At a time when one was supposed to shed tears, my eyes, like a tightly shut faucet, were unable to produce even one. On a day when people were wearing black lace gloves and holding white handkerchiefs near their mouths, the floor was granite, and the strong smell of lilies was in the air, I was wondering,"What does it feel like to die?" I was concentrating solely on this question so intensely that my eyelashes were not even wet, but I couldn’t find the perfect answer. The question settled in of its own accord, and since then, sometimes, it would suddenly pop up in my mind and occupy it.

     And, yes, at that time, too, I also thought about it. 

    While looking at the scenery on the other side of the iron bars on little window in the basement, I wondered, “What does it feel like to die?” The dried, brown cornstalks in the field made a rustling sound as usual as the wind blew. Over this field, I could see a strip of blue sky the width of my little finger, and from high above, I could hear the bright, clear cry of a bird.

     Maybe, death is not such an extreme feeling. For example, it might be like having a big stretch after staying in the same position for a long time. When I was thinking about that, suddenly, I heard a voice next to me saying something.

     “You remember what our mother told us before she went out, don’t you?”

     A person with the same dark honey-colored eyes as I have stared at me. Like a lens suddenly coming into focus, I remembered our mother’s words. Our mother had taught us the reason we had to hide. It was the simplest reason that could be hoped for. Once we are found, it is the end. Without a doubt, both of us will be killed. Even I could understand that.

     “If nobody knows who we are, we will be all right. In that case, we won’t be killed.”

     The eyes that were looking at me were shining like she had hatched a plan.

     “What can we do to hide our identity?”

     “From now on, we will not say each other’s names.”

     We jumped down from the wooden boxes that were piled up beneath the little window.

     “So, we should make up false names, shouldn’t we?”

     “No. We won’t do such cowardly things as tell lies. Such things are unworthy of us.”

     She rejected my idea decisively, and I said nothing because I agreed with her. After all, to our enemies, we are special children who are worth killing.

     But, be that as it may, I felt it would be a problem if we didn’t have names.

     “Well then, what shall we call each other? When we get separated from each other, shall we just shout ‘Hey!’”

     “Silly. You should call me ‘I-girl,’ and I will call you ‘I-boy.’ You should whisper, ‘I-girl, where are you?’ when you don’t know where I am.”

     Right away, I closed my eyes, and feeling I was in deep darkness, I raised my arms in the air.

     “I-girl, where are you?”

     I heard the sound of footsteps running across the basement with short steps. I sensed she was bending down, and she was somewhere near our father’s computer desk. “I-boy, I am here. I am here.” Following I-girl’s voice, I started walking, making a chuckling sound. That’s the way we always started playing. Looking back, I realize that from the time we were born, we were like one person. In our childhood, we could even share the dreams we had while sleeping as though we were each one half of the same body.

     We were fraternal twins who were born on the same day, and that October, I-girl and I were seven years old. In those days, for us, fairy tales and reality were woven together like a double helix.

 §　　　　　　　§　　　　　　　§

It all started on a Friday night. A deafening sound split the air, we sprang out of bed at the same time, and we ran to the window in our room. In the deep blue sky, there were several flashes of light with long tails.

     “It’s a meteoric shower!”

     I shouted. It was exactly like a display of fireworks being set off to welcome the New Year. The sounds were coming from the direction of the town. I-girl looked at me with eyes full of anticipation.   

     “Maybe, today is that day.”

     All of a sudden, the door to our room opened wide, and our mother stood there. Even without turning on the lamp, we could see that she was smiling by the light that trailed across the sky.

     “Be ready in five minutes. We are leaving.”

     We held our breath with a feeling of happiness and looked at each other. We both thought that we were going to Surprise Camp, as we had expected.

     For a while, we had noticed that our mother and father had been secretly stocking up on canned goods and things to drink. We imagined that it would be happening pretty soon.

     With light steps, Mother goes downstairs, and we quickly get our rucksacks out from under our beds. Then, we put in the things we need to take to camp, our favorite tee shirts, tablet computers, headphones, toothbrushes, and so on.

     Our father likes Surprise Camp a lot, and he makes up various reasons for having it. A Year After I Lost My First Milk Teeth Camp, Commemorating I-girl’s First Ballet Performance Camp, and so on. He never tells us until departure; he always surprises us. This time, it will be Commemorating the Meteoric Shower Camp, I think. Surely, tonight the four of us will lie down in a row on the shore of a lake with a good view and watch the sky all night.

     “Let’s go. Hurry up.” 

     From the door, with her rucksack on her back, I-girl urges me to go faster. From the time of our birth, I-girl had always been a little ahead or a little quicker than me. On that point, I accepted that it couldn’t be helped because she was born first. Besides, I am a boy, and if I remember that at some time in the future, I will naturally become taller than she is and be able to reach things for her from high shelves, I can be magnanimous now. Actually, that day never came, but at that time, I had no reason to doubt it.

     “Um. I wonder if we can drink juice while looking up at the sky.”

     I hoisted my rucksack on my shoulder and followed I-girl down the straight staircase. All the while, I was thinking if I could just grow five more centimeters, I might be able to slide down the shiny banister and catch up with her.

     “If we use bendable straws, it should be easy.” I-girl answered from the hallway without looking back, and suddenly she came to a halt.

     I ran into her gingham-checked rucksack, and finally wondering what had happened, looked at the end of the hallway. Our father was there, locking the front door from the inside. Instead of wearing the vest with many pockets that he always wore when we went camping, he was wearing a lightweight indoor cardigan.

     “Aren’t we going to Surprise Camp?”

     I-girl asked, and our father looked at us and grinned.

     “This time, it is a Special Surprise.”

     Our father walked toward us in a funny way just like the clowns in the circus that comes to town in the spring, and he gestured for us to come along. Though we didn’t understand what was going on, we followed him.

