At Kinosaki: Madoi Ban (Part 1)

“Whoever brings me a hard-boiled egg will be the next editor-in-chief!”

Even the fact that we were on the train to Kinosaki did nothing to tamp down Miyoshi’s natural tendency towards tyranny. The only saving grace was that our car was mostly empty.

The Kōnotori Express was running on time. Through the windows the terrain had turned into mountains, mountains, and more mountains, and even I, who didn’t know the first thing about the geography of Hyōgo, knew that it wouldn’t be much longer before we arrived.

“I know this is a club trip, but do you mind chilling out?” I asked.

Miyoshi scowled at me and clicked his tongue. His conspicuous combination of gold-frosted tips and sunglasses made him look like a petty thug; the fact that he was lined up to take over his family law firm was enough to convince me that the world was doomed.

We’d taken two seat rows, turning the front row around so that the four of us could sit facing each other. If only it was anyone besides Miyoshi sitting directly in front of me, but I was so stoked to be on a February trip to Kinosaki that I was willing to put up with it.

“Wake up, Erikawa, and you might notice the difference.”

Erikawa being me.

“He’s right…” said Amiko in the seat next to Miyoshi, looking thoughtful. “Normally he’d tell us to write a whole article in an hour, or suddenly reject a piece we worked really hard on all without missing a beat. Kinda like when someone sexually harasses everyone when we’re playing King’s Game. But today he’s not like that.”

Harsh but true. I had to admire her for having the guts to say that to his face.

Hamauzu Amiko was as cunning as she looked, always playing her cards close to the chest. It was almost scary how she could charm her way into anyone’s confidence; she’d just been chatting up a couple of old ladies who loaded her up with all sorts of goodies. Not that we could complain, since we all benefited from it.

“You got that right. I’m just skirting the line so that I can’t get sued for harassment. I’m a lawyer-to-be, remember?”

I couldn’t believe he said that with a straight face.

“I’ll tell you all the details later, but right now all you need to know is that the tradition for selecting the next editor-in-chief of Third Eye involves hard-boiled eggs and stuff. No one knows exactly how long we’ve been doing it this way, though supposedly it’s been going on for at least thirty years.”

Third Eye was the name of our college student co-op’s magazine. We mostly published articles written by students. The mag didn’t make any money, but the co-op took care of all the publishing costs, so we could put out whatever we wanted without having to worry about being in the red. I guess you could say that the occasional letter from a reader was our reward.

We’d been hard at work writing articles since last April, labouring as lowly freshmen under the Chief Miyoshi regime. I was only vaguely interested in writing for the magazine when I went to their welcoming party, but it didn’t take long before I was hooked. It didn’t help that I don’t have any hobbies to speak of, so I found myself dedicating every minute of free time I had to Third Eye.

The way Miyoshi threw his weight around you’d think he was older, but he was actually only a sophomore himself. 

“I got this position by getting a boiled egg to the previous chief. Oh, and my rivals for the spot? They’re all dead.”

“Whatever line you said you were skirting, I think you just crossed it.”

“It’s a metaphor, relax. I’m just saying you have to be prepared to do whatever it takes.”

“Then I’m just going to say it now, I’m definitely the most devoted.”

My mind went back to the events of the last ten months. The very first article I wrote was rejected, so I furiously rewrote it…only for it to get rejected again. I gave up my weekends to work on an article because we suddenly decided to publish an extra issue…rejected. I put up with a lot of things, but I was determined to one day become the next editor-in-chief.

“You’re such a harsh taskmaster, Chief Miyoshi. You do realize that if it were anyone else but me they’d have quit a long time ago, you know?”

“Not like I forced you. If you want I can move you to proofreading duty?”

“I wrote the most articles of any of the freshmen. It’s like having the most wins in baseball!”

“You also had the most rejections.”

“Doesn’t that just prove how motivated I am?”

“If everything was down to motivation, we wouldn’t need job interviews or elections now, would we?”

He just had to be quick with the comeback, didn’t he.

“Yeah, well, I still don’t buy this tradition. I mean, if it let someone like you be chief…”

“Well, lemme ask you this. Why do you want to be chief editor so bad?”

“…I’d rather not talk about it here.”

I sneaked a glance at Narusawa Umi, who was drowsing in the seat beside me, and lowered my voice to a whisper so I wouldn’t wake her.

“All I’ll say is, I’m fine as long as it’s not Narusawa.”

Both Miyoshi and Amiko were struck dumb when they heard my confession. It was Narusawa herself who broke the silence.

“…What about me now?”

She sounded sleepy, but then again maybe was just politely pretending not to have heard. Not that I cared if she had.

