Minato no Hoshizora

Without warning, the world turned white.

In a violent rush the light struck the boy's eyelids, as powerful as a physical blow. Blinding, even with his eyes closed.

How bright, he wondered. What could it be?

Both his mind and body felt light, aloof.

Where had this light come from? As he began to think on this, the boy came upon a more pertinent question.

Where was he?

Who...a spasm of pain. Who...am I?

The boy was beset with confusion, adrift without a handhold in a blaze of light.

Timidly, he eased his eyes open. His breath rushed out in awe.

Before his eyes, blindingly bright, a meteor shower was falling.

The window by his bed was brimming with light as the meteors fell, endlessly, brilliant bright arcs across the night sky.

His eyes couldn't bear the brightness any longer and he shut them again, tight.

Was he dreaming, he wondered, or were these meteors real? And who was he, who did not know even his own name?

And as he wondered, the shapeless fog that had filled his mind began to thin. Ah….Yes. Now he knew.

Recollection was emerging out of the fog – recollection, or indeed reawakening; and withal his consciousness was reasserting itself.

My name is… Minato, he thought. Nine years old. This is a hospital room. I've always been here. How could I have forgotten something so obvious?

He suddenly felt that he'd be able to stand the brightness now, after all, and he forced his eyes open. But what had he expected to see? The walls of the ward room greeted him, the same, familiar walls, the only place he'd ever known. The hospital sheets beneath him crinkled softly. At the foot of his bed was a television set, powered off. The ceiling above him was gray, the embedded light undecorated and utilitarian. It had been set to night-light, and now the room was suffused a gentle orange.

Minato climbed down from the bed. Reaching the window, he placed his hands up against the glass and looked upwards at the sky. He could see himself, faintly, in the glass, slim of frame and hair that, on a boy, would be called long.

Light streamed out in all directions from a single point in the sky, to come to fall to the earth; and Minato gazed at it, fascinated by the sight. This, surely, was a dream. There wasn't a meteor shower listed for tonight on the almanac and in any case, such a literal shower of light was a physical impossibility. And the dosage of his pills and been measured so, that he would not find himself waking at night.

Slowly, the light began to weaken, and at last it faded away entirely.

The view from the window began to assume its usual looks. Hills lay in a low, blackened chain in the distance, and high above them hung the multitude of the stars. Right against the upper frame of the window was red Aldebaran, the Eye of Taurus. And there, next to the V that formed the head of the Ox, like jewels nestling in a bed of cotton, were the Pleiades.

But still, something felt off. The boy could not help but wonder.

How did he know what he knew about the stars? He'd spent his whole life in hospital: where could he have learned about them from? He turned these thoughts over and over in his head, until at last another memory reemerged, and at this he could not hold back a quiet laugh. I really must be confused, he thought, and shook his head to clear it. Of course he knew about the stars. He might not have been able to go to school, but he'd certainly kept up with his studies. Something really was wrong with him tonight, to forget all this.

Maybe shaking his head had helped. Clarity was returning to his thoughts.

Remember. He loved astronomy, had a complete star chart pinned up on the wall, astronomy books and a small telescope in his bedside cabinet, and even a mini-planetarium his father had brought here for him. His name, too, had come from the stars. Knowing much about them was only natural.

Like at a scene of dominoes, where, rewound, each tile rises after its successor in an unbroken sequence, his memories were returning.

Before he'd gone to bed the nurse, Fujiwara-san, had looked in on him, chiding him for being still awake. Before that was dinner, where as usual he'd not managed to finish more than half of the meal. Before that, his mother's sorrowful farewell as she'd left that evening. Before that was his afternoon IV drip, and before that was the tasteless lunch that he'd forced down, his midmorning checkup with Dr. Eguchi, the show at ten with eighth graders cooking, the toast he'd had for breakfast.

Maybe the unchanging rhythms of every passing day were stealing his wits from him. The boy laughed weakly at that, but his smile faded soon again. The reality that he'd never be able to leave this hospital he'd been in all his life loomed over his mind, and drew the laughter from him into a sigh.

Slowly, he raised his head to look once more out of his window.

Really, what had been the light just now? It was too bright to be a meteor shower. Strangely, it felt almost as though it'd given his formless life a substance. As if his dolour-filled heart had been lit up and impressed in a flash upon reality, as if he'd been plucked out from a dreary, unchanging earth.

As if the light had come to seek him out, here in a lonely hospital room forgotten by the rest of the world.

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