第 三 章

25 August 2075

A genderless electronic voice from his watch told him that it was 07:25. The patterned flannel blanket that he had used to cover himself when he went to bed had been kicked towards the bottom of the futon and was now twisted around his feet. Although he had slept for longer than usual, it had not been a restful sleep and Shoichi recalled hazily having woken up frequently during the course of the night, sweating from the heat and becoming disorientated on account of his choice to sleep in the tatami room after last night’s hospital visit. The air conditioner could be set to come on if the temperature and humidity rose above a certain level, but Shoichi had chosen not to use this feature as it left his throat and nose feeling dry by the time morning came around.

The cicadas were singing in the trees. The drone of the kumazemi cicada interplayed with the high pitched revving motorbike of the minminzemi cicada; a swarm of insect-sized Hells Angels, different but equally complementary.

Waah waah waah waah !

Weee-oh weee-oh weee-oh weee-oh weeeeeeeeee!

If summer could have a sound it would be this; it was already heating up again outside.

Having freed his feet from the manacles of the blanket, Shoichi rose from the futon and loosened his back by stretching towards the wood panelled ceiling with both arms, leaning over to his right side then his left, enjoying the muffled clicks from his vertebrae. He felt thirsty so walked to the kitchen for a glass of water before heading through into the wet room for a lukewarm shower to wash away the latest film of sweat that had formed on his skin.

The bathroom had cost him a small fortune when the house was built. The construction company managing the build had included a very basic model of wetroom and standard acrylic bath in their original design, which Kimiko had quickly dismissed. She was not looking for something luxuriously appointed or ostentatious, rather, a design that would remind her of the bathroom that she enjoyed using as a child when she lived in Ōfunato, a coastal town about four hundred and fifty kilometres further north of Mito. The bath she recalled fondly had been made of hinoki cypress wood and gave off a wonderful fragrance as it filled with hot water. Using some pictures Kimiko provided of her childhood bath, the company went to great lengths to source a tub that came from the same region of Japan and that was made by local craftsmen as opposed to mass-production. Money was tight back then and Shoichi was reluctant to put them into an even more precarious financial position considering the size of the mortgage they were about to take on. However, later that evening, over dinner and a bottle of wine, Kimiko explained the sentimental value of the type of bath she wanted in their home, after which he had no further reservations about digging deeper into his pockets to pay for this pricey customisation to the build.

Temporarily refreshed from his shower, Shoichi walked upstairs and got dressed in front of a fan to try to get the fresh sweat to evaporate from his body before it had chance make his clothes damp, but which proved to be a thankless task. He then went down to the kitchen to make a drink and get something for breakfast.

To start, he ground up some coffee beans and spooned these into an antique looking metal stove-top espresso maker he had bought from a small family-run shop he came across whilst using up some spare time he had gained from a cancelled meeting during a business trip to Naples. There were modern versions of these available that ground the beans automatically and then extracted the coffee using a direct steam feed from the hot water system but the taste was somewhat too clinical, too perfect, lacking the rustic flavour that he was able to achieve from this low-tech model. He had also not fully washed his espresso maker for years, preferring instead to rinse out the bottom half that held the water and leaving the grounds in the upper bowl until he used it again the following day. Like an unwashed wok, where the flavours from the previous meals served to enrich the next one being cooked, the coffee contained a depth that he found comforting in a world where instant gratification continued to be the flavour of the day.

Not wanting to spend too much time on breakfast as he was not especially hungry, his appetite suppressed by the heat, Shoichi decided to make some toast which he ate with fresh butter from Hokkaido and a Tiptree brand of strawberry jam that he had picked up from the food court of a high-end department store in the Kichijōji district of Tokyo. The jam was made in England and while he ate he wondered about a life thousands of kilometres from his own, of someone working in the factory that produced this jam he had just spread onto his toast; an existence very different from his current daily routine travelling from home to hospital and back again.

How long would his life, their life, be on pause?