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My favourite thing about Yamanashi is how the fruits taste here. Obviously we could have them in Nanbu and Hamamatsu too, it’s not like we lived in Tokyo, transport wouldn’t take long. But fresh fruit is something else altogether.
Anyone who is alive in these times must know this already, but I want to write it down anyway. This is my super special guide to making fruit jam! You need to take one kilogram of fruit to about half kilogram sugar, and two lemons. You have to combine the fruit and half the sugar in a bowl and leave them together for a while. I leave them for an hour! The next part is cooking this mixture over heat for an hour, or longer. Add the lemons now. Just the juice! You have to keep removing scum or the texture will be weird. Then you add the rest of the sugar, and let the mixture boil for half an hour. Don’t mix too much except at the beginning, to let the sugar settle in. After that you’re done! Have it immediately or store it in a clean jar. We made cherry jam recently and I had it with bread. We exchanged some jam for bread our neighbours made. We could make bread at home though. Maybe I should do that next week.
I have to clean the peaches we picked now. Maybe we will make peach jam! But we picked a lot, so we probably have to give them to our neighbours. Last week Nee-chan fell sick and our neighbours gave us some medicine. We didn’t even know we had medicines left in Minobu. Then again, they don’t know the amount of sugar we have. Though they probably guess from the jam we’re making.
If you’ve found my not-so-secret way to make jam, pass it on! You can make a temporary jam with honey as well, but I’ll talk about that next time.
These days I miss Rin-chan more and more. In case you’re wondering who that is, if you’ve not read the other letters I've left lying around already, she is the friend from high school who taught me so much. Without her I wonder if I would be alright like this, completely alone, today. The first time I saw her was the first time I arrived at Minobu, right when everything was changing, way before everything changed for everyone. She was so comfortable all alone, just looking out at those mountains. I was coming from a place surrounded by sea and river, all kinds of water, and she was steady as stone. I wonder where she is, how she’s doing.
I miss Aoi-chan and Chiaki-chan too, but I meet them more often. We take care of our families, we grow and hunt food, and we try to survive. More and more trees are cut down every day. It makes the mountains look brown and barren, I don’t like it. Better the colour of nori than the colour of mud.
I can’t write about Fuji-san, it makes me too sad. Sakura-nee told me to remember Fuji-san of old and to look at pictures instead of thinking about the current Fuji-san, which was so unlike her. I thought she would tell me to stare at the current Fuji-san until the reality settled in my brain and I cried or ate ten dumplings instead. Instead we look at old albums. Instead she shows me pictures she took with her friends when they used to drive around Yamanashi, and I show her mine. Pictures with the camping club, pictures with Rin-chan, pictures of Fuji-san. We grew up in Shizuoka, in Hamamatsu and its water-scapes. The sea was in our hair, our senses, the background to countless pictures. But a few meagre years of the mountains, of Yamanashi, and it didn't feel like any place else had ever been home, except in a distant memory.
The people are a different matter, obviously. Grandma came up to us. Ayano-chan keeps in contact, which is funny. I knew she was popular, but I didn't know how popular she was. We don't have telephones or any postmen, so this letter you're reading is not being carried by anyone. It was left here in this house and it will stay here in this house, until you pick it up. And if you're reading this then here you are. And anyway, grandma is with us, I have no way of meeting Ayano. Or anyone else. The only way to know if someone is alright is if they have sent word with someone else. Word of mouth is the most reliable communication we can hope to have. Ena-chan is right here with us, and I don’t know if Rin-chan had any friends besides us. She hasn’t sent word with anyone. I don’t know how she would have. I have to hope Rin-chan is alright. No matter where and when I met these people, they’re all important to me now. Even her, though I haven’t seen her in so long.
I don’t know why this letter is so heavy . Maybe because we’ve been talking about moving soon. And if we move, then no place will be home.
But hey! Jam. If you're reading this you're right here in Minobu. If the trees are still around, if there are people still around, try some fruit. It tastes like living.
She travels for what is almost two years before she remembers. Then, upon remembering, she checks her stock of supplies. The last bit of her fuel is enough to take her to Lake Motosu from where she currently is, which surprises her. Two years of staying away from home and at the end she is closer to home than she would have thought. Not that she wants to go home. Not yet.
So she drives up to Motosu, right up to the Koan campground, and after pitching her tent and checking for any survivors nearby, begins writing.
This is difficult to begin. I don’t understand people who say if you read a lot you must be a good writer. Those are two completely different things. Just like trekking and camping. When you go camping in the mountains, some people expect you to know how to scale them too. I could. With my scooter. But it’s been 6 months now and I’ve all this cash I left home with and no petrol pump to spend it in. The last bit of fuel I found was at an abandoned station that surprisingly had a few gallons remaining. I took 5 and left some cash at the counter. It looked abandoned, but who knows?
