The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes by Mei Hachimoku

Author:Mei Hachimoku [Hachimoku, Mei]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: light novel
Publisher: Seven Seas Entertainment
Published: 2022-03-17T07:00:00+00:00

We only ended up being able to attend sixth period that day. Needless to say, Ms. H gave us quite the earful when we finally stumbled onto campus. Honestly, I wasn’t sure why we’d bothered showing up. I let out a loud, bellowing yawn in the middle of class, and the math teacher instantly shot me a dirty look, so I ducked my head down in submission. It was 2 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, but as far as my body clock was concerned, it was still sometime in the early hours of the morning after Friday night; trying to stay awake and pay attention to the lecture was an uphill battle, to say the least. I twirled my pen in my right hand as I tried to fight off yet another yawn. None of the lecture material was registering in my brain. All I could think about was the Urashima Tunnel.

Two key aspects defined the legend of the tunnel: one, it affected the flow of time, and two, it could grant any wish to those who enter it. The former we’d confirmed to be true, but the latter still remained to be seen, and it was starting to make me anxious. My wish certainly wasn’t to be reunited with a dead pet, or my sister’s sandal, and if Anzu was to be believed, those sheets of paper weren’t what she was truly after either. That begged the question: On what conditions did the tunnel manifest things like that? Did it grab meaningful objects from a person’s memories and project them at random? No, there had to be a method to the madness. In my case, it was almost like it took my real wish and taunted me by granting me all sorts of things which were closely related, but never the one thing I truly wanted.

I was suddenly reminded of the tale The Monkey’s Paw. It was a short horror story that I’d been assigned to translate for my junior high English class. The basic premise was that whoever held the titular paw would be granted three wishes, but only in a roundabout way that exploited loopholes in the wisher’s phrasing. It was essentially a genie’s lamp but much more devious. For example, a man and woman who used it to wish for a large sum of money would be granted the sum, but only as a settlement after their son was killed in a horrific accident at his workplace the next day. Then when they wished to bring their son back to life, they’d get a knock on their front door from his mutilated, decomposing corpse.

In a way, perhaps the Urashima Tunnel’s wish-granting mechanics functioned similarly to the monkey’s paw, albeit without the evil twist. On second thought, maybe there was a certain malevolence to it. I mean, it had waited until I was about to turn back before it made Karen’s sandal appear in front of me, which seemed a little too perfect. Then the same thing had happened with Kee, our parakeet.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.