Golden Time:Volume6 Chapter1

Status: Incomplete

53% completed (estimated)

   

Golden Time 6: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Speaking of August 31st, for children going back and forth from school in Japan, it was the dreadful "Judgement Day."

Take Katsuo, for example.

A young man having the remarkably good looks of his parents, a strange perm parting his hair in three, living with an older yakuza girl and a younger miniskirted girl.

Pretty good at most everything, good at talking himself out of trouble, blessed both in ideas and the ability to accomplish them, you could sometimes say that in his actions he showed cunning. But even when showing outstanding intellect, he could not escape judgement at the end of the day. That time limit looming over him mercilessly, his round face (still showing the innocence of youth) twisted by impatience and fear, he would wind up involving not only his family, but even his brother in law in the madness.

Or perhaps Nobita. He ought to be sleeping and waking under the same roof with a robot which easily sidestepped the limitations of time, distance and so forth through future technology. And then there's Chibi Maruko. Bound by chains of love, her grandfather would do just about anything for his granddaughter. ...And yet, even with such advantageous options they still, just like Katsuo, cannot escape from their Judgement Day.

So. August 31st is the last day of children's summer vacation. Children all throughout Japan tremble in fear, overtaken by drowsiness and fatigue as they were condemned for their laziness, the blood-colored words "PLAN AHEAD" tattooed on their souls as they bawl, "I didn't finish my homework!" It was such an accursed, promised date.

But, when that day passed leisurely by, and the world passes into September, the college student's summer vacation is not yet over.

And college students have no homework.

There are no picture diaries with accumulated writing, and no withered morning glory flowers. Without advancing math or kanji drills, the long summer vacation just keeps wandering along into September.

But it wasn't enough. It was just last week they'd set out in a car for the beach to make some unforgettable summer memories. But they weren't blessed with good weather, and he didn't even get a suntan. Not just Banri. None of his friends did either.

Unforgettable memories... so to speak. To put it more bluntly, "trauma" was what we had all suffered. And it was pretty severe.

Tokyo in September. Summer vacation still going on, just past noon.

Sitting across from Banri, Two Dimensions let out a strange noise, "Eep! Couscous...!"

He wasn't laughing. Couscous. It was a very small, pale-yellow colored, crumbly pasta. In appearance, it's color is close to, but not quite, that of "land caviar." Incidentally, that's "tonburi." It's the very small, greenish-colored miniature fruit of the common kocchia plant.

Two Dimensions was rather frightened of the lunch plate of the day placed on the table special thickly piled with dense lumps of stuff he wasn't used to seeing. Next to him, his face pointlessly well ordered, Mitsuo was taking a selfie with his friend the couscous. This guy had the almost girlish tendency to take pictures the first time he encountered some new, poisonous looking food.

Banri and his two good friends, immersed in the stylish room's stylish space, with it's stylish soups boiled down in stylish pots for stylish appetites. No. Feeling out of place, rather.

Though this was his second time visiting this café, today, like the time before, he did not feel comfortable in this stylish zone. The stylish flooring, the stylish sofa, the stylish music and the stylish lights. The stylish trees. The stylish oxygen. He was uncomfortable with the stylish man in a beard the next seat over, moving his finger stylishly over his notepad. The corner where the three of them were seated stood out from the surroundings in awkward bas-relief. Banri looked vaguely over at the bridge of his couscous-frightened friend's nose and eyelids. The last time he was here, it wasn't Two Dimensions there, but rather Kouko seated across from him. The bridge of her nose was a bit finer. It was sleek, and her eyelids sparkled like pale pearls, with long eyelashes... For no good reason, he curled the sheepskin parchment menu (so stylish!) into a tube and looked at his friends through it. As he moved its muzzle back and forth between the faces of his friends,

"You can start eating now."

Banri raised his voice to the other two, who already had their lunches placed before them. His portion was running a little late and had yet to arrive.

"Come on now, it's embarrassing... it's hard to be watched while eating."

Chided by Mitsuo, who had beef curry set before him, Banri stopped with the telescope. ...Incidentally, even this handsome guy felt out of place in this stylish zone. Being stylish (or not) is not simply a matter of one's looks.

And the cell-phone in his back pocket was as quiet, as usual. Not so much as a twitch. A short time ago he'd sent a text "Everyone's at Oka-chan's café, you're it!" to Kouko, but there had been no answer. Banri was no longer surprised by that.

It had already been a week since he'd last heard from Kouko.

It started on the day they'd all gone to the beach, and on the way back Kouko had fallen asleep at the wheel and got into an accident. Since that day, nobody, not even Banri, had been able to get in touch with Kouko herself.

