But I didn't get the chance to learn anymore. Just as I was about to ask, "What do you mean, 'incident'?" I bit down on my tongue, hard. Thus, I was unable to get the words out. But even if I miraculously had somehow, it never would've reached Kunagisa's ears, nor anyone else's ears, including my own.
It would have been drowned out by the other noise.
The shaking.
I soon realized it was an earthquake.
"Gah!" Shinya-san uttered.
"Everyone, please, stay calm!" urged Hikari-san, whose profession demanded that she remain cool no matter what happened.
Maki-san, who looked as if she had been expecting the earthquake all along, reclined on the couch without a glint of worry.
I tried to recall what I had learned about earthquakes back in my first year of junior high school when I was still in Japan. Supposedly, they would start with small tremors, and then get bigger and bigger. I couldn't quite recall which were S waves and which were P waves, or figure out which were horizontal and which were vertical tremors, but that didn't matter.
At any rate, the strength of the shaking had jumped a few levels. In a panic, I shoved Kunagisa—whose expression said "I have no idea what's going on"—onto the sofa and threw myself on top of her. There was a chandelier right above her. If that were to fall, she wouldn't stand a chance of survival with that tiny stature of hers. That was my thinking at the time, anyway.
But my efforts seemed to have been in vain because not a moment later, the shaking died down. Of course, when I say "not a moment later," I mean in terms of real-time. To me, it felt only slightly less dragging and terrible than five minutes with your hand on a stove.
In reality, the shaking had probably lasted for less than ten seconds.
"Is it over?" I asked, still on top of Kunagisa.
"Yeah," Maki-san answered. It was the word of a prophet, and probably trustworthy. Meanwhile, Kunagisa groaned with her face buried in the sofa, so I got off her for the time being.
"An earthquake… It was pretty big, too. I wonder what it rated on the scale," Shinya-san said, looking around the room. The glasses and bottles on the table had fallen, and Hikari-san had already reflexively begun to clean.
"Pardon me, Hikari-san. I'm going to borrow the phone. I'm worried about Kanami." He pointed to the house phone. Hikari-san nodded. He headed to the white phone by the cabinet.
"Hikari-san, do you have a radio or something?" I said. "I want to check the earthquake's level. Oh, Tomo, could you look it up on the Internet?"
"Well, there's probably already been a breaking news bulletin. We're technically in Kyoto right now, right? Oh, wait, is that wrong?"
"It was a level 3 or 4. I can't quite pinpoint the epicenter, but it's probably around Maizuru, where the level would be at 5," Maki-san said quite matter-of-factly. "And it seems like there weren't many injuries, even in urban areas."
"How do you know?" Perhaps it was inelegant of me to pose such a question, but it just felt like the natural thing to ask.
She let out a big sigh before answering. "It's like I've been telling you, I just know. You may be smart, but you sure are slow. Don't have much of memory either, it would seem. Hey wait, doesn't that make you stupid? Anyway, to use an expression, I can see these things clear as day. Ibuki-san and the others are all fine."
"Ah, remote viewing and superhearing, was it?"
The distance wasn't a factor for her. She could technically watch TV somewhere on the other side of the ocean, and even predict what would appear next. Complex ESP.
But even if she had just been making all of this up, there was no way to check. But it was probably true that the mansion hadn't suffered much damage.
Shinya-san returned from the phone. "Kanami's fine," he said. "She says she's in the atelier. Some paint cans fell off the shelf. It sounds like a big hassle, but at least she's not hurt."
"Shouldn't you go over there?"
He was her caretaker after all, and even if he hadn't been, he must've been worried about her, seeing as she couldn't walk.
"Nah, no need," he said with a shrug. "She would probably get ticked off if I did."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she told me not to come," he said with a pained expression of humility. "She says she's working right now. In fact, she's working on your portrait. Sounds like she's going to turn it into a real masterpiece, so I'd better not bother her."
"Even with Ibuki-san's talent, there's no hope if she used such a terrible model," Maki-san intervened.
"You really hate me, don't you?"
"Uh-huh," she nodded.
Geez.
Well, whatever. That's how life had always gone for me anyway.
I looked over at Hikari-san.
"Does this happen here a lot? Earthquakes, I mean."
"Not a lot, really. Shinya-san, you've been through a few, right?"
"Yes, but this one was unusually big."
"I wonder if any furniture fell over. I'm a little worried."
"If you're going to fix things up, I'll help."
"No, it wouldn't be right. Tomorrow, we'll deal with it depending on Rei-san's orders."
She flashed a sweet smile. If she were a mother, her kids would grow up properly for sure. If we hadn't met in this kind of place under these kinds of circumstances, I definitely would've fallen for her. Or at least, I thought I would. It was never going to happen, but I thought so.
"Teehee. That was my first earthquake in a while," Kunagisa mumbled, tossing her blue hair around as she finally got up from the sofa. "I wonder if my computers are all right. They should be. If the epicenter was in Maizuru, the mansion should be okay, too. Boy, this takes me back to the Great Hanshin quake. Say, Ii-chan, you were already in Houston in those days, right?"
"Yup. For sure."
I vaguely remembered seeing something about it on the news back in my tiny room in America.
"That was a really tough time for me. I was still in Kobe back then. Most of my computers crashed permanently. I was so startled."
Was "startled" really the most appropriate word to describe living through that disaster?
"So shouldn't you be worried about your computers? You must be fully crammed with cheese by now. Let's go back to your room already."
It seemed like the time was right, so I decided to leave the living room. I didn't trust that I had the self-control to stay cool if I had to talk to Maki-san anymore. It seemed like a good time to split.
