Issue 36.0

by Seth Horan

Sunflower

The first day I spent alone with Himawari was the last before I left. It was raining from before I woke up, but I didn’t mind. Following when the university introduced us as Buddies in April, I could count the number of times we’d hung out on one hand over the semester, and each time it was either with her friends or mine. I didn’t think she thought anything of that, or anything of that day leading up to it. Even now (only a few weeks later) when my time with her feels like nothing more than a dream—like I’d suddenly awoken in Maryland two weeks before classes—I can’t help but wonder if she really misses me at all.

We met for lunch at one. The place we went to, near Totsuka Station, was crowded with people likely trying to get inside for a moment, and by the time we got our food, ate and paid, it was already nearing two-thirty. The ride to Kasai-Rinkai Park Station was just under an hour and a half. We’d only have about an hour in the aquarium before it closed.

 An aquarium date was something that’d been on my mind for a while; from sometime in the years I’d spent without anyone in mind to take. The idea of an aquarium gradually grew beyond an air of romanticism for me, though. I realized I liked the atmosphere of them—the soft, ambient music; the deep and cool lighting; the clean and homely construction and design; and the animals, of course. There was a liminal quality about aquariums that made me feel sentimental. But the closest aquarium to my place in Maryland was an hour away in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, so I didn’t often go to them.

The summer before I went away for my freshman year of college, however, my dad and I drove to Atlanta to visit the Georgia Aquarium—the largest aquarium in the States. That was one reason I wanted to go, but the other was they were hosting an event where people could interact with a penguin. I loved penguins. So much about them was cute—their shapes, their sizes, the ways they moved— The problem with the event, we figured out, though, was there was only a single seat left for it. I’d have to do it alone. Which may not seem like such a big thing, but I was terrified to join a group of people made of other groups of people as the only single party. And more than that, I was terrified to do anything alone at all. In hindsight, the world was small for me, then. As it is now, but back then, I felt I was frozen. I felt until I found the right environment, until I could live as an adult, I couldn’t help myself.

I couldn’t wait that long. I took the seat.

The penguin’s name was Tinkerbell, and she felt like a wet rubber tube.

Standing on the train, the flowing river of gray out the train windows slowed, then halted. I turned to Himawari next to me, her nose no higher than my chest. A smile crawled onto my face in hopes of not seeming so absent from her. She turned to me too. I breathed a pained laugh. What should I say? Anything, really. Obviously.

The doors slid open to the platform. She shifted her body slightly, still looking at me, as if to make sure I understood. I followed her through the threshold, then the exit, and against the flooding crowd to an open space by the wall next to a line of gachapon. I figured she meant for this pause to ready us for the onslaught of rain just down the stairs, so I brought up my hood.

We continued to stand there, after that, the fact of the situation coldly skittering outward in my body from a nest near my heart; soft, migrating clusters of pinpricks drying my mouth to a taste like freezer burn.

Our train left. Looking over the rows of other platforms, I saw another train rolling in. I saw the lines of people standing on the platform edge and watched them each get eaten up as the train rolled through to the end of the station. The sound of the train’s lowering speed pooled in my hood, flooding my ears. Since coming to Japan, I’d noticed the glut of human accidents delaying trains. I’d often thought about how it might feel to stand watching the rails, glancing at the train coming in, avoiding the conductor, having a surge of romanticism push you forward—

So, that’s all my life is? And I haven’t yet felt happy to be alive . . . Suddenly at the end of things, there is a vague sadness at not having started a family . . . Or published a book . . . And a vague desire for a little—no, a lot more.

—Onto the tracks and under the train.

I’m scared to die. I want to be hospitalized for a while. To be alive without living and not feel the guilt of that.

“Are you ready?”

Himawari was looking up at me and it made my heart leap from the hospital bed to the space next to the gachapon.

“Oh, yeah.” Was she waiting for me? “Ikimashou ka?”

She gave a slight nod and a sound in affirmation, then we made our way down to the brink of the rain.

Himawari took up her umbrella, then looked to me. Possibly trying to avoid another period of silent loitering, she asked, “Do you have an umbrella?”

I shook my head bashfully, then spread out my arms. “Only this.”