There was no answers to texts nor phone calls, and in the end we couldn't even connect to her phone, and nobody knew why. They didn't know whether she didn't want to be contacted, or whether she was in a situation where she couldn't have contacted them if she wanted to. Left to his imagination, Banri could do nothing but worry. He thought he might simply leave her alone for a bit after all that had happened, but as you might expect, a week with no word from her was simply too much. He was too worried.

Everyone else seemed to be worried about Kouko too, and so, unable to sit still, at Banri's urging, the friends had tried gathering at this stylish café for now.

"Sorry to keep you all waiting... this is borscht."

Setting Banri's soup plate lunch on the table, Chinami plopped herself down on the sofa next to him.

Having removed the apron she had on until just now, now in jeans and a simple T-shirt, her long black hair neatly done up in three braids, she only had a coffee set before her.

"Good job, Oka-chan. Shouldn't you have some lunch?"

When Two Dimensions called out to her,

"The kitchen looked rather busy, so I'll have lunch later."

Chinami chuckled innocently, her voice and appearance like something out of an anime. As always, her soft, milky white, smiling face would be the envy of a baby. Against her pale complexion, her eyes sparkled the color of outer space. Innocent, flawless, unprecedentedly pretty, with a single "Ehe!" she filled the stylish room in an instant. Chinami was peerlessly pure again today.

We'd all decided to get together anyway, but Chinami's schedule was filled up with her job for a while yet. That being the case, we figured we'd simply drop in at her job, and this is what happened. Her break was an hour long, so for that hour she became a customer of the café.

Banri, finding a spoon buried in the plate of green salad he was served, tried to grab it, but dropped it on the table. His fingers were sticky.

"......Wow. Even the borscht is stylish..."

He looked at his smeared fingers and groaned.

On the borscht's rich, dark brown surface, white cream was splashed about in an avant-garde design. It was splashed with the same energy, leaving no gaps, over the salad, on the handle of the spoon, even over the borders of the plate, saying to the person with spoon in hand, "Shall we eat?" It was a trap designed to get the diner stylishly sticky. Incidentally, for some strange reason, it was garnished with some sort of stylish dried grass. The bread was a stylish green, about the color of vegetable juice. The jomon pottery in which the borscht was served was only about five centimeters across and charming. But at Banri's low groan,

"Banri, aren't you feeling well...?"

Chinami's eyebrows fell to a sad expression. He wasn't feeling well. Of course not. But even if not, he couldn't be to blame for making his female friends show such an expression. Banri deliberately cradled his chin in both hands and once more,

"......Awesome! Even the borscht is fancy here!"

He shook his head while shooting her a dirty look. He raised his voice. He wondered if he always sounded this nervous...

"Isn't it though~!? I mean, I was the one who made that cream~!"

Chinami made just as much noise, in the same pose.

"Figures that was you! You dribbled it all over the plate and the spoon!"

"I thought you could wipe it up with the baguette as you ate~!"

"And then this dried grass! Once more, it makes sense!"

"That is just some strange grass from a parking lot around here, so please don't eat it~!"

"And how about this earthenware!? It's nice too! Good discovery!"

"It was on sale for 27,000 yen!"

"Wow, that's cool too... eh!?"

The unexpectedly high price making him come to his senses, Banri looked down at the earthenware bowl of borscht with an unconcerned look on his face. Mitsuo waved his spoon as if to get his attention. Holding up his spoon like a conductor asking for silence,

"Okay guys, enough of trying to show a brave face. I mean, Chinami, I heard you found a new place?"

At the handsome guy's rebuke,

"Uh, yes, I decided on one..."

Like a balloon deflating, Chinami calmed down. Ah, she decided... Banri calmed down too. Incidentally, Two Dimensions, who was digging into his couscous, was chill the whole time. "This collection of little grains sometimes looks a little gross..." Speaking of lunch, perhaps Mitsuo's choice of beef curry was the right one.

When the three celebrating idiots said "Congrats!" and "Oh yeah!", Chinami lowered her head and raised her mug in one hand. But with an unhappy look on her face,

"It is not at all what I dreamed of. But I had to make a snap decision, and then was forced to make compromise after compromise after compromise. Father and Mother both came here, we finished up the contract right away, and I'll be moving there before the day is over."

She took another mouthful of coffee and sank back into the sofa. Gazing up into the bare plumbing up in the high ceiling, she continued talking as if to herself.

"I mean, I even texted Kaga-san, you know?"

And when Banri asked her if she'd gotten no replies, she nodded in confirmation.

"Nothing at all. And even though I tried to call her many times, it looked like her phone wasn't turned on. ...She promised she would help when I moved. Even though she said 'I am not the least bit interested in where you live! There's no way I'm helping you! But, commoners moving is a little unusual, so can I come and see?'... She said 'I'll bring some soba noodles, at least, so there!'"

