Strange Tales from Pokomaru-kun's Studio (4)

Time passed uneventfully until twilight.

There was an expectation on my part that the crowds would begin to disperse after sundown but, evidently, I was under some sort of misapprehension. The allure of night-time exclusive attractions such as a haunted house and fireworks kept the park running at full capacity – in the throng, Haruhi and I were separated from Takashi and the Shinsengumi.

Suddenly I realised that, with the exception of Haruhi, I had no means of communicating with the other members of our group. Actually, I wasn’t even sure if the Shinsengumi were even old enough to have mobile phones of their own.

“You should call Takashi and ask him where they are.”

“Marvellous idea, Watson. Unfortunately, my phone’s battery died a long time ago,” Haruhi replied, but made no effort to offer evidence of that claim.

“My phone has this cool feature where it can charge other peoples’ devices. You know, like a portable charger. Here, give me your phone,” I slid my hand into my pocket and took out my trusty smartphone.

She ignored me. “Let’s go on that next. The Eye of Pokomaru,” Haruhi was now pointing at something in the sky, and I craned my neck to look up at it.

A Ferris wheel.

Apparently, dragging me to places was the theme of the day; much like Sana had done earlier, Haruhi grabbed hold of my hand and led me into the queue. This was preferable to a stage show, I supposed, and we waited in silence as the people in front of us filled into the compartments.

When it was almost our turn, Haruhi grabbed my hand again; miraculously, I was able to hold my tongue and my surprise did not express itself in verbal form. Instead, I could feel both my ears burning. I looked at Haruhi, expecting some kind of witty quip, but she was looking away from me. Shyly, I thought, or perhaps my imagination was running away with me…

As we approached the front of the queue, the attendant gave me a knowing look and directed us to an empty compartment, immediately stopping the group behind us from crossing the threshold. It wasn’t until we were seated opposite each other in the Ferris wheel’s compartment that she let go.

Frankly, she looked miffed. At me. As though I had done something wrong.

“You didn’t notice?” her face was tinged red.

I tilted my head in unfeigned confusion. “What was there to notice? We were just waiting in line…”

“Harumph! Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that the people behind us were a group of three friends?”

“Hah? Is that relevant?”

“Of course!” Haruhi insisted. “There’s enough space in these pods for six people, Watson. If we didn’t pretend to be a couple, we would’ve been put in the same pod as them, see?”

In a roundabout, ‘logical fiend’ sort of way, what Haruhi was saying made sense. It also explained the look that the attendant had given me when he ushered us across the threshold. There might have been an onus on the attendants to allow couples and families to have a compartment to themselves.

After all, weren’t Ferris wheels terribly romantic? Especially at night?

“I see your point,” I replied. “Although I wouldn’t have had any problem with sharing a compartment.”

“I would have minded,” she snapped, looking rueful. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound angry. I mean, I’m not good with strangers; sorry again, it must have been unpleasant. I thought you knew though…”

Stifling a chuckle, I replied. “You’re probably the only person in the world who could make a deduction like that, Holmes.”

She shook her head, as though to insinuate that I was wrong. “Well, you didn’t say anything.”

“Because I was stunned into silence,” I smiled wryly.

Another short silence ensued as the cogs of the Ferris wheel began to shift; soon we were high up in the air, and the people below began to look like moving specks. The appeal of the Ferris wheel was never more lost on me than at that moment – what was I supposed to do here anyway, just enjoy the view?

“We’re pretty high up, huh?” I ventured, but Haruhi’s eyes did not veer from the window; deliberately, I leaned forward and spoke again, this time with more purpose.

“What are you thinking about?”

Her eyes flicked and she turned in my direction.

“I was thinking about Kamijousaki High’s seven mysteries,”

“The voices on the baseball field again?” I asked. “What about it?”

“Speaking of that: Did you know that the batting cages in the new sports complex were finished about six months ago? What can you infer from that, Watson?” she responded.

I shrugged. “I guess we can estimate that Fujioka and his students have been using the facility for half a year at most.”

“I can tell you for a fact that students only started hearing those ‘voices’ about six months ago, so I wager your estimate is pretty spot on.”

