1.1 Golden Hour
1.1 Golden Hour:
The sun was beginning to set. The omniscient light, which had guided my hand all afternoon, began to retreat, leaving a golden-orange hue as a complement to this offering of mine—or perhaps it was a warning that my aerosol art in these ancient tunnels had aggravated the spirits lying dormant until nightfall. Still, the beauty of the light somehow outshines the pride of my creation; in fact, it breathed life into it.
It was a wonder that I only had a few seconds to marvel at my efforts.
Following the train tracks that curved along the walls and paved the way to the heart of the tunnel, I knew the exit lay somewhere beyond, though the dense forest surrounding the mountain made it difficult to locate. It was the perfect hiding spot for my art, even if a part of me anguished over the thought that my creation would never be known to anyone else.
I glanced to my left, spotting a shadow within the dark. It was nothing vile… unless you had the judgmental eyes of a woman. Leaning his back against the cold stone wall, his eyelids heavy, was my close friend Masato. I had often pondered what great deeds I must have done in a past life to have earned this friendship—a bond with someone who walked through the world with one leg shorter than the other.
Walking over the discarded bags and empty cans, I stood over him within a few steps. I leaned in, entirely unsure of how I should drag him back from his internal fantasy. He often told me that his mind drifted toward fishing, but I knew better; he was hopelessly hooked on Erina, his longtime, one-sided crush, who at the very least knew of his existence.
You see, we suffered from a chronic case of anonymity.
Perhaps I should have quit stalling and brought him out of his internal misery. I flicked my index and middle fingers sharply against his forehead. His head shifted uncomfortably, but Erina clearly maintained her firm grasp on his daydream. I flicked again, this time closer to his eyes, hoping he would see the siren who had held him captive for the past few hours.
This time, I was met with the most unsettling stare. His eyes opened, but they shared absolutely no recognition.She has his soul, his heart—oh, what a tragedy!
It was unfortunate, but…
“You’ve left me with no choice, Sato. For I shall destroy her illusion!”
I rushed toward the exit, nearly tripping over my own untied shoes in the process. The light outside hadn’t changed yet, but I had been warned never to play games with time.
Exiting the mouth of the tunnel, I looked toward the nearest tree sitting just below the train tracks to my left. Lowering my center of gravity, I sprinted downhill, finding very little grip on the slick, green terrain. My feet begged me to be cautious, but how could I be when total nightfall was only an hour away?
I reached the bottom too fast, forced to do a frantic lap around the tree trunk just to break my momentum, stumbling over thick roots in the process.
“Ugh, that stings...”
Masato, you bastard. If only your heart were made of steel and your mind a fortress, my actions would not have to be this embarrassing.
I stood up and ignored the ache—there was no point in crying about it. I dropped my hands to wipe off the dirt. There were no scrapes or blood; the sting came from the sheer impact rather than a laceration. Kneeling down near the roots where the soil was softest, I cupped up a mass of loose dirt, using the front of my shirt as a makeshift bag. Three handfuls later, I began the grueling ascent back up toward the tunnel.
Not all the sand survived the trip, but I only needed an earful.
Masato was still trapped in his deep trance, his eyes closed once again. His body tilted slightly to the side; in a few moments, he was likely to tip over completely, which made his current position a perfect target.
I carefully manipulated the edges of my shirt, twisting the fabric to create a narrow funnel.
“I should just leave you here for the spirits,” I whispered, bending my posture and kneeling down beside him. I aligned the funnel-edged shirt right against his earlobe. “Let natural selection take the reins. However, if you were to perish, I’m surely next!”
And with that, I unleashed my counterattack.
The sand was quick, invasive, and suffocating as it forced its way into his ear canal. The reaction was immediate. Masato’s arms flailed wildly, his eyes snapped wide, and he practically levitated into the air before stumbling blindly onto the train tracks.
“Aaaugh!”
He immediately tilted his head sideways, shaking his sand-tsunami ear toward the ground.
“What the hell—aaaugh! What, Yoshi?! What the hell, man?!” he yelled in a panicked fit, slapping his palms against his head as if the impact would reverse the flow of gravity. He shoved his fingers into his ear, practically gouging at it to clear the debris. “Sand? You poured sand into my ear! What the heck, man? This is exactly why I won’t ever get a girlfriend—because now I have an entire ant colony growing in my brain!”
