The third morning of our life on Wet Crow's Feather Island was just greeting us. I awoke in a daze, trying to distinguish between the dreams I had just had and the reality yet to come.
The high, rectangular window admitted just a bit of light, so the room still remained dim. Since the room had no lights, I would just have to wait for it to get brighter: the sun had only just risen, and it was maybe around six a.m., judging by my internal clock. I suspect this way of determining the time has no more than a fifteen-minute margin of error. But even supposing I was an hour off, it's not like it would be a problem.
"Getting up," I mumbled, and slowly rose from the bed.
The room was mostly empty, its only furnishings a chair and a futon. Aside from that, it was completely bare. Its high ceilings gave it an even more spacious feel—and that hollow, dead atmosphere that evokes so vividly images of solitary confinement or something. I couldn't help but feel a little bit like an inmate on Death Row.
It was the second time in my life I'd woken up with that feeling.
But while this was in fact not solitary confinement, neither was it originally a bedroom. It was formerly a storage space. When I asked Akari to show me the smallest room in the mansion, this was where she brought me. The smallest room. Even so, it was infinitely bigger than my room at the lodging house. Boy, was that ever depressing.
"Nah… it's way beyond depressing," I said to myself.
Now then. I switched my cognitive channel from Death Row Inmate Mode to Routine Mode.
Wondering what time it really was, I glanced at my wristwatch, but the LCD screen displayed nothing. Maybe the batteries had died while I was sleeping. But wait, I'd changed them just a little while ago. There had to be some other problem. Well, I could always ask Kunagisa to fix it.
Clearing my sleep-fogged mind, I did a couple of simple stretches and then left the room. I walked around for a while. The carpet was thick, bright red, and looked like (and most probably was) super-high quality. It eventually led to the spiral case, which is where I bumped into Rei-san and
Akari-san.
"Oh, good morning. You two are up early." It was only common courtesy to greet them, but they simply passed by with no more acknowledgment than a silent head-bow.
"Guess they're the quiet type," I muttered to myself.
But to be fair, they were probably working, and I wasn't exactly a "guest," per se, so I just had to live with their lukewarm response. If I expected anything more out of them, I'd have to throw my arms out wide and cry out, "How you feelin', my freaky people?!" And, frankly, I just didn't have the energy.
Handa Rei-san and Chiga Akari-san were maids employed at the mansion. Rei-san was the "head maid," Akari her subordinate. And there were two other maids at the mansion, of the same rank as Akari-san. A total of four maids.
Considering who owned the mansion, and the size of the mansion, it seemed as if a staff of four maids would be too small. But these women carried out their duties with the swiftness and skill of true specialists.
The mistress of the mansion, and the person these maids served, was Akagami Iria. She was the proprietress of the island, as well as the mansion. And furthermore, she was the one who had invited me and Kunagisa here.
"But wait, was I actually invited?" I asked myself.
Now just how old was Akari-san? You could tell just by looking at Rei-san that she was probably in her late twenties. It's not easy for kids like me to tell exactly how old a woman that age is, but that's definitely the impression I got from her. Akari-san was the real challenge. I didn't think she was younger than me, but still, she looked ridiculously young. She was one of those women you see downtown who can get away with paying half-price for everything when they're actually adults. As I went up the spiral staircase and headed down the second-floor hall, my mind tilled with nonsense. Maybe she has a thing for young guys. Yeah, just babbling.
I was headed for Kunagisa's room. Two days ago, when we arrived at the island, a room had of course been prepared for Kunagisa, but not for me. This was to be expected: even I had had no idea I would be visiting this weird little island until that very morning when Kunagisa called me.
Akari-san prepared a room for me at the last minute. But I'd politely refused it. Why? The reason hit me as soon as I opened the door.
I knocked once, then went ahead and opened it.
The interior was vast. Pure white carpet and pure white wallpaper complemented pure white furniture. Even I knew that white reflects light. Kunagisa was crazy about the color white, so somebody had decorated this room this way deliberately. In the center of the room were a luxurious sofa and a wooden table. A chandelier hung from the strangely high ceiling. The bed was like something straight out of a movie set in medieval times; it even had a canopy.
"Yeah, I'd never get any sleep here."
And so I had Akari-san show me to the storage room on the first floor. Meanwhile, Kunagisa, lacking my more delicate sensibilities, lay there drowsily on her pure white sheets.
Looking at the enormous, antique, mechanical clock on her wall (also ever-so-thoughtfully selected in white), I saw that it was, in fact, six o'clock, just as I'd guessed. Pondering what to do now, I sat on the side of her bed, enjoying the feeling of the thick, fluffy carpet beneath my feet.
Kunagisa rolled over. Her eyes opened, just slightly. "Hmm? Oh, Ii-chan?"
Somehow she had sensed it was me, but at any rate, she seemed to be awake. She pushed her mussed, I Hawaiian-blue hair away from her face and regarded me with sleepy eyes. "Oh, ahhh, Ii-chan… Ummm… You came to wake me up, didn't you? Thank you."
"Actually I came here to tuck you in, but what's this? Tomo sleeping at nighttime? That's pretty rare. Or did you just get to bed?" If that was the case I'd have to apologize.
