Young Writers Society

Days of Gold Gone By: A Serial

Authors Note: Due to suggestions this episode contains more active events! Also you may notice that speech seems to be going in the right order in some places. This just simulates that the character now understand how questions work, so will always answer afterward instead of having to write it like backward every time (like a translation).

Episode Four: After May

The mouth of the beast follows after its tail. It roars from the depth of its stomach, desperate to inhale the smoke it so eagerly chases. Apart from the bomb that bought me into this world, it is the loudest thing I have ever heard in my life.

I watch as it hungrily approaches the station, sitting tight on the rails as its cubed body snakes up to the platform. It eventually comes to a rest and its powerful growl subsides into an impatient rumble. There are faces of people pressed up against the glass lining of its stomach.

~

I feel it was chance that bought me here. I did not know where we were going, nor what was going to happen when we arrived. I had simply seen my mother getting into the household automobile and had jumped at the chance to follow her in. I had never been in a vehicle before the trip here.

I had asked a series of frustrated questions during the car ride until I had discovered why we were here. June.

The date is now the 16th, and I had been hearing snippets of the name floating around. It is caught in the air between hushed conversations; none of them ever directed at me. Here I am now, at the train-station on the day that June departed.

I have high expectations of June. I am curious as to who she is. In my mind’s eye I imagine all kinds of heroines and heroes from the few books I have been skimming for the past few days.

Books are the most interesting thing I have found in my life so far. The books are written in the way that time moves for the people around me. I try to open to book at the start and read through the pages from the cover to the back, but the words make no sense to me. They are backward and jumbled, I do not understand their order. If I start at the books ending and read it backward from there, the words make sense. They are written in the same way I think and the same way people speak to me. However if I read it like this, the story, much like my own life, presents the conclusion and I feel myself merely reading to find where they started.

The anticipation about June is far more exciting. I image a delicate and exotic beauty, or a grandmother with tales and stories to tell, perhaps even a wartime hero from this exotic land of England; the place that the stories depict of adventure, dramatics and great ideas. If June is from a place of such then she must be also.

~

The first two people to exit the train are a woman and her son. The woman looks younger than my mother, but has a good number of years on myself. She has a soft but pleasant appearance; clean and pale with dark red lips. Her clothes are western and silky; her black hair is tied up in a stylish knot.

The boy who follows her carries both his bag and her own. His head darts around urgently so it is hard to catch onto his face. He finally stills and he makes direct eye-contact with me. I assume that he is her son but he hardly looks like her. In fact he looks nothing like anyone else around the station. He is not different enough to stand out, but just different enough to notice his face is shaped with far more pronounced features. His eyes are rounder pressed more into his face and the bridge of his nose is built further out. His hair could be considered black at a distance, but in truth it is a much lighter colour; brown with natural folds that curl slightly over his forehead, unlike Kaho’s stylized ones.

His jaw quivers and his eyes are framed in red; angry, sad, lost. The woman approaches us rapidly, waving and calling out her greeting. She kisses my mother on the cheek and leans to hug her tightly. She tries to kiss me on my cheek as well but I pull away, jerking desperately to dodge her affectionate grasp. I have no desire to pretend I am participating in heart-rending farewells. The boy comes up to me also, but he does not try to touch me, he just stares at me, with his round and lightly discoloured eyes.

“We have to go now! Please take care,” calls the woman as she hugs my mother again. On the body of a train a man peeks out his head from a crack in its mass.

“All aboard! Final call for passengers! Train to Tokyo.”

The boy does not greet me with a goodbye, in-fact he continues to stand there, saying nothing.

“Who are you?” I say bluntly and without kindness. I do not have the patience for this. “Where is June?”

“I am June.” Says the boy; his voice cracks.

June is the boy? June is a boy? This boy? If it is possible to dislike someone for no other reason than for disliking them, then this is true for June. I am disappointed. All I see is a boy, and a not particularly impressive one at that. Perhaps a little taller than me, perhaps a little younger than me, perhaps having that unique appearance. Those were the only things I could observe from him. All I saw was a disappointment. A disappointment to a stubborn child such as myself.

~

I expect myself to go home with the woman who bought me here and forget the whole endeavour, bury myself in the story I was studying to forget my disappointment. Instead I find myself being taken along with June and his mother. It was not on my will, but neither against it. I simply lost sight of the woman I called mother and was gently coaxed along with them. I am confused, looking around myself as we walk to a different road from which we had come from. I do not know these people. I do not trust these people. The woman repetitively keeps telling me I act unwell and should go home and rest. The boy looks at his feet and the concrete the whole time.

Their car is large and darkly painted. It has its own driver and has space for many to be seated in the back. They get in the car but I do not, I stand outside for a full minute. The car does not move. I eventually decide to get in with them, I open the door and the boy immediately grabs my wrist.

“Akira...” he says in a hushed tone, his voice trailing off. “Do not run away.” I glare at him and smoothly lower myself into the seat beside him and opposite the woman. No sooner am I inside another patron enters the vehicle, taking the front seat beside the driver.

This man is even more extraordinary looking than June. His skin is pale like pink paper, unlike the paleness from the woman’s make-up. His beard is light and greying, his eyes shine bright grey. His nose is even more pronounced, and his eyes indented even deeper.

The engine begins and the car rumbles along the streets, much faster than the one that had bought us here. The boy is sulking with his forehead against the side of the seat.

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask him almost spitefully.

He looks up at me with the same red eyes. “I am afraid. Terrified, full of fear.” I had expected him not be unable to speak properly the language, but his words are perfect without even an accent. I consider asking why but rethink my question when I consider that my future is his past and that he would have no context for the singular word. I elaborate on the question.

“Why are you full of fear?”

“You do not know who I am....” There is a pause between the former statement. His expression of sadness turns into a hateful and sly smile. “It means I never see you again, which means something happens to cause it. Maybe I stay in England forever, maybe I die in a freak train accident!” As he raises his voice the woman hushes him. Something about this boy chills me. It’s like he knows. Knows about time. Knows more about me than anyone else.