"Kenji Kanon"

That’s all she (meaning I) wrote for Mabuchi. There’s enough to do there to spend another day in the city, but I have business elsewhere in the prefecture. I recommend the castle, I recommend the museum, I recommend the Vietnamese fusion, and I recommend my tour guide.

She’s sitting next to me on the train over to the town of Kenji. Things are less pretty as we hit the outskirts. Huge factories dot and rot the land, their doors long closed as manufacturing dries up and out. The foundations for unfinished projects produced in the heady days of the Bubble - the world’s largest indoor pool, for instance - sit silently, overgrown and empty, never knowing a single swimmer. There’s a still emptiness to the area here, ruins that were never lived in, monuments of a better, more hopeful time. And it spreads like a plague, since poverty claims both the large and small. Further into Yoshiaki, I know empty villages await me, cut off and forgotten by new highways, zombified by the migration of their young to the cities.

But, as we head out into the countryside, the urban jungle gradually recedes, giving way to rice paddies and long country roads turning the entire area into a large checkerboard. Fathers drive tractors, mothers weed the fields. The harvest won’t be for another month or so - it’s amazing to think that soon enough, this land of idle sunshine and endless summer will be transformed into a painting of caramel and orange dipped in soft autumnal breezes. By that point, Shizuko and I will be back in Tokyo for school, where you don’t see much of the changing seasons outside of tourism advertising campaigns. Come to think of it, you don’t see much of summer in general outside of the humidity and heat radiating out of the pavement, so it’s nice to see the season in full bloom out here.

Shizuko doesn’t see it. While my eyes stare out the window, she’s got hers fixed on her sneakers. Shoes are cool and all but I wish she would look at the countryside with me.

Whatever the case may be, it ends soon enough as we enter a cityscape once more. Kenji is a bedroom commuter town, maybe a half hour away by train, for the main city of Mabuchi. The buildings are mid-rises instead of high-rises, and there’s actual houses here instead of an endless grid of apartments. It’s a ten minute walk from Kenji Station to the town’s high school.

The gray building looks like any of its other copy-pasted brethren across the country. Despite the vanilla sameness of it all, I can’t help but feel a rush of nostalgia. High school - talk about having an idea of what I was doing! I was going to get good grades to get into a good college. My friend group was going to make memories. Suga and I used to stand on that roof in Saitama and stare across the city, towards the setting sun, knowing fully-well in our subconscious that our youth was not wasted on the young. We were living without thinking, undeniably sure of ourselves and our paths.

So it felt good to have a teacher open that gate to the high school for us. He introduces himself as Mr. Matsumoto, dabbing a wrinkly forehead with his handkerchief, running a hand through his gray hair. He has two students with him, and that’s where the crux of the whole matter lies. In the list of suggestions Minister Azawa left for me, one of them was less a suggestion and more of a “definitely do this” - she has a friend in Kenji whose high school-aged son wants to be a writer. The son would tell me about Kenji and I’d tell him all about being a writer, tips and tricks, like and subscribe and all that jazz.

The son now walks beside me. Matsumoto, the other student, and Shizuko split off to the teachers' office to pick up some papers, while the future Proust and I are heading up to the Kenji High School Writer’s Club to wait for them. He walks confidently, darkly, with short brown hair and the Prussian officer’s black uniform on his stocky frame despite the summer haze. No doubt, he wears it because it adds to his look, a look indicating he has the weight and fate of the nation on his shoulders.

Once we get inside the classroom, he shuts the door behind me. I take a quick look at the clubroom - no tea sets or any other fun slice of life club nonsense around, unfortunately. Perhaps we need to get down to business, but that’s what I came here to do.

“Kentaro, was it-”

“You!” he exclaims, jabbing a finger at me. I can imagine angsty punk rock music radiating from him as he speaks. “I heard you’re trying to win the Rescue the Prefecture contest.”

“...yeah?”

He slashes an arm in front of him. “Not while I’m here! You see, I’m entering that contest too, and unlike you, I’m not some rich Tokyo carpetbagger trying to exploit Yoshiaki for his own purposes. This is my home!” He storms around and clenches his fist. “When I write this and show the whole world just how beautiful Yoshiaki is, I’ll stop its decline for sure.”

“...carpetbagger?”

He steps forward. We’re about the same height, but his eyes glare daggers. “You think you can waltz down here from the big city like some slick tourist and really know anything about us?”

I chuckle at his youthful rage. “I know all about you. You’re 100% sure you’ll succeed in this, right?”

Kentaro just grins and wipes the imaginary blood off his nose. “Some people tell me I just don’t know when to give up.”

“You and me both. I’m only a few years removed from high school, you know. I remember how I felt then. We were all going to make it.” I sit on top of a nearby desk. “Nowadays, I’m not quite sure of what I’m doing. Well, what I’m trying to do in life right now is figure out what I’m trying to do in life in general. When I close my eyes, I see a candlelight, and every day it flickers more and more. If I don’t do something quick, I’m afraid it’ll go out - for good.”

I sigh, since I wasn’t trying to get all sappy and spiritual on him, but Kentaro is furiously scribbling down everything I just said in a notebook. “Hey, cheaters don’t win,” I protest.

He waves the notebook around with a smile. “Don’t worry, I’m using torchlight instead of candlelight.”

To that, I can only let out an amused sort of exhale. “Alright, kid. You want to beat me?” I stand up and extend a hand. “Then beat me.”

To that, Kentaro can only grin. Our hands lock firmly as we stake our plans for victory in the form of a promise between men.

That’s when the women (and Matsumoto) enter the classroom. Each of them carry stacks of manila envelopes, files, and papers, and apparently, as a result of all this extra manual labor, Shizuko has her dyed hair up in a ponytail. It’s quite nice, and I take her stack of papers - Writing Club short stories - and set them down.

Kentaro also likes the ponytail. His springtime-of-youth rage has transformed into tranquility; he can only stare at Shizuko for a moment before expressing his approval.

“...okaa-chan.”

The other student moves quickly. She tosses her stack into my hands and immediately puts Kentaro into a headlock. There’s a bright red sheen to her face as she chokes him out.

“Don’t call a woman you just met ‘mommy’!”

“Ayako, sorry, sorry-”

A moment later, he has his head ducked before Shizuko in apology. He raises his head and smiles serenely. “Okaa-san,” he corrects.

That earns him another stranglehold. Shizuko looks at me, and I look at her, and we both raise our eyebrows, since that’s all we can do. I keep the same facial expression as I gaze down at the flier in my hands. It depicts the face of an anime girl, black hair covering her ears and sides of her face and tumbling down to just above her shoulders, a red cap adorning her head, her eyes, confident and clear, staring off into the distance.

What I’m trying to say is that I’m looking at Che Guevara turned into an anime girl.

Ayako notices my expression and sets Kentaro down. Her face is full of pride, and that’s when I realize she has black hair as well, tumbling down to just above her shoulders. It’s not a 1:1 match, but the resemblance is there. She’s thin and short, shorter than Kentaro, but there’s an energy there, like an endless neutron star in the way she bounces on her feet.

“I drew that,” she says, puffing her chest out in pride. “Forget about your government-sponsored contests. Kentaro’s not saving Yoshiaki.” She forms a square with her index fingers and thumbs around her eye, mimicking a camera. “I am.”