宗像 生日快乐
存 K fan clan 官方小说
2018 8.11
《一个月后》
by 来乐零
周防和宗像的真正第一次见面
这篇小说的发布日期8月11日 同时也是文中他们见面日期（1999年8月11日）的周年纪念日
推上太太画了很多相关图 存几张最喜欢的
P2 推特@ssslrs
P3 推特@tounyu_shouga
P4P5 推特@oisi000000
中翻版 ✨wb翻译地址✨ https://weibo.com/1703015231/GuaoeC2qd?refer_flag=1001030103_&type=comment#_rnd1583478292950
英翻版 ✨原文地址✨
One Month After
by Raikaku Rei
On that day, Munakata Reishi, after coming back from radio calisthenics, decided to go out.
To Munakata, a 5th grade student at a local elementary school at the time, any distance wasn’t easily covered on his bike was like a journey. Munakata put on a straw hat that he had his mother buy for him, slung a flask with cold water over his shoulder and slipped into sneakers.
“Oh, Reishi. Going out to play?” Munakata’s older brother Taishi called out to him, watching the boy tag on his shoes.
“No.”
“Hmmm? Then going to a library or something, despite having done all your homework ages ago?”
“No, I’m not going to the library either.” Munakata finished lacing his shoes and rose, standing with a ramrod straight back. “There is a place I wish to see, so I’m going to see it. I will be back by evening.” Having said all he had to say, Munakata left the house.
He went by train, changing them a few times, to get as close as the transportation system allowed to the place of his destination, and then walking the rest of the way.
Although it had been already a month since the tragedy, at the same time it had been only a month. Needless to say, the uproar had yet to die down. In order not to be in the way of people heading in the opposite direction, Munakata avoided crowded places, taking a route along the deserted seacoast instead.
The August sun had climbed to its zenith, grilling the earth below with its violently scorching heat. The breeze blowing from the sea helped though, being surprisingly refreshing.
Once he stepped into the coastlands, Munakata lifted his head, staring into the sky. Direct sunlight rained down on his face, protected by the wide flaps of his straw hat until now, and made his glasses glint, reflecting off their surface. When he had had enough basking in the midsummer sun, Munakata’s eyes shifted down, to the sea this time.
The water wasn’t really transparent, but the surface glistened as it reflected the rays of the sun. Munakata found himself gazing at the glittering waters for some time before setting off to walk along the coast at a leisurely pace.
The beach wasn’t sandy, nor did it have piers. What Munakata trotted cautiously on was unstable debris.
After a while, he came across an old man sitting on the rubble. Said old man stared at the sea with a stern-looking expression. His face was plowed with wrinkles, and his form, as he kept staring at the water without even the slightest of movements, was reminiscent of an expensive thematic carved artwork.
Munakata kept walking in silence, the distance between him and the old man gradually closing until the man finally noticed him and raised his head abruptly. That movement helped Munakata ascertain that the elder wasn’t an actual statue, the fact coming as a relief somehow.
“It’s not safe for a child to walk here all alone,” the old man reprimanded.
“No, it is not. I shall proceed with caution, sir,” Munakata replied.
The old man took in all of Munakaka, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, in one quick sweep, and in a voice quieter than before, asked, “…What, did yer friend die or somethin’?”
The wording was callous, but the old man’s tone betrayed sings of concern, letting Munakata sense that the man did care, in his own way. Munakata shook his head.
“No. None of those I know personally died here.”
“Then why did ya come to a place like this?”
“Because I wished to see it.”
Munakata’s answer made the old man grimace bitterly.
“And whatcha gonna do once you saw it?”
“As I am now, there is nothing I can do. But I believe I must see it regardless. Although it is hard to put into words why I feel this way.”
Munakata was a child who excelled at putting things into words. Not being able to find the right expressions to explain something was a rare state for him. Still, for once, he had a feeling that the moment he tried to describe this sensation with words, those words would become false.
“Hmph,” the old man snorted. “Y'know, when I was a kid, there was a war raging,” he suddenly changed the subject.
“I see,” Munakata nodded, unfazed.
“And there were air-raids. Countless, again and again. And every time, we fled. Those who couldn’t flee usually died. Many of those who did flee died too.”
