They groped in the dark, looking beyond the tractor and below the work desk, but they couldn’t find it. Shinji stood up and checked his watch again. Instead of 12:10, it was approaching 12:15.
Finally, he decided to take out the flashlight from his day pack. He cupped the bulb area with his hands and turned it on.
He did his best not to let any light leak out, but the interior of the warehouselike pseudo farm coop glowed a faint yellow. Shinji saw Yutaka’s worried face and then beyond his shoulder, he easily located the pulley, lying beyond the moonlight from the window on the floor by the plain wall behind the desk. It was less than a meter away from Yutaka’s day pack on the floor.
Shinji signaled Yutaka and quickly turned off the flashlight. Yutaka snatched up the pulley.
“I’m sorry, Shinji,” Yutaka said apologetically.
Shinji forced a grin, “Get it together, Yutaka.”
Then he shouldered the day pack and rope once again. He lifted the gas can. He was confident about his strength, but two of these items were pretty heavy. Carrying the rope would only be partway, but he would have to carry the twenty-kilogram gas can to the top of the mountain. And they had to hurry too.
Yutaka carried his bundle of rope. The heavy load made him look like a tortoise weighed down by its shell. Well, Shinji looked no different, he thought. They walked to the sliding door on the east side of the building. The door had been opened approximately ten centimeters, letting in a thin ray of pale blue moonlight.
“I’m so sorry, Shinji,” Yutaka said again.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry. Let’s just make sure we get it right from here on.”
Shinji shifted the gas can to his left hand, put his right hand on the heavy steel door, and slid it open. The pale light spread out.
Outside there was an unpaved parking lot. Its entrance was on the right. The farm coop faced a narrow road. Near its entrance was a station wagon. The wide longitudinal road traversing the island was slightly south of this road.
In front of the door, east of the parking lot, was a farm made up of several houses. Beyond that area was another cluster of houses, and even in the dark you could see them.
To his left Shinji saw a small storage shack at the end of the property, and further on up was the school, and above it, as if it were embracing it, the cliff. There were some trees right by a two-story house in front of the school. They were planning on tying the rope to the tallest tree there. They had secured the wire near the farm’s waterway immediately left of the tree. So the wire went by the school and directly up into the center of the mountain, where the overlooking rock was, covering an amazing distance of three hundred meters.
I can’t believe I came up with this plan. I wonder though, whether that wire will really lift the rope up to the mountain without getting cut?
Shinji took a breath and then after considering it, he decided to say something. It wouldn’t matter whether they heard him say this.
“Yutaka.”
Yutaka looked up at Shinji. “What?”
“We might die. Are you prepared for that?”
For a moment Yutaka fell silent. But then he answered immediately, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Okay.”
Shinji gripped the handle of the gas can again and was about to form a smile. A smile that froze when he saw something in the corner of his eye.
Someone’s head emerged from the farm east of the parking lot.
“Yutaka!”
Shinji grabbed Yutaka’s arm and ran back behind the sliding door into the slate-walled farm coop building. Yutaka teetered for a moment, partially due to the heavy rope, but managed to follow him. By the time they were crouched over behind the sliding door, Shinji already had his gun aimed at the figure.
The figure shrieked, “D-don’t shoot! Shinji! Please don’t shoot! It’s me! Keita!”
Shinji realized it was Keita Iijima (Male Student No. 2). Keita, relatively speaking, was friendly and got along with Shinji and Yutaka (after all they’d been classmates since their first year), but Shinji wasn’t relieved someone was joining them. No, he felt like this meant trouble. That’s when he realized he hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of others joining them until now. Damn, why now!
“It’s Keita, Shinji. Come on, it’s Keita.”
Shinji thought Yutaka’s excited voice sounded a little inappropriate.
Keita slowly stood up and proceeded toward the farm coop premises. He held his day pack in his left hand and what looked like a kitchen knife in his right. He spoke cautiously.
“I saw the light.”
Shinji clenched his teeth. It must have come from the flashlight he’d used just that one time to find the pulley. Shinji chided himself, how could he have screwed up like that, rushing to use that flashlight?
Keita continued, “So I came here and saw that it was you guys. What are you doing? What were you carrying? Rope? L-let me join you guys.”
Knowing how their conversations were monitored, Yutaka knit his brow and looked over at Shinji, his eyes opened wide, realizing how Shinji hadn’t lowered his gun.
“Sh-Shinji, what’s going on?”
Shinji moved his open right hand and signaled Yutaka not to move forward. “Yutaka. Don’t move.”
“Hey,” Keita said. His voice was shaking. “Why are you pointing that at me?”
Shinji took a deep breath and said to Keita, “Don’t move.” He could tell Yutaka was getting tense.
Keita Iijima’s pitiful face was visible in the moonlight as he took a step forward.
“Why? Why won’t you let me? Have you forgotten who I am, Shinji? Let me join you guys.”
Shinji cocked his gun with a click. Keita Iijima stopped. They still had plenty of distance, seven or eight meters.
“Don’t come near us,” Shinji slowly repeated. “I can’t let you join.”
Yutaka whined right beside him, “Why, Shinji? We can trust Keita.”
Shinji shook his head. Then he thought, there’s something you don’t know about us, Yutaka.
It wasn’t a big deal. In fact it was a trivial incident.
It happened during their second year near the end of the term in March. Shinji went to Takamatsu to see a movie (there was no movie theater in Shiroiwa) with Keita Iijima. Yutaka was supposed to go too, but he had a cold that day.
That was how Shinji encountered three tough-looking high school students in a back alley off the main street near the shopping arcade. Shinji and Keita had already seen the movie, and once they were done checking out the book and record stores (Shinji bought imported computer books. They were lucky finds. Even though they were technical books, the government strictly prohibited books from the West so they were difficult to come by), they were heading over to the train station when Keita realized he’d forgot to buy a comic book and went back to the bookstore alone.
“Hey, you got any dough?” one of the high school students asked. This guy was at least ten centimeters taller than Shinji, who at 172 meters was short for a basketball player.
Shinji shrugged. “I think I have 2,571 yen.”
The interrogator looked at the other two as if saying, how lame. Then he leaned over by Shinji’s ear. Shinji was annoyed. Maybe it was from getting wasted on paint thinner or some wacky drug that was hip these days—in any case the guy’s gums were receding, and the smell of his breath coming between his teeth reeked. Brush your teeth, man.
The guy said, “Give it up. Come on, now.”
Shinji gave an exaggerated look of surprise and said, “Oh, so you guys are homeless! You know you should be content with twenty yen then. I actually might give you something if you get on your knees and beg for forgiveness.”