     Through the living room, through the study, to the hallway by the kitchen, he walked in an exaggerated way that made the floorboards creak, and then he stopped in front of a door, stomping his feet dramatically. No matter what was happening, this was surely not camping. I-girl and I exchanged glances because this was the door to the storeroom. In there, we kept the Christmas tree and all the trimmings, electric fans and other seasonal items, the baby carriage for twins, two tricycles, and other items that had nostalgic value but were no longer used. In the time we spent going from the kids’ room to here, I had probably already missed seeing several shooting stars. On top of that, I realized that we were not going to leave the house, and I couldn’t help letting out a disappointed sigh.

     At that moment, our father faced the door and shouted some words that sounded like gibberish to us. Suddenly, though nobody touched the door, it opened, and though the storeroom was supposed to be dark, suddenly a bright light came on. “Whoa!” I exclaimed in astonishment, though in the next second, I felt silly and regretted that because, in the middle of the storeroom, I saw our mother holding a flashlight in her hand.

     Yet, our father seemed to have fully transformed into a clown, as he twirled his wrist in welcome, bowed, and urged us to enter. I-girl started to move forward, and she was looking around with a serious expression on her face, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Next, our mother performed some real magic. When she pushed the edge of what we thought was a wall, it opened like an accordion door, and we could see a space beyond that. It was a hidden closet.

     In addition to these surprises, when our father tapped the floor with his finger, a handle appeared and when he pulled it, it opened like the hatch on a submarine. Our father got the flashlight from our mother, and in the flashlight’s circular beam, we could see an iron ladder leading down to a basement. Until that time, I had never thought that our house had a basement. The sight of the bright silver ladder, like something inviting us into another world, made me burst with expectation and excitement.

     First, our mother went down, then I-girl, and then I followed. I grabbed each rung like the horizontal bar at school and climbed down. The ladder smelled like some familiar wax, so I knew that rust had been removed from it recently.

     When I stood on the basement floor, my eyes widened in amazement. The space was bigger than our kitchen, dining room, and study combined. Here and there, lanterns and candles in branched candleholders filled the room with an orange-colored light. On a large oval table, there were game boards that used dice and pins, 3-D wooden puzzles, round puzzles that looked like they came from a foreign country, and other playthings. Beside the table, there were a round trampoline, a hula hoop, and a unicycle.

     Last, our father shut the door that was like a hatch and came down the ladder. I don’t know when he put it on, but he was wearing a rucksack. There was a desk that looked very old, and he put his rucksack on it and took out his laptop computer, plugged it in, and turned it on. Surprisingly, it seemed that there was electricity in this basement, too. In addition, there was a sink with running water and beyond that, even an old-style toilet.

     “You are both in second grade now, and you are strong, so I think you are old enough for me to tell you a secret.”

     With a flourish, our father opened a drawer, took out two bars of chocolate, and put them on the desk. Having snacks like that after dinner was a special thing we only did at Surprise Camp. While we polished off the chocolate, our father told us that our grandfather’s grandfather had built this house, and when his descendants are told about the existence of this secret basement, there is a rule that the family must spend a few days here.

     We looked where our mother, with a smile, was pointing her finger, and we could see a low table and a sofa with chairs, and beyond that there were two beds for children. They were new beds that had been made from a kit. As I was thinking that there should be a bed for adults behind the rattan screen, I-girl pointed at the ceiling with her chocolate-stained finger.

     “Why is it like that?”

     Looking at the ceiling, I could see there were several sockets, but there were no light bulbs in them.

     “Because we are camping, there are no electric lights.”

     “Well, what about that?”

     I-girl pointed at one wall near the ceiling. It was the wall that faced the street, and in the upper part of the wall, there was something like a little window. The window was completely covered by a board wrapped in black velvet. Our mother answered while setting out a game board near the lantern on the table.

     “It’s to make this place the same as the forest at night.”

     Certainly, if we could see the ground outside the window from here, it would spoil the fun. I licked the chocolate on my finger, ran to the game board, and asked about the way to set the pieces. Once again, I-girl began to set out the pieces before me. Our father blew a puff of air on the dice he was holding in his hand and began to play the game. We never played games like this in the middle of the night at Surprise Camp. Completely fascinated by this secret little world that had been passed down through the family, we both forgot all about the meteoric shower.

     That night, before going to sleep, we prayed. That was something that we had not done for a very long time.

     When we were small, before we entered elementary school, our mother came to our room at night and prayed with us. By the side of the bed, we knelt down, put our hands together, and spoke to God in our hearts. Our mother’s thinking about prayer was unconventional. Mother clearly told us that even people who do not believe in God have times when they need to pray, and if that prayer is sincere, there is nothing to be ashamed of. I cannot remember at all what I prayed for in those days when I was little. I do remember, though, that this short period of silence before bedtime brought a feeling of tranquility. All day long, I-girl and I were busy inventing new ways to play, screaming, arguing, and laughing, but during this quiet time our overexcited nerves were wrapped in a comfortable tiredness, and like a boat that is towed gently, this prepared us to sleep.

     The three of us were kneeling beside our new beds that were made from a kit with our mother in the middle. I asked our mother a question that came into my mind.

     “Mommy, even now, do you pray before bedtime?”

     For some reason our mother did not answer, she just silently smiled. Our father finished washing the cup that had held cocoa, dried his hands, came to us saying this was because it was Special Camp, and knelt down next to I-girl. For the first time, the four of us prayed together. I prayed in my heart that this Special Camp would continue for as long as possible. And then, just like when I was little, I got into bed, put my head on the pillow, and soon fell asleep.

     If a child’s sleep is not interrupted by nightmares, it will last soundly until morning. But, that night, for some reason, with a snap, my sleep was disturbed and I woke up. All the lanterns and candles had been extinguished in the room, and our mother and father were sitting side by side on the sofa with their shoulders touching, looking at the screen of the laptop computer. My view of the screen was blocked by their backs, but I could see that they were sharing a pair of earphones, with each one wearing one ear bud.

     When I looked at I-girl, I could see that she had already been awake for a while. She was gripping the edge of the terry cloth blanket beneath her chin and closely watching our parents’ backs. From I-girl’s bed, she could see part of the computer screen, and she was gazing at it so fixedly that she did not notice I was awake. In short, nobody noticed, and when I realized that, I suddenly wanted to surprise everyone.

