Part 1: Kozue
3
Both in Japan and America, I could make more money and faster by finding lone children and searching for their parents than by getting asked by parents to search for their children. I don’t know what’s separating them, but there are a lot of parents searching for their children. Not like all of them are involved in some crime; there’s simply a lot who don’t know where their children are and are willing to pay a large sum to anyone capable of getting them in touch. I sat on a bench near the fountain of South Chofu Station, waited there, found a bicycle with a number registered in the crime prevention service of Saitama Prefecture’s Saitama City, and observed the kid with wornout jeans and a disheveled T-shirt riding it. I was used to Japanese people so I could tell he wasn’t a grade-schooler, but a middle-schooler. Maybe even a high-schooler at most, but that was unlikely, in my opinion. I took a picture of him with my digital camera, got closer, and listened in on a conversation he was having with his friends. That group had a few people seemingly under the orders of the others; I confirmed that the lower-hierarchy group talked about having to go collect the money they made by stealing, prostitution, illegal sumo wrestling, and other stuff while laughing. The kid I was marking was called Hoshino. I’d say he was the Number 3 of that six-person group. Staring at Hoshino’s bicycle, I could discern ‘Saitama Prefecture, Saitama City, Murakami, 4-5-24, Hoshino Masato’ written on the front wheel’s tire with a silver pen, which was a letdown...I mean, a surprise. His personal information was written in plain sight. Do virtuous people deliver forgotten bicycles to their owners in Japan? Heeh, nice to know. I got away from the fountain plaza and these six, headed to the Chofu library hall situated in the fivestory-tall city hall, and looked up Hoshino Masato’s phone number in a telephone book there. It was registered as Hoshino Keisuke. I returned to the plaza. Those six were still there. The Number 4 boy was sitting on a bench with the Number 6 boy made to sit on his knees in front of him. On this noon of a weekday, in front of a station, many took notice of this traditional Japanese dogeza, but I was surely the only one who noticed the true hierarchical nature of what was happening there. I stood up from my bench and approached the six. I was pondering over what the best way to take Hoshino into custody from this group could be. Either help Number 4, aim for Number 2, persuade Number 1, take Hoshino with me and run, or beat all six of them to a pulp right there. I got fed up at every one of these choices, so I just approached the kids straight on, passed slowly right through the six who were tense at the idea of coming in contact with me, and, all while impregnating my senses with the smell of the toxic familial violence happening there, I put a foot on the bench next to where Number 2 was sitting, with constant eye contact with the closely-shaved-head Number 1, stepped over it, headed towards the hedge behind it, passed through the branches which made them shake, came out on the other side, flew over a bunch of bicycles parked there to finally land on the pathway in front of the bank. I could hear the bluffing laughter of the relieved kids.
I arrived back at Villa Hapira Kojimacho after buying the groceries for lunch and dinner; Kozue, who was watching anime, rushed up to me. “Disco~!” “Hi Kozue.” “Babuu! Chaan!” she exclaimed as she jumped towards me, so I caught her in the air with a hug. Then, I finally realized that Kozue imitated Ikura-chan because his only lines were ‘babuu’ ‘chaan’ and ‘haai,’ the last one being reminiscent of my ‘hi.’ Then ‘babuu’ and ‘chaan’ might have similar reasoning.
Having finished eating the roasted pork seasoned with shishito pepper, Kozue was about to immediately go back to playing by herself, when I told her, “Kozue, let’s take a nap.” “Eeh?” she laughed it off. “I’m not sleepy.” “If you lie down you’ll soon be.” “Cat pretending?” “Yeah. Eat. Nap. Play. Eat. Nap. Play.” “In a play?” “Oh.” “Where do I sleep? My room?” “Wherever you want.” “The garden!” “It’s hot, you know.” “Garden~.” I pulled the living room’s couch through the patio door up to the rear garden and laid it in the shadow of a ginkgo tree. It should stay in the shadow for some time, but soon the sun would shine its light on it and then we’d have to stay patient until we get the next ginkgo tree’s shadow. I also set up an electrical fan and plugged it using an extension cord. Finally, I sprayed insecticide on our limbs before lying down alongside Kozue with a hand towel on each of our faces. Seeing that, Kozue became even more in high spirits now that she was blindfolded. I patted her head and fell asleep before her, while sweating a little. The grass diffused the voices of the cicadas, making me feel like I was sleeping on top of a rug composed of a million bells. Shawawawawawanwanwanwaaaaaaah.
When I woke up and removed the towel from my eyes, I saw Kozue still sleeping with her head resting on my shoulders, so I put her towel that had fallen on my chest back onto her face. That movement made Kozue half-open her eyes, but they soon closed again. I, too, was still half-asleep and my mind was dizzy, but I was now convinced: there was only one Kozue inside Kozue. There was no way she’d have a multiple identity disorder. And the big Kozue I had only met for a few seconds yet was Kozue all the same. I didn’t know what’d caused this to happen, but Kozue was greatly shaken, as if the shockwave of the fireworks we saw four days ago got transmitted through the air and shook Kozue. I’d witnessed it happening four times since the fireworks. It still hadn’t occurred today. Maybe because some time has passed since the fireworks, the tempest inside Kozue has started to die down.
After that, I took another nap, then got woken up by Kozue scratching her legs. She put a leg on my stomach, her eyes still closed, and scratched her ankle with her fingernails. “Did a bug sting you?” “Bite me.” “Then let’s go back inside.” “I’m sleepy~.” “I gotta prepare dinner.” The sun had come down; the clouds right above us were still white, but, closer to the horizon, they turned into a gradient of orange to bright red. The cicadas had calmed down, too. “What do you want to eat, Kozue?” “Hot spring egg.” “With?” “I’ll take you on, damn bite! Graah!” Kozue kicked the back of the couch then bent her knees and went scratch scratch scratch scratch on her ankles... “Kozue, let’s go inside. I’ll put some medicine on it.” “No need. I will ask God.” “Just suck up the stinging.” “What time is it now?” “Already evening.” “The time?” “About half-past six.” “On the news, you see, a UFO came down and Paris and Greece and stuff went booom and broke, you know.” “Really.”
I thought that might have been mystical precognition or a sort of sixth sense kids might have, so I turned on the TV to see if anything had fallen in Europe, but obviously there was no such news. It was probably just something Kozue had cooked up to distract me and avoid getting the Kinkan spray.[1] Of course, I used the Kinkan regardless, which caused Kozue to once again let out a supersonic ‘Kyaa,’ making me flinch; she didn’t miss that opening and used it to run full speed to the bathroom and wash down the Kinkan with water. I closed the Kinkan, brought the couch back to the living room, picked up the crayons scattered on the ground, looked at the weird animals Kozue had drawn inside her sketchbook, and found an adult’s writing mixed among those.
(NT: The name of a medicine sold in Japan useful to ease up bite scratches.)
“Disco Wednesdayyy. What a weird name. I’m the seventeen-year-old Kozue. Is this the past? I’m so confused. I’m investigating various things. I found Disco, but nothing else fo-”
This was written in red, what comes after switches to green.
“-r now. Hold on, this is three days later for me. But here, it’s the same day. Doesn’t it feel like only a few hours have passed? I’ll write all sorts of stuff down. It’s kinda sad that this’ll end as I’m writing this. DISCO-san, please write whatever you want me to read here. Then, see you soon! -Kozue”
After that, dates of eleven years in the future were written. July 20th and July 23rd. Here, it was the 13th of July, so it was apparently a time loop of almost eleven whole years.