Her eyes and mouth flicked open with mild shock, and she made a sound in disbelief. “Nande?”

“I thought a windbreaker’d be enough . . .”

She made the sound again. Then, after a brief hesitation, she brought her umbrella between us. “Okay?”

“Daijoubu.”

I made to walk so she would start with the umbrella, and we were off. Ahead of us, the Ferris wheel peaked out to the side over a line of trees along the walkway. The trees came together in the distance at a tall, framed glass bubble—the dome of the aquarium. I felt I was too early in seeing it, so I flicked my eyes down to the wide, stone bricks of the way, wet under my feet. I felt water splashing on the edges of my pant legs and on my left side too. I looked at Himawari briefly before that flustered me. I reached out a hand then and took hold of the umbrella above where she held it. It felt as if the rising humidity from the rain was steaming my face under the umbrella next to her’s.

“Ano . . .” I began. Himawari half looked at me. I felt a light shiver crawl over my skin. “Do you like aquariums?”

She gave a slight nod and made a sound in the affirmative. Relief washed over me momentarily before I thought that there was no way she could have said no at this point. She continued with thoughtful English. “When I was in primary school, I loved Ponyo, so I became interested in the ocean.”

I smiled and said in Japanese, maybe a bit too formally, “I like aquariums too.” Then in English, “I think the ocean is cool . . . and a little scary.”

“Kowai? Why?” She wore her question softly.

I heaved a shy laugh. “It’s so big . . . If I can’t see or touch the bottom, I get scared. Even looking at pictures of fish in the open ocean makes me a little uneasy. I can’t help but imagine some kind of creature swimming around effortlessly and imagine myself barely staying above water. I mean, even if it’s just a dolphin, or something, I’d be scared if it was swimming near me.”

I examined her face between glances at the ground, but I wasn’t sure if she understood what I was saying. Whether she did or not, she nodded again when I was done, and we fell into another silence.

There weren’t many other people around. The heat and the pressure under the umbrella felt like a void crushing me.

In the wake of the silence, Himawari and I giggled together, and the thought we might look like a couple crossed my mind and reddened my already ruddy face.

In Japanese, again, I asked, “What’s your favorite sea animal?”

“Kurage.”

From my smile, and a little performatively, a small burst of air blew out, and I said I didn’t know what that meant.

Himawari’s brow furrowed slightly, then lightened as she brought her hand free up in the puddle of air between us, spread her fingers, and pulled at nothing, dragging her hand haltingly in a soft curve.

“Jellyfish?”

She thought for a moment—“Sou, Jellyfish”—then smiled in a way which felt like a platitude but warmed my heart (the heat having been sucked from it to my face).

In Japanese, I told her I liked penguins.

“Oh, kawaii! Maybe they have them here.”

“I think they do,” I said, knowing full well I confirmed this with the animal directory online beforehand. “I’m excited to see them!”

She made a sound in half-agreement.

And, again, we were silent.

 We carried the silence to a low, climbing set of steps at the head of the way. I ducked my head as we went up, anticipating the view I saw at the station. And then it was there.

Looking ahead, again, the dome stood starkly blue against the gray sea of sky behind it, and the stones, smooth and slick with the rain, reflecting it faintly as a ghost. The stones flanked the dome broadly and came to a ledge at every side, forming a terrace directing Himawari and I underneath the dome’s blue-glass and iron. There, the silence finally dissipated after we filed into one of the empty ticket lines as we paid at the counter. From there, it was only a few steps to an escalator that carried us down into the first room of exhibits.

The room was dark, lit sparingly, the primary source of light coming from each of the fish tanks along the walls. I read and tried pronouncing each of the animals’ names in Japanese before relaying the English name to Himawari. Every time we moved to a new tank, I took notice of the people around us—a father and his son, wandering back and again between the tanks as his father read the name plates; a young man and woman with a little girl in a stroller and every now and again, a couple.

I was laughing perhaps much like an American at something Himawari said or did—nothing more important than the algae on the back walls of the exhibits—and suddenly I thought again about how we must seem. I wondered if the children could tell how little I’d lived in Japan.

I wondered if the couples could tell how little she and I knew each other. I wondered if the parents could tell how little I knew of living.

