Golden Time:Volume7 Chapter1

Status: Incomplete

61% completed (estimated)

   

Golden Time 7: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"Anpan! It's anpan!" said Mother, gripping the steering wheel.

He took his mouth off the bread roll, which he had opened wide and was about to bite into at any moment,

"...Huh?" Banri, in the passenger seat, had no choice but to reply.

It was just the two of them in the car. Those words were clearly meant for him, but "anpan"?

To think she couldn't tell the difference between an anpan and a dinner roll even from this close, surely, for all that she was his mother, wasn't she going senile a bit too soon? Or perhaps she was simply so heartbroken at her son leaving home to return to his solitary life in Tokyo that her perception had been impaired to the point where she could no longer distinguish one type of bread from another? If that was the case, he supposed he could bring myself to be gentle with her.

"...You see, Mother, this food item is what is referred to the world over as a "roll." Just look at it. It clearly has a rolled shape, doesn't it? And then the whole thing is bread. That is why people call it a 'roll'."

He thrust the roll he was holding right up to his mother's nose.

"Hey, don't do something like that while somebody's driving..."

As she tried to push her annoying son's hand away with one of her's, her eyes widened in shock.

"Woow! What's this? Such a wonderful smell!"

He knew he'd get that reaction.

"It's irresistible, isn't it? Isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's ir-re-sistible. This. Is. Out of this world. Top class!"

"Isn't it? Top class, isn't it? Then you understand why I couldn't resist eating it, can't you? How about you taking the first bite?"

"But as I get up in years my mouth gets dry. I have that chalky, parched feeling, so just give me the 'puff' part. Just the 'puff'."

He understood. Banri lightly puffed up the plastic bag around one of the individually wrapped rolls, pinched the opening shut, and shot the trapped air in a puff right beneath his mother's nose. Hit point-blank by the irresistible aroma of the baked bread, she let out a long, blissful sigh without ever loosening his grip on the steering wheel.

"It smells like pure happiness... or rather, this truly is anpan."

"...No. Look, like what I said before, this is a bread roll! Just so you won't wind up embarrassing yourself, I am setting the record straight: anpan is normally round. And it has sweet red bean paste stuffed inside. And by the way, a bun filled with green pea paste is called an 'uguisu-pan'. The paste is green and has a strong flavor of 'bean-ness'."

"Oh shut up."

"So it's come to this!?"

"What were you talking about just now? 'Bean flavor', are you an idiot? Do you seriously think your mother is weird and losing it and can no longer tell the difference between a roll and an anpan?"

"Ah, am I wrong!? But you were saying anpan, anpan, so I totally thought..."

"The point is, the way you looked as you were about to eat it was just like in that anpan game."

"Anpan game"... was she talking about that thing where you flick an anpan sitting on a table with your finger, aiming to knock another one flying? Or that trick where you skillfully toss three anpan into the air and catch them in time with a song? Or perhaps that business of grabbing at a bunch of anpan all at once and messily devouring just the tasty bits?

"That doesn't fit... the first is ohajiki, the next is otedama and the last, chasing women. So what the heck is the anpan game...? Could it be something like slamming one down with all your might and using the momentum to flip another anpan over so you could claim it as your own?"

"Enough. Talking with you makes me old."

Stepping on the brakes at a red light, she switched on the radio. Music poured from the stereo: a track brimming with such reckless, spirited energy that it seemed capable of giving lovestruck girls throughout Japan the courage (and a gentle push) to charge forward, transforming them into radiant, happy versions of their future selves. A moment later,

"...'Playing around with anpan' is a form of glue sniffing, where one puts an organic solvent in a plastic bag, hold it over your mouth, and inhale the fumes to get high. Don't do it; it melts your brain."

The explanation was far more wretched than he had anticipated.

Answering with just his eyes, "Who would do that?", Banri finally took another bite of the bread roll, which was half peeled open in the bag. At that moment,

"Huh...!?"

The aroma of wheat flour and a rich buttery quality wafted up through his nose. That exquisite texture, soft, melting in his mouth. Crisp, airy and chewy, followed by the gentle, spreading sweetness of sugar.

"So. Good! Are you kidding!? What is this? It's super delicious!"

He was amazed. It was so delicious, far beyond anything he had expected that he instinctively straightened up and wanted to make a big fuss over it.

"Eh? That much?"