I took the blue crayon and thought. For starters:
“Yo, I’m Disco Wednesdayyy. I got a weird name.”
After writing that, I realized it wasn’t the time to be talking about worthless stuff. The future Kozue could only stay here for a short moment. I had to convey as much information as possible as succinctly as possible. I ripped and threw away the drawing paper on which I’d started writing, thought a bit, went to the kitchen and picked a silver-colored fork and knife decorated with pink cherry blossom petals among my Uno Chiyo dining set, wrapped them in plastic wrap, went to bury them near the roots of the ginkgo in the garden, went back once to fetch a knife from the kitchen, and when I had engraved up to the ‘DISC’ of ‘DISCO’ on the ginkgo’s trunk in big letters,
“Disco-san.”
I heard a voice. I turned back to see the six-year-old Kozue’s dress worn like a T-shirt, with a bath towel around her hips; it was the big Kozue, smiling. She was looking at the ‘DISC’ engraved on the ginkgo tree, then said: “I checked that. The silver-colored knife and fork with pink cherry blossom petals. After looking at your letters, I immediately headed to Chofu. This ginkgo was still there. Have you already buried them?” “I have. But I still haven’t written any letter.” Was I going to write the letters she had already read, now? “I probably read most of your letters. I have them in my closet at home. I had a letter my future self wrote in the past for me inside my album, and this year...I’m talking about this year for me, by the way; I was told to not open it until June 31st this year, and although I did wonder what the deal with it was for a while, I had forgotten. But with what happened recently, I went to look for it yesterday, read it, and it mentioned the letters inside the closet so...I read them all. It was written that it might be better to not read them but... Disco-san, this world’s even—”
Having said that much, shushushushu, Kozue shrank. The bath towel fell to the ground, leaving a six-year-old Kozue standing with her mouth gaping wide. “Pineapple Tunnel,” she muttered before screaming “Kyaa!” with both arms raised above her head to stretch, then made a barefoot dash through the garden up to me. “Disco!” She grabbed onto my legs so I held her from the back and lifted her upside down, making her laugh greatly. I then flipped her and put her on my shoulder. “Once more!” “Nope.” “Once more!” “Kozue, what’s Pineapple Tunnel?” “Eh?” Up till then, Kozue was frolicking on my shoulders, paddling her legs in the air, but she stopped when I said that and wrapped her whole body around my head. “You see, in the dark, you see, there was a yellow hole, you see, it was so smooth and warm.” “Did you see that just now?” “Yes.” “Did it look like a pineapple?” “Eh?” “Was it like a pineapple?” “Yes. Very sour.” “You licked it?” “Yes. Very hard.” “Did ya bite it too?” “Did ya beat it too~!?” “Don’t try to eat everything you see.” “Ehh?” “Don’t eat strange stuff.” “But it was yummy...” “Still a no~.” “I lied. It was not yummy. I go inside the pineapple hole, okay?” “Don’t do it, Kozue.” “Ehh?” “Don’t ‘ehh’ me,” having said that, I took Kozue off my shoulders down to around my chest’s height, looked her in the eyes, and repeated myself: “Don’t go in the pineapple hole, Kozue. Got it?” “Got it.” “Swear it.” “I swear~.” “And not just the pineapple, don’t go into strange holes, Kozue.
Ever.” “Are there monsters?”
I wondered. There probably weren’t. But I felt like the one going inside the hole would become a monster themselves. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell Kozue about this half-assed twisted fiction of mine.
“In the hole, there is Lord Whiplash.” “Bored Carwash?” “Nah. Unlabeled danceable.” “Untabled chance label.” “Duwa~.” “Juwa~.” “Haha. Kozue, even if there’s no monster inside the Pineapple Tunnel, you still can’t go in there. If I say no, it’s a no. Can you follow my directions, Kozue?” “I can. Juuwaah! Pyooh!”
In the moment, I thought of using this made-up character I invented on the spot, Lord Whiplash, ruthlessly whipping the kids he captures, to keep Kozue away from that incomprehensible abyss, but on second thought, I stopped. I didn’t want to scare Kozue meaninglessly. With the same logic as the one opposed to fishing with bait, I didn’t want to use an electric shock to keep her away from the fence.
I stepped inside, still carrying Kozue, picked up the bath towel, and brought Kozue back to the bathroom to wash her dirty soles. She greatly enjoyed flapping her feet in the running cold water. How likely was it for that Pineapple Tunnel to be the rumored light leading to the world beyond death that people with near-death experiences frequently witness? I pondered for some time, but discarded that idea. Why did I think of near-death in the first place? The first thing that should come to mind here was the spacetime tunnel that Kozue was going back and forth through. When the future Kozue comes and steals the body of the small Kozue, she gets driven away; that could be the yellow-ish tunnel.
But...a soul being driven away by another soul still leads to the world beyond, doesn’t it? When the future Kozue came, was the six-year-old Kozue on the brink of death?
This question revealed a paradox. If Kozue were to die here, the future one wouldn’t exist, so the future Kozue wouldn’t have come from then to now, and the small Kozue wouldn’t have died in the Pineapple Tunnel.
Anyway, if Kozue was standing near a door of light while on the brink of death but unable to fully die, my duty was to get her away from that dangerous place. I had to seal away the path the future Kozue was using.
The letters. The future Kozue said ‘all the letters.’ For the moment, I only had the unfinished draft of one, but apparently there was gonna be many more in the future. I was sure Kozue and I would write them. Kozue was going to keep coming here. The small Kozue would once again go near the Pineapple Tunnel. Was there anything I could do? I was currently holding Kozue’s hand—that was for sure—but as I was doing that, would the small Kozue let go of mine, leaving me to find myself holding the big Kozue’s hand? If the fireworks did shake Kozue, then I should hold her tight to calm the vibrations. But my hands were weak and my arms frail and small; I couldn’t hold her down.
4
As we were eating roasted, locally-raised chicken with a hot spring egg and an arugula salad, I recalled the Uno Chiyo knife and fork decorated with cherry blossom petals. The future Kozue’d said she had received them, but what would happen if I took them out of there? What would happen if I left the unfinished engraving as ‘DISC’? Also, right, what would happen if I didn’t tell her about the knife and fork buried under the ginkgo?
This was a great experiment that would shake everything to its core, truly. I had the power to decide over the survival of this timeline. I could change the future. If I didn’t write any letter, unburied the knife and fork from the soil, cleaned them and put them away, and left the writing on the ginkgo as is, as time passed, a paradox would emerge. We would diverge from the future where Kozue received the knife and fork, and the small Kozue and I would eventually arrive in another future. Was that fine by me? It was. The seventeen-year-old Kozue was cute, but I’d get to meet her again in eleven years...wait, I wouldn’t?
The future Kozue didn’t know who I was. She investigated me because she didn’t. I wouldn’t be at Kozue’s side in eleven years. Having realized that, I put my chopsticks down. I was in shock. I rounded my back, making myself look smaller, as if melting away, while letting out groans of pain. What was gonna happen to me? Wait, I was just going back to America, wasn’t I? Leaving Kozue in someone’s care. My visa expires, I go back, and never return.