     “What are you doing?”

     I spoke in a voice that was a little louder than usual.

     I-girl drew in her breath sharply. For a moment, she gave me a fierce, reproachful look, and then she closed her eyes. Our father took the ear bud out of his ear, turned around and looked at me with a confident smile of special privilege and said, “Because adults can stay up later at night than children, your mother and I are watching a movie.” Then, he changed to a solemn voice like a school principal and added, “So, good night.” I answered, “Good night” and pretended to sleep, but I was looking at I-girl and waiting for her to open her eyes. Without using our voices, it was easy for us to talk by only moving our mouths. But, this time, though our parents turned back to watch the movie, I-girl didn’t open her eyes. Of course, she should know that I wanted to know what kind of movie they were watching, but she obstinately kept her eyes closed. Sometimes I-girl intentionally did such mean, spiteful things to me.

     I got tired of waiting, and feeling angry, turned over. I decided that, even the next morning, I would not tell her what I saw when our father turned around, and I saw the screen on the laptop computer for just a moment. At a large baseball stadium somewhere, it seems that somebody hit a home run, waved one arm in the air in response to the cheers of the crowd, and ran around the bases. I thought it might possibly be a movie about baseball.

     I knew our mother and father liked movies. Before they were married, it seems they went on dates to the movie theater in the town in his pickup truck. Our grandfather told us privately that our mother liked to watch adventure stories, and our father liked love stories.

     Every day, early in the morning, our mother and father went out to work on the farm, and instead of them, our grandfather waited for the school bus with us. The bus stop was on the south corner of our lot in front of the large elm tree that our grandfather’s grandfather had loved so much from first sight that he decided to build his house here. Thanks to that tree, on a hot summer morning, even if the bus was a little late, we could wait in the cool shade of the tree. Then, when we got on the bus and sat down, our grandfather sent us off to school by waving both hands in front of his chest. It went on that way until the summer before that, and then it became just the two of us who waited for the school bus.

     The orange and blue striped bus travelled farther and farther north at a leisurely pace on the one road through the farming area, stopping at several houses to pick up children, and in a little less than an hour, it arrived at the elementary school in the town. After lessons were over, of course, it was forbidden to stop anywhere. We waited for the bus by the school gate, and it took us straight home. Therefore, once a month, when the four of us went into town in the minivan that our parents had bought the year we were born, we were always in a festive mood.

     The town's shopping mall housed an electronics store stocked with the latest game equipment, a large toy store with kickboards and skateboards, a shop selling the handmade cheese our mother liked so much, our father's go-to liquor store for bulk buys, and shops selling eyeglasses, tableware, and everything else imaginable. Our absolute favorite, though, was the shop selling colorful ice cream in all sorts of flavors. We enjoyed spending a long time choosing the ice cream to put in the cone, and eating it while sitting on a bench was a time of supreme bliss. While we ate ice cream, our father and mother usually drank soda water, and they smiled fondly as they gazed at us. On benches near us, there were older kids who were playing games on tablet computers. Since our tablet computers for the lower grades were limited to only textbooks and illustrated reference books, we were envious of those older kids who seemed almost like adults to us.

     However, for me, on that first night in the basement, the new puzzles and the unknown game boards were many times more attractive than the older kids’ tablets, and I fervently looked forward to the morning. I turned my back to I-girl and closed my eyes.

 

§　　　　　　　§　　　　　　　§

I was awakened by the light coming through the little window. The board covered with black velvet had been removed from the window, and it was sitting on our father’s desk next to his closed laptop computer. I-girl was already up and dressed, and she was making her bed.

     Usually we had cereal for breakfast, but that day, just like a camping trip, our father made hot ham and egg sandwiches that we ate together. After that, we played with 3-D wooden puzzles, had unicycle races, and played charades. It rarely happened, even at Surprise Camps, that our father and mother played with us all day long (they usually got tired and took naps partway through), so we were hyperactive from morning till late afternoon.

     When dusk approached, our father put the black velvet-covered board over the window, and our mother turned on the lanterns. After that, the two of them started to make dinner from canned beans and dried meat. Until that time, I-girl had been in high spirits just like me, but suddenly a worried look crossed her face. I-girl pulled me over to the dark area at the edge of the basement.

     “You could see that when Daddy turned around, couldn’t you?” I-girl spoke in a low voice. At first, I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but I gradually realized that it was the movie from the night before. At that time, she had ignored me, so I was irritated that it took her so long to bring it up.

     “But it’s you who could surely see it better, isn’t it?”

     “If you tell me what you saw first, I may tell you what I saw.”

     I-girl, who was the same height as me, straightened up proudly.

     “I saw a lot more than you did.”

     In a discussion of this kind, I have never once won, and that time was the same. I reluctantly started to talk about seeing a baseball player hitting a home run.

     “So, what did you see?”

     “That’s a scene from the baseball player’s childhood. In the town, uh, . . . . . . somebody was just about to buy him a baseball glove.”

     After saying just that, and no more, I-girl turned toward the camping table and began to set out the plates for dinner. I was convinced that it was a movie about a baseball player after all, and that evening, instead of playing games, I wanted everybody to watch a movie. I remembered that a friend in my class at school had told me about the streaming of an interesting cartoon about a family of wild ducks who went on a journey and had a lot of adventures.

     After dinner, while we were eating apples, just when I was thinking about mentioning it, there was the most terrific roaring sound I have ever heard, and the earth trembled. Several candelabras with lighted candles here and there around the room fell over. Our mother immediately put her arms around us, and we took shelter under the oval table; our father used a blanket to hit the candles and put out the flames.

     That was the first time in my life I had ever experienced anything like that, and I didn’t understand what had happened. As our mother continued to hold us under the table, she quietly chuckled and said, “It’s a good thing it happened after dinner, isn’t it?” This made me feel a little better somehow. There were still plenty of battery-operated lanterns in the room, which kept it light and also eased my fears.

