Where am I?

  I looked down at my boyish feet. They were covered in dirt.

  In front of me sat a fat glowing box. Within it, two characters knelt at a chabudai, drinking green tea in a blue room.

  “You think it’s about time you told me why you wanted me to come out here?” a rather deadpanned boy asked.

  The monotone girl with the glasses responded: “It’s about Haruhi Suzumiya. And in addition, myself.”

  “I am not referring to the absence of universally accepted personality traits,” she continued from within the glowing box. “I have been created by the Data Integration Thought Entity that supervises this galaxy.”

  Boring, I thought. My eyes drifted away.

  Hot sunlight fell through the windows in patches onto tatami mats below. A noisy ceiling fan blew its mildly warm air. A bamboo shoot tucked near the corner. A stack of VHS tapes on the sofa. A pile of tax forms on the table. A calendar on the wall—

  2006年7月

  (July, 2006)

  “Oh, Kohei! You’ve dragged dirt everywhere!!” a woman scolded from the kitchen behind. “Look at those feet. I just polished the floor this morning… At this rate, I should roll you in a futon and hang you out with the laundry!”

  “Sorry, Mom,” I replied. My voice came out cracked like an awkward duck.

  “Why don’t you go outside and play with your friends?” she said, walking towards the glowing box. It muttered its last words before a finger turned it off—

  “An alien—?” *ZIP*

  “It’s such a beautiful day today. We don’t get many like this in Ishikari, so make them count.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  She ruffled my hair. “Good boy.”

  I put on my dirty baseball shirt and slid on my dirty sandals, then slowly closed the apartment door behind me. A little gold cat waved from the counter as I did.

  Next thing I knew, I was at a muddy riverbed.

  “Look at this!” a boy shoved a giant green creature in my face. It ribbited. “I caught one!”

  “That’s not even that big,” another boy said, crouched nearby, poking a stick into the mud with one hand and holding a plastic bag in the other. “Tohru found one twice that size last week.”

  Souta. Tohru and Souta.

  He pulled an emptied Ramune bottle out of the mud and dropped it into the bag. “I think we have enough. Guys, come look.”

  We looked.

  “Twenty-eight,” Tohru counted, still holding the nonchalant toad with both hands. “You think he’ll actually pay us this time?”

  “Dunno,” Souta muttered. “That old man better.”

  The sidewalk was cracked in places where the wild weeds pierced through. The sun battered our tanned skin with absolute indifference, and our necks were wet with sweat trails, like our heads had been crying.

  “Chirrrrrr, chirrrrrr, chirrrrrr…”

  Cicadas screamed from their treetops, a ceaseless chorus that would only end when they did, weeks from now. Their obnoxious song ingrained itself into the minds and memories of all those who were forced to listen.

  The three of us walked, passing and re-passing familiar sites, smacking the occasional mosquito that nominated our arms and legs for its next bloody feast.

  Tohru kicked a pebble into a crack in the sidewalk. “My cousin lives in Tokyo and he says they have vending machines there that sell used women's panties.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Liar,” Souta shot, holding the bag of bottles with both arms. It jingled with each step of his tattered Asics sneakers.

  “Not lying. They’re putting them in PlayStation boxes now. My cousin said that when he unpacked his PS2, there was one inside his.”

  “That is SO bull. Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Not Bull. Kohei’s dad works in Tokyo. He knows,” he nudged me with the toad. “Right, Kohei?”

  “I swear, I’m getting more brain-dead each day listening to you talk,” Souta muttered.

  Tohru laughed.

  “Anyway… if we do get paid, you guys wanna hit the Seicomart?” Souta asked. “I have to get out of this heat. Grab some popsicles or Pocari or something.”

  “Pocari Sweat?” Tohru asked in a mocking tone. “What are you, an old man?”

  “Hey, can’t a guy have his own tastes?”

  Tohru snorted in my ear: “Yes, sir… Ojisan.”

  Up ahead, a row of little square shops, identical in their square shape. The only difference being in name and purpose: A mechanic. A fish market. A general store. A karaoke box. A café…

  We stopped in front of one like any other. A hardware place, probably. Or maybe it used to be. The shutters were halfway down. A kei truck was parked outside. A man with his sleeves rolled up was fiddling with something metal inside.

  “Hasegawa-san?” Souta called out as we entered, stepping over boxes in rehearsed motion. “We did it.”

  The three of us stopped in front of his workbench. Souta dropped the heavy bag onto the floor with a dull clatter.