I bet the Kozue who had read the letters knew much more about the future than I did. I wondered how she was feeling. Would unburying the knife and fork and not writing any further than ‘DISC’ save both Kozue, me, and the other Kozue?
I sent Kozue to take a bath, put away the tableware, went to take a bath myself after putting Kozue to sleep, then went to Kozue’s room after getting out of the bath, and found her sketchbook left open. Ring. You got mail.
“This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny and wills, they say. Did you know?”
That was written in big, red letters. What came after switched to a lead pencil.
“I was about to say that last time but came back before I could. This time it’s four days later. The interval is growing larger and larger. But the time I can spend here is getting longer, too. Is it because my body is getting used to the timeslip? Don’t worry about the future. Everything will fall in order thanks to destiny and wills. Oh, I’m still here. I was searching for you earlier, Disco-san, but you were in the bath. Here, my bath is fully regulated with electronics and I can change the temperature by will at any time. I can dry out the room, and the place where I clean my body comes with a heater. ← extremely useless information. More like, wasn’t this kind of technology kinda common in your era too? Wait, no no, that’s not what I was going for; I meant to write about how amazing this is. Another ultra crazy part is how everything I’m writing here ends up being the same as what I read in the letters. Mega scary! But it feels like my memory gets rewritten as I write to end up being the same as what I say here. Am I imagining it? Am I doubting too much? Now, here’s the home stretch. Next time, my two-weeks-into-the-future self will continue this letter, okay? How confusing. My head is fuming from how much I have to think about! So I haven’t been to school recently. It’s not an excuse. Though I guess it’s kinda meaningless to justify myself to the past Disco-san, huh. Kyaah… Huh? I can still write. Crap, what does this mean? I have no memory of what I’ve been writing here. Shit, shit. I gotta stop screwing around or the future might change. I’ll need to check the letters when I go back. And here I thought I had them perfectly memorized after reading them so many times. Anything can be dangerous. I need to think about things more thoroughly. Here ends the rope crossing. Still, I was trying to imitate the contents of the letters at first. I’ve no idea what’s happening anymore. I gott—”
Having read everything written, I looked at the small Kozue sleeping straight in the dim room. The afternoon nap had no effect, she was sleeping as profoundly as ever without a movement in her sleep.
After having thought that, I picked up the lead pencil which rolled a little away from the sketchbook, most likely the one Kozue used, and wrote my reply to her letter.
“To the Kozue two weeks from now. You wrote that earlier part with a lead pencil, so can’t I just erase the useless parts? If you tell me about the contents of the letters, I can replicate them to be identical to that. I’m a detective; copying handwriting is my forte. If needed, I can prepare another sketchbook or notebook and have conversations there that you won’t have read.” Having written that much, I realized.
“Oh, maybe what you wrote earlier ended up being the exact same thing that you read? Your writing made it feel like you were flustered, but didn’t you in fact copy everything with a calm mind? Didn’t you, in reality, not write anything superfluous?”
I halted the letter there for the moment and started thinking as I went to put my room in order, dried my hair, brushed my teeth, picked up my copy of Tim O’brien’s The Nuclear Age, went back to Kozue’s room, sat on the sofa set, and continued my reading under the light of the floor lamp. In chapter six, the cheerleader began growing into a terrorist, reminding me of when Norma Braun slapped Dana ‘Chanel Chanel’ Strummers’ cheek in the hallway back in high school. At half-past ten in the night, Kozue came to Kozue.
“Woah! It’s happening! What the hell, it hasn’t been two weeks!” Seeing the Kozue with tight clothes saying that, I thought about how the small Kozue must have been pushed away again. The Pineapple Tunnel. I wonder, would she keep her promise of not entering that strange hole? “Hahaha. I see, so I won’t necessarily be writing a letter every time.” I found the laughing big Kozue a little unsympathetic. Maybe it wasn’t the fireworks, maybe something had happened to the future Kozue causing her to travel to the past. Maybe she did something to end up in this period, and we were unrelated to it. “Discosan? Is there anything bothering you?” “You’re coming here from eleven years in the future, right?” “Yes.” “And how?” “Eh? I don’t know.” “Did you do anything unusual on your side, in the future where you come from?” “Not really...I just lead my life like a normal person.” “Nothing comes to mind, really?” “No, nothing.” “I see. Do you know what the Pineapple Tunnel is?” “Eh?” “The Pineapple Tunnel.” “What is that?” “I don’t really know either. Then, let me see...just checking, do you really have the sketchbook letters?” “I do. Ah, right. The letters...” Kozue got off the bed with her panties completely showing, opened the sketchbook, read what I had written, then repeated herself. “I do have the letters.”
But she couldn’t confirm whether these were exactly the same object.
“You can’t bring anything from the future, after all.” “Looks like it. Thanks to that, I’m braless now.” “You haven’t had a pacemaker installed on you?” “What? Is that a question? Is a pacemaker the thing for the heart? I don’t have one. I’m in good health.” “Isn’t your memory situated in your future self’s brain? Then how is it that you bring them to this brain?” “Don’t they just come along with me? Not like I know how it works. Humans are such a mystery, aren’t they?” “Is that even possible for humans?” “I’m a human, too, you know. Are you suspecting me or something?” “I’m pondering over whether I should suspect you.” “Bwah, so honest. But at least I get to talk to you, so it’s fun. Then...I agree with you, Disco-san.” “On what?” “I remember the contents of the original letters, so we can copy them here and, if we ever miss each other, we can write on another note. Can I write my own part?” “Sure.” “...” After that, Kozue silently looked up at the ceiling vaguely lit by the floor lamp, then said, after letting out a little laugh, “How free. It’s wonderful. People’s futures guarantee their freedom.” Hearing that, I noted that Kozue had grown into a girl skillful at summarizing things that way. She was clever. Got things done. And most importantly, she was very perceptive. “You know, I was persuaded that everything I wrote in that book was predefined and I couldn’t escape from it. I got crazy stressed about how hard it would be to not disrupt them. I lost my head over it. But you removed what had been weighing on me in no time. I was like ‘woooow! He’s so smart. I see. The writings only need to match.’”
But you can’t control other people’s memories.
“Do you remember me?” “I don’t~. Sorry,” she said, nonchalantly. “The thing is, I don’t remember anything about when I was around six. Though I do have fragments of memories.” “What about when you were seven?” “Not much either. I’m joining the Saint Richard Kindergarten in the winter of when
I’m six, you see.” “Saint Richard? Where’s that?” “In Suitengu.” “Pretty far. That’s on the other side of Tokyo.” “Exactly. And I’m becoming Inoue Kozue then.” “Inoue? Who?” “Eh? My mom and dad? Inoue Shingo and Hiromi.” “Heeh, never heard of them. I’ll check their backgrounds another time, then. When did you get adopted?” “I was their kid before I knew it. My name was already Inoue when I entered Saint Richard Kindergarten, you see.” “And I wasn’t there by the time you started attending that kindergarten?” “Yeah, probably.” “Probably.” “Probably. I don’t remember much, but...” “I wonder what causes you to go to the Inoues.” “That’s something from the future, so it’s better if I don’t tell you, no? It feels like just talking about that would change a lot of things.” “Got it.” “Well, you’ll know soon enough. Probably.” “Probably, probably, probably. Let’s set the future aside for now. So I’m going to be separated from you no matter what.” “Yeah, I wonder how I’ll go back. I mean, I’ll go back and that’ll be it at some point, right?” “No no, I was talking about the small you. I wonder why I’ll get separated from the small
Kozue.” “I don’t know about that, genuinely.” “I see.”
