2. Uzuki, 202X, Singapore
7:00 am should be regarded as morning by almost everyone on this planet. Uzsuki had at least believed so and that was the case without fail. It was always the thing that she busily prepared for school as a child, and for work as an adult, bathing in the bright sunlight.
She could observe enough morning light to tell her the arrival of a new day no matter where she was in those days: Whether in her childhood house with its wide-open living room typical of the region in a rural area which was famous for spacious houses the local people tended to build there, or in the tiny apartment she lived in when working in Tokyo, with less sunlight due to the location surrounded by higher buildings, she definitely could.
However, Uzusuki, a Japanese woman in her mid-forties, found nothing insinuating that the current moment was around 7:00 am. She had never felt that it was morning at 7:00 am, since moving here: Singapore, just a small island, but one of the richest nations in the world. It was still dark outside when she saw the clock on the wall indicate 7:00 am. Uzuki nervously blinked several times and gazed at the clock again. The second hand in it advanced soundlessly and kept ticking away, seemingly apathetic towards Uzuki's thoughts.
"What I just can't get used to is that it's still dark at this hour. Don't you feel the same way?" Uzuki asked her son Yosuke but got no response.
Still, she understood herself not expecting any answers from her son. She just could not help but ask him, anticipating no answer.
Just after getting out of the washroom, Yosuke grabbed his backpack and opened the entrance door. As walking out the door hesitantly, "I'll be late," he said.
That was when Uzuki finally realized the school bus would arrive at their condominium shortly. Yosuke attended a Japanese middle school where most students were Japanese, children of expatriates assigned to this island, or entrepreneurs running businesses on their own.
"Yosuke's already gone?"
Just after that, her husband, Riku appeared from the same door.
"Yes," Uzuki replied but did not continue further.
He was about to shower off the sweat from his morning jog. She had never tried discussing such a personal feeling with her husband. Uzuki knew certain topics would always be beyond his understanding according to her experiences shared with him so far. It was not out of the disdain toward him, just an acceptance that things went like that. Likewise, she understood that he had rather more, something he had never shown her.
Such things didn't disappoint Uzuki, though she sometimes felt a loneliness that no one, not even her family could touch. Uzuki believed this solitude was a kind of obscure, independent pain, a fundamental loneliness existing within every human. Therefore, she acknowledged it as something that simply existed, yet she made no effort to address it.
Now, Uzuki found herself alone in the empty room after her family had all gone for the day.
The room looked drab and frigid, owing to its imitation marble floor, minimal furnishing, and a sparse array of household stuff, all typical of expats' temporary accommodation.
Her husband left for work and so did her son for school. Both of them started their new day by departing for their respective destinations, which meant it was the morning that Uzuki was being in. Nevertheless, "Why is it so dark?" Uzuki told herself with a slight sigh. "Just a thing like a morning conceptually seems to have arrived at this island, ignoring every factor in reality," Uzuki continued.
Still, she surely knew that such darkness despite the time of day was caused by the discrepancy between the local time here and the real one: it was set out one hour earlier than what should have been for some reason. Like in nearby nations, where it was still 6:00 am, it should have been at the same time here considering the longitude in which Singapore was also located.
Additionally, the time of sunrise never fluctuated, firmly fixed throughout the year because the island was just above the equator. Of course, it had no four seasons and had never deviated from its default of always being an everlasting summer.
Unless the earth turned upside down, with the north-south and east-west directions swapped, the island would be firmly within the summer season.
Uzuki peered at the split of the curtain, the outside of the window.
The dense tropical rainforest that supposedly surrounded a huge condominium mainly resided by expats, where she was temporarily staying for her husband's job.
Uzuki sometimes wondered if the forest was real.
"Do I have a question only about the forest?" Uzuki asked herself. "Or, is my concern fundamentally related to this whole world? The world? It means the earth, the physical land that consists of my surroundings, but is it everything? Are there any possibilities that we have more things invisible, for example?"
A few months ago, Uzuki landed on the island.
Despite being a small island, the city had gained a huge presence and a reputation as a cozy little sanctuary for people who devoted themselves to various businesses, providing them with business-friendly conditions. For example, it was said that foreigners from any country could enjoy living there without difficulty thanks to English being the nation's official language and its typical tendency in a society where several ethnic groups had lived together since the nation's foundation. Moreover, the government had focused on the tourism industry, particularly for the wealthy, by improving the refined management system to maintain well-kept city views. It was true that the nation looked more beautiful than she had expected, but she had felt uneasy since coming here: the sense of reality was so frail.
