Editing Kino no Tabi:Volume1 Summary (section)

===Chapter 1: Land of Visible Pain —I See You.—===

'''(Anime Reference: Episode 1)'''

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Kino and Hermes were riding on a road in the middle of a grassland. Hermes chides Kino, who, out of dizziness from hunger, almost got them into an accident. Apparently, Kino did not eat lunch to save up her rations because they’re about to arrive in a country. Hermes notes that she can’t always be sure that she would be able to eat even if they do arrive in one, because the next country may be deserted.

Soon they arrive at the country’s walls, which was surrounded by a moat and had a drawbridge for a gate. Kino approaches the guard post but forgets to put down Hermes’ sidestand, causing him to fall over. Because she was weak of hunger, she couldn’t even lift Hermes up, much to Hermes’ chagrin.

There is no one in the guard post, and it is a machine that took care of the entry procedures. Inside the country, Kino first eats a meal in an unmanned restaurant, then spends most of the day looking around the country. They encountered machines that gave them maps, cleaned streets, and served food, but met not a single soul. At the end of the day, they find a hotel, where they are led to a gorgeous room, much to Kino’s confusion, as the room, like the food and the fuel she helped herself to earlier that day, is incredibly cheap.

Kino and Hermes examine the map they received, noting areas labelled as a government district, an industrial district, and a residential district. Kino remarks that there has to be someone making all the machines, and notes that the situation seems unlike the country they were in right before, where there was only one person left. She decides to check out if there are people living in the residential area the next day, and decides to sleep off the rest of the evening in the comfortable bed.

The next day, Kino wakes up at dawn and proceeds with the maintenance of her two persuaders, the slim .22 automatic ‘Woodsman’ and the double-action revolver ‘Canon’.  She practices her quick draw before enjoying her second luxurious shower and buffet breakfast. Late that morning, she wakes up Hermes and checks out of the hotel. They head for the residential district located in a forested area, where they find identical houses among the trees that didn’t seem to have any people living in them. They eventually reach the western gate and head back towards the government district at the country’s center and take an elevator to the top floor of a tall building. Kino pulls out a sniper scope from her bag and observes the houses inside the forested area. To her surprise, she finds people living in them. However, every single person lived in isolation. Before heading back to the hotel they stayed in the day before, they visit the industrial district where the machines are made, but find out nothing about the country’s situation from their machine guide.

The next day, Kino replenishes their supplies and heads straight towards the western gates. They pass through the forested residential area and meet no one, until they find a man tinkering with a machine in his garden. They approach the man, who leaps in surprise upon seeing them. When he has finally calmed down, he asks Kino if she could tell what he is thinking. Kino becomes perplexed but answers truthfully. The man soon realizes that Kino is a traveler, and delightfully invites her to tea.

The man guides Kino and Hermes into a large room and serves her tea. Kino inquires about the contents of the tea after sniffing and noting its strange aroma. The man replies that it’s called ‘dokudami’. Hermes tells Kino not to drink it, concluding that it is poisonous because of its name (Note: ‘Doku’ means poison in Japanese). The man laughs and explains that it is not poison, rather an ‘antidote’ for poison (i.e. bodily toxins). The man’s smile then changed to sobs, explaining that it was so long since he last talked to a person. Kino urges him to tell his story.

The man tells her that their country is a place where everyone feels each other’s pain—the land of visible pain, so to speak.  They believed that it was a wonderful thing to understand how other people feel, for them to know when their words or deeds had hurt somebody else. Because their country was rich and all the work was done by machines, the citizens had free time to pursue the arts and sciences. One day, a group of neuroscientists discovered an untapped ability of the human brain to perceive other people’s thoughts and feelings, and created a medicine that could activate it. All of the citizens drank the medicine, partly because of faith in its merits and the belief that it is a step forward in evolution, and partly because no one wanted to be left out.

Then the man shares his own story. He and his lover lived together in bliss for a while after receiving their telepathic abilities. But one day, the man saw the woman watering his herbs, and thought that she was watering them too much even though he had already told her not to do so. Before he could explain gently, the woman received his thoughts and was angered at the notion that he thought her an idiot. From then, things fell apart between the two of them. There was chaos elsewhere: a man killed in an accident transmitted his pain to onlookers, driving them mad; allied politicians realizing the treachery of their peers; school tests rendered useless when everyone could tell the answers from their classmates’ thoughts; people getting arrested for rape or indecency just by looking at a woman, and so on.

The country was in utter disorder within a week. They all realized that no good came out of knowing each other’s feelings, and that it could potentially make things worse. Having discovered that the ability doesn’t work if they are apart from each other, they all volunteered to live in isolation. The man notes that the country is headed to certain collapse, with no children born in it for almost ten years. The man plays his favorite music.

'''''“I find this piece deeply moving, I often wondered how other people felt about it. I used to listen to it together with my lover, and she told me that she loved it, but is that really how she feels? And you Kino, what do you think about it? ...But I don’t want to know the answer to that.”'''''

The man sees them off, but when Kino is about to launch Hermes, he suddenly asks Kino to stay with him. Kino refuses and insists on continuing her journey. Realizing the implications of his suggestion, the man blushes and apologizes. Kino shares a gaze with him before finally setting off. On their way, Hermes accuses Kino of being “lovey-dovey” with the man (and comments on the man’s ‘weird’ taste). Kino denies this, and says that she exchanged parting thoughts with the man during that last gaze. Hermes wonders if the message came across, but Kino herself is unsure.
 

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