It’s difficult to carry things with me all the time, of course, so I’ve attached a little cart behind my scooter. If Ena saw me she’d laugh and laugh at me.
Being forced to learn things isn’t new. The first time I went camping I was forced to learn how to start a fire, how to cook, how to hammer in hooks. I’m writing this while sitting by Motosu, which is where I learned all these things. These days I am without fuel for days on end, so I stash my scooter somewhere and I walk for miles. That’s how I found the abandoned station. I’ve learned how to walk distances. My first winter on the road, I had no wood to burn. Everyone had been hoarding wood like crazy and I wasn’t strong enough to cut down a tree on my own. I had to scale mountain slopes to scavenge for anything to burn. That’s how I learned how to trek. You learn to do things as they happen. Now I'm learning how to write, right here at Motosu.
I've made so many things in these two years. I still don't know how to make a vehicle that's solely solar-powered so it all feels useless sometimes. But a solar-powered bike isn't edible. I've made roasted rabbit, rabbit stew, I exchanged a bird I hunted for some flour and eggs once. It was grandpa’s birthday so I made pancakes. I’d never done that. Not at home, nor on the road. They were fluffy. A pink haired someone would’ve loved them.
My grandpa was with us when it all went to the dogs, so he taught me hunting. That's proved to be useful. I just lay out traps and wait for birds and rabbits to be caught. Besides exchanging meat sometimes, it’s helpful to know how to hunt. I need to eat meat if I have to stay alive.
Aliens still aren’t real. No one’s landed. It all feels so useless. My copy of Tales of the UFO is so tattered by now. There are bookstores by the towns and cities I pass, but it feels scary going anywhere populated. I haven’t seen a dog in months . What is even the point of writing this? Can a dog pass my way soon?
I’m stopping this now. I’ll keep it with me. For now.
There is no sense in staying in one place for too long – there are no people around for miles and it gets eerie, lonesome even. Though Shima Rin is used to long stretches of time when nothing really happens, a crackling fire in front, Mt. Fuji in the distance, no human to confront – though she is used to that solitude, this is nothing like that time of her youth. This is more forceful, absolute, and condemning.
And yet – she catches herself thinking. Often these days, somewhere from the recesses of her mind, despite the tragedies and the bereavements. And yet.
Shizuoka is no longer the populated city it used to be, and she’s not sure what she is doing here. The amount of petrol she can carry both on herself and inside her scooter is limited, but is enough to let her travel a hundred kilometres at a time. She can leave any time. There isn’t anyone here to welcome her.
She decides to go to Hamamatsu.
She meets them roughly twenty kilometers outside the city.
We made camp first thing this morning. I say “made camp”, but all we did was go to Nadeshiko’s grandma’s house and settle down. The snow was sudden and swift and bound to pile up, with the intensity it was coming on. The roads would soon be blocked. We had to take shelter. “Supernatural snowfall”, Aoi called it. Nothing supernatural about what is normal these days. Oogaki didn’t say anything, but she was restless throughout; always looking around, always startling as if she’d spotted something, anything at all, when it was always nothing. We’d made a mistake coming to a place so populated, but we knew it was only a matter of time before we left, so we’d come anyway. We didn’t know what we were hoping for. She’s helpful in that she gets nervous and starts babbling. It makes me feel less nervous. She started talking about how everyone we know must be in Minobu back home. Aoi-chan hit her on her head and that helped calm her down a little, because then she took a deep breath and said
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let’s make some eel .
We don’t know how we got eel. We’re too lucky. The people selling seemed to want my half gallon of fuel and we wanted their eel. They must’ve been desperate for fuel because they gave us a lot. I’m not sure how to even make this. Oogaki asked Aoi what we should make because I will eat anything these days, and she said Unagi don, of course.
Unagi don it was. I’m not sure what help writing it down will be, but here’s how we made it.
Over heat, place a pan and put mirin, sake and sugar in it. We borrowed Nadeshiko’s grandma’s pan. After whisking it together, add soy sauce and bring it to a boil. I can’t remember how much exactly we added except everything was a quarter of the cup I carry with me everywhere. Then you have to let the mixture thicken and reduce to almost a third of what it was initially. If it’s too thick at the end, add a little water. Otherwise you’re done with your eel sauce.
Aoi-chan prepared the eel. Thank you Aoi-chan. I’ve had too much of cutting up animals. We gathered under the kotatsu which was thankfully traditional. They had charcoal and I was so hungry I didn’t even remember to ask how they got it.