“I see.”
“Tons of people died… The deathtoll in this incident is the same or even more, I hear.”
Once again, Munakata turned his gaze to the see. The old man started at the water too.
This time, quite a while had passed before Munakata nodded and said “I see”.
“Why did it have to happen, I wonder…” the old man wondered aloud in a seemingly laid-back tone.
“It was said in the news that the cause was an explosion that occurred in the research institution of next generation energy sources. …There are many suspicious points that do not add up though.”
“No, that ain’t what I’m talking about. I don’t care what the actual cause was… I was wondering why these things keep happening… just grumblings of an old man,” the man chuckled with derision directed at himself.
Munakata’s lips thinned.
When a calamity strikes, it strikes.
However, Munakata pondered, was there really no one who could foresee it or prevent it? Or, maybe, there were those who expected it and tried to prevent it, and it all combined and fit together like a puzzle, with the picture revealed in the end being this calamity?
What he would do if he were one of those who had predicted such a catastrophe? Munakata tried to imagine it. Could a helpless child do anything? Or would he actually be able to see, if only a little, the right option to choose?
Munakata’s age being what it was, he was often asked about his dreams and hopes for the future. And every time Munataka was hard-pressed to answer. He did have a picture of his ideal world in mind, but he could never quite tell who he needed to become in order to make that image reality.
A world where everyone could be happy could never exist, but a world that could gain peace while avoiding hurting people as much as possible or making them suffer was not too far fetched, and he wanted to become someone who would strive for such a world. Someone who would sense an impending calamity first and minimize the damage from it as much as possible.
Munakata thought long and hard about who he should become to be such a person, all to no avail.
“I… I want to become someone who would do everything in his power to prevent such things from happening,” Munakata blurted out before he could check himself. He was sure, to the old man his declaration sounded as nothing more than a child’s irresponsible dream and was no consolation at all, and he felt he made a blunder with his word choice, but after a second of surprise, the old man showed a tiny smile for the first time.
“I see,” he nodded.
A red-haired boy chose this time to abruptly come out of the sea waters long ways off from where Munakata stood.
Munakata’s eyes opened wide, and for a fleeting moment, he believed him to be a ghost. Munakata’s eyesight wasn’t good enough to let him see the boy’s face clearly at that distance, but from the boy’s stature and physique it appeared they were the same age.
The boy rose from the water and climbed to the land. It seemed he swam right in his clothes, his tanktop and breeches soaking wet and clinging to his body. The boy gave a shake like an animal, shaking off the water.
“Did he swim at a place like this?” Munakata frowned.
“Do you find it sacrilegious?”
In reply to the old man’s interested question, Munakata nodded. “I do not find such an act agreeable.”
“It would be desecration if he actually meant to desecrate this place, but he has no such a goal, I assure you.”
From that statement, it appeared that the old man knew the red-head. Against his better judgement, Munakata found himself sending a reproachful look to the old man upon the realization.
The old man narrowed his eyes in mirth, watching Munakata, then got up heavily and, without saying goodbye, turned around to walk away.
It was 1999, the 11th of August, a month after the landscape of Japan had changed due to a mysterious explosion, and South Kanto had become a crater that sunk to the sea.
*
It seemed grandfather’s friend died in the incident that turned South Kanto into a crater.
It was summer break, and one morning grandfather suddenly announced that they needed to go to a month anniversary of death.
Suoh Mikoto lost his parents at a tender age and now lived with his eccentric grandfather, just the two of them.
In exchange for living like he wanted, said grandfather seldom made any demands of Suoh, but on that day his utterance was an order with no room for objection. Not waiting for Suoh’s reply, he began making preparations.
Suoh never even met his grandfather’s friend. But he had no particular reason to object either, so he hadn’t, simply following his grandfather out of the house in silence.
The place they went to visit wasn’t an area with survivors or an altar to lay flowers on. Instead, it was a deserted location to where no one bothered coming on purpose, a quiet place where rubble piled up, becoming makeshift breakwaters, and beyond that there only sprawled the vast sea - the endless blue ocean.
Until just a month ago, this was land.