     Looking up at the clock on the wall, it said 7:25 PM. For the time being, it was decided that our father would check what had happened upstairs and outside the house. Our mother and father were standing beside the silver ladder talking in a low voice, but I could hear them. When our father put the cover over the little window in the evening, it seemed he had noticed that the sky looked strange.

     The thirty minutes or so that passed until our father returned felt like a very long time. Our mother picked up the apples that had fallen on the floor, then sat with us on the sofa and waited. I-girl had a frightening expression on her face like she was angry, and she clenched her fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

     The submarine-like hatch opened, and our father climbed down the ladder. His face looked so sad and depressed that we could not ask him anything until he sat down on the sofa. He somehow managed to raise the corners of his mouth and smile at us.

     “The elm tree is ruined. The trunk has been split in half.”

     The elm tree on the south corner of our property had been hit by lightning; it had broken in half and fallen over, he told us. The elm tree that had watched over this family since our grandfather’s grandfather was young. The elm tree that had seen us off to school and welcomed us home. When I thought about the tree that had fallen over, I felt that part of something important had disappeared, and I felt sad. The garage had been crushed by the tree trunk, and the minivan inside the garage was also crushed, but unlike the car, the tree was something that could not be bought with money. It seemed that the transmission tower in the mountain had also been hit by lightning, and the fire fighters were out checking around. He told us that, according to the fire fighters, until the electricity was restored, school would be temporarily closed.

     “All right. In that case, we will challenge the record.”

     Our father said this as he suddenly slapped both of his knees with his hands and stood up.

     “What record is that?”

     I asked because I was surprised that our father was suddenly so cheerful.

     It seems that, when our father first heard about this basement from our grandfather, he stayed down in the basement all summer without ever going outside. But still, his record was not equal to our grandfather’s record. Our grandfather heard about the secret basement before he entered elementary school, so his record can never be matched. Last night, it was true, I had wished I could stay down here as long as possible, but naturally there were limits. Besides, as long as school was closed, I wanted to use this valuable time to go out into the forest to look for nuts and mushrooms. I knew there were lots of special treasures in the forest in the autumn.

     I immediately expressed an objection to our father’s suggestion. Because we were now old enough to go into the forest by bicycle on the condition of “if you go together,” I thought that I-girl would support me. Somehow, however, I-girl expressed her agreement with our father’s idea to challenge the record, and while I was in a state of blank amazement, the issue was decided.

§　　　　　　　§　　　　　　　§

Naturally, in a basement without a supply of electricity, the battery on our father’s laptop computer soon died, and the computer became a piece of junk. Of course, our tablet computers went dark even sooner. With no school to go to, no Internet and no television, just staying in the basement, we gradually became uncertain about the date and the day of the week.

     Around that time, even I started thinking that challenging the record was an excuse and that there was a reason I should not ask our parents why we had to stay here in hiding. In addition, I realized that I-girl had noticed this before I had.

     Thinking things over well, usually, the corn in the cornfield that we could see from the little window should have been harvested by now, and in an average year the dried stalks should have already been cut down, and it was time to plant the lettuce and the beans.

     Rummaging around in a cupboard in the basement, our father found an old calendar. Glancing at the month of August on that 80-year-old calendar, I-girl was the person who noticed that the date and the day of the week when we found out about the basement in October of this year matched that August calendar exactly. Our father used a felt pen to cross out August and write October above it, to cross out September and write November, and to cross out October and write December, and then he hung the calendar on the wall. Then, it became my job every morning to cross out the previous day.

     After we finished the last of the apples, every other day, I-girl and I were each given a canned apricot in syrup on our plates. Our parents had not eaten any fruit for a long time.

     Before long, our mother and father weren’t eating very much at all.

     Then, one night, it was decided that our father would go Treasure Hunting. It was clear that treasure meant food. Our father patiently tried to persuade I-girl that we children should wait with our mother, but she would not listen and insisted on going with him. I-girl put on her rucksack and stood in front of the ladder, blocking the way, vehemently arguing that she was fast and would definitely be useful. She furiously and unyieldingly tried to prevent our father from going out by himself. It was the first time I had seen her behave in such a willful and unreasonable way. I-girl was always logical and sometimes she could even outwit her teachers at school. I didn't know what to do, so I just stood there feeling flustered between her and our father.

     Our mother put her hands on our shoulders, and she spoke to our father.

     “These children are special, you know, so they should be able to play a role.”

     Our mother taught us that in Treasure Hunting there is a role that only special children can play. But, in order to play that role, the children must leave by a different door than their father.

     I-girl and I, as our mother told us to, piled up wooden boxes under the little window. Then, our father put on his rucksack and left the basement. After the door like a submarine hatch was closed, we couldn’t hear any footsteps on the floor above.

     But, we could exactly imagine how our father moved around above our heads. With his eyes accustomed to the dark, our father slowly goes through the study and the living room. Then, he comes out into the hallway. Across the hallway is the family room, and through the open door, the piano next to the window is faintly visible. Our father stops for a moment and looks at it. The sheet music for the last piece for four hands that I-girl and I played together is open on the piano music stand. Our father recalls what used to be ordinary life like something from the distant past, and he soon moves toward the front door. We know the number of steps it takes. Our father unlocks the door and goes outside. He goes through the front garden to the street and walks along the cornfield. It is almost time. Our mother turns off the lanterns so no light is visible from outside. Then, at just the right moment, I-girl and I remove the board that covered the little window.

     Right across from us, on the other side of the street, our father bends down on one knee. He turns on a flashlight for just a moment. With the cornfield behind him, our father appears like a firefly and disappears. That scene is burned into our memories. The place where the brown cornstalks were standing in the field was the gateway to our dreams.

     Our mother quickly covered the little window and turned on the lanterns.

     “Now, you run after him,” she said to us.

     I-girl and I jump down from the wooden boxes, and in order to fall asleep as soon as possible, we dive into bed. We enter the world of dreams to help our father. Ahead of our father, there might be frightening beasts and traps, or there might be old wells overgrown with bushes. Like the wind in the darkness of night, we run, searching hither and yon, to warn our father of danger. This was the very job that only special children could do.