Aoi said, “Thank you for the supernatural eel.”
Oogaki said, “Thank you for the supernatural eel.”
I said, “Thank you for the very normal eel.”
The unagi don was the best thing I’ve had in a long, long while.
Maybe the writing thing could grow on me.
“Things are never as bleak as they seem!” Oogaki is grinning at her with that self-assured stance she never really lost. She’s begun wearing her hair out front in soft locks tucked behind ears, hair cropped till her shoulders. Her glasses are not really glasses, just an empty frame. They sit on her ears, pretty and useless. But it makes sense , Rin privately reasons. A resource as precious as lenses would get stolen, and if lost would be nearly impossible to replace.
“Oh? Ogling at my beauteous face?”
“Just thinking how I preferred you with your forehead showing.”
“Not you too!? Aoi and Nadeshiko said the same thing.”
“Nadeshiko?”
“That’s right,” Oogaki facepalms, blanching. “You wouldn’t know…” She veers off, as if that explains anything.
“Wouldn’t know what?” Her palms are sweating, heartbeat rising. “Is Nadeshiko here? Where is she?”
“Is this the part where you bring out a hidden stash of alcohol, if you have any.” Oogaki gesticulates. Rin stares. Oogaki gesticulates harder. Rin frowns.
“Of course you don’t have any…”
“I mean, I was sure you’d turn out like sensei, but to this extent…”
“We’ve just met and you’re insulting me already!?”
Oogaki startled her out of herself. She made her forget writing and heavy, empty roads and hunting. They were warm and giggly before long, but an air of unease persisted.
“Why are you avoiding talking about Nadeshiko?”
“Shimarin,” Oogaki sounded exasperated, with an edge of tiredness creeping in, “I cannot do this without alcohol.”
“It’s really easy, you just have to say Oh maybe she’s lost! Haven’t seen her in a long time or Oh yeah just saw her! No clue how she’s doing right now though and it’ll be–”
“You really miss her, huh?”
Rin pauses, profoundly startled. She doesn’t need to turn her head around as Aoi comes into view. The imp is smiling at her in that same gentle way of hers, even though she was always the most dangerous of the four.
“I–” Oogaki’s sighing, Aoi is just staring at her. She can’t find the words. They’ve probably met Nadeshiko or they’ve not seen her in months. There’s no in between. She is seeing them for the first time and this takes precedence, though, so she calms herself down. She tells herself to go one step at a time. “Yeah,” she admits, simply. “I missed you both too.”
Aoi scoffs, and Oogaki grins. Rin reddens. “I did! I’m not lying,” she adds, muttering, “I’m not like you.”
“I heard that. And we believe you, don’t we Chiaki?”
“Yeah!”
“And we also believe you’re worried sick over her.”
“ Ugh .”
They start laughing. Rin doesn’t join in, but she smiles despite herself. “You’re the reason why she went off and tried to camp on her own. Don’t count on her being so helpless. Plus,” and here her voice softens a smidgeon, but Rin remembers the Aoi of old, and Oogaki has always been trained in Inuyama-speak, so they catch it, “it’s not like she doesn’t have family.”
There’s so much care in that, no one else would understand. Only the three of them do. And Rin realizes suddenly, despite having said it a few moments ago, she really has missed them.
Some things have gotten softer. Aoi’s lies are more soft and harmless than fun and harmless, if that makes sense. They don’t lack for food, that’s happening elsewhere, so they roast meat and as the spiced-legs blacken slowly, make slow talk. It’s slow rather than small, because Rin feels there is no room for hurry, not when only an eternal expanse of time awaits them. Even Chiaki has mellowed in her speech and somehow this is enough to warm Rin to her core, bitter winter withstanding.
“Rin?” She startles, coming to herself as she realizes the other two are staring at her. “Yeah?”
“Would you mind getting the rice started? Aoi will take care of the broth.”
“Sure, yes.”
They lapse into silence. Rin stares at the rice until she can feel her eyes burning. “Stop that.”
“I’m bored.”
“So then stare at my face.”
“Will you not tell me what happened to Nadeshiko?”
“Don’t put it like that! She’s fine! Let’s just eat first, okay?”
The rice made, the meat roasted, the broth done – “What are we even having? What strange concoction is this?” “Shut up Chiaki” – they huddle closer, laughs subsiding, now eager to eat.
Rin takes the first bite of her rice and she knows she has missed this beyond measure . The other two are discussing how they are going to enter Hamamatsu, what the weather's like, how the trade is supposed to be like, but she can't bring herself to listen. She's missed this so much.
