Until the Drop Melts

I was a busy nine-year-old. I had to measure the time it took for a drop to melt.

A candy placed against my left cheek took seventeen minutes. On my tongue, eight minutes. I would pop one in my mouth and note down in my notebook how long it took to dissolve and disappear. It wasn't useful for anything. But to me at the time, it was a serious study.

Since I was little, I preferred being alone to being with others. After school, even when I wanted to join the circle of kids playing with rubber bands, I couldn't bring myself to say so, and would just watch from the shoe locker. Even when I was invited, I would sometimes make up excuses to decline. Even when I played with my closest friend, I would always let out a deep sigh after saying goodbye.

When I got home, there wasn't much to do. My parents, both working, wouldn't return until night, leaving only my grandmother and me in the house. There weren't any real toys, either. There was an organ a relative had given us, but I didn't know how to play it. I had already read all the picture books for small children in the house, and the manga biographies of great people were still too difficult. There was no library nearby, either.

There was origami paper and coloring books, but they weren't games I could enjoy freely. My mother had emphasized that I should "use them carefully." One night, after I had finished four pages of a coloring book at once, my mother came home and warned me to "take it slower." When I showed her my origami creations, she would open them up right in front of me and smooth out the wrinkles, saying, "This way, you can use them again." Gradually, I stopped picking up the coloring books and origami paper.

📖

That was when I, at nine years old, invented that "game of counting how long it takes for a candy to melt." When I first received a tin of drops from a relative, my heart raced. The muffled, rattling sound the tin made when shaken was irresistible. Above all, this game didn't use paper and didn't bother anyone. The candy would disappear, but no one could peek inside my mouth. I had found the perfect game, with no worries about being scolded and no need to be considerate of anyone else.

The next thing I invented was the "time-guessing game." I would close my eyes and succeed if I could open them at the exact time I had set. I became obsessed with this. The challenge, which started at ten seconds, soon cleared one minute, and eventually stretched to ten, twenty, and thirty minutes.

After school, I would close the sliding door in my four-and-a-half-mat room and sit cross-legged by myself. I would close my eyes and focus on the sensations of my body.

One day, the sliding door suddenly opened, and I made eye contact with my grandmother, who was cleaning. "W-what are you doing...?" my grandmother asked. I replied with a small smile, "Oh... just a little something." As I continued doing it every day, my grandmother began to quietly close the door whenever she opened it.

🍬

At the time, I admired Son Goku from the anime Dragon Ball. His positive attitude, willing to endure rigorous training to save his friends and the Earth. If I became strong and saved my family from a crisis, wouldn't my father, mother, and grandmother praise me even more?

To get even a little closer to Goku... In my mind, the four-and-a-half-mat room was the "Hyperbolic Time Chamber" I had seen in the anime. A harsh environment with ten times the Earth's gravity, one-fourth the air, and temperature fluctuations from minus forty to fifty degrees Celsius. I focused my consciousness solely on the sensation of passing time. The moment I opened my eyes at exactly thirty minutes, I was already a Super Saiyan. I truly believed that I could save the town I lived in, the Earth, and my family from any crisis.

Once the meditation was over, the next step was combat training. In my head, ferocious androids would jump out from the walls, the ceiling, and behind the door to attack my family. To save everyone from such a crisis, I would engage in a death match with invisible enemies. The punches and kicks I unleashed at the enemies, the full-force shockwaves. By the time the thirty-minute fierce battle ended, I was drenched in sweat, and my limbs were trembling. Still, I was incredibly proud that my fists were becoming more powerful day by day.

"We shouldn't let her play like a boy. Maybe we shouldn't let her watch anime..." I once heard my grandmother and mother talking about this through the sliding door. But in the end, the two of them gave in to my love for Son Goku. No, to be precise, it would be more accurate to say they chose to look the other way.

🐉

At the time, I was taking swimming and calligraphy lessons at my parents' suggestion. I hadn't wished for either of them, but perhaps thanks to the meditation and combat training, I passed every swimming stroke on the first try.

