Penguin Highway

by Tomihiko Morimi

  “A significant one.”

  We saw black smoke rising from the peak we were heading toward.

  On the slope ahead of us, we saw a man sitting on the stairs. He looked like a college student. The man who’d brought Uchida a handkerchief after the investigation team had scolded us and made Uchida cry. He saw the lady and me coming up the hill and was so surprised, it took him a while before he could say anything. Then he turned around and yelled, “Professor! Professor!”

  There was a small stone-paved square in front of the church, and all the investigation team members The Sea had swallowed were gathered there. They didn’t know how to get home, so they’d lit a fire there, like Robinson Crusoe when he reached that deserted island. Professor Hamamoto came running over to us and stared at us in silence for a long time. He seemed entirely at a loss, like a kid my age had grown a massive beard.

  “Aoyama,” Professor Hamamoto said. “What are you doing here?”

  I bowed. “We’ve come to rescue you all,” I said.

  The penguins were piling up behind us, crowding together until they filled every inch of the narrow slope. When they found a spot to stand, they stood at attention, staring up at the sky.

  “Is it about time to go?” the lady said, looking up at the sky, just like the penguins.

  “Can you leave just a little bit of The Sea?”

  “Why?”

  “If you leave a little bit, some Penguin Energy will remain, and you can stay healthy.”

  “I dunno if it’ll be that easy.”

  The lady hopped up on the wall by the alley at the top of the hill and looked down at the sea. The town was completely covered in penguins. All the penguins seemed to be holding their breaths, waiting for her signal.

  “Then let’s all go home,” she said. She raised her hand toward the sky, blue like the Cambrian period.

  A stir ran through the assembled penguins, like ripples running across them. Staring up at the sky, one after another, they took off, flying straight up. So many of them that it grew dark around us. The penguins flew in all directions, and everywhere they flew, they left trails behind, like the ones planes leave in their wake. It looked like these trails were dividing the blue sky into pieces.

  And The Sea crumbled.

  The cracks in the sky joined together, forming one big tear, which came down on us like a giant whip cracking… And then suddenly, we were standing in the parking lot near the athletic field. The Sea behind us was collapsing, and Seas of various sizes were rolling away into the neighborhood.

  We all fled to the stands on the side of the field to avoid contact with those remnants. The investigation team still seemed unclear as to just what it was they were seeing.

  We watched as The Sea crumbled, flowing out of the forest and sweeping through the neighborhood like a tsunami. It made no sound at all. We could see penguins swimming across The Sea’s waves. Countless small rainbows appeared and vanished on the surface of the flow. The waves broke apart, Sea spheres rolled across the field, and the penguins swarmed around, breaking those apart.

  “What are the penguins doing?” Professor Hamamoto asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I said.

  “What is this water-like substance? Aoyama, do you know what’s going on here?”

  “Maybe I do. But this is my research project. I can’t tell the secrets of my research to anyone.”

  Professor Hamamoto scowled at me. I met his gaze.

  He didn’t say anything else.

  I looked over at the forest and saw a group of Jabberwocks clustering on top of the water tower. When they got to the top, they stopped moving altogether; one after another, they burst like water balloons, vanishing entirely.

  Eventually, The Sea’s collapse ended, and the force of the tsunami running through town subsided.

  “Let’s get going,” the lady said, holding out her hand to me. I took it, and we clambered down off the stands. The investigation team stayed frozen on top, watching us go. Professor Hamamoto took a step forward.

  “Wait!” he said. “It’s dangerous! Stay here with us!”

  “Professor, have a nice day. Good-bye!” the lady said.

  “I said it’s dangerous!”

  “But, Professor, we have urgent business.”

  Hopping off the stands, the lady and I waved at the team and left the athletic field behind.

  There were still shattered fragments of The Sea rolling through town, but the penguins following us took care of them one at a time.

  There was no one in town. The sad squeaks of the penguins echoed through it, a lonely sort of sound. We’d returned from one end of the earth, but it was like we’d found ourselves in a different one. I glanced back as we walked, but The Sea’s dome could no longer be seen over the Jabberwock Woods.

  Instead, the remains of The Sea were racing freely through town. By the time we reached Seaside Café, it had reached the vacant lot by the dentist’s office. The lady stood by the surf, kicked The Sea, and it shattered into marble-size balls that danced through the air. They soon faded to nothing.

  We stepped into the deserted Seaside Café.

  The lady went behind the counter and made some coffee. “You drink this, right?” she asked. “Sure,” I said. We sat at our usual seat by the window. She brought two cups over, steam rising off them. I was all wet and starting to feel a little cold, so the warm coffee was very welcome.

  “Want some sugar?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Don’t force yourself.”

  I drank the coffee, staring out the window.

  Outside, The Sea’s level was subsiding. The rainbows it had kicked up here and there were fading out.

  Penguins were gathering in the lot by the dentist.

