Fireworks Over Sagami Bay

At ten o'clock the god of Watatsumi Shrine came down the hundred and eight steps on the shoulders of forty men, rocking like a boat in a storm, and did not stop at the bottom.

The mikoshi, the portable shrine, gold and black and heavier than a car, crossed the sand at a run and went straight into the sea. This is the hamaori. The men in happi coats went in up to their chests, chanting something that was mostly vowels, and the shrine rode on the waves above their heads with its little golden bird on top, glittering. Tetsuo was on one of the guide ropes, wet to the waist, his reading glasses pushed up on his head and still, somehow, dry.

"The god goes into the sea once a year to wash," Yukari told me.

"It's so the old men can get drunk in the water," said Mio.

I was standing at the edge of the crowd with my trousers rolled up when an old fisherman with a towel round his head grabbed my arm. "You! The tall one! Shoulder!" And then I was in the sea, under one corner of a god, the pole on my shoulder, my feet looking for the bottom. I carried it for ten metres. Then a wave came in sideways, and I went down, and the god went on without me.

I came up with seaweed in my hair and salt in my nose, and the whole beach was cheering. The old fisherman hauled me up by the collar, delighted.

"The sea god likes you," he said. "He only knocks down the ones he likes."

Across the bay, where my guidebook had promised Mount Fuji, there was a white wall of haze. Fuji, as usual, had sent its apologies.

By half past six I was dry, sunburnt and wearing a yukata that reached my ankles, because Yukari had sewn a band of indigo cloth round the hem. "Uzbek style," she said, and gave it ninety-five points before I had stood up.

The Shiokaze Ginza had turned into a river of lanterns. Stalls stood in front of every shop: yakisoba hissing on iron plates, grilled squid, candied apples shining like traffic lights. The whole street smelt of soy sauce, sugar and smoke. Daichi was waiting outside the tofu shop in a jinbei, shorts and a short-sleeved top, looking like a man about to face the batter of his life.

Fumika arrived in a pale grey yukata printed with goldfish, carrying a notebook. "For research," she said.

Daichi looked at her for a long time. "…Illegal," he said, to nobody.

Then Kotone came up the street from the harbour, and I forgot the name of every food.

Her yukata was navy with white morning glories, and her hair was up. I had never seen the back of her neck before. I looked immediately and politely at a candied-apple stall, and studied it for some time. It was a very interesting candied apple.

She stopped in front of me and looked at the indigo band on my hem. Her mouth moved at one corner. I knew that corner. It was the one that laughed at my haiku.

Behind us, at a distance of exactly twenty metres, Mio and two friends were walking with sparklers. Whenever I turned round, all three of them looked at the sky.

We ate our way down the street. At the takoyaki stall I explained that takoyaki is a samsa that has lost its corners and gone to live by the sea. Daichi said takoyaki has octopus in it, which samsa does not, so takoyaki wins. Fumika said takoyaki is served at a temperature above the boiling point of water, which is a safety issue, not an argument, but she would vote for it anyway. Kotone ate one whole, burnt her mouth, and pointed at the stall.

I lost three to one. In Tashkent they would have rioted.

At twenty past seven the promenade along the beach was shoulder to shoulder, families on plastic sheets, children with glow-sticks, the whole town facing the dark sea. Minase came the other way with a group of third-years in dark yukata. He saw us, and stopped, and bowed.

"Enjoy the fireworks, Aliev-kun." A small bow to Kotone, too; a small bow back. Then he went on with his friends.

That was all. No fuss. And that was the worst part: it made him impossible to dislike, so I liked him a little less.

Kotone turned off the promenade without a word. She led us down the harbour road, past the dark shop with its racks folded, and up the steps onto the breakwater. We walked along the top of the wall in single file, the sea on both sides, black and breathing, until the red lighthouse stood over us. A few fishermen sat along the edge with rods, coolers and cans of beer. Nobody else. The beach was a long curve of lights behind us.

Her place. She sat on the step at the base of the lighthouse, and after a moment she moved her sandals to one side. There was room for two. I sat.

The first rocket went up at half past seven from a barge in the middle of the bay. A pale line; a pause; then a flower of gold as wide as the sky, and a second later the sound, a thud I felt in my ribs. I counted the gap between the light and the boom, the way my grandfather taught me with thunder: three seconds. One kilometre.

They came one after another after that, red and green and silver willow that hung and fell slowly into the sea. The fishermen said "Tamaya!" at the good ones, the way people have in Japan for three hundred years, Fumika explained, taking notes. Then, for a moment, there was a gap. The smoke drifted. The whole breakwater went quiet at once, the way a classroom does.

Daichi stood up.

"IINCHŌ, I LIKE YOU!"

It went out over the water, bounced off the lighthouse, and came back. Everyone on the breakwater heard it. Probably the barge heard it.

Fumika did not move. The next rocket went up, opened, faded. Then, in her most official voice, the one she uses for dissolution notices:

"…Hoshino-kun. I will consider it. Report back in the second term."

Along the wall, the fishermen put down their beer and applauded.

Daichi sat down very slowly, as if his knees had been told something. Fumika wrote in her notebook without looking at it. I am almost sure it was upside down.

The finale began at ten past eight. Chrysanthemums first, huge slow ones, the petals drooping in the smoke. Then the star mine: a barrage so fast the booms ran into each other, until the sky was white and the sea was white and the red of the lighthouse behind us had turned gold.

I turned to Kotone. Her face was lit from one side, then the other.

"Kotone, I—"

No "-san". It fell out of my mouth on its own. And the finale swallowed the rest.

Then it was over. The last sparks dropped into the bay, and the silence afterwards rang like a bell, and my ears rang with it, and she was looking at me. Waiting for the end of the sentence. Her hand was on the step between us, a centimetre from mine. I could have counted the centimetre. I counted other things instead.

In that silence I read the air. For the first time in my life I did it on purpose. I thought of March. I thought of the return date the Foundation would send in the autumn, and of Rule 7, printed in a booklet in my desk drawer. I thought that it would not be fair to say a sentence like that to someone and then get on a plane.

"…I'm glad I came to Japan," I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Then she nodded. Something went out of her face, very gently, like a lantern being carried into another room. I told myself I hadn't seen it.

We walked home in a group along the top of the wall: Daichi silent for the first time in recorded history, Fumika's notebook clutched to her chest, Mio and her friends twenty metres behind with dead sparklers. On the surface, nothing was different at all.

At home, in my room, with the window open and the smoke still hanging over the slice of sea between the two roofs, I wrote it on an orange note, and did not give it to anybody.

Smoke over the sea.

The loudest sound of the night:

what I did not say.

I told myself it was the right choice. It was the first time in my life I had kept a sentence in my mouth. It tasted terrible.