第十九章

25 August 2075

‘Do you know Kimiko?’ Shoichi said, ‘I had a really strange dream while I slept that night in the hut at the eighth station. I don’t believe that I ever shared it with you but now seems like as good a time as any.’

We awoke as planned and headed to the summit for sunrise. All was going well when suddenly there was a huge crack from the rocks above us, like ice splitting when dropped into a glass of water. A landslide had started about three hundred metres above where we were hiking along the trail. Although it looked pretty insignificant at first, as the landslide gathered pace it picked up more and more mountain debris like when rolling a snowball through snow. It was clearly going to hit us so I grabbed your hand and ran back from where we had come as fast as I could in the hope of avoiding being hit. 

We were safe, but others in the group were not so quick to react. They got picked up by the falling rocks as they rumbled on down the mountainside and were literally swept along with it. We were both horrified and beside ourselves with shock. The odd thing was that Megumi-san was completely nonchalant about the whole incident. Having taken a roll call to establish who was missing, she said what a shame it was and asked the rest of us if we were OK to continue. When you questioned  if getting to the summit was still appropriate considering what had just happened, she replied by saying that was the risk of climbing mountains and we should be grateful that we got out of the way of the landslide.

So we continued to climb and reached the summit just before sunrise. We waited and waited, watching for the sun to emerge from below the horizon but after two hours it was just as dark as when we set out from the eighth station. There was then an announcement through a loudspeaker that ‘due to unforeseen circumstances the sun was unable to rise this morning and that an engineer was working to fix the problem as soon as possible.’ I was bitterly disappointed but you said that we might as well make the most of it as we had travelled all this way and suggested looking into Fuji-san’s crater which was lit with floodlights.

 We walked up a slope and then sharply down towards the crater which had a simple two parallel bar metal fence running around its perimeter. As we started looking into the crater, which was much deeper than I had expected, the fence that you were leaning against broke, you skidded, sending small stones down into the crater and a plume of volcanic dust into the air. I tried to grab you or any part of your clothing but it was too late and I saw you hurtling down into the centre of Fuji-san. As you fell you were shouting something to me. 

‘Shoichi! Don’t forget to write to me! I love you!’ 

And you were no more.

His tiredness had caused him to let down his emotional guard and for the first time he was overwhelmed with a feeling of loss as he recalled his dream; he was hit with the sudden reality that he really could lose Kimiko. His throat tightened as if trying to contain the sadness within but to no avail as tears rolled down in rivulets over his cheeks, ran down his neck and sunk into the material of his shirt, just below his Adam’s apple.

‘Please don’t leave me yet, Kimiko. We have so many new memories to make together. I’m not ready to begin a life without you,’ Shoichi said as the tears flowed more freely and his voice took on a tone of longing, of desperation and of fear. ‘Kimiko, please give me a sign, any sign, that you can hear me.’

Kimiko continued to lay with a tranquil look on her face, head turned towards Shoichi but unaware that he was there and the torment he was going through.

Shoichi was also unaware of the pain that Kimiko was reliving through her own memories from over sixty years ago and hundreds of kilometres north of her Tokyo hospital bed.