Kozue then said, as if trying to cheer me up because I went silent, “Hehehe. But I find it reeeeal sketchy. Don’t you think so too? I guess only I know. You don’t know what I’m talking about, huh? According to the letters in the sketchbook, you see, you and I are going to become quiiite close, you know?
Eheheh.”
I was startled. That was too freaky, I thought at the moment.
“I’m telling the truth, you know?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’ll get it once we finish copying the letters anyway. Ah! But the letters are pretty long... Oh, right, the time I’ll get to spend in this world will apparently get longer and longer.”
“...You wrote that in your letter, yeah.”
“Then, the small me and the current me will get more and more half-andhalf, then I’ll be the one who stays longer, and eventually it’ll be mostly me. I’m talking about the current me by the way. The seventeen-year-old, big me.”
“...”
“So of course both of us are panicking. Because, in other words, if the small Kozue disappears, then this me will also disappear. ’Cause that’s a paradox. But I properly lived these last eleven years. So something will happen and I won’t be coming here anymore. And, since you and I are pretty much in love, we’ll both be sad about getting separated.”
“And you don’t know what’ll happen that will make you not go back again, right?”
“Ehh? No idea. The letters seem to cut right before something happened. But since I exist eleven years in the future, I’m guessing the small me won’t disappear in the end.”
I’d thought that too.
“So we’re gonna have a tragic love, you and I.” Heh, I laughed.
“Laugh at me while you still can.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Yeah sure, yeah sure, you’re so...aaaah!”
“That’s just what happens inside the letters we’re about to write, no?”
“Yes, but why...”
“Then...well, I guess it might have truly happened the first time they were written.”
“Things that happen once, viewed another way, are things that are liable to happen. With a pretty high probability.”
“...If life is like a straight road you can only take once, I wonder how a tragic love that’s only meant to be copied came into existence. Maybe it’s completely made up.”
“Hey! Romance isn’t something made up. At the very least, ours isn’t.”
“Ours... It doesn’t exist yet, you know.”
“Well, true.”
Maybe these letters truly existed in her world and Kozue read them carefully multiple times. Maybe she got infatuated with me then. That might be why she was irritated at my theory of it being made up.
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s better to not know anything rather than knowing what’ll happen. If that romance will have a bad end then isn’t it better for it not to exist?”
“People keep pets even though they know they’ll get sad when they die before them,” Kozue argued. “But we can stop talking about that for now. I’m the type who doesn’t need pets, too.”
We both went silent after that. Now in a worse mood, Kozue said “Ugh, it’s kinda awkward” before standing up, pulling the towel blanket off Kozue’s bed, and wearing it like a manteau to hide her kiddy panties. She then left the room and descended the stairs with quick steps. I thought about Norma Braun. At the cafeteria, my friends and I called Norma and her friends the ‘Astronomy Club’ and laughed at them, but they weren’t carrying thick books about constellations talking about the black hole in the center of the Ursa Major, white dwarves, or Planet X—or whatever it was called. I’m not even sure you could call them typical otaku. They were just edge puzzle pieces without a pattern. Like all blue, all black, or all yellow; a piece with nothing but that. We had no idea where they went. I wasn’t a top-star QB either, but even then, I was still somewhere on the map. I find this kind of stuff to be too high schoollike, but I was really engrossed with Norma Braun, so I always end up blaming the mood we were trapped in at the time. That’s so childish. I should’ve worked at a bank or something. But my name is Disco...
I got up from the sofa, left Kozue’s bedroom, and descended the stairs, heading for the living room. The patio door hidden by the curtains was open, the wind making them flutter. Kozue was standing on the other side, around the roots of the ginkgo in the garden. She was staring at the unfinished ‘DISC’ with a knife in her hand. “Kozue,” I called out to her, to which she answered with her eyes still set on the ginkgo, “I wonder what will happen if we make this say DISCOVER. We can’t just replace the ginkgo, can we?” Kozue was thinking about the same things as I did. “Why not try it?” “...” “I don’t think you’ll be able to. Even if you really try.” “...Is it possible to leave it as DISC?” “Dunno. Should be fine to leave it for a while, no?” “I wonder, will I disappear if a paradox occurs?” “I think it’d be pretty hard to make one. There must be a way. You can always think of some way to make things coherent.” “But I’m scared.” “...Maybe I, too, am an existence as borderline as you, you know? I simply don’t know about it.” “There’s a big difference between knowing and not knowing. Because it’s a matter of being scared or not.” “I guess so. Well, don’t mind it too much.” “...You’re talking like you’re not part of it, Discosan. ...Do you know about Hoshino Masato?”
“Yeah.” Saitama Prefecture, Saitama City, Murakami, 4-5-24. “You’ll get beaten half to death by him, Disco-san. Pretty shortly.” “...” Eh?
“Now you get what’s scary about knowing the future? Well, I guess you don’t yet. It’s not something you can understand immediately after hearing it. But it’ll slowly come to you. The more you think about it, the more scared you’ll be.” “...” “Try thinking it through once.” “The things written in that sketchbook are nothing but empty sentences meant to be copied.” “Who knows. We’ll see. Even then, I still don’t want to go near room 202.” “Which room 202? Of the villa?” “...Once it starts being about you, you want to confirm the details, huh, Disco-san. You just can’t be like ‘Ahaha everything will turn out fine,’ can you? I don’t mind leaving the ginkgo as DISC. Let’s not touch it until the last moment.” “...Kozue-chan.” “Am I still not going back? It’s so long. I guess not yet, huh. Can I watch the TV? I’ve investigated the incidents around here a bit. I might even accomplish world domination now. I could save many people’s lives and become a hero.” “...” “...Ah, but if the future changes, I’ll disappear, and if I disappear it won’t change, and if it hasn’t changed then I won’t have disappeared, so maybe I’m the paradox itself...no? Jeez, so confusing. Should I write a letter to my small self for now? Saying stuff like ‘this kind of stuff will happen in the future. Here is how you can make a bunch of money without changing the future.’ Ah, or writing her the winning lottery numbers. Haha. It must be a pain to search for them, but it’s easy work for 2-3 hundred million. But I have no memory of receiving such a letter, nor of winning the lottery... What if the fact of bringing my memory from the future in itself will create a paradox? What if I disappear as I’m saying these dumb things? If I disappear and the paradox goes away, I will be resuscitated, and if I’m resuscitated, there’ll be a paradox causing me to disappear, then resuscitate, repeating these disappearances and resurrections; isn’t it like my life is flickering?” “...” “I guess you don’t care. Discosan. Am I a bother? If so, say it.” “That’s not the case at all.” “I don’t have friends at school, after all. Well, not many. There’s a girl I’ve been friends with for a long time, but that’s still on the low side.” “Friends aren’t a matter of numbers.” “You can have some expectations for Norma Braun, Disco-san.” “Eh?” “Aah, this feeling of omnipotence again. Haha, crap. You know, I was in the middle of watching a drama at home. And this much time passed over here... Where is the small Kozue?” “At the Pineapple Tunnel.” “Ah, the thing you mentioned earlier. What even is that?” “I don’t know.” “I don’t know what that is but you’re better off not going near weird tunnels.” “Exactly. Wait, it’s about you-” “Lord Whiplash.” “Eh?” “Huh? What was that? It came out on its own. Haha.” “I was the one who said that.” “To me?” “Yes.” “The kid version of me?” “Yeah.” “Eh, no way. Seriously? Come on, I’m mega scared of Lord Whiplash. So that was your fault. Jeez, don’t teach this weird stuff to kids. That character was recurrent in my nightmares. He wielded his whip like whu-psh! and chased me around, you realize? I hid along with other kids in my elementary school’s hallway, the gymnasium, the grounds, my house, the mountains, all sorts of places, but he suddenly captured any kid that came out and went whu-psh! on their backs. Mercilessly.” “I came up with that today, you know? The Lord Whiplash thing. During the Pineapple Tunnel talk.” “Today? Really? Wow. And I remember. Heeh.” “What’s learned in the cradle lasts to the tomb.” “I mean, Disco-san, did you really not repeat that many times? How likely am I to have remembered something you only said once?” “I haven’t said it more than once.” “Yet, right?” “Yeah. True. I feel like Kozue didn’t really listen to the Lord Whiplash thing today, to begin with.” “So, Disco-san, that means you’re going to tell me that scary story again and again. You sadist.” “I won’t.” “But if you don’t, there’ll be a paradox, you know?” “...” “Fufu, there’s some pressure resting on your shoulders as well, then.” “...What was that thing about Hoshino Masato earlier?” “What day are we on today?” “13th of July.” “Then you’re still fine. Probably.” “...” “Aah, I’m only giving vague hints. I’m starting to get drunk with power. That’s no good.” “Tell me about Hoshino Masato and Norma Braun.” “Wouldn’t it be worse if I told you?” “...” “I found it pretty harsh just reading the letters. Curiosity is such an evil thing. I don’t know how you manage to be a detective.” “I’m not doing it out of curiosity.” “Hmm. So you’re doing it because you can?” “Beats me.” “Actually, isn’t it because you’re Disco Wednesdayyy? Since you have a weird name. People with weird names are destined to either be actors, detectives, or authors.” “Perhaps.” “I’m telling you. Norma Brauuuu-”
Kozue shrank before she could mouth the ‘aun,’ returning to whence she came. What happened to the future Kozue’s body while she was absent? Did her soul (?) only leave for an instant? If we assume there is a certain blank period, what did Kozue look like during that? It’s not a big deal if she was sitting at a desk at school, but if it happened when she was running a marathon or talking to a friend, did she simply lose consciousness and collapse on the ground? Wasn’t that dangerous? “Kozue.” “Disco~.” “Did you see the Pineapple Tunnel again?” “I saw it~,” she said nonchalantly, but her face suddenly turned into a grimace as she started crying. Wahhh. “Di~sco~.” Wihhh. I lifted her up. “Was it scary?” Kozue nodded in tears to my question. As I patted her head, I said “Don’t enter it, okay?” “Please, no more~,” she continued crying; was there anything I could do? I embraced Kozue. If I could stop her shaking, I would readily do it. I want to keep the Kozue who cries and says “I don’t want to go!” here with me. The big Kozue’d said her time over here would increase. That meant Kozue would spend more time inside the Pineapple Tunnel. Just thinking about Kozue being in pure darkness near the sour and hard Pineapple Tunnel all alone made me so worried I felt like pissing myself.
“Disco Wednesdayyy. What a weird name. I’m the seventeen-year-old Kozue. Is this the past? I’m so confused. I’m investigating various things. I found Disco, but nothing else fo-”
This was written in red, what comes after switches to green.
“-r now. Hold on, this is three days later for me. But here, it’s the same day. Doesn’t it feel like only a few hours have passed? I’ll write all sorts of stuff down. It’s kinda sad that this’ll end as I’m writing this. DISCO-san, please write whatever you want me to read here. Then, see you soon! -Kozue”
After that, dates of eleven years in the future were written. July 20th and July 23rd. Here, it was the 13th of July, so it was apparently a time loop of almost eleven whole years.
I took the blue crayon and thought. For starters:
“Yo, I’m Disco Wednesdayyy. I got a weird name.”
After writing that, I realized it wasn’t the time to be talking about worthless stuff. The future Kozue could only stay here for a short moment. I had to convey as much information as possible as succinctly as possible. I ripped and threw away the drawing paper on which I’d started writing, thought a bit, went to the kitchen and picked a silver-colored fork and knife decorated with pink cherry blossom petals among my Uno Chiyo dining set, wrapped them in plastic wrap, went to bury them near the roots of the ginkgo in the garden, went back once to fetch a knife from the kitchen, and when I had engraved up to the ‘DISC’ of ‘DISCO’ on the ginkgo’s trunk in big letters,
“Disco-san.”
I heard a voice. I turned back to see the six-year-old Kozue’s dress worn like a T-shirt, with a bath towel around her hips; it was the big Kozue, smiling. She was looking at the ‘DISC’ engraved on the ginkgo tree, then said: “I checked that. The silver-colored knife and fork with pink cherry blossom petals. After looking at your letters, I immediately headed to Chofu. This ginkgo was still there. Have you already buried them?” “I have. But I still haven’t written any letter.” Was I going to write the letters she had already read, now? “I probably read most of your letters. I have them in my closet at home. I had a letter my future self wrote in the past for me inside my album, and this year...I’m talking about this year for me, by the way; I was told to not open it until June 31st this year, and although I did wonder what the deal with it was for a while, I had forgotten. But with what happened recently, I went to look for it yesterday, read it, and it mentioned the letters inside the closet so...I read them all. It was written that it might be better to not read them but... Disco-san, this world’s even—”
Having said that much, shushushushu, Kozue shrank. The bath towel fell to the ground, leaving a six-year-old Kozue standing with her mouth gaping wide. “Pineapple Tunnel,” she muttered before screaming “Kyaa!” with both arms raised above her head to stretch, then made a barefoot dash through the garden up to me. “Disco!” She grabbed onto my legs so I held her from the back and lifted her upside down, making her laugh greatly. I then flipped her and put her on my shoulder. “Once more!” “Nope.” “Once more!” “Kozue, what’s Pineapple Tunnel?” “Eh?” Up till then, Kozue was frolicking on my shoulders, paddling her legs in the air, but she stopped when I said that and wrapped her whole body around my head. “You see, in the dark, you see, there was a yellow hole, you see, it was so smooth and warm.” “Did you see that just now?” “Yes.” “Did it look like a pineapple?” “Eh?” “Was it like a pineapple?” “Yes. Very sour.” “You licked it?” “Yes. Very hard.” “Did ya bite it too?” “Did ya beat it too~!?” “Don’t try to eat everything you see.” “Ehh?” “Don’t eat strange stuff.” “But it was yummy...” “Still a no~.” “I lied. It was not yummy. I go inside the pineapple hole, okay?” “Don’t do it, Kozue.” “Ehh?” “Don’t ‘ehh’ me,” having said that, I took Kozue off my shoulders down to around my chest’s height, looked her in the eyes, and repeated myself: “Don’t go in the pineapple hole, Kozue. Got it?” “Got it.” “Swear it.” “I swear~.” “And not just the pineapple, don’t go into strange holes, Kozue.
Ever.” “Are there monsters?”