“For a fact, you say? But you didn’t even know about that rumour until Kazami told you. And that was like what? Two days ago?”

“I have my sources,” her lips spread out into a sly grin.

“You have your brother and three little kids,” I replied sarcastically, and then added, “and have you noticed one of them has the face of a 35-year-old man? He’s the spitting image of that old timey wrestler Inoki.”

“Hinata, you mean?” she laughed. “That mature looking face is the cornerstone of the Shinsengumi’s most powerful move, Watson. Sooner or later, you’ll see.”

“Oh, I’m sure I will,” was my genial response.

“But let’s go back to the voices on the baseball field,” she changed the subject, taking a more serious tone as she did so. “Even though the urban legend is half a year old at most, people spoke about it like it was an old legend. It made me curious about the nature of the seven mysteries.”

“Relatively speaking, six months is a long time,” I said.

“Relative to what?” she was the one tilting her head in confusion this time.

“Relative to the amount of time a person spends in high school. Three years, right?” I held up the corresponding number of fingers. “Six months is around 16.6% of our total time in high school, and that’s only if you’ve already graduated. Right now, we’re in our second year but it’s only the first term, so six months is slightly under 50% of our total time in Kamijousaki High… but, for first year students who only started in April, it’s more than 100%.”

Haruhi looked contemplative. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. “Imagine if the sun never rose again. If, ten years from now, you talked to a nine-year-old boy and asked him about the sun, he wouldn’t have any clue what you were talking about. He’s never seen the sun, so it might as well have never existed. It wouldn’t matter that we lived 4.5 billion years with a sun, and only ten years without – at least to the people who were born after the sun disappeared.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Haruhi looked at me quizzically. “Without the sun, there would be no life left on Earth.”

“Y-you weren’t meant to take it literally. It’s just an example,” I explained. “What I mean is, a first year student who hasn’t even been in Kamijousaki High for six months can’t remember a time before this urban legend existed. To them, the baseball field has always been haunted because the rumour itself is older than their existence as Kamijousaki High students.”

“A detective has no time for philosophy, Watson. Also, you shouldn’t speak so cryptically to begin with,” Haruhi chided me gently. “You’re not Oshima Nagisa or Suzuki Seijun.”

“I guess I’m not,” I admitted – for the record, those two names didn’t mean anything to me. I have no idea who they are.

“But I think I get what you’re trying to say,” she went on. “So the seven mysteries are dynamic in nature as opposed to static…? They’re constantly changing, so the seven mysteries we’re familiar with now are different from the seven mysteries of, say, ten years ago.”

“An urban legend from ten years ago might have persisted to the present day. On the other hand, they could just be stories with no basis in fact. Lies, perhaps, or the products of someone’s imagination,” I conjectured.

Haruhi scowled as though she were recalling a particularly unpleasant memory. “That happened to me in middle school,” she said, but didn’t elaborate.

I was still leaning forward, and now she was too; our faces were barely inches away from each other. “You know, Watson,” she began, “I think I’ll like to take a crack at solving all seven mysteries.”

We were so close that I felt compelled to lower my voice to a whisper. “You should focus on the mysteries with tangible leads, Holmes, instead of chasing ghosts. Imagine if the story about the haunted baseball field is still being told ten years from now? Fujioka and his guys would have moved on already, and the mystery would be unsolvable.”

“I agree. There’s probably more than just seven mysteries anyway. Also -,”

We were interrupted by the buzzing of a mobile phone.

“I thought your phone was dead?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

“It came back to life,” she replied dismissively, taking out her phone. She read whatever notification it was, tapped the device a few times and put it away. Then, she sprang forward to my side of the compartment, which rattled slightly from the sudden shift of weight from left to right.

“It was Takashi,” she answered in response to my puzzled frown. “He said we were going to miss the fireworks show.”

“And what did you say?”

Immediately after I finished formulating the sentence, the first firework was shot; in the deathly silent Ferris wheel compartment, its whistle was a jarring shriek. The sky, black as ink one moment and shimmering with vibrant colours the next, came alive but the only sensation I could feel was that of Haruhi resting her head on my shoulder. It was only when our compartment was at the apex of the wheel that she spoke:

“I told him we already had the best seats in the house.”