"Yes, that much! It's completely different from what they sell around there! I'm shocked! Nothing needs to be added! It's delicious as it is! It's incredibly moist, and it won't dry your mother, so try it! I mean, please, try it! I want to share this joy with you!"

"That so? If you say that much about it, then, well, I guess I'll try a little."

Banri tore off a bite-sized piece of the bread in his hand and passed it to his mother. His mother popped it into her mouth,

"...Hmm...!?"

Her eyes widened so much it seemed they might pop out. It was a fresh reaction coming from somebody around fifty years of age and who had experienced all the big events of life, from marriage to childbirth, the funerals of her parents, and even having seen her son off to college. "Right? Right?", Banri asked with his eyes, "Yes! Yes!" she nodded vigorously. "More? More?" "Yes! Yes!"

Banri split the remainder in two to share with his parent, and the two of them quickly devoured the bread roll right there in the car. The whole process took less than a minute; the traffic light hadn't even changed yet, and the song was still playing.

"This stuff is dangerously good. Should I eat another one? I mean, they gave me so many, so maybe I could share a few?"

"No, no. Since they gave them to you, go ahead and eat them after we get home. And if you can't finish them all, you can even share them with your friends in Tokyo."

"Really?"

His friend in Tokyo... the face that immediately sprang into Banri's mind was, of course, the face of a person who was anything but a mere 'friend.' The face that was surely waiting for Banri to get back was the lovely, perfect smiling face of his lover. Only imagining it like this, Banri's heart was instantly on the verge of shooting straight to Tokyo, transcending time and space. He almost called out her name: Kouko. His cheeks were nearly melting with joy, but then he remembered he was in Shizuoka, in a car his mother was driving.

"In that case, I'll do it."

Pretending to fix a twisted seatbelt, he managed to hide the lovestruck, slack expression on his face, on that betrayed his feelings about her, so that his mother wouldn't notice.

"I had no idea that home-made bread could turn out so delicious."

"Why can't we do it too? Then we could eat all we want, every day."

"Once, a long time ago, a neighbor showed me how. But I certainly could not make it anywhere near as well, and neither your nor your father were thrilled with it."

"Is that so? Well, Meiko's technique must be exceptionally good. Even amazing."

"That's incredible. With a wife who can make bread like this for him, Dai-kun is a lucky guy."

"Well, he's probably quite happy... even if his wife's driving is a bit rough."

"It may be rough, but there is definitely an abundance of happiness there."

Meiko had only arrived not long ago.

It was at the very moment they had been pulling out of his parent's garage. His mother was driving.

Noticing a cute yellow Beetle speeding toward them along the narrow road in front of the Tada house, a street barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, Mother hit the brakes with a look of bewilderment; yet, ignoring the nose of their car jutting out from the garage, the Beetle headed straight for them, effectively blocking their path. "Oh no, we're going to get hit!" Mother cried, hurriedly backing up. Almost simultaneously, the Beetle slammed on its brakes, skidding wildly with a deafening screech before finally coming to a halt at an angle that completely blocked the entrance to the Tada family's garage. As mother and child exchanged puzzled glances, Meiko popped her head out of the driver's-side window and waved with a beaming smile, calling out, "Thank goodness: I made it!"

When Meiko found out that Banri would be returning to Tokyo on the Shinkansen shortly after three o'clock that day, she had spent the morning baking her signature bread rolls for him. A few days ago, while hanging out with the group, including Dai and Linda, Banri had heard of Meiko's hobby baking bread, and had shouted reflexively, "I want some!" It seemed that Meiko remembered that well and went out of her way to bring some over, fresh from the oven.

"Sorry to add to your luggage. Please take care on your way back to Tokyo. Definitely get in touch next time you're back home... and we absolutely have to get everyone together again!"

Saying this, Meiko handed over a paper bag full of bread. Then, apparently headed for work, she made another rough U-turn, jerking and clunking with a wildness that seemed out of character for her looks, and hurriedly went back the way she came.

The bread she'd given him was still warm. Each individual item was in its own plastic bag, and inside there was a thin film of moisture, making them look as if they were living things. They seemed to breathe, and to pulse with the flow of blood. Banri instinctively cradled the bag of bread against his chest, as if holding them protectively with his arms.

Meiko, whose "air" bore a certain resemblance to that of a "fairy-like" female friend of his from Tokyo, truly exuded the scent of pure happiness, just as my mother had said earlier.

