Adachi to Shimamura - Volume 99.9 - Chapter 1.5

“Uhhh…”

I knew I needed to say something more. For her part, Adachi offered nothing but plain puzzlement. To be fair, the desire I’d voiced probably didn’t make sense to someone who only ever lived in the moment. Still, that was something I dearly admired about her.

“On second thought, never mind.” 

Shrugging it off, I went back to burying my face in Adachi’s shoulder, eyes squinting in the sunlight. Outside our window, the skies were still clear and blue. 

***

“What’ll it be today…?”

Later that evening, I stood at the fridge with my arms folded, pondering aloud. As I did, I heard…

“How about some nice, cold hiyamugi noodles?”

“You again?” And this time, she’d manifested out of thin air onto my shoulders. But I hadn’t even noticed that she was there until she spoke. “You sure love noodles, hm?”

“I love all food.”

“Good. That makes things easy.” 

Sky-blue motes wafted like spores from her weightless body. When I caught one on my finger, it melted, perhaps from my body heat. Is her whole body made of these? I had yet to witness the vast reaches of the universe and surely never would, but for a moment I paused to reflect on it. 

“For lunch today, I partook of an apple.”

“Didn’t ask.” 

She shimmied down my body to the floor, then looked back up at me, her eyes more sparkly than ever. “Oh ho! It seems that you have decided.” 

Were those eyes all-seeing, or was I simply this obvious? I nodded. “I want to make something Adachi might like.” 

Giving her more things to love—more things to think of whenever she thought of me—was my goal from now on.

“Yay!” Yashiro raised both hands into the air. She seemed to do so purely on reflex; still, something about it felt a tiny bit encouraging. 

***

“If I had to choose, I would say you more closely resemble Shimamura-san.”

“Oh yeah? You think so?” 

As Yashiro continued last night’s story in bits and pieces, I finished packing up, then stuffed her into my oversized knapsack. That sounds nuts, but she really did fit; only her head poked out from the top. When I’d asked her whether she was okay with it, she’d said that was better than having to walk. You sure it’s not cramped or anything? Oookay then. 

Although the knapsack was nearly bigger than I was, I heaved it onto my shoulders—before promptly remembering something and setting it back down.

“Huh?” 

“Well, I don’t want you to hurt yourself if you fall.” As I spoke, I set a helmet on her head—yellow, the front labeled with a name I didn’t recognize. As the helmet slid over her hair, a cloud of motes rose into the air.

“Much obliged.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded like a thank-you, so I nodded. “Mm-hmm.” Then I slid the knapsack back onto my shoulders and set off for real this time, pedaling hard. 

Since gasoline was so scarce these days, a bicycle was a valuable mobility option, enabling me to travel for as long as my physical stamina allowed. When the tires inevitably went flat, I’d find a new bike and keep going. How many had I gone through at this point? I remembered the red frame of my first, but none of the ones that came after. I traveled on foot for as long as it took to find a working bike, rode it until it broke down, then went back to walking…over and over and over, never staying too long in one place. 

At first, the bike juddered weakly over the cracks in the pavement, but over time its glide smoothed steadily. With each bump we hit, a fresh wave of blue motes washed over me from behind—yes, even though we were moving forward. The physics of that didn’t make much sense to me. My gaze followed the motes’ trajectory into the stagnant tangerine sky as they seared the clouds and faintly enveloped all that was left behind.

“It would appear that this planet has a caramel-colored sky.” 

“‘Caramel’?” I repeated.

“Doesn’t that sound tasty?” 

Yashiro was clearly busy entertaining herself. I usually understood what she said, but every now and then she’d toss out a word I hadn’t heard before. Some language from some other planet, maybe. In any case, this so-called “caramel-colored” sky served as the constant backdrop for endless ruins and overgrown foliage, all painted a shade of sunset that made me want to turn away on sight.

The world was crumbling. 

“It is also the color of curry… To this day, I don’t think anyone will ever make better curry than Mama-san.”

“Oh no?” I had no clue what she was talking about, but that sounded like a nice memory. However cheerily she spoke, I heard the slightest contrasting inflection in her voice. “You said all your stories take place on some other planet, right?”