The central area of the city was always filled with a significant amount of green and flowers blooming throughout the year, which must have been planted based on a distinct plan aimed at making the city as beautiful as possible, but it all looked so artificial.
"I don't know, but a lot of things around my life seem dubious recently as if this new place is made out to be a well-made diorama," said Uzuki, wondering if she'd suffered from a kind of paranoia caused by frustration: she had to start living in a foreign country in her 40s for the first time. Some said that it was not too late to start anything anytime, but Uzuki found herself getting too old to adapt to anything new.
Then, Uzuki opened the laptop computer before her and logged on. The dining table where the PC was placed had a transparent top plate, so under the laptop, she could see her laps and room shoes with brilliant beadwork, a traditional craftwork of the island.
All the furniture in the apartment was chosen, according to one cohesive taste. A cool, futuristic feel was intended, but it did not suit her taste.
They were originally selected and set up by the owner of this room, the wall and the floor of which, the interior construction materials, were almost entirely made of artificial marble stone.
The atmosphere of those things inexplicably led her to be uneasy. It was just because she was not good at anything unfamiliar, but she wondered if she had ever lived in any perfectly comfortable places even back in Japan. "Or have I ever led a life, being full of energy? I cannot even remember what kind of life I had in my past days. Well, is there a place that exactly fits me? It might be cyberspace. Well, I was certainly energetic there, wasn't I?,"
The world inside the computer was the same as the one she was in at the very moment, yet it was also completely different, or a separate dimension simultaneously.
No sooner had she touched the keyboard than she started typing. Those keys printed from "A" to "Z," "0" to "9," and all of one of the Japanese phonetic letters, Hiragana, were a kind of one of the parts of her own body, with a tender, familiar texture fitted with her fingertips.
Whenever she dove into the World Wide Web that interlinked her with another space from the one where she was now, Uzuki somehow felt something guilty: Failing to get along with the real world, she might have gotten away to cyberspace. As long as she was connected to the Internet, she could keep a calm mind, but "This makes me feel like I'm an addict, doesn't it? Also that might be nothing short of escapism?" she was sometimes afraid of.
Still, she was also grateful that it was not too late to encounter the Internet: she was able to keep up with a series of progress achieved around the dawn of the Internet era as a university student. More than 20 years had passed since Windows 95 was launched. If it had been a bit late, she must have given up being involved in the Internet due to her conservativeness, but she didn't imagine herself living without the Internet. "I almost missed the train of the Internet, but I jumped on it in time!" Uzuki thought.
The lifestyle with the Internet seemed to have completely become embedded in modern life worldwide, but there were a certain number of those who didn't particularly need it. Strangely, Uzuki sometimes felt that she was one of them despite being a heavy user. The internet was undeniably convenient but might have detracted from human's real, natural ability, Uzuki sometimes felt. "What was the ability?" She asked herself but was not sure accurately. Still, humans originally had something beyond the efficiency of the Internet. Or, it was similar to the Internet and computers, but something more outstanding, even divine.
Uzuki typed, "Occasionally, only after a certain period passes, do we realize how important a certain kind of memory is. Even when we are at the very moment, which we will not be able to forget forever, we do not know exactly what is going on as long as we are just in its vortex. Even though you feel regret and think, "If we had known that it would be classified as an unforgettable, precious memory later, we could have observed and dealt with it more carefully," but just after happening, nobody can grasp the correct meaning. Why can we be such oblivious to what is going on right before us right now? But we are fatefully such an existence. If we are concerned too much before doing anything, we cannot do anything."
Suddenly, a mysterious sound cut through the air, which halted her writing. "It might be a chirp of a notorious bird on this island, but I don't remember the name," she said. Uzuki heard that those who wanted to enjoy staying in bed till late in the morning for example on their holiday, could not but suffer the strident shout here. "But I am the one who doesn't care about that because I don't want to sleep much longer these days. These days? I have been such a type of person since I was a child, haven't I?" Now, no longer could even the bird disturb her. No one could stop her from writing. Uzuki began to write again.
The sound of the keyboard being passed over by her fingers never stopped, endressly got longer and longer... And then, no one but only the thick rainforest was listening to her...
To be continue....