Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 1 (section)

===Record 72: What Can You See?===

'''07/20/1998

'''18:20

After making my way down to Underground Tokyo and punching some bad guys, my job was complete.

I left all the cleanup work to you and sipped at a can of coffee all alone on a bench with peeling paint at Underground Tokyo’s Kichioji Station. It was still evening, but Underground Tokyo was already dark.

“…”

While lazing around with the bench, the train station TV showed a giant tower in Osaka.

“You don’t have us beat when it comes to height.”

When I looked up into Underground Tokyo’s sky, I could see the bottom of Surface Tokyo’s floor.

That ceiling was about three kilometers up and rivers flowed there.

The ceiling was made up of elevated districts that matched the terrain on the maps. It looked like Underground Tokyo’s map had been plastered there.

The winding ceiling rivers that flowed between the elevated districts were like windows and I could see the sky through them. Unlike here, it was twilight and the sky was bright red. I was jealous.

The red-dyed water of the rivers did not fall.

The power that kept them flowing was stronger than the one that would pull them down.

The clear streams on the ceiling would flow into either Underground or Surface Tokyo Bay.

I lived in Nishitama, so that view of the ceiling felt somewhat uncomfortable. Besides, it was too dark without any light from the sky. But the ceiling’s rivers acted as windows that somewhat relieved that discomfort.

“Hey.”

I heard a voice.

I was conceited enough to assume it was calling me. I looked left and right and saw people in student uniforms, people in suits, and one young woman in a miniskirt with oddly alluring legs, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to me. ''Dammit. Start looking at me, people.'' I prepared to strip off my clothes to make my presence known, but…

“Hey.”

I heard the voice again. I realized where it was coming from as I reached for the buttons on my collar.

It had come from above.

A small boat was floating on the other side of the one of the ceiling rivers. The voice coming from it was…a net? What were they trying to catch? Regardless, they weren’t calling to me. They were trying to catch something.

“They’re catching the twilight.”

You sat next to me and tossed me a drink that was getting a trial run in Underground Tokyo.

“The river has such a quick current that the color of twilight floats, so they catch it before it can sink. That’s the last light of the sun, so it apparently has a fair bit of energy. And I hear it tastes good.”

You mimicked scooping something up in your hand as you explained.

“I see,” I said as I touched your butt and received a backhand blow as thanks. “So that’s why I didn’t see the color of twilight here in Underground Tokyo.”

I opened the drink can and the lights that meant it was night came on within the station.

The lights were the color of twilight.

'''Author Comment:

Anyone who has driven from east to west on Tokyo’s roads probably knows where the idea for Underground Tokyo came from.

When you move east from around Kunitachi, everything suddenly gets a lot lower and there are a lot more places with underground structures.

The trains also get a lot lower around there.

Underground Tokyo is both about falling underground and about looking down and wondering what it would look like to look up from below.