Penguin Highway

by Tomihiko Morimi

  Suzuki didn’t really respond to my praise. Something was very odd about him.

  “You’re acting weird today, Suzuki.”

  He scowled. “I’m not weird! You’re weird. You and those penguins.”

  “There sure were a lot of penguins. I was surprised, too.”

  “Why were there so many penguins there?”

  “Maybe someone’s pets escaped.”

  “Don’t just make things up! You’re such a liar.”

  “I said maybe. I’m just suggesting a possibility. That’s not a lie.”

  “You’re talking nonsense again!” Then he lowered his voice. “Why can the lady here control those penguins?”

  “That is a mystery.”

  “Not the only one,” he whispered. “There was that weird floating thing in that field.”

  “You mean the gas coming out of the ground? What about it?”

  I waited, but he just stared into space, saying nothing.

  “Something bothering you?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Nothing you want to talk to me about?”

  “Nope.”

  Suzuki said nothing else.

  “If there isn’t, that’s fine. I won’t force it out of you.”

  He spent the rest of the time in silence. By the time my examination was done, he was already gone.

  While I was sitting on the couch waiting to be called, the lady came out of the exam room. She sat down next to me. Her weight made the seat shift, and I was pulled toward her like my gravity was being influenced by a large sun.

  “You said something to Suzuki again, kiddo?” she asked. “He’s acting weird.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Really? Look at my eyes and swear.”

  I looked her in the eye and said, “I didn’t say anything.” “Hmm,” she said. “Then maybe he’s just scared of me now. Because I set the penguins on him.”

  “That might be it. It might not be, though. Suzuki’s been acting strange all day.”

  There wasn’t anyone else waiting, so after I paid, I talked quietly with the lady for a few minutes.

  “I was pretty surprised when you suddenly made a penguin in front of the others. A moment earlier and Suzuki’s group would have seen! You should be more cautious with that stuff.”

  “Sorry. Uchida seemed like he was in trouble.”

  “Well, you did save him.”

  “Right?”

  “Did you know the penguins could damage The Sea?”

  “I didn’t know that. I just threw one.”

  “That experiment proves The Sea and the penguins are connected. I’d like your help researching The Sea. But Hamamoto’s against it. I’ll need to persuade her first.”

  The lady looked at me and grinned.

  “That’ll be pretty difficult,” she said.

  “Really?”

  The lady thought for a moment, then patted me on the knee.

  “If you want to patch things up with her, why don’t you all go to the pool together?”

  “That sounds extremely enjoyable. I’m good at swimming.”

  Emperor Suzuki came to the clearing alone a few days after we saw him at school.

  He stopped at the entrance to the Jabberwock Woods, watching us.

  I was playing chess with Hamamoto, and Uchida had his arms folded in front of his notebook, thinking. Hamamoto looked up from the chessboard, glanced at the forest, and hissed, “Suzuki’s here.”

  The supreme ruler of the Suzuki Empire had no one with him. He stood next to the hammock we’d strung up near the forest entrance, glaring at us in silence. He didn’t come into the clearing. When he saw us looking, he turned as if he was leaving but came back and again stopped at the border between the forest and the clearing.

  “Maybe he’s here to challenge you to a duel.”

  “I don’t want to duel him.”

  “Duels are so boring,” Hamamoto said. She stood up and waved at him. “What are you doing here? Do you want something?” she called.

  Even then, Suzuki stayed in the forest, so we walked over to him.

  Suzuki said nothing, just pointed at the thing in his hand. The exploration map Uchida and I made that he’d confiscated from us. He spread it out and showed us an awkward, wriggly line representing the drain, drawn from the back of the school through the town and the forest. “Are you giving this back?” I asked. He nodded. He showed none of the energy he’d had the other day when they attacked our observation station. He kept glancing at The Sea.

  Hamamoto seemed rather taken aback by this. “So you aren’t here to fight?”

  “No.”

  “Suzuki, if you want to talk about something, come over to the observation station.”

  “I’m good here.”

  He looked at The Sea again. He stood like that awhile, hands scrabbling at his short-cropped hair. I’d never seen Suzuki this thoroughly at a loss.

  “If you say nothing, we can’t understand,” Hamamoto said, getting angry.

  Suzuki looked angry, too.

  “Really weird things are going on!”

  “Weird things?”

  “And you know something, right?”

  “If you explain properly, we promise to listen.”

  At last, Suzuki started explaining what had happened to him.

  It started the other day when the Suzuki Empire had attacked our observation station.

  That day, the lady had yelled “Go, penguins!” and in the chaos of the penguin assault, Suzuki had beat a hasty retreat back into the Jabberwock Woods. He’d assumed Kobayashi and Nagasaki were following, but they didn’t come running after him. Lazy bums! Suzuki thought. He’d turned around just in time to see them run off in a different direction.

  Suzuki tried to go after them, but right then, he heard Hamamoto yell, “Prominence!” What? he thought, peering through the trees into the clearing just in time to see a large ball of water go flying across the grass, directly toward him.