Himawari and I continued mostly like this throughout the rest of this section of the aquarium, stepping off course only to enter a larger exhibit room with stairs to a tank standing at a height like two stories. I stood in front of it for a moment longer than Himawari (I hadn’t noticed her turn away), but when I went to scan for her, I found myself unwilling to move. I sensed at some distance in the dark behind me a series of eyes, seeing me, illuminated by the caustics dancing freely behind and over me. The aquarium was populated only sparsely with guests, and maybe it was only the gusts from the air conditioning unit above me, but I thought I could make out amongst the quiet breathing of the place a sound almost like my name. I stood for a moment waiting for it to come again. Then longer—long enough to think I’d actually like to hear it to save me from my stasis.

“Judas.”

A thrill like the thrashing of a hooked fish ran through me. I felt my blood chill, chest tighten and eyes widen, wider, taking in just about the fuzzy blackness of the room in my periphery. My neck felt engorged like a statue made from flesh, and I was waiting for the sculptor to crack it with his chisel, release my body’s tension more with every spray of blood—

Himawari came around to my face, now, having done a lap of the room, and I smiled and followed her out.

We made it, after that, to an area with a large glass wall and doors leading outside ahead of us, and the path continuing to the right. As we walked, I could barely make out through the glass an exhibit with something like tall, jagged rocks jutting from inside it and what could have been a pool of water. I’d seen something like this before in Atlanta. A penguin exhibit.

I drifted from the line we were making to the exhibits to the right to glance out at it more, and Himawari trailed behind me.

“Pengin?”

“Tabun . . .” I said. “Demo . . . Imasen . . .”

In my stilted Japanese, I relayed to her the fact of things. There were no penguins in the exhibit.

“I guess it’s because of the rain,” I said.

“Tabun . . .”

Some of the people I’d seen earlier in the aquarium were passing through now. A couple came over to stand near where I was and tried looking out to the penguins as I had, then, seeing there were none, moved into the next room. I stood where I was, only a little disappointed.

If I’m not mistaken, many penguins mate for life. I thought about when I’d gone to Atlanta. The trip marked the end of my life in grade school. Then, the opening of the of weight living—albeit, with training wheels. It’s almost unnerving to be so responsible for yourself. I thought about what my college life could be like—I thought about a life with close friends and the makings of a career—and a girlfriend. And I thought about the luck I’d need to land all of that. And I thought about how I’d need even more luck if I wanted my girlfriend and I to stay together after graduation.

I had a strong aversion to entering a relationship I could see the end of, then. Then. I’d be leaving Japan the next day. Yet I knew if she asked me to date her, I might say yes. The reason for which, I was afraid, was I felt like I was falling behind.

Himawari was gone again when I regained myself. I peeled my body away from the empty exhibit to look for her in the next room. It hit me that I’d spaced out on her twice, now. I felt my heart try to tug me down to the soles of my shoes with each step.

Entering the room, it was different from all the ones we’d been to before it. It had a high, industrial ceiling, was brightly lit and most of the walls were white. The wall to the left was tiled and even has stairs to a catwalk to look into the exhibits from above the water. There was a children’s exhibit near the right wall, but it was closed. Rounding it, I saw Himawari standing in front of one of the exhibits near the end of the hall. As I walked up to her, I noticed what she’d been looking at and tried to refresh myself on the word before she saw me. I made it a few paces away.

“Kurage?”

“Sou.”

We looked at them for a short while, then walked on.

After that, there was a short walk until we wound up in the gift shop. As we walked around, I felt the tugging in my heart spread up to my tongue and down to my knees—I felt like I’d crumple. I didn’t want our time to be up yet. I didn’t know what to say.

Then, through the overhead speakers, came a crackly piano instrumentation of “Good King Wenceslas.” Inspired by the oddity of it, I drew my face up into something dramatic and turned to Himawari.

“Isn’t this a Christmas song? Why’re they playing it in July?”

She didn’t so much as crack a smile for me. “In Japan, when they play songs like this, it means it’s time to leave.”

My face was straight except for my mouth which was creased into a flat smile.

“Sou desu ka?” Is that so?

That got her to crack.