After the snow around Hamamatsu melts, Rin packs up. Despite Oogaki being the restless one it's her who's been getting antsy the last few days. Aoi makes her stay one more night though, and then she asks once again.
“She’s fine, Rin-chan. You worry so much. Sakura-san told me what you did when she went camping alone.”
“Yeah! Wow, imagine me doing that to Aoi.”
“I’d gut you like a fish!”
“Don’t say that with such a bright smile!”
“It’s not,” she tries to say again. Finding the words is so difficult. “It’s not like that.”
“We’re not saying anything Rin-chan,” Aoi’s voice is all wrong, all soft and no edge, no joke waiting. “We’re just wondering if you are okay.”
“Yeah! What about you Shimarin?”
What about you?
“What about me?”
“Are you okay? You’ve been alone and out on the road for too long. We just got here and you're about to go out again. We already told you she's fine.”
"You hesitated too much when we first met! It got me scared!"
"She is fine, but you were so serious I got scared! And it's not like I've met her in a while. It's been, what now?"
"Five months."
"Five months! I'm not saying she's not fine, but I can't say she is either, you know?"
"You are infuriating."
"Rin-chan," Aoi's voice rings out, clear and commanding. Chiaki, about to protest, shuts up. Rin stares. "You need to relax."
They are sitting around the charcoal-heated kotatsu and she cannot relax. But at Aoi's words she realizes she's shivering.
"We miss our families too. We miss her and Ena-chan too."
Rin doesn't say anything.
"Are you homesick?"
“I mean…”
The moon on Lake Motosu. Mount Fuji as the Sun is rising, as the Sun is setting. Grottos in the dark. Shimmering seas.
The question arrives but she doesn't know what to make of it. She's been thinking about their old camping trips more and more lately. Dreaming, even. Once while camping out in an abandoned supermarket she dreamt about caribous swimming underwater. She felt like it was a memory for a long time thereafter, even though it couldn't have been.
“If I had to put a pin on it, I think I miss my grandfather the most. There’s all the other people and all the other stuff of course, but…”
Chiaki and Aoi offering her warm rice, broth and meat. The wild geese she saw on the road to Hamamatsu. The last snow before spring in Minobu. It never melted.
“I think I like life like this.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
This makes no sense, but none of it ever has. She likes life. She likes the weird weight of the empty road and the lack of people. If it's a comfort she can't be without, or a genuine desire, she cannot say. But she does not mind it. It eats at her. Aoi was right, and even as she was leaving Hamamatsu and Oogaki was making faces at her, she kept thinking about Aoi asking her to relax. Wasn't she? Relaxed is the only state she ever felt she'd been in. So what was this?
She mees Ayano on the road, a connection to the Nadeshiko of old, and she knows what to do again. She has to go home.
When it comes to it, meeting Nadeshiko isn't difficult at all. All her weird worry and sense of something going awfully, terribly wrong is ultimately misplaced. She meets Nadeshiko. She’s living in her home in Minobu.
“Who said this has to be difficult?”
Shima Rin looks up, and Nadeshiko is watching her with that expression again. Smiling slightly, as if the world hasn’t come to a standstill, as if everything is still alright if these two are still here and still on the move. She tries to speak.
“No one, but–”
“Then have you been reading too many books again Rin-chan?”
She scoffs despite herself.
“Where would I keep them? I haven’t returned to these parts in two years.”
They fall silent again, as Nadeshiko doesn’t offer any answers and Rin is content to just sit by this fire and steal glances at the girl beside her. The fire is dwindling a little so Nadeshiko throws in another log, her face passive but pensive, forehead scrunched up in thought. Rin wants to reach out and smooth it.
“Truth be told I’m surprised you’re still here.” Rin catches Nadeshiko’s eyes with this. Her forehead smoothens and she privately considers it a success. “I found your letter. I thought you’d left.”
“We did. I came back.”
She doesn’t elaborate any further and Rin doesn’t ask, but she thinks of her grandpa, she thinks of the quietness of the road that now somehow doesn’t feel like a choice, and she understands. “Oogaki and Aoi-chan.” She ventures. “They left.”
Nadeshiko smiles. “I always thought they might sometime. Not permanently, but they like each other so much and they wanted to leave for a while.”
“More than that, they like annoying each other…”
“Like you and Ena-chan!”
“The only saving grace about Ena is Chikuwa.”
Nadeshiko giggles at this and it makes Rin smile. “Where is Ena now?” She asks quietly, after a while. “I haven’t seen her either.”
