Chapter 8 — A Beaming Smile
“Even though I chose a different station today…”
Ichinose sulked while I held onto her arm.
“Seriously, cut it out already with trying to jump in front of trains.”
I scolded her, still gripping her wrist.
“Then what kind of suicide would be acceptable?”
She showed absolutely no sign of remorse.
“Well… if about eighty years pass, you’re allowed to die peacefully.”
“That’s not called suicide.”
It was the second June 1st since I gave away my lifespan.
Monday. Clear skies.
On this day, Ichinose attempted suicide for the eighteenth time.
She tried jumping in front of a train at a station different from the usual one she used—but as always, I caught her.
“You know, if you jump in front of a train, that cute face of yours will be ruined.”
Flustered, Ichinose quickly denied it.
“I’m not cute at all.”
Seeing her like that, I suggested, “Instead of trying to kill yourself, why don’t you try becoming an idol or something?”
“Please don’t tease me,” she said angrily.
“Let’s go somewhere a bit farther today.”
It was a weekday morning.
We were standing on the station platform, with Ichinose—whom I had just captured—beside me. It was the perfect chance to go on a little trip. Thanks to a guidebook I’d been reading, I had already decided on the destination.
“I don’t have any money.”
“I’ll pay for everything again today.”
“Why would you do so much for someone who’s about to die anyway?”
“If you’re about to die, then there’s no reason to worry about it, right?”
After our usual exchange, we boarded the train.
It was rush hour, and the train was horribly crowded. For us, it was pure torture.
There was barely any space at all. Even for people other than us, being packed in like sardines would be unbearable. All the hanging straps were taken by salarymen, and just maintaining our balance was difficult.
Every time the train swayed, Ichinose grabbed my arm.
Surrounded by a sea of businessmen, her small hands and slender arms looked strangely fragile.
Every time the train stopped at a station, we were pushed further inside. When Ichinose was pressed close against me, I caught the sweet scent of her shampoo.
It was definitely coming from her hair.
If that scent were coming from the burly salaryman beside me, that would be terrifying.
By the time we reached the transfer station, we were both completely exhausted—like we had just come back from climbing a mountain.
We got off the train and immediately collapsed onto a bench on the platform.
I bought drinks from a vending machine and handed one to Ichinose. She accepted it without hesitation and drank it down.
For someone like her to accept something so readily, she must have been really tired.
For the next train, we’d get seats for sure.
While checking my phone for how to buy reserved seat tickets, she asked,
“Where are we going today?”
“It’s a secret.”
That was all I told her.
After buying reserved seat tickets at the machine, we boarded the next train.
The car we got into had rows of seats lined up like a bullet train, and there was no one else inside.
I seated Ichinose by the window and sat in the aisle seat.
I tried leaning my seat back to take a nap, but sleep wouldn’t come.
Beside me, Ichinose kept staring out the window the entire time.
Her reflection in the glass made her look younger than usual.
“You weren’t sleeping?”
She seemed to think I had been watching the scenery.
“Do you want to switch seats?” she asked.
I declined.
“I just couldn’t fall asleep. And if I stay awake too long, I get motion sickness.”
“Aiba-san, you get motion sickness easily?”
“Yeah. It’s been a problem since I was a kid.”
I was weak against vehicles and got nauseous easily. Normally buses and trains were fine, but these kinds of forward-facing seats messed with me.
“That’s surprising. I thought you didn’t have any worries.”
“There’s no way that’s true,” I protested.
“School trips were the worst. I only remember being sick the whole time on the bus.”
“Oh—yeah, I had a classmate like that too. Someone who got sick on the bus.”
“I couldn’t even enjoy sightseeing properly, but they still made us write an essay about it. So I just wrote in detail about how sick I felt and submitted that.”
I said it with a wry smile, but recalling it actually made me feel nauseous again.
“I kind of want to read that essay,” Ichinose laughed, digging into an old wound.
“I threw away that kind of dark history.”
“That’s such a waste,” she sighed.
It wasn’t just the essay I threw away.
When I left my parents’ house, I threw away almost everything that wasn’t necessary for living. Even my apartment only had the bare minimum.
If I died, the only trace that Aiba Jun had ever existed would probably be something like a graduation album from school.
“If you start feeling sick, don’t hold it in—tell me, okay? I’ll commit suicide while you rest.”
“Absolutely not. Seriously.”
After chatting for a while, the scenery outside suddenly changed.
The ocean came into view.
“Aiba-san, look! The sea! The sea!”
Ichinose reacted like a small child.
A few minutes later the train arrived at the station, and we walked toward our destination.
As we walked along the coastline, the building we were heading to came into view.
I pointed at it.
“We’re going there today.”
“Is that… an aquarium?”
The building I pointed to was indeed an aquarium—one listed in the guidebook I bought earlier.
“You said you like fish, right? I thought you might want to go somewhere like this.”
For Ichinose, a tropical fish shop was probably like a tiny aquarium. So I figured bringing her to a real aquarium might make her happy.
“Aiba-san, let’s hurry!”
Her eyes sparkled as she beckoned me forward.
“Come on, hurry!”
Usually Ichinose walked behind me, often hiding behind my back. Seeing her walk ahead was rare.
Bringing her to the aquarium had already proven to be the right decision.
Inside, there were families with small children and couples, but since it was a weekday it wasn’t crowded.
