At Kinosaki: Madoi Ban (Part 2)

“Miyoshi started a stopwatch when he dropped the eggs in. It’s already been 1 minute!”

As soon as I realized that the clock was already running, I had an attack of vertigo at the thought that I might not be the next editor-in-chief. I’d never even considered the possibility that next year I might be a lowly editor working underneath Narusawa or Amiko. My brain went into overdrive trying to prevent this dire fate from becoming reality.

I needed to make a hard-boiled egg and make it to the gondola on time to give it to Miyoshi…well, how about this. First, I’d position a chain of assistants between here and the station. As soon as the egg was hard-boiled I’d take it out and have my assistants relay-toss it all the way down. It’d probably about a minute to get it to the station, which meant that I’d only be able to boil it for 16 minutes, but that was probably within the margin of error…

Nah, finding enough assistants in time was going to be pretty hard, and tossing a fragile little hard-boiled egg around would be a recipe for disaster.

Argh, I was so worked up that I was having trouble coming up with an even remotely realistic solution.

“Not to interrupt your obviously tormented chain of thought, but what if I told you that I already had a solution?”

My entire body went stiff when Amiko unexpectedly piped up. Here I was, still clutching at straws, and Amiko already had the answer? But then again maybe she was bluffing.

“So you’re really gunning for the spot too?”

“Nah, frankly it doesn’t matter much to me either way. But I figure, if I were chief editor, I could put out some more interviews. I could go around asking about fun stuff, then I could have Narusawa write them up…yeah, that sounds pretty good to me.”

“Have Narusawa write for you? Good luck with that!”

“Ooh, feeling spicy, are we? Hey, how about this. If you tell me why you wanna be editor, I might just hand over my solution.”

It was a very, very tempting offer. If Narusawa hadn’t been standing there I might just have given in.

“…I don’t want to tell you.”

“So you’re gonna be stubborn, huh? You sure you’re not going to regret it if that pride ends up costing you the spot? It’s been 3 minutes now…I wouldn’t waste too much more time racking my brains if I were you.”

Decisions, decisions. The way things were looking, Amiko might start heading to the ropeway any second now. I had a strong urge to put her in a full nelson to keep her from leaving, but that would just fritter away more of my own precious time.

What was I going to do?

But then I was hit with a revelation.

“Hold it right there…you can drop the act now.”

“It’s not an act. I’ve got it all planned out…”

“Sure. I believe you when you say you’ve got it all figured out. But you left your wallet back at the ryokan. How are you going to buy a ticket at the ropeway?”

“Oopsie…”

It was complete guesswork, but an ancient ropeway like that, I was pretty confident they didn’t have cashless payment set up.

“If you want to go up the ropeway, you’ll need to borrow money from either me or―”

“I don’t mind spotting you the fare,” Narusawa chimed in.

“At least let me finish!”

Narusawa had destroyed my bargaining position, the thoughtless wench. But Amiko didn’t seem to care much either way.

“Eh, I bet if I asked Miyoshi he’d lend it to me too…but whatever. If you really don’t want to talk about it, Eri, that’s okay. You can be chief editor.”

Amiko seemed to be enjoying all this. I was relieved that she’d dropped out from the race, but I still didn’t know what her solution was.

“Actually, I think I’ve got the answer as well,” said Narusawa nonchalantly.

“You’d better not be bluffing too!”

“Uh-uh. At first I was confused too. But then when Amiko said that she had it, it was like a lightbulb went off…kind of like a mental chain reaction.”

I felt myself break into a cold sweat. Narusawa wasn’t devious enough to lie in a negotiation. Which meant that if she wanted it, the editor-in-chief spot was as good as hers.

“You’re really worried about me becoming chief, aren’t you?”

“Not worried, exactly…I guess I’d just prefer it not be you…”

“Do you mind telling me why? I just can’t figure it out.”

“If I had to guess…maybe she just doesn’t like you?” guessed Amiko bluntly, but Narusawa shook her head.

“There has to be more to it than that.”

I was so tempted to just unload it on them. But that just wasn’t my style, and anyways there wasn’t enough time. Even assuming I could convince them, by the time that happened the gondola would already have departed, and we’d all be out. Then with the ritual out of the way, Miyoshi would be able to choose whoever he wanted. I didn’t know if it’d end up being Narusawa or Amiko, but it definitely wouldn’t be me.

“It’s been 11 minutes…it’s now or never.”

