Kino no Tabi:Volume10 Chapter2
“A Tale of Braggarts” —Fantasy—[edit]
This story takes place in the dining hall of a hotel of a country.
The dining hall took up the first floor of the wooden building. The floors were paneled with wood, the walls likewise, and wide beams crossed the high ceiling.
Between each beam, as well as between the beam and the wall, hung thick ropes.
They were the kind you could find on sailing vessels. Tens dangled low enough to touch a person’s head.
About twenty round tables were arranged on the floor. Only one had chairs, and it was there where four travelers had gathered.
All of them just came into the country that day.
One was a man in his fifties, traveling by coach.
One was a woman in her thirties going around in a four-wheel drive.
One was a youth in his twenties who befriended the woman and got a ride, but otherwise went on foot.
The last was a short-haired teenager with a large revolver hung by the hip who rode a motorrad. (Note: A two-wheeled vehicle. Only denotes that it doesn’t fly.)
After the four took their meals, they had their usual information exchange as they sipped tea. No other customers were present. Even the bartender was not at the back counter. And then,
“There’re travelers here!”
The residents gathered round, talking loudly. All at once, some thirty people crowded around the surprised guests.
After exchanging simple greetings, one countryman said this.
“Say, travelers. When you guys say stuff like, ‘These are the places I’ve seen up until now’ and people don’t believe you because they’ve got no way of checking the facts, you end up having to lie to satisfy them, right? So how about it? Tell us what kind of lies you make up when that happens. Something very imaginative, full of strange things that aren’t possible in reality—we’d like to hear those.”
This surprised the travelers, but if you were told that the meals would be free of charge if each one shared such a story, how could you keep quiet?
The old man spoke.
“This, I once saw. In one country, everybody was a tub of lard—so obese that you’d think they weren’t human. Beauty and fat went hand-in-hand in their minds, I suppose, but anyhow, they pigged out every day. Obesity-related diseases manifested one after the other in them, but they didn’t care one bit. And when they finally got to the point where they can’t walk anymore, they were hailed as ‘saints’, taken care of by someone, and led a life wholly devoted to eating until death. Body weight always exceeded 300 kg. The sheer load causes the flesh to separate from the bone, so that’s how they can’t move. Such things can’t be called human.”
The woman spoke.
“The country that surprised me the most would have to be this one. Its custom was to lop off a baby’s arm or leg once it was born. They considered having a full set of limbs too perfect and how ‘it wasn’t beautiful for a human’ so they simply cut one off. They were even selling tools for that. Of course, that meant everyone there was missing an arm or a leg, and since it was their standard of beauty all this time, wherever I went, they always asked me with a frown, ‘Aren’t you ashamed to have all of your arms and legs?’ And eventually they got this close to cutting something off of me, so I shot off.”
The youth spoke.
“The one I went to was amazing. They had a law called the Middle Age Act. It says that if middle-aged people—adults who’ve developed their judgment—commit a crime, they’re innocent. As long as they agree to some simple reformation, they won’t be put in jail. It seems that their justification is this: ‘For such sensible adults to have committed the crime, they surely must have had no choice at the time. Hence, they cannot be charged with the crime.’ So there was a proverb like this in that country: ‘If you’re going to commit a crime, wait until middle age.’ Of course, most of the adults there were normal, but outrageous crimes cropped up every so often and gave me the creeps. I left pretty soon.”
The motorrad rider spoke.
“I once saw an entire land moving. It was about the size of this country we’re in, though beneath the huge walls were millions of caterpillars that never stopped moving. The people lived above them and traveled leisurely like that. When I got on, there was another country blocking its way, but the moving country used high-power lasers that burned through the walls like paper and reflected every missile that came its way, so it went on in a matter of minutes. Even now, I believe that country must be wandering somewhere.”
The stories were finished.
The stories highly amused the residents, whose eyes opened wide, laughed and exclaimed, “There’s no way that could ever be real!”
So they thanked the travelers for the good time. ‘We’ll go pay the meal costs now, and the morning is nigh, so we’ll be taking off,’ they said.
Just like the way they came, they left in an instant.
The four sat there all alone. To break the sudden silence in the dining hall, the old man spoke.
“Everyone— You thought that thinking up of a lie was too much trouble, and ended up telling your real experiences in the places you visited, didn’t you?”
The other three nodded. As they stared at the old man,
“Yeah. So did I.”
He matter-of-factly confessed the same. And then,
“Although the places we spoke of earlier were shocking…”
The three nodded. Then all four looked up at the hanging ropes.
“This country is quite amazing itself.”
And the three firmly nodded to the old man’s murmur.
For the residents who had just been there were dangling upside-down from the ropes. All four continued staring up at the ropes.
At the bar counter, the bartender too hung upended from the rope tied to his knee.
“Would you like seconds?”
And asked this as he polished a glass.
| Back to Chapter 1 | Return to Main Page | Forward to Chapter 3 |