  At first, it was just a few here and there around the empty lot, but soon they started flowing in endlessly. I couldn’t begin to count them. It was like every penguin in Antarctica had decided to move here. Penguin after penguin came diligently waddling in, joining the flock that already had the entire lot buried. Then they stopped, looking relieved.

  All the penguins looked up at the sky like they were waiting for something.

  The lady and I put the chessboard on the table.

  But we didn’t play chess.

  “Kiddo, The Sea seems to have been entirely destroyed.”

  “There were a lot of penguins.”

  The lady appeared to be at peace. She was watching the penguins through the window.

  There were so many penguins now, they were spilling over the edges of the vacant lot. Staring up at the sky, they slowly started disappearing. Several small tornados sprang up, shaking the windowpanes. The penguins didn’t panic, just waited for their turn to disappear.

  The lady put her chin on her hand and looked at me.

  “So my memories and I were all created.”

  “Does that feel right to you?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “It doesn’t seem right to me, either.”

  “Aoyama, why do you think I was born?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know why you were born?”

  “Uchida and I have talked about that before. But it’s a difficult topic for us. Uchida said thinking about it makes his head spin.”

  “Hmm. I don’t blame him.”

  “But maybe someday I’ll know why I was born.”

  “If you do, will you tell me?”

  “I will.”

  The lady stood up and sat down next to me. She put both her arms around me and hugged me tight. I’d thought her breasts were like hills, but they were extremely soft and warm. Her breath on my ear was warm and moist, like a sea breeze. It tickled. How could anything so warm and moist come out of someone who wasn’t a creature of this world? It didn’t make sense.

  “So I’m not human.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “And you’re humankind’s representative.”

  “Yes. Someday I
will become humankind’s representative and go to outer space.”

  “If you become that important, I bet you’ll be able to solve the mysteries around me. You’ll be able to find me and come see me again.”

  “I’ll definitely come see you.”

  I’d once sat staring at her face as she slept, wondering why the lady’s face had been made to look this way. In the same way, I could ask why I was here. Why was I here, why was she here, and why was she so special to me? Why could I never get tired of seeing her face, of seeing how she put her chin in her hand, of the light in her hair, of the sound of her sigh? I knew that life was born in the primordial sea and, after a dizzying length of time, evolved into humankind, and eventually, I was born. I knew that I was a boy and the genes in my cells made me predisposed to like the lady. But I didn’t want a hypothesis or a logical explanation. That wasn’t what I wanted to know. The one thing I did know for sure was that those things weren’t the answers I sought.

  “Well, I’d better be going,” she said. She let go of me and started walking away.

  I tried to stand up, but she turned away at the entrance to Seaside Café. “You stay here,” she said. “It might be dangerous.”

  She saw me sit back down and grinned.

  “Don’t cry, kiddo.”

  “I won’t cry.”

  And she left Seaside Café.

  The sky was bright and clear, and the wind had kicked up. The wind caught the lady’s hair, and it gleamed in the light. She walked slowly down the road and into the lot by the dentist’s office. The same lots where the penguins had first appeared and where they’d disappeared. It was really quiet in Seaside Café. I could imagine the sound of her footsteps on the grass and the feel of her hair in the wind.

  She was growing unsteady on her feet.

  She stopped in the middle of the lot, turned toward me, and waved. A moment later, a huge gust of wind blew by, and all the glass in the café windows rattled. I’m sure that wind swept all the way through town, making the trees on the breast-shaped hills sway with a noise like a waterfall.

  When the wind died down, the lady was gone.

  I sat there alone for a while.

  I made a record in my notebook of how it felt sitting alone at that window, but reading it over now, I don’t feel like it captured those feelings at all. I wasn’t able to reproduce it accurately. I’ve only ever felt like that once in my entire life. I have learned it is extremely difficult to write a proper account of once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

  After a while, I left Seaside Café.

  I walked through the deserted neighborhood, soaking in the warm sunlight.

  I listened closely to the sounds of the town, but nothing seemed out of place. Just a brisk breeze blowing and the grass rustling in the vacant lots. The water tower on the hill and the vending machines by the side of the road and the empty asphalt pavement and the high-tension towers behind the forest were all just as they’d always been.

  I walked past the zelkovas and saw the red row of fire trucks up ahead and a large crowd gathered around them. The ambulance lights were flashing. The investigation team was sitting with blankets around them, surrounded by firemen. Professor Hamamoto was hunched over like a bear, his arms around something. It was much smaller than the professor, so at first, I thought he was just crouching down alone.

  The firemen noticed me coming toward them.

  There was a commotion and a lot of yelling. They started running to save me. Then Hamamoto came flying out of the professor’s arms and ran toward me, reaching me before anyone else had a chance. When she threw her arms around me, I saw that she was crying and realized just how tiny and frail she was.

  We stood perfectly still for a while.

  Then Hamamoto spoke, her voice almost a gasp. “Is she…?”

  “The lady left.”

  Hamamoto’s big eyes stared into mine.