     From I-girl in the neighboring bed, I soon heard the breathing of a person who is sleeping. I was afraid, though, and could not fall asleep. I was afraid that if, in a dream, I got separated from my father and I-girl, I would surely not be able to find my way back home by myself. Feeling guilty about my uselessness, I just pretended to sleep.

     My mother held my hand, and finally, near dawn, I fell into a doze. Without ever dreaming, I was awakened by the morning light. Our father had safely returned home, and moreover, his rucksack was full of treasures.

     “This is our achievement.”

     He patted I-girl and me on our heads with his powerful hands. I-girl turned her face, beaming with smiles, to me. Looking at I-girl’s face, I was struck by the idea that maybe, sometimes, people just don’t remember their dreams. I forgot what it was, but I surely must have done something useful.

     Every time our father returned from Treasure Hunting, we were allowed to choose something from among the things that he brought back, and at breakfast the next morning, we had a little celebration. It might be canned sardines or corned beef, or various kinds of grain in a small cloth bag, but if the four of us ate it together, I thought it was delicious.

     One night, however, when the moon was bright, our father went out Treasure Hunting, and he did not return home.

     I-girl refused to take in anything our mother said, and after having only a little water and one piece of hard candy, she slept for two days straight, but she was not able to find our father and bring him back home.

     Then, one evening seven days later, it was finally decided that our mother would go out Treasure Hunting. With her rucksack on her back, before she went out, she explained to us the reason we had to hide.

     She told us that our grandfather’s grandfather was a kinsman of a king in a faraway country whose subjects had revolted and caused him and his family to escape to this place. Eventually, the king’s enemies found out where they had gone when they escaped. For the enemies, it seems the descendants of the royal family were beings to be killed.

     “Are we the last prince and princess of that royal family?”

     I-girl asked our mother, and our mother answered quietly.

     “That’s right. No matter what happens, by all means, you two must survive. Do you understand?”

     We silently nodded our heads.

     Our mother climbed the silver ladder and went out. We didn’t believe in the power of dreams anymore. However, in order not to worry our mother, we imagined her going across the study and the living room and out into the hallway, through the front door, then the front garden, and in front of the dried stalks in the cornfield until she was no longer in sight, and the whole time, we counted her footsteps and waited.

     And then, so that light would not be visible from outside, we extinguished all the lanterns before we took out the board that covered the little window, and just like the times when our father went out, with the dried stalks of the cornfield in the background, we watched for our mother to appear and then disappear. But, even after our mother disappeared in the darkness of the cornfield, we didn’t get into bed. We only stood on the wooden boxes and waited. We strained our eyes watching and waiting for our mother to return.

     It was a long night. There was no wind, and even with our eyes open, it was as pitch dark as though our eyes were closed. I-girl and I were side by side with our faces pressed together in the little window. In due time, the darkness was tinged with a dark blue color, and the dried cornstalks in the cornfield and the edge of the sky dimly became visible. It was just before dawn, before the birds began to sing, when we could hear the rustling sound of leaves in the far distance.

     “Did you hear that?” I asked in a low voice.

     Right next to me, I-girl immediately nodded her head quickly two times.

     The sound like two knives being rubbed together gradually became louder. Finally, we could see the figure of our mother pushing her way through the dried cornstalks. Probably our mother could see our faces dimly white side by side in the little window. She was running, and just at the moment she left the cornfield and went out onto the road, a bright orange light caught her from the side. Our mother froze, and we saw her gasp for breath. Our mother immediately dropped her full rucksack on the road, turned around, and ran back into the cornfield. Right in front of our eyes, a jeep with its headlights on stopped on the road. Several men with guns got out of the jeep, chased after our mother like they were having fun playing tag, and disappeared into the cornfield.

     We were gripping the iron bars of the little window with both hands so hard that we felt numb with pain, but our mother didn’t come back for a very long time. Around the time the light changed from a deep blue to a light inky charcoal, the men reappeared from the direction of the cornfield with our mother, pulling her along. Our mother’s blouse was torn, her hair was disheveled, and she was wearing only one sneaker. One of the men picked up our mother’s rucksack by the side of the road and threw it onto one of the seats in the jeep. While our mother was being pulled along, not once did she look toward us because, if she looked our way, the enemy would know we were here. Our mother sent a message to us with her brave stance: Never forget who you are.

     When a man pushed our mother into the jeep, all of a sudden, I-girl jumped down from the wooden boxes and ran toward the ladder. As if the man had heard a slight sound, he looked around, so I quickly covered the little window. In an instant, I-girl climbed the ladder and grabbed the door handle. At that moment, from the direction of the jeep which was driving away, we heard “Bang!” A dry sound like a firecracker.

     I-girl and I froze, holding our breath, and staring at each other. After a rather long time, I-girl, with her head hanging down, climbed down the ladder, went over to her bed, and sat down. After that, we didn’t say a single word to each other about the sound we had heard from the jeep.

     Now, in the secret basement, there was only I-girl and me.

     When it gets light outside, we climb up on the wooden boxes and look outside. The wind blows, and it is the middle of the day, and then in the evening, we cover the little window. We each eat a biscuit as slowly as possible and drink some water, and then we go to bed.

     “Um,” wrapped in a terry cloth blanket, I start to say something to I-girl.

     She answers without me saying anything more than this.

     “Surely, right now, she cannot move. If she could move, she would come back here.”

     “That’s right.”

     Our mother and father have not returned because they cannot move. I-girl is convincing herself of that just like I am convincing myself. Then, I remember seeing my grandfather’s face staring up at the gigantic columns of clouds.

     It was in July of last year. Our grandfather was lying on his back in the cornfield in the middle of the day. The cicadas were singing their song in the elm tree in the distance. A honeybee almost landed on our grandfather’s nose, but he did not even blink. Our father came and knelt down near our grandfather and closed his eyelids for him. My grandfather was the first person I saw who could not move.

     Black lace gloves and white handkerchiefs. The strong smell of lilies. During our grandfather’s funeral, I was wondering, “What does it feel like to die?” And since then, this unanswerable question has settled in my mind.