"...That was unfortunate, regarding that girl," Mother murmured as the light turned green and she set the car in motion.

"How so?"

"It was a near thing, but she might have been your wife."

Pfft! Banri blew out what was left of the aftertaste of the bread from his mouth.

"Wha, what are you saying...!?"

"After all, back in high school you and Meiko were pretty good friends. If you'd become a couple before Dai-kun did, she'd be your wife by now, and your mother would be able to eat that bread every day."

"...Hey, you know, you don't really remember Dai, do you? If you actually remembered, there's no way you could make such an insolent remark... the kind that defies even the gods. The guy is slim, tall and handsome... and on top of that, really good at soccer! And by, don't forget that even a guy like me has somebody he's dating right now!"

He snorted and puffed out his chest, but,

"There you go again. Yeah, yeah. So you say."

"...Hey! I really do. Didn't I show you her picture!?"

"Yeah, yeah, that's right. I saw. She exists. She really does. That beautiful girl who looks like a celebrity."

"No, I'm serious."

"Oh come on now~"

Crap, Banri muttered, pursing his lips. Mother doesn't believe Kouko exists at all.

She was at least aware that a person by the name of Kaga Kouko attended the same university as her son and was close to him. There was even that time when that ramen-shop owner had called the Tada household (when did this happen?). However, she just couldn't seem to bring herself to believe that her son was dating the person in the photo... the girlfriend named Kouko... that he had shown her. So even now, he kept getting laughed out with "Oh come on now~" It was still the only response he got from her.

Perhaps it was because Kouko was simply too beautiful, or because of her overly practiced "signature pose", that ironclad model stance held at an unshakable angle that never varied even one millimeter, not even for a selfie. In any case, his mother has simply decided that the photo is just some image casually lifted from the blog of a minor actress or something like that. His father even went so far as to say, "Isn't this the girl from last month's gravure spread in 'Bunshun'?"

"Whatever," said Banri, looking out the window. He'd bring Kouko here before too long. When that time came, the best thing she and her spouse could do was to be simply blown away by the flawless beauty that was Kouko. Lifting his back slightly off the seat and slipping his hand into the back-pocket of his jeans, Banri gently touched the round, flat, hard object inside.

This, too, was one piece of evidence that he and Kouko were dating. The matching mirrors we were given as gifts. ......Though his was shattered into tiny fragments now.

The car, with his mother driving and Banri as passenger was just approaching a bridge crossing the river.

Traffic on the bridge heading toward the city was somewhat heavy, and the line of cars came to a halt about halfway across.

While she braked, Mother turned off the radio and said, "All the songs sound the same nowadays." She opened the driver's side window. A cool breeze blowing across the water flowed into the car, subtly mingling with the chemical smell of the pulp mill.

Banri opened the passenger-side window half-way down. The wind flowed through even better. In the distance, a long wooden bridge could be seen going across the leisurely flowing river, divided into several channels.

They hadn't gone near that place since that night. Whenever they headed into town, his mother, his father or some friend from high school would drive him, and would use the busy concrete bridge they were crossing right now.

And today he was leaving this place once more. He was returning that that cramped apartment in Tokyo where he lived alone.

(...Oh,)

He pressed his chin against the edge of the glass window and started to open his mouth wide, but immediately thought better of it and closed his mouth.

What in the world was he doing?

Hey, what good would it do to call out? After all, that guy had sunk to the deep darkness of the bottom of the river that night.

No matter how many times he called out, his voice was not likely to reach him anymore... and even if it did, what good would it do? What was he doing? Was he trying to say something like, "I'm heading out now?" Or was he expecting to come along too? It wasn't as if he had the slightest desire to bring him along.

(If he said anything... it would be "good bye", he supposed.)

That was the only option. That had to be it.

That's probably it. Himself.

He gazed intently at the spot where he had encountered that mysterious incident the night of the reunion. At that very spot, a guy who shared his face and had lived all that past time as Tada Banri, had let go with eyes full of resignation, then fell and sank away. Into the blackness of the deep pools, swirling and swallowing the bridge piers in darkness.

"Come to think of it, Banri,"

At his mother's voice, Banri turned to her and asked, "What?"

"Did you write down your address for Grandma? She asked for it to be written in large letters because her eyes are going bad, didn't she?"

"Ah. Not good. I forgot."

"Wha? You forgot? Jeez, what were you doing...?"

"Oh man, what'll I do? I wonder if I could write it on a postcard in really big letters."