  “Aoyama, are you crying?”

  “I’ve decided not to cry.”

  I told the lady I wouldn’t cry.

  When my father got back from France, he saw the coverage of our town in the papers and on TV and was very surprised.

  The phenomena in our town were far too strange, and important people all across Japan attempted to offer explanations, arms folded. One insisted it was an earthquake; another, a tornado. Someone else combined the two, attaching them to something about viscous clouds. Then, someone else showed up, claiming it must have been a mass hallucination. As one person after another proposed different hypotheses, it all got too hard to follow and everyone forgot about it. Naturally, no one was arguing for the Aoyama Hypothesis.

  At last, the helicopters circling the sky and the news vans went away, and the town was quiet again.

  I went to school every day, just as I always had. I remained busy, with a number of different research projects on my plate.

  Professor Hamamoto made no official statement about what had transpired inside The Sea, and he didn’t tell Hamamoto anything, either.

  Less and less people talked about it. The creature Suzuki caught had vanished, and all signs that The Sea had flooded town were gone without a trace. It felt like a dream to most people, and that made them not want to seriously talk about it. I avoided talking about The Sea or the lady or the penguins myself.

  One day, Uchida and I were researching magnets at the library when we realized Hamamoto was sitting on the couch next to us. We talked about magnets for a while.

  Eventually, Hamamoto said, “Aoyama, what do you think The Sea was?” It felt like it took her a lot of courage to ask. Uchida gave me a long, searching look.

  “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “You have a hypothesis?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t like the hypothesis I came up with.”

  “Will you tell me about it?”

  “This research is going to take a very long time. I have a long road ahead of me.”

  “Fair. I understand.” Hamamoto nodded.

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Uchida said. “I know you will.”

  On weekdays, I went to school, played chess with Hamamoto, and played with Uchida. I was glad that Suzuki had stopped being mean to us. Sometimes we even played games with Suzuki. On weekends, I went to the library or explored the town with Uchida and Hamamoto. We discussed the theory of relativity and the origin of life. I went to the dentist, too, and to Seaside Café.

  It was mostly the same, but there were a few differences.

  No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find our way to the clearing in the Jabberwock Woods. That clearing had never existed, and with The Sea gone, it had vanished from our world. Part of the stream we had followed for Project Amazon was gone, too, and part of it had dried up and was no longer a stream at all.

  And I could no longer see the lady. When I went to the dentist or Seaside Café, she was never there.

  Late in fall, I went out for a drive with my father.

  We went extremely far. The car traveled beneath wispy clouds, like stretched-out cotton balls. We crossed a number of rolling hills and arrived at a town far from home. There was a café in a small station even my father had never heard of. We drank coffee there.

  Ever since he got back from France, my father and I had never once talked about the lady. Until now.

  “You miss her?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “We said good-bye.”

  “I see. It was awfully sudden.”

  For a while, we drank coffee in silence.

  “You once said there were problems in the world that shouldn’t be solved. That if the problem I was working on was one of those, I’d end up getting hurt.”

  “I did say that.”

  “I think I know what you meant now. But I had to solve the problem.”

  “What I meant was cases where not solving it is best for the people involved. But sometimes that isn’t true for everyone else. That�
�s what you mean, right?”

  “Why did the lady have to leave?”

  “You think it isn’t fair?”

  “I do.”

  My father put his cup down on the table, looked out the window, and thought about it. Both our notebooks were lying on the table. They were new notebooks he’d brought back from France. Both covers were shining in the light.

  “That’s where the ends of the earth are,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “The place you think isn’t fair. You can’t do anything about it, right?”

  “I’m interested in the ends of the earth. But they’re extremely frustrating.”

  “But everyone wants to see them.”

  “Why do they?”

  “Good question.”

  I thought about it. My father’s answer was extremely difficult. When he said mysterious things like this, it sounded like the lady.

  “Seeing the ends of the earth can be sad.”

  “Of course. That’s why people cry.”

  “I haven’t cried since I started elementary school.”

  “Do what feels right to you.”

  “I always do.”

  I drank my coffee. I didn’t put any sugar in it, so it was extremely bitter. I didn’t really think it tasted good, but it did warm me up. Every time I felt coffee sink into my belly, I found myself feeling better but also a little sadder.

  “Dad, I was extremely fond of the lady,” I said.

  “I know,” my father said.

  I live in a suburban town. There are lots of rolling hills and little houses. The farther you get from the station, the newer everything is, and you get more cute little bright-colored houses that look like they’re made of LEGOs. On sunny days, the entire town sparkles like it’s stuffed full of sweet treats. There’s a shopping mall, some high-tension towers, a dentist, Seaside Café, a hill with a water tower that looks like a spaceship, a vacant lot that looks like a savannah, the elementary school I go to, and the house I live in.

  I wake up extremely early and go explore the town at dawn alone. At that time of day, there’s no one else around, and I feel like I’ve reached the ends of the earth.