We decided to go around the aquarium collecting stamps from a stamp rally booklet we bought with the tickets.
The first area featured fish that lived in the sea near the aquarium.
A gigantic tank filled the entire field of view, revealing a vast blue ocean world.
Schools of sardines, sharks, rays, sea turtles—various sea creatures swam gracefully.
Ichinose pressed both hands against the glass and watched the fish intently.
Anyone watching her right now would never imagine she was someone who constantly tried to kill herself.
“Aiba-san, Aiba-san! There’s a fish riding on the turtle’s shell!”
Sure enough, a fish was stuck tightly on top of the turtle’s shell.
A nearby parent and child noticed too.
“Look, there’s a little fish on the turtle!”
Looking up, Ichinose murmured softly,
“It’s beautiful.”
Now she was watching the huge school of sardines swimming above.
Hundreds… no, maybe thousands.
Illuminated by lights from above, their silver bodies shimmered like something out of a dream.
“Seeing the sardine school reminds me of a school play we did in elementary school,” Ichinose said.
“A school play?”
“In the play, the main characters were fish. A group of small fish were about to be eaten by a big fish. But the little fish gathered together and pretended to be a fish bigger than the big one, so it ran away.”
I vaguely remembered hearing a story like that as a kid.
“Oh yeah, I remember something like that. What role did you play?”
“One of the little fish. A background character with barely any lines.”
“Even as a background character, you probably stood out because you’re cute.”
“You don’t need to flatter me.”
Looking at the school of sardines, a thought crossed my mind.
With that many of them, there must be a few sardines that get left out.
And if there weren’t…
Maybe Ichinose and I would’ve been better off being born as sardines instead of humans.
Nearby, a female aquarium staff member was answering questions from a small child.
But I couldn’t exactly ask something like,
“Are there sardines that get excluded from the group?”
After stamping the card near the giant tank, we moved on to the next area.
According to the map, the next section focused on deep-sea creatures.
The dimly lit floor displayed grotesque deep-sea fish.
Many of them were so strange that neither Ichinose nor the other visitors knew how to react. Everyone just stared in silence.
The only place where people chatted was in front of a stuffed oarfish.
“It’s so long.”
“Creatures like this actually exist?”
Because it was dark, Ichinose leaned close to a tank to look inside.
Suddenly—
“Eek!”
She jumped back with a small scream.
Apparently she had been startled by a giant isopod.
Since she hated insects, it probably looked like nothing more than a gigantic pill bug to her.
Embarrassed, Ichinose quickly retreated, and I followed after her.
This area also had jellyfish, floating gently through the water.
Some even blinked with light, making them look almost like artificial decorations with light bulbs inside.
Watching them drift, Ichinose murmured,
“I’d like to try raising jellyfish someday.”
I had heard that jellyfish were difficult to keep and died easily. I was about to say that when she added,
“But… I’m going to die soon anyway, so I can’t.”
Don’t die before the jellyfish.
After stamping the deep-sea section, we moved to the area with large fish.
A huge shark swam slowly around the tank.
I didn’t know if it was just that species or because it lived in captivity, but it looked rather plump.
“If this tank broke, that’d be a disaster.”
Saying the obvious thing anyone might think, Ichinose laughed.
“I wouldn’t want to be eaten by a shark.”
If you don’t want to be eaten by a shark, then please stop jumping off bridges and trying to jump in front of trains.
There was also a sunfish on display, and Ichinose watched it happily for a long time.
I had always imagined sunfish as cute, but looking closely, its face was actually pretty eerie.
Between the axolotl and the sunfish, maybe Ichinose liked creatures whose thoughts you couldn’t quite understand.
By the time we stamped the third checkpoint, it was already past noon.
We returned to the entrance area where there was a food court and decided to eat lunch.
Because the ocean was nearby, the menu had lots of seafood—seafood bowls and sushi.
I ordered a tuna bowl with lean and fatty cuts plus crab soup, while Ichinose ordered a local catch bowl with horse mackerel and milt, along with takoyaki shaped like octopuses.
Although there were empty seats indoors, we sat at the terrace where there were fewer people.
From there, the Pacific Ocean stretched out before us, and the gentle sound of waves drifted in.
The wind blew Ichinose’s hair around, and she kept brushing it back.
The seafood must’ve been fresh since the sea was so close.
It tasted completely different from the seafood bowls I usually ate.
Delicious.
“I’ve never had horse mackerel this tasty before,” Ichinose said with wide eyes.
“Well of course. They can fillet the fish right after displaying them,” I joked.
Hearing that, she looked shocked.
“So… these were fish from the exhibits?”
There’s no way… probably.
While resting after the meal, I noticed Ichinose looking toward a family nearby.
A father, a mother, and a little girl were eating together on the terrace.
Ichinose seemed to be staring at the dolphin plush toy the girl was holding.
After watching for a long time, I said,
“If you want a plush toy, I’ll buy one for you.”
“No… it just looked similar to a plush toy I used to treasure.”
“So you used to cherish stuffed animals too.”
“My father bought it for me.”
Gazing at the dolphin plush, she continued.
“When I was in kindergarten, the three of us—my parents and I—went to an aquarium together. On the way home, my dad bought me a dolphin plush just like the one that girl has.”
“I carried it with me everywhere…”