As if able to read my every thought, Maki-san's gaze burned a hole through my back, and it took every ounce of willpower in my body to ignore her. I pulled Kunagisa by the arm and took her back to her room.
The three PC's (I mean two PCs and one workstation) in her room remained securely situated in the computer rack, and the room had suffered no other damage.
Kunagisa let out a big yawn and stretched.
"Let's turn in already. Having a full stomach really makes you sleepy, huh? Ii-chan, undo my hair."
"Do it yourself, will you?"
"Come on, it's hard to undo a ponytail by myself. I'm not flexible. It's not that I can't do it, but I'll start aching. I've broken bones that way, y'know."
"I get it, I get it. You're really adorable, you know that?"
I removed the band from her hair and ran a comb through it. She let out a naughty little giggle. Once I was finished, she dove into bed. She sunk herself into the mattress and rolled around joyously.
"Take off that coat. How many times do I have to tell you? And aren't you hot?"
"This coat has special memories attached, so no dice."
What memories? Even our dear fortune-teller, Himena Maki-san, couldn't read Kunagisa's past. Maybe it had something to do what that "team."
"Anyway, Ii-chan, Kanami-chan, and Akane-chan are pretty terrible, but you and Maki-chan don't seem to be on the best of terms either."
"Well, it's more like she harasses me for no reason," I said, thinking about how similar this was to what Kanami-san had said. "I don't have any problems with her in particular."
"Yeah, I'll bet. You're not aggressive enough to hate or resent people. At the very worst, you get miffed, isn't that right?"
"You think? That's interesting."
"Just joking," she snickered. "But Ii-chan, you've really never fallen in love with someone before, have you?"
"Nope."
"I love that about you."
Snicker snicker.
Strange. She was being weirdly feisty. I wondered if maybe that ginger ale had really been wine. I'd never seen her drunk before, so I couldn't imagine what she would be like.
"By the way, Tomo."
"Vat eez eet?"
"Do you have any special powers?"
"Hmm… If I did, I wouldn't mind at all," she said with a big grin. "I don't really want any, but one can always dream. It's better for Santa Claus to exist than for him not to, right? It's just like that."
"That's an odd point of view."
Even if she had special powers, she wouldn't mind.
Hmm, indeed. That was surprisingly insightful. Whether you had such abilities or not, it wouldn't have much of an effect on your daily life. Of course, now was a bit of an exception.
Because we were on this island?
Because we were on this island.
I'm gonna go back to my room and turn in, too. See ya tomorrow. If you're planning to sleep now, I'll come to wake you tomorrow, so let's have breakfast together."
"Hey, Ii-chan," she called to me, still lying face-up on her bed. "Let's fool around." She beckoned to me.
I paused, just for a second. "No," I said.
"Weirdo. Good for nothing. Coward! Chicken pot pie!"
Yeah, yeah. I shut the door, went downstairs, and headed to my room. It would have been truly awful to run into Maki-san in the hallway or something, but luckily, no such incident occurred. Perhaps she was still busy chatting it up with Shinya-san.
I found a key sticking out of the door to my room. Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise, seeing as it was supposed to be a storage room, but I couldn't help wondering about being trapped inside if someone were to turn the key while I was asleep. There was no way I could reach the window even if I stood on the chair, so it really would be like solitary confinement. Then again, there was nothing anyone could gain by locking me up, so it was probably just excessive worry.
I entered the room, curled up on my futon, and stared at the ceiling in thought.
I was, of course, thinking about what Maki-san had said earlier.
Oh my, this part is fairly skewed. You stay by her side because you're jealous of her. And while you're jealous of her ability to express herself freely, she somehow looks unhappy, regardless of whether or not she really is. You see this girl who has everything you want and can do all the things you can't do, yet she is still, for some reason, unhappy, and that makes you feel better. That makes you feel like it doesn't matter if you can't get what you want.
"Ha!"
Dammit.
"She's exactly right."
Akane-san of the Seven Fools had described Kunagisa and I as a codependent pair, but really, Maki-san's opinion was closer to the truth.
To me, Kunagisa Tomo represented the thing I most wanted to be.
No, that wasn't it. That wasn't it. To me, she was…
She was…
"She was what?"
The reason I chose a university in Kyoto rather than Kobe was that she had moved to Kyoto. I also couldn't deny that she was one of the reasons I left Houston.
Why had I done all that?
As Maki-san had said, I wasn't aggressive enough to have feelings like love or hate. Even if someone were to bother me, it was a feeling no different from being annoyed when it rains. No matter how much disdain Maki-san had for me, no matter how many malicious comments Kanami-san spit at me, no emotion would ever build up inside me.
I couldn't help but wonder.
Was I really human?
I didn't understand other people's feelings at all.
If they really existed.
If superpowers like the ones Maki-san claimed to use really existed, perhaps I wanted some myself.
"Nah, I don't need that," I reconsidered.
If I could understand people's feelings, it would just make life all the more annoying. I wasn't looking for a life with an open Pandora's box. I didn't have the nerve for it.
"I'm just babbling nonsense here, dammit."
I hate vacation. I just end up thinking too much. Well, I don't know if it's really too much, but they're the kind of thoughts that can only lead to one's downfall.
Four more days.
I could be patient.
I didn't hate being patient.
Or at least, I was used to it.
Suffering and pain.
I was used to these things.
"Still, they don't feel too good."
Damn, I wanted to return to my peaceful life on the other side of the sea, I thought as I fell into the night.
But the following day I would realize that these past three days had been plenty peaceful.