I wondered. There probably weren’t. But I felt like the one going inside the hole would become a monster themselves. But it wouldn’t do any good to tell Kozue about this half-assed twisted fiction of mine.
“In the hole, there is Lord Whiplash.” “Bored Carwash?” “Nah. Unlabeled danceable.” “Untabled chance label.” “Duwa~.” “Juwa~.” “Haha. Kozue, even if there’s no monster inside the Pineapple Tunnel, you still can’t go in there. If I say no, it’s a no. Can you follow my directions, Kozue?” “I can. Juuwaah! Pyooh!”
In the moment, I thought of using this made-up character I invented on the spot, Lord Whiplash, ruthlessly whipping the kids he captures, to keep Kozue away from that incomprehensible abyss, but on second thought, I stopped. I didn’t want to scare Kozue meaninglessly. With the same logic as the one opposed to fishing with bait, I didn’t want to use an electric shock to keep her away from the fence.
I stepped inside, still carrying Kozue, picked up the bath towel, and brought Kozue back to the bathroom to wash her dirty soles. She greatly enjoyed flapping her feet in the running cold water. How likely was it for that Pineapple Tunnel to be the rumored light leading to the world beyond death that people with near-death experiences frequently witness? I pondered for some time, but discarded that idea. Why did I think of near-death in the first place? The first thing that should come to mind here was the spacetime tunnel that Kozue was going back and forth through. When the future Kozue comes and steals the body of the small Kozue, she gets driven away; that could be the yellow-ish tunnel.
But...a soul being driven away by another soul still leads to the world beyond, doesn’t it? When the future Kozue came, was the six-year-old Kozue on the brink of death?
This question revealed a paradox. If Kozue were to die here, the future one wouldn’t exist, so the future Kozue wouldn’t have come from then to now, and the small Kozue wouldn’t have died in the Pineapple Tunnel.
Anyway, if Kozue was standing near a door of light while on the brink of death but unable to fully die, my duty was to get her away from that dangerous place. I had to seal away the path the future Kozue was using.
The letters. The future Kozue said ‘all the letters.’ For the moment, I only had the unfinished draft of one, but apparently there was gonna be many more in the future. I was sure Kozue and I would write them. Kozue was going to keep coming here. The small Kozue would once again go near the Pineapple Tunnel. Was there anything I could do? I was currently holding Kozue’s hand—that was for sure—but as I was doing that, would the small Kozue let go of mine, leaving me to find myself holding the big Kozue’s hand? If the fireworks did shake Kozue, then I should hold her tight to calm the vibrations. But my hands were weak and my arms frail and small; I couldn’t hold her down.
4
As we were eating roasted, locally-raised chicken with a hot spring egg and an arugula salad, I recalled the Uno Chiyo knife and fork decorated with cherry blossom petals. The future Kozue’d said she had received them, but what would happen if I took them out of there? What would happen if I left the unfinished engraving as ‘DISC’? Also, right, what would happen if I didn’t tell her about the knife and fork buried under the ginkgo?
This was a great experiment that would shake everything to its core, truly. I had the power to decide over the survival of this timeline. I could change the future. If I didn’t write any letter, unburied the knife and fork from the soil, cleaned them and put them away, and left the writing on the ginkgo as is, as time passed, a paradox would emerge. We would diverge from the future where Kozue received the knife and fork, and the small Kozue and I would eventually arrive in another future. Was that fine by me? It was. The seventeen-year-old Kozue was cute, but I’d get to meet her again in eleven years...wait, I wouldn’t?
The future Kozue didn’t know who I was. She investigated me because she didn’t. I wouldn’t be at Kozue’s side in eleven years. Having realized that, I put my chopsticks down. I was in shock. I rounded my back, making myself look smaller, as if melting away, while letting out groans of pain. What was gonna happen to me? Wait, I was just going back to America, wasn’t I? Leaving Kozue in someone’s care. My visa expires, I go back, and never return.
I bet the Kozue who had read the letters knew much more about the future than I did. I wondered how she was feeling. Would unburying the knife and fork and not writing any further than ‘DISC’ save both Kozue, me, and the other Kozue?
I sent Kozue to take a bath, put away the tableware, went to take a bath myself after putting Kozue to sleep, then went to Kozue’s room after getting out of the bath, and found her sketchbook left open. Ring. You got mail.
“This world’s events are all decided by the interactions between destiny and wills, they say. Did you know?”
That was written in big, red letters. What came after switched to a lead pencil.
“I was about to say that last time but came back before I could. This time it’s four days later. The interval is growing larger and larger. But the time I can spend here is getting longer, too. Is it because my body is getting used to the timeslip? Don’t worry about the future. Everything will fall in order thanks to destiny and wills. Oh, I’m still here. I was searching for you earlier, Disco-san, but you were in the bath. Here, my bath is fully regulated with electronics and I can change the temperature by will at any time. I can dry out the room, and the place where I clean my body comes with a heater. ← extremely useless information. More like, wasn’t this kind of technology kinda common in your era too? Wait, no no, that’s not what I was going for; I meant to write about how amazing this is. Another ultra crazy part is how everything I’m writing here ends up being the same as what I read in the letters. Mega scary! But it feels like my memory gets rewritten as I write to end up being the same as what I say here. Am I imagining it? Am I doubting too much? Now, here’s the home stretch. Next time, my two-weeks-into-the-future self will continue this letter, okay? How confusing. My head is fuming from how much I have to think about! So I haven’t been to school recently. It’s not an excuse. Though I guess it’s kinda meaningless to justify myself to the past Disco-san, huh. Kyaah… Huh? I can still write. Crap, what does this mean? I have no memory of what I’ve been writing here. Shit, shit. I gotta stop screwing around or the future might change. I’ll need to check the letters when I go back. And here I thought I had them perfectly memorized after reading them so many times. Anything can be dangerous. I need to think about things more thoroughly. Here ends the rope crossing. Still, I was trying to imitate the contents of the letters at first. I’ve no idea what’s happening anymore. I gott—”
Having read everything written, I looked at the small Kozue sleeping straight in the dim room. The afternoon nap had no effect, she was sleeping as profoundly as ever without a movement in her sleep.
After having thought that, I picked up the lead pencil which rolled a little away from the sketchbook, most likely the one Kozue used, and wrote my reply to her letter.
“To the Kozue two weeks from now. You wrote that earlier part with a lead pencil, so can’t I just erase the useless parts? If you tell me about the contents of the letters, I can replicate them to be identical to that. I’m a detective; copying handwriting is my forte. If needed, I can prepare another sketchbook or notebook and have conversations there that you won’t have read.” Having written that much, I realized.
“Oh, maybe what you wrote earlier ended up being the exact same thing that you read? Your writing made it feel like you were flustered, but didn’t you in fact copy everything with a calm mind? Didn’t you, in reality, not write anything superfluous?”
I halted the letter there for the moment and started thinking as I went to put my room in order, dried my hair, brushed my teeth, picked up my copy of Tim O’brien’s The Nuclear Age, went back to Kozue’s room, sat on the sofa set, and continued my reading under the light of the floor lamp. In chapter six, the cheerleader began growing into a terrorist, reminding me of when Norma Braun slapped Dana ‘Chanel Chanel’ Strummers’ cheek in the hallway back in high school. At half-past ten in the night, Kozue came to Kozue.