"Do that. I could write it for you, but she'd be so much happier getting a postcard from you. It looks like she wants to send you some mandarin oranges or something. Honestly, you're such a naughty grandson, playing with her heart like that."

"Hey, sorry about that," said Banri, scratching his head as he looked out the window again. The line of cars stretching to the bridge finally began to start moving slowly.

He was about to leave that thing behind... that guy who still lies submerged over there.

(......Do you see me? From there, even now?)

He closed the window and looked ahead. The car carrying him moved forward.

He'd thought about the events of that night over and over again, right up to this day. What the heck had happened? What was the meaning of it? Was it an omen of things to come? Could it be a sign that his lost memories might be returning?

He hadn't spoken of it to his parents nor his friends, but he had mentioned it on his scheduled visit with the doctor who had been treating him since the accident.

Meeting another version of himself on that bridge, as if in a hallucination. Watching the details of the accident, which he had long forgotten, play out before him as though it were happening to someone else. And then seeing that other self sink to the riverbed, and the unbearable anxiety that had plagued him ever since. Not knowing what was happening nor what would become of him, and being consumed by sheer, overwhelming terror.

They gave him an MRI scan, but no particular problems were found. During counseling sessions, the therapist took the time to listen carefully to what he had to say, yet they never said his memory had returned, but neither did they say he had lost his mind. The simple diagnosis made at the time of his accident, that "we don't know how this will turn out," was unchanged. Nor was there any challenge to his fundamental stance, held since he was hospitalized to the present, "I want to live as normal a life as possible."

During the session, Banri took a brief bathroom break and stepped out of the counseling room. As he walked down the hallway in his sneakers, the sound of his footsteps echoing softly, he couldn't help but recall the long, long days he had spent hospitalized there. His physical recovery was progressing well, but rehabilitation had yielded absolutely no results regarding his memory. He couldn't connect with the people who claimed to be his family, and, utterly bewildered, he had simply breathed, ate, slept and felt the passage of time. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday... and then another Monday.

He had been living since then. Standing in the hospital corridor, Banri looked around for a bit. He felt he'd gone down here many times in the past. Now, he could even look back at the hectic scene of the hospital with a sense of nostalgia. He thought that the memories that had escaped him were now building up again from scratch. He realized that that much time had drained out of his life.

On his way back to the counseling room, a nurse that cared for him while he was hospitalized called out, "Oh my! It's Tada Banri!" When he mentioned, while standing there chatting, that he was now living alone in Tokyo and going about the life of an ordinary university student, the nurse was delighted, saying, "That's amazing! Wonderful! You're really working hard, aren't you?"

That so? So I'm amazing?

For some reason, Banri had laughed at that moment. Was it really possible to call this, a college life that was utterly pathetic and a shambles in every possible way, "Wonderful?" Laughing, he returned to the counseling room, which was dazzlingly bright with the morning sunlight.

...Something similar might happen again, or it might never happen again. They still needed to monitor the situation. With regards to this time around, if one were to examine the circumstances of the accident as a new event, as if it had happened to somebody else, he felt it would be hard to conclude that his memory had come back. It might be a false memory constructed from what he had seen and heard after the accident. Unless it were connected to the "here and now" by a sense of familiarity, the feeling that this was something that actually happened in his own past, it would be difficult to call it a reliable memory.

He didn't understand very well, but it seemed to be that sort of thing. After the explanation, the doctor prescribed a medication to be taken as needed when he felt particularly anxious.

When asked if things looked okay, he loudly replied that yes, they looked good. Saying it out loud actually made him feel like everything was okay.

When asked at the very end if there was anything else he wanted to talk about, Banri recalled something that had happened in the past. However, he swallowed the words "Come to think of it" that had risen to his throat and left the hospital without saying a thing.

He didn't feel like he could say it right; he worried that if he started talking, he'd ramble on without getting to the point and end up running over his scheduled counseling time, which wouldn't be right. Besides, it felt like the sort of trivial matter that wasn't really worth talking about in the first place.

What he tried to say, but stopped, was an incident from before the summer. One night, his "past self" came back to him. He tried to run back to Linda but tripped and wound up with a nasty injury to his lip.

It was only for a few seconds, but, as if waking from a dream, his past self lived within his body. The doctor's somewhat obscure explanation, about connecting to the present moment through a sense of familiarity, seems to fit that situation perfectly. At that moment, his present self was completely connected to all the emotions of his past, including his unrequited love for Linda. He knew with absolute certainty that all the lost memories belonged to his own past.