Himawari pulled out her umbrella again, and I flipped up my hood, then we started back to the station. I couldn’t bear the thought of ending things here, but I couldn’t bring myself to know for certain that she wanted to go home. Eventually, though, ahead of us and a little off to the side, I spotted a statue of a tuna upright on its tail under a small, long roof. It was a photo spot.

‘Himawari . . .” I started. She looked at me.

I’d like a picture of you. Would you mind? Even then, I felt like a pervert for having this idea, but I didn’t have any photos of her on my phone, and I thought it might buy me a little more time with her anyway.

In Japanese, I asked her if she wanted to take pictures. She replied affirmatively, and so we did. First, she took a photo of me—smiling too broadly—and then I took one of her. I hadn’t looked at the photo until she went to line up at the edge of the roof, once again taking up her umbrella, and it had turned out kind of blurry. But I could still make out her face, which was fine enough.

Suddenly giddy, I worked up the courage, with a single skip to catch up to her side, to try and prolong our time.

 “Is there anywhere else you’d like to go?” I asked, smiling.

She shook her head.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

“Hmm. Maybe . . . it’s okay to go back.”

A sadness seeped into me with the rain. I smiled even wider. “Sure!”

That smile faded over the course of the train ride. By the time we reached Totsuka, it was all but gone, and taking with it the strength left to hold up my body, straining further not to crumple into a ball.

“Jya . . .” Himawari stood looking at me after we’d walked through the gates. I looked at her. There was so much I wanted to say, but I didn’t think I’d be able to phrase any of it in a way she’d be able to understand. And it felt like too much to run all of it through a translator right there in the station.

“Jya . . .” I said.

We stood like that for a while before Himawari raised her hand for a high-five. I met her hand solidly with mine, my eyes burning a little. Then, we both straightened back up and looked at each other some more. After a brief pause, Himawari opened both of her arms out in two synchronized jolting motions. I stood there for a moment longer. She was offering a hug.

I can’t forget this, I thought, but by the time I’d even finished thinking that, I’d already gone in and out and not even given myself the chance to remember it in the first place. And I stared blankly at Himawari again.

“Jya . . .” I said again.

“Jya . . .” she said again.

I turned my head from her, brow and lip squirming to come up with what to do.

“Judas,” she said with a small laugh. “Daijoubu?”

“Daijoubu.” I played up my expressions then until she got another laugh out, at which point I knew I couldn’t say anything to her here.

I made the same flat smile I made in the aquarium gift shop and made my first step to the side.

Himawari picked up on this and took hers in the opposite direction.

“Himawari. Arigatou!” I called to her.

“Arigatou!” She was just about giggling as she said it.

We waved at each other, each walking backwards, until I reached the stairs to Totsukana Mall. There, I decided not to let myself stop and turned from Himawari and walked all the way back to the dorm with my face and ears burning, my chest and throat tight, and a feeling like complete and aching elation with a stone of regret in my stomach.

I texted Himawari that night just about everything I wanted to say, and she responded about half an hour later confirming everything I’d thought. But she said she absolutely wanted to stay in contact, so I was fine with that. In truth, I felt more relief than anything else. That I wouldn’t have to perform for her anymore. But it killed me, still, that I didn’t know if I’d see her again.

A little before I went to bed, I got another text from her. What time do you leave tomorrow?

A little after 14:00.

I waited for a little while for her response. Thoughts came into my head like, Does she want to see me off at the station? Then, Maybe she wants to give me a goodbye kiss on the cheek . . . And I chastised myself for that propensity.

After a little longer with no reply, I went to bed.

I woke in the morning with a refreshed sense of self. I felt like a new man—a weight lifted from my being and a confidence in my ability to live independently.

But I remembered how it felt going back to Maryland even from Atlanta. Like some inky dependence creeped into my body and drained my life of its immediacy. Those days in Atlanta started to only feel like a dream, at some point, and I suddenly realized I was afraid of Himawari becoming a dream to me too. A profound sentimentality pooled up inside of me then. A lurid contrast to how I’d felt about my stay even the week before. I’d wanted to go to Japan practically my entire life, and now I’d finally done that. And I could only feel fine about it. What more did I have? At home, I knew I only had the coming semester. I’d have to get an internship soon and start looking for jobs. Where was I going to live after I graduated anywhere? More than where, how do I live now?