Suoh’s grandfather sat down on the rubble without a word and stopped moving, becoming what was essentially a living carved statue. Suoh, standing by his side, absentmindedly took in his surroundings that turned into the sea only a month ago.
He, among countless others, remembered vividly what happened a month earlier.
It was the 11th of July, and on that day, at that time, Suoh was playing soccer. Trapping the ball that came flying his way with his chest, he dropped it to his feet, and it was at the moment when he made the ball his that a thunderous roar reverberated through the space and the ground shook as if bouncing up and down.
Screams echoed around him. Everyone was frantically pointing in the direction of the south, trying to make out something there.
Suoh, too, was caught by surprise, if slight, but being a young child he was, the concentrated look on his face didn’t change when he turned to the south to look.
The sky in the south was boiling hot red, and a massive column of fire towered there, as if piercing both heaven and earth. Even from this significant distance away, that red pillar looked thick and vividly blazing, and trying to guess just how exceedingly vast the area it had swallowed was defied imagination. From its shape alone, one could have mistaken it for a backbone of the world, propping the sky, but that burning hot red color triggered instincts signaling that it was much more violent than that.
Suoh’s eyes were fixed on the sight for a while.
Commotion and shrieks filled the air, sounds mixing together, and Suoh heard somebody moan, “Looks like it’s the end of the world”.
‘If this is what the end of the world looks like, then I guess it’s surprisingly pretty,’ Suoh thought at the time without much emotion.
The sea he was gazing at today was the result and remnants of that.
When he saw satellite photos shown on TV every day, he thought to himself, 'Oh, I see, so South Kanto turned into a crater and got submerged, changing the shape of this country a little’. Now that he stood there, on the coast of said crater, a thought of 'Oh, so this is what this place is like now’ did flash through his mind with a little more gravity than before, but it wasn’t like the sinking in reality of it hit him all that hard.
After a moment of consideration, Suoh kicked off the ground and jumped into the sea with a splash.
Once he submerged, all the sounds audible on the surface disappeared without a trace, leaving only the bubbling of the water in his ears that made up the whole world.
In the water, Suoh saw the ruins of the destroyed world.
Nearly nothing still preserved the shape it once had. Having sunk to the bottom of the sea, what was part of things and objects that once were part of the life of people that used to be alive was now broken and absorbed by the sands of the seafloor.
It was hard to call visibility in the water good, but Suoh did make out that what he was seeing was by no means a regular seafloor.
'I see,’ Suoh thought.
It didn’t invoke any further stronger emotions or impressions in him, neither did it trigger feelings of sorrow, indignation or compassion; he kept gazing at the view stretching before his dispassionate eyes as a fact of life.
Somehow or other, he remained submerged for as long as he could, rising back to the sea surface only after almost running out of air. He resurfaced at a spot much further from where he dove in, partly due to indulging in swimming in the ocean for a short while, and partly due to being carried away by the currents without him noticing. He found that his grandfather who was by his side earlier, was now sitting long ways off, and for some reason there was an unfamiliar boy standing next to him.
The boy’s glasses reflected sunlight mercilessly, and Suoh couldn’t get a good look at his face, but he did perceive that the boy was about his age. He also thought that the straw hat the boy was wearing didn’t really suit him. To be exact, as a headgear for a child on a little summer trip, it was the right choice, the problem lay with this particular child who didn’t go well with summer at all: he was pale and looked the type to never even sweat.
Suoh gave a shake, trying to shake the water off his drenched person, however futile the effort was. Intense sunlight was drying the seawater out of his clothes rapidly though, but not without leaving a sticky sensation of the seasalt still remaining on his skin in its wake.
Suoh’s grandfather got up and was now walking towards Suoh. He must have had enough of being here, then.
For some reason, Suoh’s eyes strayed to steal a glance at the unfamiliar boy who stood by his grandfather earlier.
The boy did the same, looking at Suoh.
The piqued interest lasted for only an instance, and before his grandfather even reached him, Suoh had already turned on his heel and started walking.
In the end, he and the unfamiliar boy who didn’t mix well with summer didn’t even have a chance to pass each other by.
FIN.
宗像 生日快乐
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