“Nothing,” I said.

“‘Kay,” she said with a little yawn, plucking her black-framed glasses from her breast pocket and putting them on.

Narusawa was a petite girl who kind of reminded me of a frog; I bet if you splashed a bucket of water on her she would barely even flinch. She was pretty hickish, but she could be weirdly charming, and I heard that she had a sneaky cult following among the boys. But she kept herself so busy―not just here but in the literature club too―that she didn’t seem to have much interest in relationships.

“Well, look: to head up this magazine you’ve got to be a despot. The magazine has to reflect your own aesthetic, and in order to do that you have to be prepared to reject everything that doesn’t meet your standards.”

“I am prepared!”

Miyoshi’s eyebrow twitched. I’d meant to show him how determined I was with my eager beaver act, but apparently that had backfired.

“Let’s look at your articles. You’re not any better than anyone else, but your articles are always looking down on the reader.  Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? From this moment I dub thee: Princess Soapbox!”

I’d thought that I was used to Miyoshi’s mockery, but sometimes he’d come at you from an unexpected angle and catch you off guard. True, I knew that I tended to bite off a bit more than I could chew with my writing, but how else was I going to get ahead?

“…Then what about Narusawa’s writing?”

The whole editing room agreed that her writing was superb, but I thought it was a little out of place for a magazine like Third Eye.

“You shouldn’t be jealous of birds just because they can fly and you can’t, right? You’re clearly just different types of creature, that’s all.”

“Maybe, but…”

“The fact that you don’t have a comeback ready to go just means that you’re a pipsqueak. You’re self-conscious, you’re afraid that you’re the hunted, not the hunter.”

All this time Narusawa just sat there quietly listening to Miyoshi talk her up. That’s the kind of girl she was.

“Anyways, long story short, I’m going to be choosing one of you three to be the next editor-in-chief.”

Finally! I’d been expecting there to be some talk about succession in February, but I didn’t think it would happen like this.

“Oh, so that’s why we’re heading to camp a little early.”

How could Amiko be so blasé at a time like this? Well, it’s never a bad thing when the field’s a little weak.

“But why would you choose any of us?”

Matter-of-factly asking the tough questions: a real Narusawa specialty. Even Miyoshi was taken aback by how direct it was.

“Good question…well, you, Hamasaki, are a great communicator, so you’d make the editing room run like clockwork and secure interviews without any trouble. And you, Narusawa, are such a great writer that you can make anything work; people just want to follow you. Something like that.”

“Wait. What about me?”

“You’re just here to make the number even.”

No hesitation that time. I was about to fire back but all of a sudden he got up and grabbed down his bag from the luggage rack.

“…But none of that matters, as long as you can complete the ritual of the egg.”

I was going to ask him what that meant, but it was then that the Kōnotori Express started to slow down as it pulled into the end of the line: Kinosaki Station.

Funny, considering I was born and bred in Kansai, that this was the first time I’d ever visited Kinosaki. But now that I was here it made sense: you’ve got to cross hill and dale to get here. The Sea of Japan is so close, yet so far away. No wonder my folks always just booked a shuttle bus from Umeda to go to Arima Onsen.

“I thought onsens were always built straddling a river.”

“And the buildings are way shorter here than the ones at Arima Onsen.”

To the right outside the JR station we were greeted by a street filled with ryokan and souvenir shops. It was completely jammed with tourists.

“The ryokan are fairly small, but the river is just a little ways over that way. It’s called the Ōtani River. Plenty of ryokan and onsen on both sides.”

I guessed things would quiet down once we got through this crowd.

“Hope everything isn’t completely filled up with all these sightseers. You figure they can keep building more additions, you know? It’s a big business opportunity.”

Personally, I’d feel pretty suffocated if they turned this street into a canyon of skyscrapers, but what do I know.

“The yen is super cheap right now, but who knows how long the tourism boom will last. Even some pretty well-known onsen run into trouble trying to downsize their operations. Maybe these smaller onsen are sized just right.”

We navigated through the crowd with our luggage in tow. There were a lot of foreign tourists in the crowd. Good for Kinosaki, I supposed, but I would have preferred a more low-key vibe.

There was a sudden gust of wind, and on it was the faintest scent of the sea.

“I forgot that we were by the ocean…if we’re out here too long it’s going to dry out my hair.”

“I love the smell of the sea. It makes me feel like I’m travelling in exotic lands, even though our feet remain planted upon our native soil.”

There it was: a wild Narusawa-ism. They always had the effect of making me feel downright mundane.

“We should pig out on some crab while we’re here. You can’t do that at Arima!”