As I was finishing up my packing, I got a text from Himawari.

Oh, you didn’t take an early train? I can meet you at the usual spot, then.

I stopped where I was and turned to the glass doors to the balcony. I brushed aside one of the thin, white curtains and held it in my hand; which turned into a fist, tighter and more tears fell to the carpet.

Before I left to meet her, I frantically searched through numerous webpages and translation sites to make sure I knew how to say what I wanted to her. Tugging both of my suitcases over to the station, I repeated it again and again in my head in starts interspersed with curiosity about how she’d act with me and baseless fantasies for our final goodbye.

When I got to the station, Himawari was waiting inside the NewDays near the gates.

“Whoa!” She latched onto one of the suitcases. “Are they heavy?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty full,” I said nervously.

She then pushed it forward to the far gate—the widest.

Once we stopped there, she stood up and looked at me. Not knowing what else to say, I said, again, “Arigatou,” suddenly worried about the possibility of another lengthy send-off.

“Arigatou,” she said, giggling. Then—“Oh—”—she pulled something from her pocket and held it out for me.

A keychain of a penguin.

“I got it in there just now.” She gestured in the direction of the MODI across from the station. “In a crane game.”

For what it was, I was speechless. I was truly thankful for it, but I only managed to say, “Arigatou!” again, and I wished I’d gotten something for her.

Then, putting it in my pocket, I remembered.

 “Sabishikunaru!” I’ll miss you.

Or more directly, it’s something like, I’m lonely (because I’m not with you).

Himawari laughed, probably surprised. “Sabishikunaru!”

I smiled, content that she said it too.

“Jya . . .”

She laughed still. “Jya . . .”

“Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye!” She raised her hand for another high-five. Which I met, glad to touch her one more time.

Standing there after, I thought it’d be best not to have a repeat of the previous night, so I waved to her and started through the gate. I watched her wave back as and did, and as she walked out of sight.

On the train to the airport, I was thinking, that goodbye was nothing. Nothing compared to the previous night. I cried in the morning for a keychain and a high-five. Was I a fool to dream of more? I couldn’t help but wonder if this would change how I felt about my life from only hours before; for better or worse, ground me. Once again, I was on my own. Somehow an even newer man (if I can even call myself that yet), and Himawari a sun-dappled sweetness clenching my lips, furrowing my brow and tightening my heart—an orange phantom alive in every ache and relief it gave me. I wondered when I’d forget that feeling. If I’d forget her. She was a friend now. For certain. But somehow, I was afraid to let the tensions of my love fade away. And I knew that was coming. And I’d be a new man, then, too. Or an old one again.

I wrestled my hand into my pocket, pushing aside my wallet so, at the bottom, I could feel the keychain. I thought about where to put it. I could take off some of the keychains I had on my backpack and attach it to a zipper pull there. Or put it on my lanyard with my student ID. Or keep it on the bookshelf across from my bed.

I remembered the fall semester at my school in Maryland began again in three weeks, and I’d have to start thinking about internships and a thesis and what I was going to do after I graduated—

I could feel a heavy, numbing pain form at the front of my forehead and wrap around the sides.

In truth, I thought of myself as a child. Functionally, I was barely more than one. Living as independently and confidently as an adult was more responsibility than I felt I could manage. I often spent weeks lounging, unable to relax, unable to act. I only noticed I was living when the days had gone past, and each time I did, I was arrested by the same question: If I can’t enjoy my life, why should I live it?—

Ow—The plastic beak of the keychain hurt to touch. But the back was smooth, and it felt good to rub my finger across its odd, stump-like feet.

The train began to slow, so I brought up my hand to hold my other suitcase again. Mildly straining to hold each one near my seat, I watched the apartments and transmission towers flow in and out of view.

I’ll be lonely without you. I smiled quietly. I think I’d be lonely anyway.

I wondered what Himawari would think of me in a few months, a few years down the line. I hoped to see her again, and I hoped she hoped so too.

Sabishikunaru. Did she really mean that when she said it?

The train started easing back into a higher speed.

Whether she did or not, though—I rubbed the penguin’s feet—I knew where I put the keychain was up to me.