As if infected by the small sigh of Chinami, who was sitting next to him, Banri's shoulders sagged involuntarily.

Setting down the spoon he had been using to stir the borscht, he moistened his lips with some of the strangely smoky smelling iced tea. Ever since he lost contact with Kouko, whatever he ate was worrisome, not good and not enjoyable, and he didn't have much appetite to begin with.

He glanced to the side at Chinami's mouth, which had gone silent. If you looked closely at the edge of her shapely upper lip, there was a little scar, hardly noticeable. It was nearly healed, and had turned into a small blackish mark. Noticing Banri's gaze, Chinami tilted her head slightly.

"Were you looking at me?"

"I was. ...Oka-chan, your parents came to sign the contract for moving? Was that, perhaps, all they came for...?"

Understanding Banri's question that far,

"That's right. They came to see this. They took time off work to come all the way from Fukuoka. They even had Grandma stay at a care center."

Chinami used her fingertip to point at the scar on her lip. "It's so huge," she said, shrugging her shoulders to show she was exaggerating, but Banri couldn't quite bring himself to laugh in return. Mitsuo frowned, and Two Dimensions looked down, a hard look on his face that he could not hide.

This past week, instead of getting their news from the vanished Kouko, the four people here and their respective guardians were in contact with the two Kaga parents.

Kouko explained to her parents the mess she caused that night: driving her friend's car as they returned from a short trip to the beach, falling asleep as she drove and causing an accident... she apologized, took the blame for everything, and said that she would do everything she could to make it up.

Judging by the results, it wasn't all that big an accident. The car with five people in it struck the curb and lost control, and Banri slammed the brakes just in time to scrape the guardrail. They could have gone over the cliff, but instead spun around and came to a stop facing the opposite direction. The road was empty with no oncoming traffic, and by good luck the damage to car was limited to the bumper. The car could still be driven, and after the police had completed their on-site inspection, the group was able to return to Tokyo with Two Dimensions at the wheel.

Kouko's parents, each having had to cancel their schedules and arrive in separate cars, were waiting for them at the terminal station.

The four of them could not say anything when they saw Kouko get her face slapped by her father when she got out of Two Dimensions' car.

Not even having let her pick up the sandals that had slipped off when she staggered and fell, Kouko was crying and shaking. Banri could see that her father was shaking too as he bowed his head to the four in the car and said "forgive us." At that, Kouko was stuffed into her father's car as her mother carefully walked Chinami to her car, seated her there, and drove her to a hospital providing all night emergency care. At first, they had tried to take everybody to the hospital, but the three guys, all apparently unharmed and in no pain, had firmly refused. They told them they would definitely go and see the doctor themselves. Chinami refused, but she was ignored.

The next morning, to the Satou family, owners of the car, and then to her former neighbor and childhood friend Yanagisawa's house. They showed up at Banri's apartment, and at Chinami's home, holding boxes of gift cake, bowing deeply and leaving behind their contact information. They called the Tada home in Shizuoka and the Oka home in Fukuoka to ask if it would be a bother if they came to visit and apologize.

Banri's father called at once to check on his situation, and Banri explained that he wasn't hurt, that the damage was only to the bumper and guard rail, and in any case it was nothing, he was okay. So Banri's father told Kouko's father that everything seemed to be fine, and to not worry about it, but a few hours later something happened.

His always cheerful, young looking while also a fifty-something parent, Mieko, someone he thought he could talk with, in a mad rush… that is, almost if she had gone crazy, called him again. She was so scared she peppered him with questions, "What accident? What happened? Is your head okay? Where does it hurt? Did you go to the hospital?" It was hard explaining it all over again.

"Somehow you really do seem okay," she said as if in agreement, but after that she persisted in saying "Come home anyway!" She even told him to come back today or tomorrow, and if he didn't come home, she would come and get him. He understood that he made her worry, but he couldn't bring himself to leave Tokyo while still out of contact with Kouko.

For their part, Chinami's parents hung up the phone and flew to Tokyo with a second thought.

It seems they took her straight from the Kaga house straight to an unaffiliated hospital, had her receive a full body exam, confirmed that her wound was nothing than more than the result of her having bit her lip and then returned for a face-to-face with both Kaga parents. They ended the conversion with, "Since it was between friends, let's not make a big deal out of it."

"Kaga-san's father was apologetic from the very first phone call, and my parents were quite surprised to find out what had happened. In the end, since I wasn't allowed to be at the meeting between the parents, I don't know the details of what they talked about."

At Chinami's words, Two Dimensions, his head hanging down still, nodded deeply.

"I don't know what really happened either. Various things were discussed: insurance, cars repairs, the police report, a loaner car, and what would happen with the guard rail, as it was a little damaged too... and more, but I was just a spectator listening in. Anyway, every time I was made to apologize, I felt so hopeless. As if this was so important."