Amiko’s reminder snapped me out of it. If we were all going to be disqualified anyways, I’d rather just board the gondola and bargain with Miyoshi. I still hadn’t figured out how to hard-boil the egg, but I could still bring him a soft-boiled one and improvise my way through it.

“Sorry girls…it’ll have to wait!”

I scooped up one of the eggs and stuffed it into my down jacket, then dashed like a jackrabbit towards Sanroku Station. I wished I hadn’t worn the jacket, because with every step I could feel the air tugging at it and slowing me down. They could easily chase me down and grab me, I thought, scaring myself with my own as I puffed up the stone steps. I was running out of breath but I kept forcing my legs to pump up and down, and when I finally reached the entrance of the station I turned around and discovered that neither of them had followed me.

I should have been relieved, and yet I was kind of disappointed. It was like they were telling me that being editor-in-chief wasn’t as important as I thought it was. But now it looked like I was like the only one in the running.

The gondola hadn’t arrived yet when I went inside. Miyoshi was standing at the back of the line.

“Great, it’s you…” he said once he laid eyes on me, with a deeply disappointed sigh. “Fine, let me buy your ticket.”

He detached himself from the line and took his wallet out, heading to the ticket window. It was more expensive than I’d expected, 1200 yen for a round trip to the top.

“You don’t have to…”

“Of course I do.”

“All right…”

The boarding announcement came just as I got my ticket and brochure and was headed to the line. Without a word to each other we hurried to the platform.

We just managed to squeeze in, but we were with two groups of foreigners, and the air was filled with foreign tongues. English and Chinese, I think, both of which I’d studied in class before, but I couldn’t make out a single word.

“I guess I’d prefer a little background noise for this…” Miyoshi said quietly, just before the gondola started to move.

I didn’t get it, so without thinking I just blurted out, “What does that mean?”

“I’ll keep it simple. I’m not making you editor-in-chief.”

As the gondola shuddered off, my mind went blank. I’d come all this way for the sole purpose of convincing Miyoshi, yet it was over before it’d even begun.

“But…I’ve spent more time in the editing room than any of the freshmen. And I’ve written so many articles…”

My mind turned over everything that had happened in the months since I’d started college, the good things as well as the bad. What had I put in all that hard work for?

“That’s the thing with you. It’s only natural to expect your own effort to be rewarded, but why should that matter to anyone else?”

Miyoshi sighed deeply, looking pained. He looked like he was trying to vomit out an invisible hairball. I’d never seen him so tortured, not even half an hour before going to print.

The multilingual chatter around us had died down. Maybe they thought we were breaking up or something.

Miyoshi breathed in slightly, as if to take a beat, and then let it all out.

“You’ve convinced yourself that you’re leadership material. But the way I see it, you’re the worst of the first-years. Your writing is never satisfactory, and you’re too dense to read the room. And pretty much everyone else in the club knows that.”

“You’re not serious…”

“And you know what else? As the editor-in-chief it’s my job to bring you back down to earth.”

“Onsenji Station, Onsenji Station.”

My rebuttal was interrupted by the announcement for the midpoint station. I was left to face my own emotions.

I didn’t need to be hit by a train to come face to face with death. Miyoshi’s words were death sentence enough.

I thought that I’d internalized Shiga Naoya’s attitude towards life and death after reading At Kinosaki. But all I’d done was pass my eyes over the pages and skim literary analyses without actually understanding what it really meant. And now I was reaping the rewards of my half-assed work.

And if Miyoshi was telling the truth, I’d never been in the running from the start. I’d never even had a chance, a dead girl walking this whole time. It was so funny how pathetic I was that I started to cry.

The doors shut and the gondola started towards the peak once again. Miyoshi apparently decided that was the signal for him to begin again, his face blank.

“I’m not heartless so I’ll give you one chance. I still don’t know why you want to be editor-in-chief. Once we get to the top, we’ll visit Kanizuka, and you can tell me your reasoning. If it’s better than the articles you’ve written, I’ll give you the job.”

“But…”

“Not another word. I want to enjoy the view. If you have anything to tell me, save it for after we get off the gondola.”

I bit my lip. That wasn’t a concession from him at all, because he knew I couldn’t do what he was asking.

My stomach was churning, but my mind was still. Nothing was getting in. Or more like, I didn’t want to let anything in. I was hunched over staring at the floor. He may have been right, but that was no reason to say things like that.

My mind just kept going around and around in circles. Before I knew it the speaker was announcing that we had arrived at the summit.

“Come on, we’re there. Let’s go.”