     It was only I-girl and me now on this clear October day. I climbed up on the wooden boxes and looked out through the iron bars of the little window. The dried stalks in the cornfield were making a rustling sound in the wind. The brown stalks that were the last thing our mother touched. Once, this field was the entrance to our dreams. Over this field, I could see only a strip of blue sky the width of a little finger, and from high above, I could hear the bright, clear cry of a bird.

     Yes. Again, that’s what I thought at that time. What does death feel like?

     I-girl felt it, and it might be why she said this to me.

     “You remember, don’t you, what our mother said to us before she went out?”

     We are the last prince and princess of a faraway country. We always tried to keep in mind that we had to behave properly. We did not whimper, and in order to forget our hunger, as much as possible, we turned everything into a game.

     One morning toward the end of October, as always, I-girl woke up a little earlier than I did. She spoke unexpectedly loudly, as though she had made an important discovery.

     “Our enemies will not come here anymore.”

     “Why do you think so?”

     I asked her while rubbing my sleepy eyes.

     “Because the men who took our mother away from the cornfield would surely have searched this house, don’t you think?”

     “Do you mean they came back to search for us.”

     Immediately after I asked this question, I remembered that we were descendants of a royal family. I-girl nodded her head deeply, jumped down from the bed and pointed at the basement door that was like the hatch on a submarine.

     “When that door is closed, we cannot hear sounds from the house above at all. So, we didn’t hear them because we were asleep.”

     I-girl, with her forehead wrinkled in thought and her arms crossed over her chest, walked up and down between the beds as she kept talking.

     “The astronomical telescope in our grandfather’s study and the picture of anemones in the living room have surely been stolen. And the silver knife and fork set we used for guests, too!”

     While I was listening to her, I felt I could see the men who had looted our house.

     “I saw it in my dream. Men with dirty shoes were walking around in the study and the living room.”

     “They probably checked under the beds in our room, but no matter how much they searched, they couldn’t find us.”

     “So, they got angry and went into our parents’ bedroom.”

     “They took our mother’s jewelry case.”

     I felt that I-girl and I had both seen the same reality in our dreams while we were sleeping. With our cheeks flushed and our spirits raised, we looked at each other without speaking for a while.

     “What shall we do,” I asked in a low voice. It had been a long time since I felt I had energy flowing inside me. I couldn’t think clearly about ways to retaliate, but in my heart, a childish flame of revenge burned.

     “I already said that the enemies won’t come here anymore, so there is one thing we need to do.”

     I-girl spoke decisively, and then she said something I never expected at all.

     “Let’s go out Treasure Hunting together.”

     I-girl said that we have to wait until after we store up enough energy and acquire some weapons; otherwise, we will only be killed by those we want to take revenge on, and her words were persuasive. But, if the enemies will no longer come here, we no longer had to wait until nighttime. We soon got ourselves ready and put our rucksacks on our backs.

     Just like when we went down into the basement for the first time, I-girl went up the ladder before me. The inside of the closet in the storage room would probably be dark, we thought, but by groping around, if we could reach the hallway, sunlight would come through the windows. We thought it would be like that. On the contrary, however, the moment I-girl pushed up the handle and opened the hatch, sunlight poured in, and our eyes, that were accustomed to the dim light of the basement, were blinded by the light. We grimaced with pain, and with half-closed eyes, we crawled out of the basement.

     Scattered all around, there were pieces of wood, and broken glass, and fragments of concrete. Our blue window frames and the lid of our piano were lying on the ground. Above our heads, there was no roof, only a blue sky with clouds shaped like fish scales.

     Our house was gone.

     The only things left were part of a wall and the paving stones from the front porch. Sticking out from the wall, there were some useless stairs; above them there was no second-floor hallway, and the shiny banister had fallen down.

     I couldn’t understand it. When our father went Treasure Hunting, and also when our mother went Treasure Hunting, we counted their steps as they went through the house above our heads, and the number of steps always matched exactly. Cutting across the study and the living room, into the hallway, and straight on to the front door and outside to the street. And then, both of them, with exactly the right timing, appeared in front of the little window in the basement. And, with all that, I wondered when on earth our house had disappeared.

     On the south corner of our property, as our father had told us, under the fallen elm tree, the garage and the minivan on its side lay like a crushed sandwich.

     And while looking at that, I noticed something.

     “. . . it didn’t rain.”

     Sitting beside me, I-girl turned her head to look at me. In the bright sunlight, she looked very thin, only her eyes looked large, and I imagined that I probably looked the same.

     “It was the night our father told us the elm tree was struck by lightning, wasn’t it?”

     I nodded my head in agreement with I-girl. If lightning had struck so close by, it’s not possible that it didn’t rain, and that night, we didn’t hear the sound of rain on the cornfield.

     I-girl drew a short breath and spoke.

     “We didn’t hear the sound of a fire truck either, did we?”

     “That’s right.”

     Our father had told us that he saw firefighters on patrol in our area, but we didn’t hear the sound of any trucks on the road outside. At that time, our house had been destroyed. So that we wouldn’t know what had happened to the house, when our mother and father went out, they walked through the place where the study and the living room had been and went out to the road from where the front door used to be.

     “How come . . .?”I started to say something, but I-girl drew my attention in a certain direction by turning her eyes to the north --- looking toward the town.

     The town had become just the silhouette of some stakes, and here and there, thick columns and thin wisps of black smoke were rising into the sky. It reminded me of a charred skeleton.

     “The thing our father and mother were watching on the first night, after all, that wasn’t a movie.”

     I-girl told me that the scene she peeked at on the computer screen that night looked something like the town where our elementary school was located, but the wide road our school bus took had a big hole like a crater in it. A modern apartment building had been cut diagonally like a cake, and the inside of several rooms were visible. Baby beds were hanging from tilted floors, and torn curtains were waving in the wind. The shopping mall had collapsed, and nothing was left except the foundation.

     “So, at first, I thought it must be a town in another country. No, that’s not it. I hoped it was a town in a foreign country.”

