Choices: The Sequel to Weathering With You

Birthdays and Relatives

The very next morning, the two lovers who left the city, got caught in a storm and decided to make love in an empty cave with walls that echoed the crashing of the sea all around it, woke up to the usual grey sky and light rain that had now become an eternal staple in this part of the world.

Hodaka stretched luxuriantly. For the first time he felt the rasping sand against his skin and noticed that he was lying there with his genitals exposed. He pulled his pants back up and asked Hina, who was on her feet, looking out at the shore.

"Where are we?"

Hina studied the horizon from the safety of the cave.

"By the looks of it, it's Tatadohama beach. There are a couple of houses nearby. Maybe we can use one of the telephones there and call for someone to take us back to the University."

Hodaka threw his shirt on and out they went into the rain, climbing up the hill towards the Shimoda Yamatokan, which was a hot-springs bathhouse. The manager was kind enough to let them use the telephone to call the University and have them send over a bus to pick them up. During the ride, Hodaka slid into a sleep so profound that it was more nearly coma.

"Exhaustion," said the doctor Hina brought back from the University, "and exposure. It's a miracle your friend isn't dead, Amano-sama. Let's let him rest for a few hours, and give him some warm blankets, his legs will be fully healed by tomorrow morning."

Hodaka's eyes opened. His clouded mind registered the white coats in front of him, then his eyes rolled back in his head. He was in bed, in his apartment, with his only guess being that Hina and the doctor carried him there. The doctor closed the eyelids with fingers practiced in schooled medicine.

"It would be better for you to rest, Hodaka-kun. You could get sick."

"Drink this," said the nurse next to the doctor.

Hodaka swallowed. Then he gulped. The sweetened milk tasted better than anything he'd tasted in weeks. When it was all gone, he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand to erase the milk mustache. "I'm mighty hungry, miss, could I have something to eat?"

The nurse, whose name was Aiko, nodded. "Just a second," she said. Then she stood over by the doctor and asked quietly.

"Should we tell the school and have his teachers mark him as absent for a few days?"

"A good precaution," said the doctor. "But I am sure it won't take that long. All he needs now is rest."

When they were finished, Aiko pulled the coverlet up over Hodaka's shoulders and tucked it around them. Hodaka was asleep. The medicine in the milk was laudanum. Hina and the doctor left while Aiko stayed behind.

Hodaka tossed fitfully while he slept. When he thrashed off the coverlet, Aiko tucked him in again and stroked his forehead until the lines of distress were soothed away. But Aiko could do nothing about the dreams.

They were disjointed, chaotic, fragments of Hodaka's memories and fears. There was hunger, the never-ending desperate hunger of the bad days in Tokyo. And Takai with his soldiers, coming closer and closer to their location, looming in the shadows of the McDonalds where Hina used to work, handling the poor children and whispering that she and Nagi would have to be put in a foster home, sprawling in a pool of blood on the floor at his home in Kozushima, the blood spurting, spreading, becoming a torrent of red that rose into a mountainous wave higher and still higher over a screaming small Hodaka. And there was cold, with ice covering trees and shriveling flowers and forming a shell around him so that he couldn't move and couldn't be heard although he was calling "Hina, Hina, Hina come back" inside the icicles that were falling from his lips. His mother passed through his dream, and Hodaka smelled grapefruit, but Etsuko never spoke. Shuji Morishima jumped a fence, then another, then fence after fence into infinity, chasing Hodaka until he finally caught up with him and told him how much of a burden he was to his life. The voices changed, became a girl's voice with a boy's, became hushed. He couldn't hear what they were saying.