“I know her family is safe, Nee-chan has been in contact with them. Ena-chan was sick for a while last year, but she’s okay now.”
Rin feels so… She feels so strange . She should go out to meet Ena, but all she wants to do is stay on the road, or stay for a while beside this funny girl. Woman, she corrects herself, but the correction makes her want to pinch herself. Ena would want her to stay awhile. Ena has Chikuwa, who she misses, who she would love to meet.
Ena would understand if she wanted to leave.
So much in the world is now barren, and bereft, and long gone. The time she spent travelling in high school feels so distant and so near. It’s like she’s that young still, even though she isn’t much older yet. Like that time will always follow her no matter what. It almost feels like death, except it isn’t.
And yet Rin is alive. And yet she is glad to be here, now, thriving. Or trying to thrive. It almost feels wrong to like life, to have faced so much stillness and still want more of it. To breathe in spite of it.
“It’s different when you go out there, isn’t it?” Nadeshiko says.
And Rin can’t remember why she’d ever worried after all. “Yeah. Yeah it’s not the same.”
It was one of the last few camping trips of their high school lives, Aoi and Chiaki were discussing, ironically enough, dystopian camping. Did Rin know about square shaped nutrient packets that were absolutely tasteless, but guaranteed to give you nourishment? Did Nadeshiko know the future of the world, and camping, where she would have no extra snacks to pig out on? “Don’t cry Nadeshiko, we’re only speculating.”
Rin hummed a little to herself, as the others fought on about the inedibility of dystopian food. “I read this book once.”
The pink haired girl turned towards her immediately.
“Um,” she suddenly felt self-conscious, “it’s nothing. Just that in the book, the world was also dystopian. And it was written in the form of letters.”
“Letters, huh?” Chiaki was suddenly up in her face. “That’s interesting.”
“Letters mean anyone reading them would know eeee-very thing about the person writing them,” Aoi piped up helpfully.
“That’s so nice,” Nadeshiko was staring at the ground. “It’s like little stories of the world around them.”
“Mm, yeah,” Rin was beginning to feel a little morose, “I don’t know if I would ever want it to come to that, but letters sound nice. As for food, in the book they never had to eat tasteless food because they hunted for it.”
“Rin-chan!” Aoi and Chiaki exclaimed together.
“Or gathered fruit, you know—”
“You’re saying you can murder a rabbit in cold blood!?”
“No, but—”
“And skin it, and clean it—”
“Hey, this world doesn’t exist yet—”
“And put its small skinned body through a pot of hot boiling water—”
“Why are your imaginations so specific!?”
“Roasting it would be better if you covered the meat with enough spices, you know!”
The three of them turned their heads immediately. “You’re saying you would be okay with this?”
Nadeshiko grinned happily. “Rabbit tastes really good roasted! I can tell you which spices to use, though I tried making it with gochujang the other day and—”
“Nadeshiko is a rabbit-killer!” Chiaki yelled, laughing, at the same time as Rin mumbling “I don’t think you’d be able to regularly make gochujang in a dystopian world.”
“I will too! And I am not!”
When all the chaos and yelling had settled down, Aoi was the one who suggested it first, a fact Rin would somehow never forget. “But letters are so nice. They’re better than diaries, if you crib about your mom in your diary too much and she finds it it’s one solid proof that you’ve been a bad child.”
“That’s so specific.”
“But letters!” She barrelled on. “They can be left anywhere. They’re single sheets of paper. Or double. Triple. Whatever, I mean they are easy to read, easy to store, and easy to lose.”
“You’re saying that letters are easy to tell someone how you were feeling or what you were doing for a particular while.”
“Who knows if our letters will find each other in such a world, though.”
“Shimarin’s right, there would be no point.”
“No point,” Nadeshiko echoed.
“You people are hopeless! You don’t want me to read all your dirty secrets!”
“That’s all you wanted, huh?”
Their voices would carry into the night until dawn. They should have slept, but they didn’t, and they stared at stars and at the fire and then at each other making silly faces and talking about how bored they were. None of them were bored. Their dystopian letter-talk forgotten, they talked about the food they'd have the next day, how beautiful Fuji-san looked bathed in starlight, the advantages of woolen over nylon blankets, synthetic is better, thank you very much.
Rin thought, as she finally drifted to sleep someplace close to dawn, that the mobility of home was not a bad thing. Drifting, shifting homes. Some vague platitude that did not even begin to cover it rose in her mind, then forgotten as sleep overtook her. When she awoke to the sound of someone snoring, and a pink haired someone pressed up close to her, she would be disoriented. And then drifting back to sleep she would wish to never be without what she had right then, ever again.