"It's quite rare for a child to pass everything on the first try."
"Mizuki, you held your breath the longest before coming up for air."
My kind teacher praised me with a hint of surprise. If there was one thing I was confident I wouldn't lose at, it was holding my breath and enduring the time. After all, I practiced every single day. I wish there were more places where I could be praised like that.

I started attending the calligraphy class my father went to as a child, at my grandmother's request, who wanted to turn me from a lefty into a righty. It was hard holding the brush with my unaccustomed right hand, and at first, nothing I wrote looked like characters. Even so, I loved that calligraphy class.

When I opened the door to the teacher's house, it smelled of ink and newspaper. The only sound was the chirping of birds in the garden. When I focused on moving the tip of the brush, I would sometimes be enveloped in a pleasant, hazy sensation. It was the same feeling I got when I closed my eyes in my four-and-a-half-mat room. On days like that, my steps felt light on the way home.

⏰

The summer of my third year. A large typhoon was approaching. The television, left on, broadcast news about train suspensions and flood warnings for the rivers. My parents were at work since morning, and my younger sister was at daycare. It was just me and my grandmother at home.

My grandmother had a chronic illness. Sometimes, she would complain of heart pain and suddenly crouch down, clutching her chest.
"The medicine... on the second shelf from the top of the chest of drawers, on the far right..."
Spurred on by her raspy voice, I stood on my tiptoes and desperately searched for the medicine.

The phone book next to the black rotary phone had the number for my mother's workplace, and I had been told, "Call if anything happens." I had memorized the number so I could call at any time. "This is Hokura, may I speak to my mother, please?" I practiced holding the receiver every single day without fail.

Outside the window, the sky had been lead-colored since morning. The sound of rain lashing against the house echoed through the room. On TV, an announcer in a raincoat shouted something while staggering in the wind. Every time our two-story wooden house creaked under the gusts, my fear grew.

"They say it's a big typhoon. I wonder if the house will break? I wonder if the river will overflow?"

My grandmother muttered, "I wonder," while washing vegetables at the sink.

That was the kind of person my grandmother was. She wasn't one to offer kind words, but she was always there. Just this once, her curt answer made my anxiety swell even more, and I felt a little angry.

Even so, I couldn't abandon my grandmother, who couldn't swim. If such a crisis really did come, and I could heroically save her, then maybe my father and mother would praise me even more.

I went upstairs to get my swimming bag. When I opened the zipper, it smelled like the pool. I put on my cap and goggles. To make sure I wouldn't panic whenever the water rushed in, I clutched my kickboard and nervously patrolled the house. I opened the upstairs window a crack to check on the river. And whenever I had a spare moment, I would rest my stomach on the table and kick my legs desperately. It was flutter kick practice, to swim through the muddy torrent.

By night, the rain and wind gradually weakened, and my parents returned home in their raincoats. The whole family sat at the dining table. The familiar sounds of dinner and the scent of miso soup. I let out a big yawn. At the same time, my little ambition, having lost its chance to shine, had nowhere to go and withered away.

I asked my father, who had started his evening drink as usual.
"If the river overflows and water comes into the house, do you think I could save Grandma while swimming with my kickboard?"
"Hmm, that might be a bit difficult. If it gets dangerous, I'll be home right away."

With my father's words, my hero complex from earlier completely vanished. I was too embarrassed to say that I had been seriously practicing saving my grandmother all day. I wanted him to say, "You did a great job," but I just ate my dinner as if nothing had happened. I took a bath and brushed my teeth.

"Please, don't let another typhoon come when it's just me and Grandma."

I went in front of the family altar and prayed quietly so no one could hear.

☔

The sigh you let out after saying goodbye to someone doesn't completely disappear even when you become an adult. As for the desire to be praised, it's what even makes me write these sentences now. But the time I spend alone, focusing on what I love, passes quietly and sweetly, just as it did back then. Like a drop melting in my mouth.

By the way, when I reached the fifth grade, I started aspiring to be a singer. To build the stamina needed to sing and dance for two hours straight at a live concert, my four-and-a-half-mat 'Hyperbolic Time Chamber' transformed into the Nippon Budokan.

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