“Woah! It’s happening! What the hell, it hasn’t been two weeks!” Seeing the Kozue with tight clothes saying that, I thought about how the small Kozue must have been pushed away again. The Pineapple Tunnel. I wonder, would she keep her promise of not entering that strange hole? “Hahaha. I see, so I won’t necessarily be writing a letter every time.” I found the laughing big Kozue a little unsympathetic. Maybe it wasn’t the fireworks, maybe something had happened to the future Kozue causing her to travel to the past. Maybe she did something to end up in this period, and we were unrelated to it. “Discosan? Is there anything bothering you?” “You’re coming here from eleven years in the future, right?” “Yes.” “And how?” “Eh? I don’t know.” “Did you do anything unusual on your side, in the future where you come from?” “Not really...I just lead my life like a normal person.” “Nothing comes to mind, really?” “No, nothing.” “I see. Do you know what the Pineapple Tunnel is?” “Eh?” “The Pineapple Tunnel.” “What is that?” “I don’t really know either. Then, let me see...just checking, do you really have the sketchbook letters?” “I do. Ah, right. The letters...” Kozue got off the bed with her panties completely showing, opened the sketchbook, read what I had written, then repeated herself. “I do have the letters.”
But she couldn’t confirm whether these were exactly the same object.
“You can’t bring anything from the future, after all.” “Looks like it. Thanks to that, I’m braless now.” “You haven’t had a pacemaker installed on you?” “What? Is that a question? Is a pacemaker the thing for the heart? I don’t have one. I’m in good health.” “Isn’t your memory situated in your future self’s brain? Then how is it that you bring them to this brain?” “Don’t they just come along with me? Not like I know how it works. Humans are such a mystery, aren’t they?” “Is that even possible for humans?” “I’m a human, too, you know. Are you suspecting me or something?” “I’m pondering over whether I should suspect you.” “Bwah, so honest. But at least I get to talk to you, so it’s fun. Then...I agree with you, Disco-san.” “On what?” “I remember the contents of the original letters, so we can copy them here and, if we ever miss each other, we can write on another note. Can I write my own part?” “Sure.” “...” After that, Kozue silently looked up at the ceiling vaguely lit by the floor lamp, then said, after letting out a little laugh, “How free. It’s wonderful. People’s futures guarantee their freedom.” Hearing that, I noted that Kozue had grown into a girl skillful at summarizing things that way. She was clever. Got things done. And most importantly, she was very perceptive. “You know, I was persuaded that everything I wrote in that book was predefined and I couldn’t escape from it. I got crazy stressed about how hard it would be to not disrupt them. I lost my head over it. But you removed what had been weighing on me in no time. I was like ‘woooow! He’s so smart. I see. The writings only need to match.’”
But you can’t control other people’s memories.
“Do you remember me?” “I don’t~. Sorry,” she said, nonchalantly. “The thing is, I don’t remember anything about when I was around six. Though I do have fragments of memories.” “What about when you were seven?” “Not much either. I’m joining the Saint Richard Kindergarten in the winter of when
I’m six, you see.” “Saint Richard? Where’s that?” “In Suitengu.” “Pretty far. That’s on the other side of Tokyo.” “Exactly. And I’m becoming Inoue Kozue then.” “Inoue? Who?” “Eh? My mom and dad? Inoue Shingo and Hiromi.” “Heeh, never heard of them. I’ll check their backgrounds another time, then. When did you get adopted?” “I was their kid before I knew it. My name was already Inoue when I entered Saint Richard Kindergarten, you see.” “And I wasn’t there by the time you started attending that kindergarten?” “Yeah, probably.” “Probably.” “Probably. I don’t remember much, but...” “I wonder what causes you to go to the Inoues.” “That’s something from the future, so it’s better if I don’t tell you, no? It feels like just talking about that would change a lot of things.” “Got it.” “Well, you’ll know soon enough. Probably.” “Probably, probably, probably. Let’s set the future aside for now. So I’m going to be separated from you no matter what.” “Yeah, I wonder how I’ll go back. I mean, I’ll go back and that’ll be it at some point, right?” “No no, I was talking about the small you. I wonder why I’ll get separated from the small
Kozue.” “I don’t know about that, genuinely.” “I see.”
Kozue then said, as if trying to cheer me up because I went silent, “Hehehe. But I find it reeeeal sketchy. Don’t you think so too? I guess only I know. You don’t know what I’m talking about, huh? According to the letters in the sketchbook, you see, you and I are going to become quiiite close, you know?
Eheheh.”
I was startled. That was too freaky, I thought at the moment.
“I’m telling the truth, you know?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’ll get it once we finish copying the letters anyway. Ah! But the letters are pretty long... Oh, right, the time I’ll get to spend in this world will apparently get longer and longer.”
“...You wrote that in your letter, yeah.”
“Then, the small me and the current me will get more and more half-andhalf, then I’ll be the one who stays longer, and eventually it’ll be mostly me. I’m talking about the current me by the way. The seventeen-year-old, big me.”
“...”
“So of course both of us are panicking. Because, in other words, if the small Kozue disappears, then this me will also disappear. ’Cause that’s a paradox. But I properly lived these last eleven years. So something will happen and I won’t be coming here anymore. And, since you and I are pretty much in love, we’ll both be sad about getting separated.”
“And you don’t know what’ll happen that will make you not go back again, right?”
“Ehh? No idea. The letters seem to cut right before something happened. But since I exist eleven years in the future, I’m guessing the small me won’t disappear in the end.”
I’d thought that too.
“So we’re gonna have a tragic love, you and I.” Heh, I laughed.
“Laugh at me while you still can.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Yeah sure, yeah sure, you’re so...aaaah!”
“That’s just what happens inside the letters we’re about to write, no?”
“Yes, but why...”
“Then...well, I guess it might have truly happened the first time they were written.”
“Things that happen once, viewed another way, are things that are liable to happen. With a pretty high probability.”
“...If life is like a straight road you can only take once, I wonder how a tragic love that’s only meant to be copied came into existence. Maybe it’s completely made up.”
“Hey! Romance isn’t something made up. At the very least, ours isn’t.”
“Ours... It doesn’t exist yet, you know.”
“Well, true.”
Maybe these letters truly existed in her world and Kozue read them carefully multiple times. Maybe she got infatuated with me then. That might be why she was irritated at my theory of it being made up.
“Anyway,” I said, “it’s better to not know anything rather than knowing what’ll happen. If that romance will have a bad end then isn’t it better for it not to exist?”
“People keep pets even though they know they’ll get sad when they die before them,” Kozue argued. “But we can stop talking about that for now. I’m the type who doesn’t need pets, too.”
We both went silent after that. Now in a worse mood, Kozue said “Ugh, it’s kinda awkward” before standing up, pulling the towel blanket off Kozue’s bed, and wearing it like a manteau to hide her kiddy panties. She then left the room and descended the stairs with quick steps. I thought about Norma Braun. At the cafeteria, my friends and I called Norma and her friends the ‘Astronomy Club’ and laughed at them, but they weren’t carrying thick books about constellations talking about the black hole in the center of the Ursa Major, white dwarves, or Planet X—or whatever it was called. I’m not even sure you could call them typical otaku. They were just edge puzzle pieces without a pattern. Like all blue, all black, or all yellow; a piece with nothing but that. We had no idea where they went. I wasn’t a top-star QB either, but even then, I was still somewhere on the map. I find this kind of stuff to be too high schoollike, but I was really engrossed with Norma Braun, so I always end up blaming the mood we were trapped in at the time. That’s so childish. I should’ve worked at a bank or something. But my name is Disco...
