Her intonation had none of the local Kansai dialect that Kei’ichi had grown accustomed to hearing. He was from the countryside and wondered if she might be too. He thought he detected the trace of a Kyushu accent, while perhaps she could hear his own Chugoku inflection.
He looked in the direction that she had pointed and off in the distance, in a blue sky that heralded the summer to come, he could see the dark shapes of five helicopters in formation.
‘Ah, no – that’s not what you think,’ he replied automatically. ‘Those are Self-Defence Force utility helicopters. News media helicopters don’t fly in such a precise formation. See how, even at that altitude, they look like they’re all flying along together smoothly as a single unit? And the intervals between them don’t change either. There’s an air base in Itami so occasionally they fly over. I don’t know if they’re doing training drills or something else.’
Kei’ichi suddenly realized that her gaze had grown round-eyed as she looked at him.
Back in high school, before he came up to the city for university, some girls had labelled him an army geek and made fun of him. He’d been in the school light music club and the other members were reasonably popular with girls, but Kei’ichi alone was teased mercilessly. Occasionally a group of girls would ask him something about weapons or military stuff and, because he was so keen on these topics, he’d respond too enthusiastically, and then they’d laugh at him, saying, ‘He really is an army geek …’
Kei’ichi had been hurt when another member of the club told him this, which was still painful for him to recall. ‘They even said, “Too bad, because if he wasn’t so into that stuff …”,’ which only made Kei’ichi feel worse.
He’d vowed that, at university, he would conceal his military geekdom and reinvent himself, and now look what he’d done. He gnashed his teeth.
‘That’s amazing.’ The girl said this with what appeared to be genuine admiration, which Kei’ichi had a hard time accepting at face value, caught up as he was in past experiences.
‘Sure. You probably think I’m an army geek.’
‘What’s an army geek?’
He was disarmed by her sincerity.
‘Uh … someone who’s obsessed with military stuff and weapons? Kind of like a railway buff.’
‘Ah, I’ve heard about people who are into trains. Like, they know all kinds of things about train carriages, or what series train it is. They can recite timetables, they set themselves up on the platform with amazing cameras.’
‘You can tell the different types of helicopters?’
‘It’s hard to know for sure, from this distance. I’d say those are most likely UH-1Js.’
‘Ah, but you can make a pretty good guess – it’s impressive.’ As she spoke, she bent her knees and crouched again in an attempt to follow the formation as they disappeared behind the rows of houses. ‘What an incredible thing to get to see today!’
Her expression seemed so delighted that it served to defuse his somewhat cynical attitude.
‘You really like those?’
Despite the fact that he knew they went to the same university and were in the same year, he could hardly believe that he was able to talk with this girl so easily.
‘Well …’ She gave her head a little tilt. The helicopters were no longer visible so she turned to face Kei’ichi. ‘Doesn’t it make you happy to discover something unusual or that you didn’t know about? That’s why, when I ride the train, I always position myself so that I can see outside. In particular, my favourite spot is by the door, where there’s a big window.’
That must have been why, when the crush of passengers had boarded the train at Mondo Yakujin, she had squeezed next to Kei’ichi instead of allowing herself to be swept further into the carriage. A person of small stature like her could get away with squishing to the side and still not be in the way of people getting on and off the train.
‘I’ve only ever seen SDF helicopters on the news, so then to see them right here in the city! What’s more, it’s amazing how they’re able to fly in such close alignment. This was definitely the big-ticket item of the day!’
‘You know, we’re in the same year, we can speak informally,’ he offered. She had been sprinkling her words with formal keigo.
She responded automatically with a just-as-formal ‘yes’ but then corrected herself with an awkwardly enunciated ‘yeah’ and a nod. Perhaps she wasn’t all that used to speaking casually with a guy.
‘My name is Kei’ichi Kosaka. And you are?’
He meant it as an innocent icebreaker but her expression instantly hardened. He had thought they were hitting it off, though maybe he’d got the wrong impression and she was simply a friendly person.