  The man paused his tinkering and turned to us. His face was covered in grime. “Ah, boys. Nice to see you three. You did it?”

  “Yeah,” Tohru said. “Twenty-eight this time.”

  “Good work today, boys!” He ruffled the hair on each of our heads, leaving his greasy mark.

  “So can you pay us this time?”

  The man laughed, rubbing grease off his nose. “Of course, of course!”

  He rummaged through a cabinet at his feet, then handed us 500 yen. “Split it.”

  A quiet sigh escaped all three of us.

  “Sorry, boys,” he added, shooting us a distracted grin. “It’s all I got right now, heh... Keep up the hard work, okay?”

  He returned to his tinkering. We stepped over the boxes, and resumed our aimless journey.

  “Hey, I mean, it’s not that bad...” Souta said.

  “Yeah… but he didn’t pay for last time…” Tohru muttered, placing the toad into the opened window of the parked kei truck with a mischievous grin.

  And a couple blocks later, we arrived at our next checkpoint.

  *Ping-Ping*

  Another sigh escaped us, but this one of physical relief. Seicomart was the heaven to the hell that was the summer heat outside.

  “Ah, ah, ah!” a voice rang out almost immediately.

  “What did I tell you boys last time?” a woman behind the counter wagged her finger at us. “...And the time before that? You can’t just linger here if you have no money.”

  She tapped a sign. “Paying customers only. Not free refrigerator for smelly, bored school boys.”

  “But Nakamura-san, we have money…” Tohru offered, flashing the single 500 yen coin between his fingers like a holy medallion, or a key to a forbidden realm.

  The defeated woman muttered under her breath, turning up the tiny television bolted to the corner shelf. A news anchor rambled through tiny speakers—

  台風6号が西日本に接近 週末にかけて大雨のおそれ... (Typhoon No. 6 heads for western Japan. Heavy rain expected into the weekend ahead...) その他のニュース, 小泉首相の靖国神社参拝をめぐる議論が再燃... (In other news, debate reignites over Prime Minister Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine...)

  The woman sat back in her foldable chair, picking up a cigarette from her tray. She took a deep puff with narrow eyes in our direction, as if saying: “Watching you.”

  But there was no time for hesitation. Three boys voyaged deep into the store with determined steps, and upon completion of their quest, three boys exited with a stash in hand.

  “Three Gari Gari popsicles, two melon sodas, one Pocari Sweat… Hey, that’s six yen over.”

  “Nakamura-san said we could pay her back next summer,” Souta replied, looking up at the oranging sky. “So now what?”

  “Wanna head back to my place?” Tohru proposed. “I just got Sengoku Basara 2. My parents are visiting family in Oita, so we could play all night.”

  “And your older sister?”

  Tohru swatted at a nearby mosquito. “To hell with her. We’ll just ignore she exists.”

  “Sweet. So, we’re all good then?” Souta asked between us. “Kohei, you up for it?”

  “I think I’m headed home,” I said, rubbing the back of my head. “Got a headache.”

  “Aww, c’mon!” Tohru blurted.

  Souta nudged him. “Ow—!”

  “Alright, no worries. We’ll see you tomorrow then, Kohei,” he said with a faint smile.

  “Yeah, Kohei…” a slightly annoyed Tohru added, still rubbing his chest. “And you better be ready ‘cause we’re biking to the quarry and jumping off that pipe.”

  “Later, man!” Souta waved.

  The two walked off, bags in hand. I went home.

  The golden cat greeted me as I slipped off my sandals.

  “Home already?” a warm voice asked. “I thought you’d be at your friend’s place tonight.”

  She was sitting at the table. Her tired eyes obscured behind the reflection of her work glasses. The pile of tax forms were laid out in front of her like an unpleasant collage that revealed the ups and downs of a story with only one end.

  “I had a headache,” I replied.

  “Poor thing. We have Bufferin in the kitchen drawer. I’ll go grab it…”

  “No, that’s alright. I think I remember where it is now.”

  “Good boy.”

  I walked to the kitchen to find the Bufferin, and as I opened the drawer, Mom spoke again.

  “Just remember,” she muttered, without looking away from the spread of yellow-backed receipt. “You won’t feel it now, but days like these are the ones that really stick with you.

  I didn’t respond. Perhaps I should've.

  Finally she looked up. Her eyes met mine, but this time I saw them. “So make them count, son.”

  She smiled as if nothing at all.

  Outside, the cicadas sang their song uninterrupted through the summer night.