Tsunami Girl by Julian Sedgwick

Author:Julian Sedgwick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Guppy Publishing Ltd
Published: 2021-01-22T10:42:49+00:00

5

Ganbare, YÅ«ki!

Tokyo is a darker city this time.

As their taxi glides under the train tracks and stacked sky­scrapers of Shinjuku the neon is dimmer, some screens even black, as a cold rain falls. Areas that used to blaze with light are muted now. Mum has been quiet since they landed, fussing more than usual about passports and stuff like that.

Twice at immigration Yūki has had to say, ‘Mum, I did all this myself last year.’

And Mum answered, ‘I know, I know.’

‘I’m not a little kid.’

But worse, she’s having to fight bubbles of panic that keep rising up from her stomach, triggered by the Skyliner terminal, the rumbling subway and platform announcements, the winter cold that seeps in through the carriage doors.

She takes a breath now, watching the driver’s white gloves on the wheel, and thinks again of the ghost girl in a taxi trying to go home in the rain . . .

Mum leans forward. ‘Everything seems so gloomy.’

The taxi driver clears his throat. ‘Energy saving. With all the nuclear reactors offline. It was hell last summer without proper air con and the rolling blackouts and everything.’

‘Excuse me, but what do you think about the nuclear plants?’

‘Keep them all switched off, I say. At least until we know what’s happening with Fukushima. I’d not go within a hundred kilo­metres of the place.’

Yūki leans forward. ‘But people are going home . . .’

‘Had a journalist in here last week who told me some scary stuff. Nobody’ll buy anything from there – not rice, not sake, not vegetables. I feel sorry for those yokels.’

Mum’s voice lowers, still sticking to very polite language – but with a definite growl to it now. ‘Excuse me, but you’re looking at two of those “yokels”. I grew up there. My father died in the tsunami.’

‘I’m sorry. I apologise totally, I—’

‘I was there,’ Yūki adds quietly. ‘I saw it all happen.’

There’s an uneasy silence in the cab as they slide through the shadows under the train tracks near Shinjuku station. As they come out from under it the taxi’s wipers smear what little neon there is across the windscreen in streaks of electric green and crimson. Yūki sees the driver glance at her, his eyes wide.

‘You saw it? I really apologise again, young lady. But we’re all worried about what might happen if they don’t sort it out.’

‘I heard students went and helped after the disaster—’

The driver sucks air through his teeth. ‘It was good to see young people being idealistic and all. But I’d not want my ­daughter ­anywhere near that zone. She’s just finished high school.’

‘Thank you for your advice,’ Mum says. ‘We’re not planning on heading north.’

They sloosh across the slick tarmac of Shibuya Crossing, mega screens dimmed or blank, past ranks of pedestrians waiting under their umbrellas.

‘My sincere respects,’ the driver says as he pulls up outside Kazuko’s ‘mansion’ apartment block a few minutes later. ‘And no charge for this ride.’

As Mum and the driver argue about the fare and the cold rain

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