well and I asked you to find a safe place for us to hide.”
“Right…” He backed away from her. “I’m sorry, but I need to go,” he said, heading to the cashier.
“Wait.” Hana grabbed his arm. “I know you and you know me. Your name is Keishin. You are a physicist, and you have accepted a job at the Super-Kamiokande detector. You are trying to find neutrinos.”
“Everyone at the university knows why I’m moving to Japan.”
“You were abandoned by your mother, and all your life, every achievement and discovery you have chased after has been about trying to find something that will make you feel worthy of her love.”
Keishin’s basket slipped from his hand, scattering his dinner over the floor. “Who told you that?”
“You did. You told me about how your mother left you when you were a young boy. The rest…I saw for myself.”
“Who put you up to this? Is this some kind of prank? Because if it is, I’m not laughing.”
“Keishin…Kei…” Hana approached him slowly. “You need to listen to me very carefully. You did as I asked. You found a safe place for us to hide. We are in a moment in your mind so insignificant and small that no one would think to look for you in it. But you have hidden yourself too well, you have gone too deep.”
“This is insane.” He marched to the exit.
“Where will you go? To your apartment? To sit on a leather couch while listening to a song that will take you to a little boat floating on a quiet lake beneath the ground? Your beautiful trap?”
“How did you…”
“You took me there. We were on the boat at the Super-Kamiokande.”
“But that’s just a—”
“A memory you borrowed from someone else.” Hana looked around the convenience store. “But this memory is your own, a fragment from a time before you stepped through a pawnshop’s door.”
“The pawnshop…” Keishin squeezed his eyes shut. “It…it was ransacked.”
“Yes.”
“And you were there. Your foot was bleeding.”
“I had stepped on—”
“Glass.” Keishin blinked and stared at Hana. “I…I remember.”
Hana exhaled, throwing her arms around him.
Keishin held her tight. “Are we safe?” he whispered into her hair.
“For now. We are still falling.”
“Falling?”
“Through the well.” Hana drew away. “This is a detour. We could not go directly to any of the places I knew. Those places would have been easier for the Shiikuin to find. I am hoping that they will lose our trail if we stay here for a while.”
“How long?”
“Until morning,” Hana said. “And then we will need to go to Haruto.”
“Hana…” Keishin hesitated.
“What is it?”
“If the Shiikuin were able to find us at the minshuku, don’t you think that they could have found out about Haruto too?”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.” Her voice caught in her throat. “He’s safe. He has tobe.”
Keishin watched her draw short, ragged breaths through pale lips. He nodded, allowing Hana to believe the lie she told herself. When running for your life, honesty was a luxury. Courage, even the false kind, was not.
—
Keishin and Hana sat at one of the convenience store’s counters, waiting for their instant ramen to be ready. Other customers walked past them without casting a sideward glance.
Keishin lifted the ramen bowl’s foil lid. “It’s ready. Just give it a stir.”
Hana stirred the noodles with a plastic fork. “It does not look like ramen.”
Keishin smiled. “Go on. Try it.”
Hana cautiously brought a forkful of noodles to her mouth. “It is…not bad. But it is not ramen either.”
“Definitely not like any ramen you’d find in your world.” Keishin laughed. “And that’s a good thing.”
“Why?”
“Because nothing in that bowl is remotely good for you.”
Hana swallowed another forkful. “It is fortunate that none of this is real then.”
“I should probably eat every single thing here while I don’t have to worry about making myself sick.” Keishin scanned the shelves.
“That looks interesting,” Hana said, pointing to a frozen-drink machine. “Why is it colored blue?”
Keishin wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t recommend trying that even if it isn’t real.”
Hana laughed.
Keishin laughed too. A small chuckle that tickled his belly and did a little happy dance over his tongue. It grew, rolling around his stomach and expanding in his chest, uncontrollable and relentless. Keishin chortled and gasped for air. A fit of giggling burst from Hana’s lips. Laughter exploded between them, knocking both of them to the floor. Keishin rolled to his side and clutched his belly, tears welling in his eyes.
Hana sat up and leaned against a snack shelf, bringing her laughter to a stop with slow, deliberate breaths.
Keishin sat next to her, his long legs stretched across the aisle. “Damn, that felt good.”
Hana smiled. “It did.”
“I don’t even know what we were laughing about.”
“At nothing.” Hana panted. “And everything.”
Keishin’s eyes wandered around the store. “It feels strange being back here.”
“Because it isn’t real?”
“I don’t think it would feel real even if I was actually here. This memory is only from a few days ago, but I no longer feel like the same person that was in it.”
“That will change.” Hana fiddled with a pack of chips she had plucked from a shelf. “When all of this is over, your old life will feel like the only one you’ve ever lived.”
“Because I won’t remember you,” he said quietly.
Hana rested her head on his shoulder. “You said that you were okay with not remembering my world.”
“I was.”
“And now?” She closed her eyes.
“It’s…” He held her hand, weaving his fingers through hers as though it would keep her from slipping away. “Different.”
—
Keishin had lived all his life believing that time wasn’t something you could hold, but tonight it fit perfectly into the paper cup warming his hands. Fifteen minutes looked and smelled exactly like a steaming latte. At the end of this time, when he had sipped the last of his dark-roasted seconds, he was going to wake Hana, as she had requested, from the nap she was taking on his shoulder. She had said that they needed to be on their way before the sun was up, back to chasing clues. And being chased.
But for now Keishin’s cup was full, and he had time to watch Hana sleep. He brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. Hana slept surprisingly peacefully for someone sitting on a convenience store’s questionably clean floor. Keishin felt calm too, partly because it felt good not to have to constantly look over his shoulder, but mostly because he had finally found an answer to a question that involved a broken elevator, a pregnant woman, and a battered box of free old books.