  Ah, he thought, closing his eyes. He felt like a giant ball of Jell-O wrapped around his body and then moved away behind him. Nothing else happened. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and found himself still standing in the forest. He wasn’t wet or anything. Or injured. But when he looked back at the clearing, there was no one where we’d been a second before. The lady and the three of us were gone.

  Suzuki thought this was a little weird but ran off through the Jabberwock Woods, trying to catch up with his minions. But he couldn’t find them anywhere. He left the woods and went to Kobayashi’s house but was told they’d just left to go play at Suzuki’s house. Suzuki was starting to get really concerned.

  He walked off toward the row of zelkova trees and found Kobayashi and Nagasaki running out of his house. Suzuki was about to yell for them but saw another boy coming out of the house after them. Who’s he? he thought. When this new boy turned his head to say something to Kobayashi, Suzuki noticed the boy looked exactly like him. He was so surprised, he almost screamed aloud. He quickly hid behind a telephone pole, watching his double walk away with his friends.

  Suzuki went inside, and his mother was surprised to see him. “What’s up? You’re back already?” she said.

  He looked at the clock. It had been almost evening, but the clock said it was just after lunch. His head was spinning, and he was totally confused, so he went to his room to lie down on his bed and then fell asleep.

  In the evening, his mom woke him up, and he went to the front door to find Kobayashi and Nagasaki there. They were pissed. They accused him of ditching them and going home to sleep. Suzuki tried to explain what had happened to him but couldn’t find the words. The more he muttered, the angrier they got. Eventually, they stormed off.

  Suzuki spent some time being scared the other Suzuki he’d seen would come home, too. So scared he hadn’t been able to eat a bite that evening.

  But that had been the end of his strange experience.

  “I know it sounds weird! You th
ink I’m an idiot, right?”

  We hadn’t said a word, but he just kept yelling.

  “I know Kobayashi and Nagasaki think I’m an idiot!”

  “It’s definitely a strange story,” I said.

  “But it really happened! I’m not making it up! Who was that with my face? Did that thing that came flying at me make me crazy?”

  “Your experience is definitely a mystery, Suzuki. But I don’t think you’re crazy. We’ve been researching that strange thing you touched.”

  “Do you have any proof you aren’t lying?” Hamamoto asked.

  “I said I’m not!” he insisted, turning red. “It’s all true!”

  It was getting dark around us. The light of the evening sun behind the trees was turning the far side of the clearing red. The Sea was still glittering. We had to get through the Jabberwock Woods before night fell.

  “If you’re researching it, tell me what that thing is!”

  “We can’t do that,” Hamamoto said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because this is our research. We can’t talk about it to outsiders.”

  “Aoyama, what was that boy who looked like me? Tell me!”

  “I need more time to research this before I can say anything. And if you want to know the truth, you should try asking nicely.”

  Suzuki screwed his face up, furious. “You’re not fair!”

  “We’re being totally fair.”

  “You’re all weird! Sneaking about! That stuff with the penguins and that weird thing floating there! You’re all plotting something!”

  “We aren’t plotting anything. Just doing research.”

  “If you won’t tell me, I’ll tell everyone you’re doing weird stuff in the forest! Then you’ll have to confess everything!”

  “That would be a problem. That would be a detriment to our research.”

  Hamamoto took a step forward. “Tell them whatever you like,” she said. “You know what’ll happen if you do. I’ll never forgive you for it. I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”

  That shut him up.

  He definitely didn’t want Hamamoto to hate him forever.

  She suddenly turned back toward The Sea and let out a loud cry.

  We all turned, assuming The Sea had activated. But it merely floated silently above the clearing, just like always.

  “Did you see something, Hamamoto?”

  “No,” she said, totally cool. “I was just faking it.”

  When we turned back, Suzuki was long gone. He’d fled in terror. He was really scared of The Sea.

  That night, I fought off sleep, scowling at my notebook, researching Suzuki’s experience.

  I decided the following facts were the most important:

  Suzuki saw another Suzuki.

  It was evening when he was in the forest, but noon at home.

  Kobayashi and Nagasaki thought he’d run away first.

  These facts led me to the following hypothesis:

  “Passing through The Sea made Suzuki travel back in time.”

  Of course, this was only a hypothesis.

  Behind the station was a place called the Welfare Pension Relaxation Center, which had a large pool. In the summer, it got very crowded. They had waterslides and sold chocolate mint ice cream and yakisoba by the side of the pool. I was extremely fond of chocolate mint ice cream. There was a current in the pool, like a river.

  When our school had a swim meet, all the students in our year did an experiment to learn the true power of water. All the students got in the water, walking around the edge of the pool. This gradually created a current, and the water in the pool started to spin. Even when we tried to stop walking, the flow of the water pushed us along. When the teachers clapped their hands and said “Now backward!” we all tried to walk in the other direction. We were all shouting, straining our feet on the bottom. But it was really hard work. The force of the water was extremely powerful. I thought about how salmon swim upstream to lay eggs and was very impressed by how much energy that must take. None of us were salmon, so we just wound up screaming and getting swept away.