     I became nauseated and vomited on the rubble, but only some clear liquid came out of my empty stomach. I-girl rubbed my back.

     “. . . but I saw a baseball player hit a home run. It’s the truth.”

     “So . . .” I-girl looked me straight in the eye and spoke slowly, “Our parents were watching foreign news on the Internet. For foreign people, this is a very faraway town. After the news about the bombing in a faraway town, they showed the sports news for the people in that country. We have seen the same kind of news on our TV in the living room, haven’t we?”

     It felt like I had hot ice in my throat, and I couldn’t speak.

     Only after I-girl held my hand did I recognize for the first time that I was shaking. I-girl spoke as if trying to force both of us to admit the fact.

     “What we saw on Friday night was not a meteoric shower.”

     I gritted my teeth and nodded. I realized that I should have noticed this first. If it had really been a meteoric shower, the same as when there was a total eclipse of the moon, there would have been an announcement in my science class about the time and the direction to look.

     Those were missiles that attacked our town. That night, a lot of people died. If we had been even one day later in taking refuge in our basement, we would have been buried under a heap of concrete and wooden rubble in the wreckage of our house.

     I-girl, like she was showing a good example, stood up. Then, she brushed off the dust on her clothing with both hands and spoke.

     “All right, we are going out.”

     I thought it was necessary to concentrate on what we must do.

     “Treasure Hunting.”

     After I said this, I suddenly started running. I knew I would soon be overtaken by I-girl, but I ran as fast as I could to the cornfield.

     The tall stalks and the big leaves completely concealed us. The smell of soil warmed by the sun was nostalgic. We didn’t sing or speak, just silently continued walking.

     We went through the cornfield toward the forest. That was our plan because in this season in the forest, the trees would certainly have nuts or other things for us to eat. The problem was, we didn’t know when we would reach the forest. If it took three times as long for us to walk as it did to go by bicycle, we were worried that we would not have enough strength left to hunt for food by the time we reached the forest. As a matter of fact, just a while ago, running full power from the ruins of the house to the cornfield, I collapsed on a furrow in a plowed field and had to rest for quite a long time.

     When the sun was directly overhead, I-girl suddenly broke the silence.

     “Look at that!”

     I-girl diagonally crossed several furrows, and I followed her unsteadily. Something like a blue cloth bag had fallen at the base of a brown cornstalk. On the cloth there were buttons, and it seemed to be a long-sleeved denim work shirt that had been tied around something.

     By pulling together, we undid the tight knot. Then, we opened up a work shirt that was a little bigger than one that would have belonged to our father. It contained canned fish in oil and canned beans, three sticks of dried meat, a box of crackers, and, in addition, a round loaf of bread bigger than our faces rolled out. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had eaten anything like bread.

     As if in a dream, for a little while, we stared dumbfoundedly at the things in the work shirt with our mouths slightly open.

     “There might be something else like this near here!” 

     I suddenly felt some energy and tried to look around. Immediately, I-girl grabbed my arm with surprising strength.

     “No, don’t do that! We’re going home! Right now! Quickly!”

     In a big hurry, I-girl wrapped the food back up in the work shirt without giving me a chance to reply, and she started to go back by the road we came. If we didn’t return to the basement, we wouldn’t be able to eat the food because we didn’t have a can opener. Thinking about that, I immediately gave up and yielded to the hope of taking a big bite of canned fish between two pieces of bread.

     In order not to waste the Treasures, it was I-girl’s job to divide the food into portions for each day and to store it in the cupboard. I-girl had skipped a grade in arithmetic and had already learned how to do division, so I could trust her in this and leave everything to her.

     Of course, on days we found Treasure, we never failed to have a little celebration, and exactly as I had imagined, I bit into canned fish sandwiched between two pieces of bread. While we were eating, we talked and laughed. And then, wondering when the last time was that I had gone to bed without feeling hungry, I fell asleep with a full stomach.

§　　　　　　　§　　　　　　　§

That night, I was awakened by the continuous sound of a very broken voice. At first, I didn’t know what it was, but in a short time I realized that I-girl was weeping. I was surprised and lit the candle that was near my pillow, and then I went over to her bed.

     I-girl was lying on her side rolled up in a ball, her shoulders trembling, trying to swallow her crying voice and hiccupping at the same time. Her eyes were wide open and streaming with tears. At dinnertime, she had been so lively and cheerful, I became worried and bent over I-girl’s face and looked into her eyes.

     “Um, what’s wrong? Does it hurt somewhere?”

     I-girl noticed me and looked at me with eyes that were overflowing with tears like a fountain.

     “. . . that person . . .”

     “What do you mean, that person?”

     “. . . that person who collected the Treasure . . . that person, like our mother, was discovered by the enemy, and had to leave the Treasure behind and run away.”

     In my mind, an image came to life again of the headlights of a jeep hitting the figure of our mother from the side. Our mother froze and gasped for breath. She threw down her rucksack, turned around, and disappeared back into the cornfield. I realized that my own breathing had become shallow, but I knew that I really had to say something to I-girl to calm her down.

     “But that person had to be a man. It was a big work shirt. Maybe he was able to get away.”

     I-girl fixed a steady gaze on me and nodded her head.

     “That’s right. That person, like our father, could run really fast, and the enemy couldn’t catch up with him, but a bullet from a gun is even faster.”

     I recoiled in shock. I felt as if I had seen someone running, get shot in the back by a bullet, then collapse. If I had gone out to search the area where the Treasure had been found, I might have come across somebody’s dead body.

     “----- No! We are going home! Right now! Quickly!”

     I-girl had surely thought that from the time we found the Treasure. She breathed with difficulty and tried to continue to talk.

     “That person, after all, might be someone’s father.”

     I promptly and desperately interrupted her.

     “But it was somebody we didn’t know, it had to be somebody we didn’t know!”

     Just like a stone had been thrown at her chest, I-girl stiffened her body. Her wide-open eyes had a tortured look. I knew that I had said something that hurt I-girl. But the same as I-girl, I was shocked by my own words, and I, too, was hurt.