When I heard his unsympathetic tone the resentment started bubbling up again inside me. Forget it. I didn’t care if this was my last day in the club. There was no way he was getting away with this.

I trailed after Miyoshi out of the gondola and through the station. He didn’t say a single word the whole time. We hadn’t walked for that long before the stone plaque came into view. Miyoshi stopped in front of it.

“This is Kanizuka. Most people don’t go out of their way to see it, so if we’re going to talk…”

As soon as he turned around I took the egg out of my pocket and hurled it as hard as I could right at his forehead. Through my fingertips it was almost like I could feel the shell shatter as if I’d crushed it in my hand. It felt so good.

Down went Miyoshi, like he’d tripped on his own feet. He wasn’t out cold or anything. He just sat there bewildered, staring at me. He didn’t seem to understand what had just happened to him, or to have expected me to go postal on him. Meanwhile, the egg in question hadn’t exploded completely; it was actually mostly intact, rolling around on his stomach.

Now I could say it. I’d spit it out here, and then it’d be all over.

“I only wanted to be editor-in-chief for Narusawa!”

Miyoshi tried to pick himself up off the ground, looking like he couldn’t believe his ears.

“I…I thought you hated Narusawa!”

“When did I ever say that?”

Miyoshi rubbed his forehead. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to jog his memory, or just trying to alleviate the pain.

“…I guess you didn’t.”

“Dang right I didn’t.”

“But you were always so rude…or maybe, *short *with her.”

I understood why he’d think that, if he’d mistaken it for the dunce being jealous of the top of the class. But I wasn’t jealous: I admired how talented Narusawa was.

“Narusawa’s not the collaborative type, she just always does her own thing. Which is fine…not just fine, it’s great. Not that I ever said that out loud.”

“What is it that you admire so much about her?” asked Miyoshi, giving up and sitting there with one knee drawn up to his chest.

“Everything she says is delightful. I wish I could record every word.”

There were plenty of people who said interesting things, but how many people could rivet your attention to themselves as naturally as breathing?

“Maybe I’m not much of a writer. Maybe I’m not editor-in-chief material. But I love Narusawa’s writing. I want to read more of it. That’s why I want Third Eye to serialize her writing. If I was chief, I’d carry her stories for everyone to read.”

Narusawa’s stories were so valuable that everyone in the club should have been begging to publish it in the magazine, even if every single other page was filler. But since they didn’t, it was up to me to advocate for her.

“I guess that would never happen if Narusawa were editor-in-chief. She doesn’t strike me as the my-way-or-the-highway type, so it’d never happen under her…and that’s why you want to be chief.” He got to his feet, wincing as he rubbed his forehead. “Guess I misjudged you.”

“It’d be nice to get the benefit of the doubt once in a while…”

“When I was a freshman I was a nobody. I was only invited to join Third Eye by accident, but once I realized how fun publishing magazines is I was hooked. It took over my life…to the point that I schemed and plotted past all my rivals to take the chief editor spot. And that’s why I swore that I wouldn’t let my successor be a monster.”

“Takes one to know one, huh?”

Miyoshi scowled.

“That’s not what I said…but now that I know you’re trying to become the chief editor for someone else’s sake, I have to admit you have the moral high ground. You win. You’re the next editor-in-chief.”

“…You’re kidding, right?”

“Did I sound like I was kidding? Besides, you passed the hard-boiled egg test.”

He peeled the rest of the shell away, revealing a perfectly hard-boiled egg.

But that was impossible. That egg could barely have been soft-boiled when I fished it up; when I chucked it at him I’d been expecting it to explode all over his face.

As calmly as I could fake it I asked him, “What about the inside?”

“Well, let’s take a look…”

He took a big bite out of the egg, and showed me the perfectly firm golden yolk inside.

“Seems pretty hard to me. Congrats, you passed the test.”

“I’m gonna try my hand at kawarake-nage¹ before I head back down, so let’s break here. Don’t even think about following me,” he said, stuffing the other half of the egg in his mouth before heading off, leaving me standing there in front of Kanizuka. I had nothing to do but head straight back down in the gondola.

How did that egg hard-boil itself? I know it was soft-boiled… That was all I could think about as the gondola creaked its way down the mountain. I was so distracted I barely even noticed the passing scenery.

Amiko and Narusawa had supposedly figured out how to pass the test, yet the only one to actually pass it was clueless old me. They were the talented ones, the popular ones. Was there something I had that they didn’t have?

“Onsenji Station, Onsenji Station.”