"Uh-uh." She shook her head. "I think I slept for three hours. Cuz y'know, yesterday, well, some stuff happened, Ii-chan. Give me five more seconds…"
"Good morning! Ah, it's a bright, brisk morning, isn't it?!" She sat up, her petite little body popping up. Flashing me an ear-to-ear grin, she struck a dynamic pose. "Huh? Hey, it's not bright out at all. I don't like this. I like for the sun to be way high up in the sky when I wake up in the morning."
"You're talking about the afternoon."
"Eh, either way. That was some good sleep." Ignoring me, she kept on talking. "I'm pretty sure I got to bed at three a.m. Some really bad stuff happened yesterday and I just huffed off to bed. Y'know, cuz sleep is the best thing when you're feeling really terrible. It's like sleep is the one and only gift of salvation God gave mankind. Now, Ii-chan?"
"Yeah, Tomo?"
"Stay still for a sec."
Without even giving me time to be confused, she hugged me. Or to put it more accurately, she draped herself on me, burdening me with the entirety of her bodyweight. She rested her tiny head on my right shoulder, with our bodies stuck together, her slender arms wrapped around my neck.
Squeeze.
Not that she was heavy.
"Uh, Kunagisa?"
"Recharging."
Evidently, she was recharging. Thus, no moving allowed. I gave up on the idea of resistance and supported her weight.
But hey, what was I, an electrical outlet or something?
Looking at Kunagisa, I noticed she had slept with her coat on. As far as I knew, she wore it all the time, indoors and outdoors, summer and winter. A jet-black men's coat. On a girl of Kunagisa's tiny stature, the large-sized coat easily touched the floor. But she seemed to be madly in love with it anyway. I had told her millions of times to at least take it off when she's sleeping, but to no avail.
One thing was for sure: Kunagisa Tomo did things her own way. In that sense, she was kind of like me.
"Okay, thanks!" she said, and finally let go of me. "Battery full! Now, let's go face another day."
With a grunt she rose from the bed, blue hair bouncing. She walked over to the computers by the window opposite her bed. They were the three computers she had brought from her home in Shirosaki. All three were tower models. The two on the left and right were of typical size, the one in the middle was exceptionally large. They were all white, of course. I just didn't get why she was so into a color that was so easy to get dirty.
The three computers were on a U-shaped rack, with a cushiony rolling chair in the center. Kunagisa plopped down in the chair and leaned back. That way she could simultaneously control all three computers. But no matter how you counted it up, she still had only two hands. Why she would ever think to use three keyboards at the same time was beyond me.
I looked over her shoulder. The three keyboards were neither ASCII nor JIS nor Oasis, but instead some weird, mysterious key alignment. But to question the unnaturalness of it would be futile. For an engineering whiz like Kunagisa Tomo, designing a keyboard from scratch was probably like a walk in the park.
Incidentally, Kunagisa didn't use a mouse. Because "they're a total waste of time," she would say. But to a novice like me, the sight of a mouseless computer was unnerving, just totally impossible to get used to. Not that that's the worst feeling in the world.
"Ii-chan."
"Yeah?"
"Tie my hair up."
Got it. I went up to her chair. I slipped some hair bands off her arm and tied her hair into two braids.
"Man, wash your hair already. My fingers are getting oily here."
"I hate taking baths. Cuz y'know, your hair gets all wet and stuff."
"Well, of course. Look at this, the blue is getting dark."
"I can't see my own head. Hehehe, if I leave it like it is, it'll turn ultramarine. Thank you, Ii-chan," she said, biting her lower lip with a giggle. I just looked back at her with an innocent, confused smile.
"Uh, no problem, really."
Even as we talked, her fingers never stopped moving. They moved with the accuracy of a machine at a constant rhythm with every keystroke. Her movements flowed so smoothly it was as if she were unconsciously tarrying out some preplanned assignment in some preprogrammed way.
Incomprehensible English characters and numbers streamed along on all three monitor displays at an unbelievable pace.
"Tomo, what are you up to, anyway? You just got up."
"Mmm, well, I don't think you'd get it even if I told you."
"Hmm. You really need all three PCs to do it?" I said.
She gave me a perplexed look. "Ii-chan, this one in the middle isn't a PC, it's a workstation," she said.
"What's a workstation? It's not a PC?"
"Nope, it's different. Well, I guess PCs and workstations are similar in that they're both intended for individual use, but, it's like, workstations are way more top-of-the-line."
"Ah, so a workstation is like a super-good PC?" I said, openly displaying my ignorance.
She groaned. "Ii-chan, a PC is a PC and a workstation is a workstation. They're both GPCs, but think of them as two completely different things."
"What's a GPC?"
She looked at me as if I were some kind of a caveman. "Ii-chan, you don't know anything, do you?" she said with a touch of disbelief. "What exactly were you doing in Houston those five years?"
"Other things."
She sighed. "Okay, okay," she said, tilting her head. Then she resumed her work as if a switch had been toggled in her brain. Letters and numbers that looked like hocus-pocus to me continued to stream by on the displays.
I wanted her to tell me a little more about the different classifications or what have you, but I'm not really that intellectually curious. Besides, it would be rude to interrupt whatever she was working on. That, and, for an "outsider" like me to try to follow this nerdy cupcake's explanations seemed as if it would just lead to a headache, so with that, I ended the discussion. I massaged her shoulders for a bit, then decided to borrow her sink, where I washed my face and changed my clothes.
"Hey, Tomo, I'm gonna go for a walk."
Without looking up from her work, she gave me a halfhearted wave. The other hand kept on tapping keys. I shrugged and left the room.