…well, at least with Miyoshi I wasn’t the most mundane one here.

“All-you-can-eat crab is all well and good, but don’t go too crazy or you’ll be cursed by the crabs.”

“Actually it just so happens that there’s a place in Kinosaki called Kanizuka. All you gotta do is go pray there after you eat, and then you won’t be cursed.”

Over the course of this dull conversation we arrived at our lodgings, Sasazuka-ya. Apparently Third Eye had always held its winter retreats at this ryokan. Sure, it looked really historic, sort of comfy in a homely way…allright, I’ll just say it, it reminded me of a cheap B&B. None of the tourists wanted to stay here in a hole-in-the-wall like this, I guessed.

“All right, everyone be at the Kinosaki Moto-Yu at 3:30. And don’t be late!” said Miyoshi after we checked in, making a beeline directly for the boys’ quarters. That wasn’t a lot of free time, but even so it felt amazing to finally be free.

We went into the girls’ room. Based on how cheap the retreat fee was I’d been bracing myself for the worst, but it was surprisingly not as dingy as I had expected. There was even a spacious veranda. The view alone, with the Ōtani River and the tourists strolling along, was more than worth the cost.

“Place isn’t so bad,” Amiko commented.

“Yeah, I’m glad I came,” I said, looking at the clock. It was about 3 right now; the rest of the club was supposed to arrive at 5, which left 2 hours or so in between. What was Miyoshi planning to do between now and then?

“Do you guys mind if I take a nap? I’m exhausted,” said Narusawa, in the midst of pulling out a futon from the closet.

“Of course you can’t!” I hastily stopped her. “It takes 20 minutes to walk to the Moto-yu, we gotta get going soon unless you want us to be late!”

I couldn’t believe someone could be that lazy, I mean, it only takes a second to look it up on your phone.

“Yeah, then I guess we’d better lock up our valuables. You guys have anything you want to store?” said Amiko, shutting an expensive-looking wallet in the safe.

“You’re leaving your wallet?”

“Yeah, I mean you can probably get away with paying with your phone. We’re at a tourist spot after all.”

Narusawa and I held on to our wallets anyways. No clue what Narusawa’s reasoning was, but I wasn’t nearly as confident in tourist infrastructure.

“Do we need to bundle up?” asked Narusawa.

I thought about it. It’d been cold when we arrived at the station, but it was a sunny day, and considering the time of day I was pretty sure we could get by without.

“I’m not taking my coat,” stated Amiko, “It’ll get cold after sunset, but we’ll probably be back by then.”

“That makes sense. Then I won’t wear mine either.”

I watched them hang their coats up in the closet, but just in case I decided to wear my down jacket. I get cold easily.

The Moto-yu was supposed to be walking distance from Sasazuka-ya, following the Ōtani River into the mountains. Still plenty of people along the way, but not so many that we’d have to fight through crowds.

The three of us took our time getting there, savouring every moment of the reprieve which Miyoshi had tossed our way. As I took in the willows along the riverbank swaying in the wind, and listened to the click-clack footsteps of geta-cladonsen guests on the stone pavement, I started to really feel like I’d arrived in Kinosaki. Like damn, there really was a day-and-night difference when Miyoshi was out of sight and out of mind.

Now that I had some space to breathe, I realized this was a perfect opportunity to knock my rivals down a peg.

“Hey, have either of you read At Kinosaki before?”

“Nope, not me.”

“I read it a long time ago.”

Amiko was whatever, but I hadn’t expected Narusawa to say that.

“So you didn’t even look at it before you came here? I thought you wanted to become an author?”

“I don’t see what visiting Shiga Naoya’s favourite onsen and writing have to do with one another.”

“Now that’s not a very romantic thing to say.”

“It sounds like you’ve read it, Erikawa. Why don’t you summarize it for Amiko?”

The fact that she still called me by my last name wounded me. For crying out loud, we’d known each other for over ten months now.

“It’s based on a real episode from Shiga Naoya’s life, when he visited Kinosaki to recuperate after being hit by a train on the Yamanote line.”

Not that anyone really wanted to know, but I didn’t want to waste the chance to review it, so I explained the story as we walked. That being said I hadn’t been expecting to talk about it, and I was a little fuzzy on some of the details.

“He narrowly escapes being killed, but there’s still a chance he might develop spinal tuberculosis, so he begins to reflect on life and death…I guess the climax is the passage with the newt. He sees a newt by a stream and throws a rock to scare it, but by accident he kills it.”

“No way. First, how the heck did he survive getting hit by a train? Wouldn’t you think he’d be torn to bitty pieces? You’re not exaggerating, are you?” Amiko cackled.