“Indeed. The one I visited before I came here.” 

“You’re really on a whole other level.” If you took her at her word, she’d traveled across the galaxy all on her own like some kind of alien. “Okay, prove to me that you’re from outer space.”

“Shall I take you there?”

“Mmm…no thanks.” Not if there’re more of you out there. I have enough trouble as it is foraging for your meals. “What about me resembles her, anyway?”

“The fact that you feed me.”

Was that her way of calling me an easy mark? “That’s all you’ve ever cared about, huh?” 

“‘That’ being what?”

“Eating.”

“Ah, yes. I get that a lot.” I could practically feel her thrust her chest out proudly.

“Well, you do you, I guess. I’m not judging.”

“It is not the first time I have heard that either.”

“Who’d you hear it from? That girl I resemble?”

“Indeed.” 

“Hm.” 

Once again, I found myself wishing I could meet that girl—but, since that wasn’t possible, perhaps that wish was what drove me to hunt for other people on this planet instead.

Fortunately, the roads were more than safe enough for mindless chatter along the way. The fauna had dwindled to the point that the whole planet was little more than a botanical garden. 

But though I’d started this journey alone, there were now two of us. And while Yashiro wasn’t especially helpful in most circumstances, I suspected her value lay in her stories of another planet. The girls she spoke of were so familiar to me, they somehow felt like the first friends I’d ever made. 

“An easy mark from 3,700 years ago, huh?”

“Perhaps it was 37,000 years ago.”

“Oh, come on.” To me, that seemed like a huge discrepancy, but perhaps it wasn’t to her.

“I distinctly remember the three and the seven.”

“How the hell do you count…?” 

In response, she whipped her little hands around the sides of my face to show me “three” and “seven,” respectively. As for how she could possibly show the number seven with just one hand—it was written on her palm, obviously. 

“Anyway, really makes you think, huh?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Considering that those girls had lived millennia ago, well… “They’re long gone, aren’t they?” I asked, purposely choosing a more indirect turn of phrase. 

Since I’d lived my whole life alone, I didn’t really understand what it was like to lose someone. That said, I’d seen the old footage with all those people in it, and I couldn’t pretend I was unmoved by it. As I reflected on that, the spinning bicycle tires whistled a soft note.

“Indeed.” That was the extent of her reaction—calm and collected, as always. 

My gaze absently wandered upward. Sometimes I wondered whether this alien felt emotions at all. 

“I must say, they are proving quite difficult to find, aren’t they?” she asked.

“I’ve seen traces of activity here and there. We should surely bump into someone any day now.” 

We came upon a brief slope where a jagged chunk of earth rose away from the rest, and my voice tensed with my legs. Leaning forward and clinging to the bike for dear life, I propelled us upward, enduring and enduring until at last we reached the top. 

“Uggghhh! I just want to find another human!” 

Pulling my feet away from the pedals, I stretched out my legs and let gravity pull us down the other side. The stagnant, sweltering air began to flow at last, blasting hotly through my hair. 

“Ho ho ho! But you have me!” the decidedly inhuman creature insisted.

“A human whose face isn’t freakishly stretchy, then!”

“What will you do when you find one?”

“I dunno.” At the very least, I wouldn’t stretch their face out—probably. “It just feels like I need to meet someone, or else…nothing will ever happen in my life.”

Granted, maybe that was just what I told myself in order to keep going. As for what I’d do when the time came—well, I’d take my cues from my gut. After all, there was no guarantee that I’d find any other survivors at all. 

Our ancestors had landed on this planet, cultivated it, built homes for themselves, then apparently decided it was “unsuitable”—unfit to sustain life, if I had to guess. Thus, the last dregs of humanity had abandoned us. Now all I wanted was the chance to connect with someone before we went extinct.

“Why’d you come to this crappy world, anyway…?” 

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said your last planet was teeming with life, right?”

Sure, it might’ve felt claustrophobic if so many people were crammed together in the same place. But they wouldn’t have to stay on the move—they could settle down and build a community with one another. Then it occurred to me: Was the loss of those dear neighbors perhaps what had driven my companion away?

At last, she spoke. “Well, you see…I made a deal with Shimamura-san.”