     “Sorry . . .”

     Suddenly, I wanted to bring this conversation to an end. I wanted I-girl to stop crying and go to sleep. I wished I had some warm milk for her.

     “. . . Shall we pray?” I asked I-girl.

     “What for?”

     I-girl didn’t look at me anymore. With her mind elsewhere, she laid her cheek on the sheets that had been wrinkled by her tears.

     “I am worn out. I should go to sleep.”

     I knew that she would not answer me. I returned to my own bed and blew out the short candle. In the dark, I pulled the terry cloth blanket up to my shoulders and without thinking about anything, I closed my eyes.

     I woke up after a light sleep, and the darkness in the basement was now strangely murky. The door like a submarine hatch was open, and the faint light before dawn was coming in. I-girl was not there in the next bed.

     When I went up the ladder from the basement, I found I-girl standing in one corner in the ruins of our house. Her eyes were closed, and there was a slight breeze blowing.

     The house was gone, and all that was left was a part of a wall and paving stones near where the front door used to be.

     I closed my eyes, too. Soon an image of our house came back to me. In front of me, there is the door. If I open it, there is the study. Then the living room. Then the room with the piano. I could recall exactly the design on the wallpaper in the room where I-girl and I slept. But now, those rooms exist only in memory.

     In my mind, I said good-bye to the house and opened my eyes. The magic of the fairytale about the prince and princess in a faraway country that our mother told us to keep up our spirits didn’t work anymore. The spell was broken.

     I-girl and I are just ordinary children.

     This world is a place where ordinary children are killed.

     I was going to say “Let’s go back” to I-girl, but suddenly I was rooted to the spot.

     I-girl is climbing up the useless staircase that is attached to a part of the wall. The banister of that staircase that doesn’t lead to anywhere is also broken, but she goes up step by step. Above the staircase that goes up along the wall, there is only sky, and the sky lures her with an inviting breeze.

     What does it feel like to die? I knew that I-girl was thinking this.

     I couldn’t move. It was as though the hand of fear had grabbed my ankle.

     I-girl climbs the last step. Her hair is blown by the wind. In my mind, I see I-girl make a leap toward the sky, and she never returns.

     “Don’t leave me behind.” I never said those words, but they echoed vacantly in my heart.

     At that moment, I couldn’t move, but I felt something graze the back of my hand. Soft raindrops were beginning to fall from the dim, light gray sky. I-girl stayed up there, high in the air, and, instead of me crying, it rained. I stood motionless amid the ruins, just looking up at I-girl.

     The sky got neither lighter nor darker, as though time had stopped. The rain enveloped I-girl. Though her hair and her clothes were soaked, I-girl lingered on the last step of the staircase.

     After a while, suddenly, her head and shoulders drooped, and the same as when she went up the stairs, she slowly came down.

     Like we often did when we were small, we silently held hands as we walked over the ruins that smelled like rain and returned to the basement. We changed our wet clothes and ate the bread we had divided up the day before for breakfast.

     Now, just the two of us, I-girl and I, lived in the basement, and like the unknown person who collected the Treasure, to most of the rest of the world, we were unknown people.

     From then on, at the end of each day, we prayed for the unknown people.

     That those who are freezing might be given blankets. That those who are hungry might be given food. That those who are weary might be given a place to lie down. That someone might gently place a hand on the shoulder of those who are lonely.

     I think back then, doing that made us feel we were somehow barely connected to the world.

§　　　　　　　§　　　　　　　§

Then, after I-girl and I had lived by ourselves for 23 days, we were found by people in a truck that had come to the town with supplies of food, and we were taken under their protection. Very fortunately, some of our relatives had survived, and it was decided we would be looked after by them. However, they had also lost a lot, and none of them were able to care for both of us together. We were separated and looked after by different families, and after that, we were once again called by our own names.

     Before long, we each left our country with our new families. I continued to write letters to I-girl, and she continued to write to me. “I-boy” and “I-girl” became our secret names for each other.

     Spring became summer, summer came to an end, and the months and years passed by.

     We reached adulthood in separate countries, but neither I-girl nor I stopped praying for unknown people at the end of each day. And I believe it was this habit that over the years shaped I-girl and me.

     Today, for the first time since I left my birthplace long ago, I traveled halfway around the world to see I-girl. It felt strangely mysterious that the people who welcomed me—even those who were meeting me for the first time—could all tell at a glance who I was. But, when I saw I-girl’s face, I understood the reason.

     Surrounded by white flowers, the face of the motionless I-girl in the coffin closely resembled my own.

     Black lace gloves and white handkerchiefs come and go.

     “Even though she survived the horrors of war,” somebody whispered.

     “It was all too soon,” a grieving voice lamented.

     But when I heard what those voices were saying, I ignored them by making gestures of denial in my heart. On the night of the first day we spent in the basement, somewhere in a faraway country, the terrible scene of the aftermath of the attack on our town and the results of a baseball game were broadcast. No matter how safe the faraway country may be, there will be people who lose their lives due to unforeseen illnesses or accidents, and there will be people who grieve over their deaths. The sadness is no different anywhere when we lose people who are important to us.

     My I-girl. Those eyes will never look at me again, but I know the vision she held for the future, the thing she wished to protect.

     Is it surprising that I, who shared the same face, also prayed that same prayer in my heart?

     So, I don’t ask “What does death feel like?” anymore.

     Now I know that this is a spell to protect oneself from sadness. At the same time, sometimes, it is a dangerous spell that kidnaps a person’s spirit and guides that person toward death.

     If a person does not accept sadness, that person cannot shed tears, and a person who cannot shed tears cannot live.

     Now, instead of protecting myself from sadness, I call out.

     ーー“I-girl, where are you?”

     A beloved voice from my childhood answers.

     ――“I-boy, I am here, I am here.”

     Like the rain on that day, tears run down my cheeks.

     I see I-girl standing at the top of the staircase on that long-ago day.

     Some children who have gone missing, and some children who could not survive are there. The children of that October, I-girl and I, are still in this world.