Here I was again. I’d been too distracted on the way up to notice, but now I saw the old wooden temple right outside the platform. I suddenly remembered the brochure that had come with the ticket. It said that Onsenji had been built all the way back in the Nara period, and still held events year-round. Even just looking at the pictures, you could feel the history lingering in the place.

Lingering…lingering…lingering heat!

Out of nowhere it dawned on me. I’d only left the egg there for 12 minutes, but as long as you kept it insulated the egg would keep cooking…that’s how it turned into a hard-boiled egg!

“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.”

Hand me a hard-boiled egg at the summit: I knew there was something funny about that statement. He never said anything about giving it to him at Sanroku Station.

Amiko must have picked up on that, and Narusawa had realized it later on. I was the only one in the dark.

It was total coincidence that I’d jumped the gun and sprinted to Sanroku Station, total coincidence that I’d stuffed the egg in the pocket of my down jacket. But it was those coincidences that had led me here.

By the time I stepped out of the gondola I couldn’t help but be in awe at how the stars had aligned. To put it bluntly, I was just a bumbling bootlicker with my head so far up my ass I couldn’t see just how unqualified I was to be editor-in-chief. But because I was too thick to see that, I’d refused to give up, and I’d attacked Miyoshi…and now I was the editor-in-chief-to-be.

In At Kinosaki, Naoya throws a rock and by chance takes the life of a water lizard. In my case, I had thrown what I thought was a soft-boiled egg and by chance hit him with a hard-boiled one…if you thought about it, didn’t it all come down to luck? Whether I succeeded or failed had nothing to do with whether I was trying or not. Not to steal from Narusawa’s story idea, but it was like everything was decided by a roll of the dice. When I thought about it that way, suddenly the editor-in-chief position I’d dreamed of didn’t seem important to me at all.

What was I supposed to do now? If all my trying just ended up with me spinning in circles, then didn’t that mean I should just not try at all?

As I walked away from the gondola pondering these ideas, I spotted Narusawa sitting on a bench inside the station, eating a popsicle.

“Welcome back.”

“Where’s Amiko?”

“She went back to Sasazuka-ya. Apparently she wants a dip in the onsen before everyone gets here.”

Very Amiko-like. But in my mind I would have expected it to be Narusawa to do that instead.

“How come you didn’t go back with her?”

“I wanted to ask you something. So I waited.”

Something about Narusawa waiting for me made my heart feel full.

“If it’s about why I wanted to become chief, forget it.”

“Well, that too…but it looks like you got what you wanted. Congratulations.”

She couldn’t have known that I had become editor-in-chief…which meant that whatever she had been waiting to ask me had nothing to do with the result of the test. I felt a warm glow spreading through my body from head to toe.

“…So what did you want to ask?”

“I was just curious how you’re feeling.”

“Um…like I just had a near-death experience?”

I felt my toes curling in embarrassment. Not only was my pitiful vocabulary being exposed, but I was exposing it myself to my favourite writer. This had to be some kind of torture.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all I could come up with on short notice, okay?”

Narusawa cocked her head and peered into my eyes.

“Hmm, let’s see…you tasted the bitter dregs of defeat and lost all hope of ever attaining your long-yearned-for seat of editor-in-chief, only for your fortunes to be reversed in a sudden stroke of serendipity?”

“How the hell did you know…” I blurted out to hide my embarrassment, though I was glad that she had picked up on it.

“Of course I knew. We’ve been friends for months.”

“You’ve never said anything about us being friends before…”

I knew she hadn’t, because there’s no way I would have forgotten it if she had.

“You really get worried if things aren’t all spelled out for you, don’t you?” she said, polishing off the rest of her melted popsicle.

Looking at her, I began to contemplate. The only thing I was sure of was that I’d have plenty of screw-ups in the future. Tests, reports, job hunting, maybe even falling in love and getting married…there was no way I’d sail through it all without a hitch. Every time I met with an agonizing failure or an unexpected windfall, I’d probably be thinking of the dice.

And yet…regardless of the outcome of the test, Narusawa had been waiting here, for me. That was something I wanted to treasure forever. Even if someday in the future we argued and went our separate ways, I would still hold this moment dear. This was my At Kinosaki.

While I waited for her to finish off the popsicle, I decided to break the silence.

“Narusawa…I mean, Narusawa-sensei. What do you think about writing a story for me?”

You never know what the dice will give you, but why should that mean you can’t roll them yourself?

Footnotes

1. A diversion involving tossing pottery discs off a cliff at a target. Hit the target, have your wish come true. ↩