I wasn’t expecting that so I didn’t know what to say. Life and death are not opposite poles, they exist side by side, I’d been planning to continue. Naoya realizes that he owes his life to the slimmest of margins, and so he departs from Kinosaki.

“Trains didn’t move so quickly in those days, so it’s possible that’s how he miraculously survived. But because the shadow of death still loomed over him, everything became a reminder for him to reflect on life and death. That’s only my theory, but it kind of makes me jealous of Shiga Naoya.”

“Narusawa…why do you say that?”

“Because even as humanity is wracked by disease and natural disasters, even as the fires of war rage beyond the sea, I still think of them as someone else’s problem. If I were to look death in the eye, would I even recognize it?”

“I think I get it,” said Amiko. “Me, I’m still trying to figure out this love thing.”

“I don’t understand the first thing about love, either. Then again, it’s not a given that an event which shakes your worldview will necessarily fall into the realms of either Eros or Thanatos. Yes, maybe I read novels in search of what that means to me.”

“In plain Japanese, please?”

I wasn’t trying to be mean, I was genuinely curious what she meant.

“I think the nice thing about novels is, you can relive experiences which you never would have had in your own,” replied Narusawa matter-of-factly, not seeming particularly bothered. But that just made me want to press the attack.

“Then, you think your life is important enough to add to other people’s lives that you want to write about it?”

“Don’t be mean. We’re only 19, you know?” said Amiko.

“There’s nothing wrong with what Erikawa said. The only things that appear in my novels are people who spring out of my own head. No matter how careful I am, there’s a good chance that the worlds I create are written in a way that is overly convenient for me. So I constantly have to think about how to avoid that.”

God, she made me want to burst out laughing. Miyoshi was right: we inhabited completely different planes.

“For example…let’s say that our fates were determined by someone rolling a die. Would we give up and let ourselves become stagnant, or would we persevere and carry on? I think it’d be interesting to write on that theme. And I think that if I did, I’d be able to bring forth and depict characters holding world views entirely different from my own. I’m glad you’re with me here in Kinosaki, Erikawa.”

Her politeness made my chest ache a little. She didn’t need me to get where she was going. She would have gone down this path regardless; I just happened to be standing on the road as she walked by.

“You know, Narusawa, I haven’t seen anything by you in the lit club magazine. Don’t they only publish 4 issues a year? There’re only two more issues left in the year.”

Narusawa shrugged.

“They didn’t exactly get axed or anything. My pieces just didn’t match everything else, so they left them out. ‘We’re busy,’ is all they said.”

“Come on…if you went to the trouble of writing something you gotta find other ways to put it out there!”

“Wait, did you seriously dig up the lit magazine just to pick on Narusawa? I can’t tell if you’re a fan or a hater.”

“That’s not what I…”

I was about to correct Amiko when Miyoshi came into view ahead, standing with his arms crossed. During our conversation we’d arrived at the Kinosaki Moto-yu.

“Ah, there you are.”

I thought the Moto-yu would be an outdoor hot spring, but it turned out to be just a rock surrounded by a fence. The only hot spring-ish things nearby were a footbath and an even punier pool of hot water…now what was that there for?

MIyoshi answered my unspoken question as if he’d read my mind.

“This is the onsen-tamago spot. You buy raw eggs from that shop there and boil them in here.”

He bought three eggs and dropped them one by one into the pool, each in a separate slot.

“And, begin!”

“Begin what?”

“Read that,” he said, pointing to the sign.

Extra soft: 11-13 minutes

Soft: 14-16 minutes

Hard: 17+ minutes

After we’d taken a look he pointed towards the mountains.

“See that ropeway station over there? It’s called Sanroku Station. In about 17 minutes I’m going to take the gondola to the top of the mountain. Whichever of you can get in the gondola with me and hand me a hard-boiled egg at the summit, I’ll make you the next editor-in-chief. But if the egg is still soft-boiled, you’re out.”

He explained all this in a single breath, but I’d already noticed something was wrong.

“Wait!”

“What? I want to get going.”

“If it takes 17 minutes to hard boil an egg, how do we get to the station before the gondola leaves?”

It was 5 minutes’ walk to Sanroku Station, maybe 3 minutes if you booked it. But if we were supposed to get the egg there along with Miyoshi, the egg would still barely be soft-boiled.

“Ay, there’s the rub. Use your little noggins to figure it out.”

“What does any of this have to do with picking the next chief editor?”

“It at least ensures that whoever it is isn’t a total dimwit. Lates!”

With an evil smirk, Miyoshi sauntered off towards the ropeway.