And then, in those few moments, my present self wasn't anywhere in the world.

The most baffling part, the thing he didn't know how to explain… was the basic "self recognizing self." His current self recognized his returned past self.

The self that had lived on since losing its memory, the self he was now, was truly nowhere to be found at that moment. He was perceived by no one. It was not as if he existed somewhere else as someone other than himself; he was absolute "nothingness."

Eventually, he had snapped out of it; the state dissolved, leaving behind only a strange emotional residue as "the self of the moment" returned to being simply himself. The events of those few seconds felt as though they had happened to someone else entirely. The ego that had inhabited his body at that moment was, beyond any doubt, absolutely not himself.

It was something he hadn't mentioned at the hospital, yet in the end, he couldn't simply dismiss it as a "trivial matter"; even after returning to his parents' home, Banri continued to think it over on his own.

And what struck him was the thought that "I", living now amidst a multitude of emotions and piling up memories along the continuum of time, and "that guy," or "his past self," seemingly could not exist at the same time.

If that guy were to emerge into consciousness, he would disappear.

And if I were to emerge into consciousness, that guy would vanish.

That guy and he were never going to connect entirely. They were not one single person. They were different. But there was only one body. That's why only one of the two could survive. This situation could be described as a tug-of-war over the ego of "Tada Banri."

Having reached that conclusion, Banri took his nightly medications. He had a vague feeling that they worked. From that time forward, he hadn't needed medication.

The one that sank was that guy.

The one living now was he himself.

The one here now was in fact, himself.

Once he adopted that defiant attitude, it seemed he could push aside both anxiety and fear. Then he hung out with his friends from high school, constantly inviting each other out. He worked a part-time job helping out with the tea, and he went to visit his cousins and grandmother. He went on short trips within the prefecture with his parents. The official name of his beloved cat had been decided. It was Matsushima Nyanyako Deluxe, or Matsuko for short. Matsuko recently wound up at the veterinary clinic after a fight with a stray cat left a nasty gash at the base of her ear; on that occasion, she made sure her name was officially recorded in the medical chart as "Tada Matsushima Nyan-nyan-ko Deluxe-chan."

He thought he'd made so many memories, truly so many, back in his hometown; some were fun, some were silly, but there were just so many of them. True to his promise to Kouko, he kept a great many things he wanted to talk about locked up inside himself.

The car had long since crossed the bridge and entered the city.

So, he was the one who'd risen from the riverbed and survived. Only he, the one here now, the one living at this moment, he was the only Tada Banri there was. And from now on, he was the only one who would continue to live as Tada Banri.

...And that is why you should stay there, sunk at the bottom of the river.

"Banri"

"Yo!"

Could it be that his sense of loneliness grew deeper as they approached the station? He turned toward his mother, whose voice had dropped slightly in tone.

"There is something I've kept hidden and didn't tell you while you were staying with us. I didn't want to cause you any confusion."

"Eh? What?"

He caught his breath and looked at his mother's profile. During the happy times spent back home, had he, through his inadequacy, placed a burden on her heart?

"...Call I tell you?"

"Go ahead and say it, of course!"

"...Lately, I've become a really big fan of Masaharu Fukuyama."

Slide... his back slumped down from the seat. His mother kept driving, her gaze clear and steady, fixed firmly on the road ahead.

"...Ah, is... that so...?"

"I love his looks, his music, and his acting, but what I like best is probably his personality. Hurry up and marry a good woman! There's got to be someone there, right? There's the 'tough talking middle aged woman' side of me, the one that wants to smack some sense into him, and then there's the 'young girl' side that worries, 'But what if he really does get married?' It's just like, you know, that black-and-white symbol? The one where the two sides are curled up facing each other in that swirling, fluid way? It's like that."

"Like the yin-yang symbol?"

"Right. It's in that kind of tug-of-war where the two join forces to drive your mother mad. It's funny, you know? I never used to think anything of it at all, but then suddenly, snap, it just hit me. Some sort of wave. I was swept away, you know, all of a sudden."

"...Well, I suppose that's fine? Having that sort of enrichment in your life."

"I'm thinking of going to his concert at the end of the year."

"Ehh?"

"Your father too."

"......Wow... really?"

"You too, in fact."

<~~61% Completed~~>

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