⚪️Short Story | Mikando Bookstore Episode 9

Continued from Episode 8

Tangerine

It was a cloudy winter dusk. I sat in the corner of a second-class passenger car departing from Yokosuka, idly waiting for the departure whistle. The passenger car, which had long since had its lights turned on, was unusually empty, with no passengers other than myself. When I looked outside, even the dim platform was unusually devoid of people seeing others off today, and only a small dog in a cage was barking sadly from time to time. These were scenes that strangely matched my mood at the time. An indescribable fatigue and weariness cast a dull shadow over my mind, like a sky clouded with snow. I kept both hands thrust deep into the pockets of my overcoat, and I didn't even have the energy to take out the evening paper that was inside.
But eventually, the departure whistle blew. Feeling a faint sense of relief, I leaned my head against the window frame behind me, waiting without really waiting for the station in front of me to begin sliding backward. However, before that, I heard the shrill sound of wooden clogs coming from the ticket gate, and soon, along with the conductor's shouting, the door to the second-class compartment I was in opened with a clatter. A young girl of thirteen or fourteen rushed in, and at the same time, the train gave a heavy jolt and slowly began to move. The pillars of the platform that I counted one by one, the water cart that looked like it had been left behind, and the red-capped porter thanking someone in the car for a tip—all of these fell behind regretfully into the soot and smoke blowing against the window. I finally felt a sense of relief, and while lighting a cigarette, I lifted my weary eyelids for the first time and glanced at the face of the girl who had sat in the seat in front of me.

She was a girl who looked very much like a country bumpkin, with hair without any oil tied in a tight ginkgo-leaf knot, and both cheeks, chapped from the wind, flushed a disturbing red. Moreover, on her lap, where a dirty yellowish-green woolen scarf hung loosely, was a large furoshiki bundle. In her frostbitten hands, which were holding the bundle, a third-class red ticket was gripped tightly and carefully. I did not like this girl's vulgar features. Furthermore, her dirty clothing was also unpleasant. Finally, I was irritated by her dull mind, which could not even distinguish between second and third class. So, having lit my cigarette, partly because I wanted to forget the existence of this girl, I spread the evening paper on my lap again. Then, the outside light that had been falling on the pages of the evening paper suddenly changed to the light of the electric lamp, and the poorly printed characters in some columns floated before my eyes with unexpected clarity. Needless to say, the train had now entered the first of the many tunnels on the Yokosuka line.
However, even looking over the pages of the evening paper illuminated by the electric light, the world was still filled with nothing but mundane events to comfort my melancholy. Peace talks, brides and grooms, corruption scandals, death notices—as I entered the tunnel, I felt a momentary illusion that the direction the train was traveling had reversed, and I scanned those desolate articles one after another almost mechanically. But even during that time, of course, I could not help but be constantly aware that the girl was sitting in front of me with an expression that seemed to be the embodiment of vulgar reality. The train in this tunnel, this country girl, and the evening paper buried in these mundane articles—what could this be if not a symbol? What could it be if not a symbol of an incomprehensible, low-class, boring life? Everything became trivial to me, and I threw away the evening paper I had started reading, leaned my head against the window frame again, closed my eyes as if dead, and began to doze off.

It was some time after that. Suddenly feeling as if I had been threatened by something, I looked around involuntarily, and before I knew it, the girl had moved from the other side to the seat next to me and was frantically trying to open the window. But the heavy glass door did not seem to go up as she wished. Those chapped cheeks became even redder, and the sound of her sniffling from time to time, along with the sound of her small, gasping breath, reached my ears restlessly. This, of course, was enough to attract some sympathy from me. However, the fact that the train was just about to reach the mouth of the tunnel was something I could immediately understand, as the mountains on both sides, bright only with withered grass in the twilight, had come close to the window side. Despite this, the girl was trying to lower the window that had been closed—the reason for which I could not grasp. No, to me, it could only be thought of as a mere whim of this girl. So, while still harboring harsh feelings in the pit of my stomach, I watched her frostbitten hands struggle to lift the glass door with cold eyes, as if praying that it would never succeed. Then, soon, with a tremendous flapping sound, as the train plunged into the tunnel, the glass door the girl was trying to open finally fell down with a thud. And from that square hole, air as black as dissolved soot suddenly turned into suffocating smoke and filled the car. I, who had originally been suffering from a sore throat, was bathed in this smoke all over my face before I even had time to hold a handkerchief to it, and thanks to that, I had to cough until I could barely breathe. But the girl, showing no sign of concern for me, stretched her neck out of the window, and while her ginkgo-leaf knot hair fluttered in the wind blowing through the darkness, she stared intently in the direction the train was moving. When I saw her figure in the soot and the light of the electric lamp, if the outside of the window hadn't become bright in the blink of an eye, and the scent of earth, withered grass, and water hadn't flowed in coldly from there, I, who had finally stopped coughing, would surely have scolded this unknown girl and made her close the window again as it was before.
However, by that time, the train had already easily slipped through the tunnel and was passing a railroad crossing on the outskirts of a poor town, sandwiched between mountains of withered grass. Near the crossing, shabby straw-thatched and tiled roofs were crowded together, and a single pale white flag, likely waved by the crossing guard, was lazily swaying in the twilight. Just as I thought we had finally left the tunnel—at that moment, beyond the fence of that desolate crossing, I saw three boys with red cheeks standing in a row. They were all so short that I wondered if they had been crushed by this cloudy sky. And they were wearing clothes of the same color as the dismal scenery on the outskirts of this town. As soon as they looked up and saw the train passing, they all raised their hands at once, and with their innocent throats arched high, they poured out their best efforts in shouts whose meaning I did not understand. Then, it was at that moment. The girl, who had been leaning half her body out of the window, stretched out those frostbitten hands and waved them vigorously to the left and right, and immediately, about five or six tangerines, dyed in a warm sun color that made one's heart leap, fell from the sky onto the children who had seen the train off. I gasped involuntarily. And in an instant, I understood everything. The girl, who was likely a girl about to head to her place of service, had thrown the few tangerines she had hidden in her bosom out of the window to reward her younger brothers who had gone out of their way to see her off at the crossing.

The railroad crossing on the outskirts of town tinged with twilight, the three children who raised their voices like little birds, and the color of the fresh tangerines falling in disarray above them—everything passed by outside the train window in the blink of an eye. But this scene was burned into my heart with painful clarity. And from there, I became aware of a certain indescribable, bright feeling welling up. I raised my head proudly and stared at the girl as if looking at a completely different person. The girl had already returned to the seat in front of me, and while burying her still-chapped cheeks in her yellowish-green woolen scarf, she was holding her third-class ticket tightly in her hand, which was clutching the large furoshiki bundle. ............
It was at this moment that I was finally able to slightly forget my indescribable fatigue and weariness, and also my incomprehensible, low-class, boring life.