Making a small pile of couscous with his spoon, then knocking it down,

"...It's something you often hear about in the world. Well, it's like 'I got in an accident the other day~' or 'I got hit~' is light conversation between guys. Why would you ever talk like that about such a serious situation?"

He stared down at the couscous he had scooped up and lowered his voice a bit.

"......Well, we were actually quite freaked out, you know. All of us might have wound up dead. They are almost always awfully scary, though. I mean... we all alive, right? What do we do? What if we are actually dead and simply don't know it? Lord Buddha's four brothers, we aren't, we have no choice but to be five siblings from now on. The real Shackson Five."

Not one of them could even crack a smile. As he said it, Two Dimensions himself wasn't smiling. You couldn't poke fun at the situation nor laugh at all.

A heavy silence fell over the corner of that stylish café. Their show of courage had already fallen flat, and the four of them fell silent. The stylish background music was the only sound there.

A while later, Chinami muttered, "......Kaga-san must have been ticked off. Really bad."

The image of Kouko's crying face suddenly came back to Banri's mind, slapped and fallen to the street in the dead of night. The cork sole of her sandal which slipped off. The dark pink pouch which had tumbled out of her bag. The whiteness of her calves, exposed by the uplifted hem of her one-piece dress. An almost creepy, terrifying feeling came over him, as if his heart were being squeezed.

Even when they had come to pick up Kouko after the police had arrested her for stealing a bicycle, Kouko's parents were terribly angry. Her father had even struck her. But, Kouko had pretty much laughed it off, and under the protection of her parents, she was acquitted and received no punishment from society.

......And now, only a few months later, this accident.

Since then, no contact from her at all, and her phone wasn't working. The look on her father's face. Not knowing what to do, Banri randomly brushed his bangs up over and over again.

Two Dimensions tossed aside his spoon, propped his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. He moaned, his voice muffled.

"She was probably scolded, and besides, she's got to be worried... I mean, seriously... what should we do now? It was my fault in the first place. It was my fault. It wasn't like she wasn't tired, and she wasn't used to driving. Why didn't I think this through better?"

I'm the bad guy, I'm at fault... immediately following the accident, Two Dimensions repeated like that, over and over again.

That night, when they all got out of the car at once to check out the damages to the car, while each of them was still shaking in a state of crisis, they were trying their best to maintain their composure. Two Dimensions returned to the driver's seat, and while keeping an eye out for following cars, moved the car to the shoulder to avoid a secondary accident. Mitsuo went to check the guardrail. Banri supported Kouko, whose face was ashen pale. He kept talking to her to calm her down, telling her it was all right. Noticing that Chinami had fallen quiet under the lights, Two Dimensions got down out of the car once more. When he asked her what was wrong, she didn't answer, but frowning a little, held one hand over her mouth.

When Mitsuo returned, he noticed Chinami acting strange too, and gently took her hand and made her lower it. All of them, perhaps at the same time, noticed a red spot on her tiny hand. In the whitish illumination, blood could be seen on Chinami's lips, and the crevices between her front teeth were stained by red saliva.

Kouko let out a muffled scream. She collapsed to her feet, clinging to Chinami. It's no big deal, it looks like I bit my lip, repeated Chinami calmly, but Kouko was in a complete panic. Stumbling over and over as she returned to the car, pulled out from her bag a towel and frantically pressed it against Chinami's mouth, tearfully saying "I'm so sorry. What'll we do? Forgive me. What'll we do?" She shouted "Ambulance, ambulance!" as if appealing to the other side of the night sky.

Banri was frozen in place and unable to move. His head went numb, and he stood there dumbfounded. In the end, the sobbing voice of Two Dimensions saying "What will I do? It's all my fault." and Kouko's wails blended together. Her panic was infectious, and Two Dimensions also sank to the ground on the street. The still standing Mitsuo, his expression stiffening, looked back towards Banri. Nobody knew what to do, what they should do. Who could you ask for help in such a situation? God? Buddha? The police? ...That's right. The police. In any case, the accident had to be reported.

Grabbing the cell phone in his trembling hands, Banri dialed 110. He tried to explain the accident and the location, but the policeman replied "we're already on the way." It seemed that a passing driver had happened to see the accident and already called the police.

It was, so to speak, the worst night of his life. Each of them had been dealt a terrifying blow.

Not to be outdone by the depressed Two Dimensions, Chinami hung her head deeply.

......Rather, it was my fault. It was my stupid bleeding that got everybody upset. Even though it's no big deal. ......My seatbelt wasn't fastened. If it had, I probably wouldn't have bit my lip."

"Cut it out, Oka-chan," said Banri, giving her a soft poke on the shoulder.

<~~53% Completed~~>

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