  It was an extremely interesting experiment.

  It was more fun to float in moving water than in water that didn’t move. I think whoever invented pools with currents was very clever.

  It was a beautiful day with weather like the south sea islands. The lady had offered to take us to the pool, so we all gathered outside the dentist’s office at ten. The lady was wearing a navy-blue baseball hat like a boy. When I got to the dentist, Hamamoto and Uchida were already there. Hamamoto’s chestnut hair had been cut short, making her look like someone from another country. “Your hair is shorter,” I pointed out. “Yep,” she said.

  Like we were about to go exploring, the lady pointed at each of us, counting us, and said, “Let’s get going!” We all got on the city bus and rode it to the station.

  We got to the pool and changed, and the lady made us do some very thorough warm-up exercises. “If you don’t warm up properly before you get in the pool, you could have a heart attack and die,” she said.

  It was summer vacation, so the pool was extremely crowded. The surface of the water was reflecting so much sunlight, it looked almost white. Children and adults alike were riding the current. The sound of the water sloshing mingled with the cries of the swimmers, making my head spin. The waterslides were framed with cumulonimbus clouds. It looked like I could reach up and eat them like the soft-serve ice cream sold at the poolside concession stand.

  The lady was sleek like a dolphin. The intense stretching routine was making her breasts move around. Looking at the lady’s breasts, I realized that dolphins were mammals, so they must have breasts somewhere. But where did dolphins put their breasts? How did baby dolphins nurse? Wouldn’t seawater get mixed in, making everything salty? I thought about it some more. If dolphins had breasts, then blue whales did, too. Blue whale babies were bigger than I was when they were first born, so blue whale breasts must be so big, you would never even think they were breasts.

  “Kiddo,” the lady said loudly. “Where are your eyes?”

  “I was lost in thought.”

  “Liar!”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “You can’t just stare at people’s boobs.”

  “I wasn’t. I was thinking about breasts, but not your breasts.”

  The lady sighed. “I know why Suzuki hates you so much.”

  After that, the lady finally gave us permission to get in the pool. The pool’s current moved us slowly along. “No need to swim,” the lady said, just floating. Uchida was sitting on a swim tube, grinning happily. He liked swim tubes. Hamamoto grabbed Uchida’s swim tube and shook it, and he yelped. Hamamoto laughed.

  We went around the pool twice, and then I started swimming underwater. Shoving the water aside with all my might, I swam so fast I surprised even myself. Like a rocket flying through outer space. And I was picking out a clear path, easily sliding between the other people. I made astounding progress.

  Satisfied I was swimming faster than anyone else, I came to the surface.

  And was surprised to see the lady’s face in front of me—I’d thought I’d left her behind. Her face was so close, I could see the drops of water running down it. She cackled. “And you thought you were fast!”

  “I admit you are also fast.”

  “Thanks. But I’m tired from being so fast, so I’m gonna rest a bit.”

  The lady slipped across the water to the side of the pool and climbed out. Her backside gleamed like a dolphin in the light. She turned around and waved at us.

  I swam slowly, letting Uchida and his swim tube catch up.

  “Hmm? Where’s Hamamoto?” I asked.

  “We got split up. But that’s okay. I don’t like it when she plays tricks on me. She keeps trying to pull me under.”

  “That is a problem.”

  I drifted with him for a while.

  “Uchida, what do you make of the fact that blue whal
es must have breasts?” I asked.

  “If you keep talking like that, the lady’s gonna scold you again,” Uchida said, shaking his head. “You like breasts too much, Aoyama.”

  “It’s not that I like them. I’m just researching them.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “I don’t think it always is.”

  I swam alongside him, talking about different breast-related topics. Uchida didn’t really respond much. He did not appear to be very interested in breast research.

  “Hamamoto doesn’t have any breasts,” I said. “She’s not a grown-up.”

  “Strange! Very strange.” Uchida was making a weird face.

  While I was thinking about breasts that existed and breasts that didn’t, Hamamoto came popping out of the water next to us and grabbed Uchida’s ring. He yelped and went under. Hamamoto laughed. Hamamoto’s interest in making him sink seemed like a real problem.

  After a while, I got out of the pool before them. I went walking along the side of the pool looking for the lady. She had sunglasses on like a movie star and was sitting on a chair under a parasol with one elbow on the table. She was drinking Coke through a straw from a transparent cup.

  I sat in the chair opposite her, and she handed me a bath towel.

  “I’ll buy everyone some ice cream later,” she said.

  “They’ll be thrilled.”

  “Look at those clouds! Amazing, right?”

  I looked up at the sky. The cumulonimbus clouds were still there. The poolside was really noisy, but above those fluffy clouds was another world, where really strong winds blew. I think about that a lot.

  “Hamamoto still doesn’t trust me,” the lady said.

  “It’s a real challenge.”

  “What matters to me is whether you can solve this mystery or not.”

  “I have an extremely large number of problems to solve.”

  “You still moaning about that?”

  “But according to my father, what seems to be a lot of problems might actually be one big problem.”

  “What do you think is the biggest mystery?”