"The Defector"

I excuse myself and head outside. Summer + incoming storm = high humidity, and the relative cool of this morning has been replaced by a blanket of mugginess. I dab my face with a handkerchief as I take up the twenty minute walk toward my objectives.

The ryokan is easy enough. Okada had recommended it to me during our Fox Knight marathon, and even called ahead to introduce me. When I got there, a smiling elderly woman greets me, and that’s that. On to the next objective - a convenience store my phone tells me is somewhere up ahead.

I put the phone away. It’s nice to get lost sometimes, just walk in a general direction, knowing your destination is on the horizon, but not exactly where. Gets the blood pumping, trying to figure out directions. Tokyo makes it easier - the Skytree and Tower work in a similar manner to the North Star for sailors. Apparently, long ago, my ancestors used to work as fishermen. Perhaps I still have the sea’s blood rushing through me, but it must be difficult for it to work its way to the surface when in a living megalopolis of 40 million people and endless concrete.

The fisherman ancestry doesn’t save me from the heat. I find a vending machine and decide to take a break. I’m surrounded by a few old buildings and overgrown plots of land slated for development that never came. If I close my eyes and listen closely, I can hear the distant sounds of the highway that ignored Hoshinomori and is slowly pushing it into a death spiral. The town isn’t completely dead, or even mostly dead, or even on life support, but all the rundown symptoms are there. I guess the gray sky isn’t helping my perception of things.

Shizuko has faith in me, since I can apparently find joy in any little thing. Amid this array of slow-motion death, I feel the cool can of milk tea in my hands and suppose that’s pretty neat. There’s a trash can next to the vending machine; nobody’s cleared it out for a while. I toss in the empty can and complete the last leg.

Finding the convenience store is easy enough. There’s a huge pole rising out of the ground nearby, holding up a sign of the store and a billboard for swan boats at the nearby lake. Resort activities might be enough to save a town, but Yoshiaki has enough of them already, and most aren’t subject to the frequent winds out of Soga. That city - where Shizuko went to high school - is home to massive cement facilities that powered much of Yoshiaki’s development in the Eighties and still feeds the construction state to this day. Perhaps the elderly here sweep the streets so much to keep them clear of the slow deluge of sand and gravel particles.

But anyway, I get inside the convenience store, and you already know the drill, so I’ll spare you the details. Shizuko and Okada didn’t ask, but I get juice for both of them. With Oranges in hand and the drinks in my bag, I step back outside. I decide to take the long way home and head in the opposite direction so I can circle back towards the Museum and see more of Hoshinomori along the way.

I stop about three feet into my journey. In the alleyway adjacent to the convenience store, I see a familiar face struggling to huff down a cigarette. Brown hair spills down her face as Ume tries to smoke one, but she ends up coughing and sputtering while a cloud of thick smoke rushes upwards. When it clears, and when she sees me there, she looks like a deer in headlights.

Her eyes narrow. “You’re Shizuko’s friend, right?”

I nod. “Shunsuke.”

The cigarette’s gone out, so she tries to light it again, but her fingers clearly aren’t used to the motions. I step into the alleyway and offer my own lighter; after a moment, she accepts. I smoke an Orange next to her; she’s sitting on the back steps to the convenience store. She coughs up a lung.

“You smoke that often?” I ask her.

“This is my first time. Smoking’s bad for running. But since I’m not running no more, might as well.”

A sharp breeze makes power lines dance in the wind. She taps her ash onto the asphalt below. “You from Tokyo? You don’t have an accent.”

“You don’t either.”

“We’re all losing them,” she says. “We’re all just becoming one big blob that looks and talks and consumes and watches everything the same way.”

If you couldn’t guess already, Ume’s on the cynical side of things. In one hand, she idly plays with the green cap that goes with her uniform. “What brings you to Yoshiaki?”

“Here to write a book. Part of the Rescue the Prefecture project.”

“Governor Daisuke,” she merely says. She arches an eyebrow. “How’s it feel, Mr. Carpetbagger? Seeing the end of the world, knowing you get to go home after.”

“...again with the carpetbagger?”

She ignores me. “Everybody talks about depopulation this and people migrating that, but what about the people who have no choice to stay? My mom used to work at the cement factory ‘til an accident, and my father…well, you know about him.”

I want to ask her why she’s telling me all this, but considering the aging demographics of this town and her own nature - she probably has nobody else she can tell about this.

“The girls in the track club go to school in Tokyo now,” Ume continues. “I can’t leave. And it’s not like I could go to a local college, either. I was the athletic, yet academically challenged-girl in high school. You know why slice of anime don’t show what happens to the girls after they graduate? Because some of ‘em end up like this.”

I smoke another cigarette to escape the barrage of negativity she’s throwing out there. Ume definitely needed to tell somebody about all this, and it ended up being me.

“Put my story in your book, then,” she says. So I did. But in any case, she just shakes her head and goes, “Did you come here to rescue Yoshiaki, or are you doing it for yourself?”

I go to answer, but then I pause. Kentaro once asked me the same thing, but I was able to shrug it off. But now I’m hearing it from someone my age, someone who’s clearly seen better days, and I’m starting to understand.

“I came here for myself,” I admit. “The world’s too big and chaotic nowadays. I’m just trying to recapture that old feeling of certainty I had in high school.”

Ume looks pissed for a moment, then she pushes strands of hair off her face. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

But then I think of the smiling faces I’ve recently seen. “I kind of like the rescuing part, though. Maybe I’m not saving the prefecture, but I made Shizuko feel better. I made a lonely cop feel better, too. I think Shizuko’s right. It’s about the people around you. Sometimes, you just have to meet someone new.”

Ume leans back on the steps and lets out a decent cloud. “Maybe. How would you help me, then?”

“Well, it's just like Shizuko said. If you don’t like running, then I guess you gotta find something else you like to do. What’s something you like to do?”

More ash falls. She furrows her brow and doesn’t speak for a long while. “I’m not sure.”

“Then I guess that’s what you gotta do.” I stand up and stretch. “Gotta go. See you around.”

But as I leave, something holds me back. Or someone, rather. Ume caught my arm as I left; she holds my wrist tightly for a moment, then lets it fall from her hand. “But I’m stuck here. How am I supposed to do something new?” Hunched up on the stairs, she looks small, a far cry from her full height.

“Maybe you’re not stuck in Yoshiaki,” I say. “Maybe Yoshiaki is stuck with you, so you gotta make the most of it.”

She has a perplexed look on her face, but she apparently accepts that answer. She tosses the cigarette away, sending it skidding across the asphalt. I can’t help it. I scoop it up and put it in my ashtray.

“Who cares?” Ume asks me as she stands. “This town will be dead soon enough.”

“Not dead yet,” I tell her. “And neither are you.”

Ume runs a hand through her long hair, letting it fall and flow across her shoulders.

“Maybe,” she says, and then heads back inside.