I got up from the sofa, left Kozue’s bedroom, and descended the stairs, heading for the living room. The patio door hidden by the curtains was open, the wind making them flutter. Kozue was standing on the other side, around the roots of the ginkgo in the garden. She was staring at the unfinished ‘DISC’ with a knife in her hand. “Kozue,” I called out to her, to which she answered with her eyes still set on the ginkgo, “I wonder what will happen if we make this say DISCOVER. We can’t just replace the ginkgo, can we?” Kozue was thinking about the same things as I did. “Why not try it?” “...” “I don’t think you’ll be able to. Even if you really try.” “...Is it possible to leave it as DISC?” “Dunno. Should be fine to leave it for a while, no?” “I wonder, will I disappear if a paradox occurs?” “I think it’d be pretty hard to make one. There must be a way. You can always think of some way to make things coherent.” “But I’m scared.” “...Maybe I, too, am an existence as borderline as you, you know? I simply don’t know about it.” “There’s a big difference between knowing and not knowing. Because it’s a matter of being scared or not.” “I guess so. Well, don’t mind it too much.” “...You’re talking like you’re not part of it, Discosan. ...Do you know about Hoshino Masato?”
“Yeah.” Saitama Prefecture, Saitama City, Murakami, 4-5-24. “You’ll get beaten half to death by him, Disco-san. Pretty shortly.” “...” Eh?
“Now you get what’s scary about knowing the future? Well, I guess you don’t yet. It’s not something you can understand immediately after hearing it. But it’ll slowly come to you. The more you think about it, the more scared you’ll be.” “...” “Try thinking it through once.” “The things written in that sketchbook are nothing but empty sentences meant to be copied.” “Who knows. We’ll see. Even then, I still don’t want to go near room 202.” “Which room 202? Of the villa?” “...Once it starts being about you, you want to confirm the details, huh, Disco-san. You just can’t be like ‘Ahaha everything will turn out fine,’ can you? I don’t mind leaving the ginkgo as DISC. Let’s not touch it until the last moment.” “...Kozue-chan.” “Am I still not going back? It’s so long. I guess not yet, huh. Can I watch the TV? I’ve investigated the incidents around here a bit. I might even accomplish world domination now. I could save many people’s lives and become a hero.” “...” “...Ah, but if the future changes, I’ll disappear, and if I disappear it won’t change, and if it hasn’t changed then I won’t have disappeared, so maybe I’m the paradox itself...no? Jeez, so confusing. Should I write a letter to my small self for now? Saying stuff like ‘this kind of stuff will happen in the future. Here is how you can make a bunch of money without changing the future.’ Ah, or writing her the winning lottery numbers. Haha. It must be a pain to search for them, but it’s easy work for 2-3 hundred million. But I have no memory of receiving such a letter, nor of winning the lottery... What if the fact of bringing my memory from the future in itself will create a paradox? What if I disappear as I’m saying these dumb things? If I disappear and the paradox goes away, I will be resuscitated, and if I’m resuscitated, there’ll be a paradox causing me to disappear, then resuscitate, repeating these disappearances and resurrections; isn’t it like my life is flickering?” “...” “I guess you don’t care. Discosan. Am I a bother? If so, say it.” “That’s not the case at all.” “I don’t have friends at school, after all. Well, not many. There’s a girl I’ve been friends with for a long time, but that’s still on the low side.” “Friends aren’t a matter of numbers.” “You can have some expectations for Norma Braun, Disco-san.” “Eh?” “Aah, this feeling of omnipotence again. Haha, crap. You know, I was in the middle of watching a drama at home. And this much time passed over here... Where is the small Kozue?” “At the Pineapple Tunnel.” “Ah, the thing you mentioned earlier. What even is that?” “I don’t know.” “I don’t know what that is but you’re better off not going near weird tunnels.” “Exactly. Wait, it’s about you-” “Lord Whiplash.” “Eh?” “Huh? What was that? It came out on its own. Haha.” “I was the one who said that.” “To me?” “Yes.” “The kid version of me?” “Yeah.” “Eh, no way. Seriously? Come on, I’m mega scared of Lord Whiplash. So that was your fault. Jeez, don’t teach this weird stuff to kids. That character was recurrent in my nightmares. He wielded his whip like whu-psh! and chased me around, you realize? I hid along with other kids in my elementary school’s hallway, the gymnasium, the grounds, my house, the mountains, all sorts of places, but he suddenly captured any kid that came out and went whu-psh! on their backs. Mercilessly.” “I came up with that today, you know? The Lord Whiplash thing. During the Pineapple Tunnel talk.” “Today? Really? Wow. And I remember. Heeh.” “What’s learned in the cradle lasts to the tomb.” “I mean, Disco-san, did you really not repeat that many times? How likely am I to have remembered something you only said once?” “I haven’t said it more than once.” “Yet, right?” “Yeah. True. I feel like Kozue didn’t really listen to the Lord Whiplash thing today, to begin with.” “So, Disco-san, that means you’re going to tell me that scary story again and again. You sadist.” “I won’t.” “But if you don’t, there’ll be a paradox, you know?” “...” “Fufu, there’s some pressure resting on your shoulders as well, then.” “...What was that thing about Hoshino Masato earlier?” “What day are we on today?” “13th of July.” “Then you’re still fine. Probably.” “...” “Aah, I’m only giving vague hints. I’m starting to get drunk with power. That’s no good.” “Tell me about Hoshino Masato and Norma Braun.” “Wouldn’t it be worse if I told you?” “...” “I found it pretty harsh just reading the letters. Curiosity is such an evil thing. I don’t know how you manage to be a detective.” “I’m not doing it out of curiosity.” “Hmm. So you’re doing it because you can?” “Beats me.” “Actually, isn’t it because you’re Disco Wednesdayyy? Since you have a weird name. People with weird names are destined to either be actors, detectives, or authors.” “Perhaps.” “I’m telling you. Norma Brauuuu-”
Kozue shrank before she could mouth the ‘aun,’ returning to whence she came. What happened to the future Kozue’s body while she was absent? Did her soul (?) only leave for an instant? If we assume there is a certain blank period, what did Kozue look like during that? It’s not a big deal if she was sitting at a desk at school, but if it happened when she was running a marathon or talking to a friend, did she simply lose consciousness and collapse on the ground? Wasn’t that dangerous? “Kozue.” “Disco~.” “Did you see the Pineapple Tunnel again?” “I saw it~,” she said nonchalantly, but her face suddenly turned into a grimace as she started crying. Wahhh. “Di~sco~.” Wihhh. I lifted her up. “Was it scary?” Kozue nodded in tears to my question. As I patted her head, I said “Don’t enter it, okay?” “Please, no more~,” she continued crying; was there anything I could do? I embraced Kozue. If I could stop her shaking, I would readily do it. I want to keep the Kozue who cries and says “I don’t want to go!” here with me. The big Kozue’d said her time over here would increase. That meant Kozue would spend more time inside the Pineapple Tunnel. Just thinking about Kozue being in pure darkness near the sour and hard Pineapple Tunnel all alone made me so worried I felt like pissing myself.
End page 29.
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