I thought he was just exaggerating for dramatic effect, but a sudden, prickly itch bloomed across my own arms. I rotated toward the fading light to find that he was right; the soil was filled with tiny landowners, and they were not at all happy that their home had been violently shoved into Masato’s face.
Luckily, I was a human—the absolute apex of the food chain—and with a few swift whacks from my mighty hands, I sent them flying into an unseen dimension.
“You know you could have just tapped me to wake me up,” he muttered, thoroughly annoyed.
I grinned, facing back toward him. “Oh, but I did. Twice, actually. But her bondage over you was simply too strong.”
“Her?”
The ambient light had grown ever dimmer, but the sudden, red flush on Masato’s face seemed to light up the tunnel walls with a warm glow. He stepped forward, and I braced myself for a nudge, a slap, or even a wrestling grapple. Instead, he walked right past me, his attention captured by my aerosol painting.
He stared up at it in a profound silence, admiring the colors I had carefully chosen to match the shifting image inside my head—the palette required to bring her alive.
“Yoshi… Man, are you seeing heroines without me?”
“Sato, you know I am fundamentally destined to stay a virgin.”
He walked closer, kicking a few empty spray cans out of his wake. “Man, you seriously have talent. You could work for Miyazaki and his studio.”
“I’m too young for that,” I replied, rolling my shoulders. “And besides, the train lines are shut down.”
Masato continued to stare, his eyes meticulously scanning every detail. The dark black hair, the stark eyes of cyan. Where I had really succeeded was her complexion; it was a strange mixture of two-dimensional and three-dimensional details outlined with thin, sharp lining. Her clothing reflected the warmth of autumn, but her eyes remained as cold as winter.
However, it wasn’t complete. It never was.
Her skin color remained undefined, the shape of her hair was still a chaotic mess, and although her complexion breathed a phantom part of her to life, her expression was distant. Gone.
“This is the same girl as last time,” Masato recalled, referencing the canvas that sat by my windowsill back home. He looked over at me with a slight, knowing grin. “Should I be concerned?”
“No, man. She isn’t even real.”
“Yoshi, every time you work on her, it feels like there’s an actual entity trapped within the art. Are you sure she isn’t a figure from your past?”
“Have you ever seen a Japanese girl with cyan-colored eyes?”
“No, but I keep thinking—”
“No,” I cut him off. I didn’t mean to sound rude, though I probably betrayed a hint of sudden embarrassment. “It’s not Alison.”
I turned away, cleaning up our workspace and gathering my things into my bag.
Alison. She was a girl who had transferred into our high school from the foreign lands of South Africa, though her accent was distinctly British. She was the daughter of Charlotte Wedding, a famous European actress and the widow of a deceased politician. The most surprising aspect of her sudden arrival in our lives was that she openly called Masato and me her best friends.
Yep, our duo was actually a trio. It consisted of two completely anonymous guys and one insanely wealthy, popular foreign celebrity.
We often made elaborate plans with Alison, mostly sightseeing or hunting down exotic foods, and sometimes we headed out into the depths of nature reserves or centuries-old temples. I frequently used Alison’s expensive camera to take pictures, and if there was enough time (and she nagged me enough), she would patiently stand near a landmark. She had a way of breathing life into the atmosphere, and I would sketch her out on paper while Masato suffocated my brain with his extensive knowledge of Japanese history—a habit stemming from the fact that he was the adopted son of eighty-six-year-old Hiroshi Miyazawa, Nagatoro’s only surviving monk.
Hence, Masato was always destined to preserve his role as the temple heir; may his soul remain pure for eternity.
Today, however, Masato and I were enjoying the absolute last days of our freedom. Just us—the old duo, the Machos and Manos, the musketeers, or as Ichinose would call us,Thing 1 and Thing 2. Tomorrow, when the new semester officially began, we would have to return to the complex dynamic of our trio-triangle, which often invited a healthy dose of resentment and disgust from our fellow classmates. But we would manage.
“You know…” I began, walking a few paces ahead of Masato down the dirt path leading to our village, ensuring he didn’t accidentally trip over the difficult terrain with his shorter leg. “Maybe we should take her to the beach on Saturday. She hasn’t been there yet.”
I got no response. Shifting my gaze backward, I saw his eyes express a long, silent sigh.
