Hideo Furukawa - Slow Boat

The train passes through the station, keeps going. Towards the end of the Rinkai Line.

Here it is. Shin-Kiba. Where the Keiyo Line runs above ground and the Yurakucho Line runs underground. They’re waiting for me. The wickets call to me, but I don’t fall for their trap. I move towards sea level. Listen—I say to myself—you’ve got your limits. You will die at some point… that’s why you can’t stop now.

You can’t turn your back on the dream.

You can’t turn your back on the plan.

You’re still alive. Right? Don’t give up on getting out—not now.

Then I see it.

The area map. I’m staring right at it. I can’t believe my eyes. It’s Yume-no-shima. Translation: “Dream Island”. A man-made island that dates back to the sixties. A landfill made out of surplus soil.

An island made of trash—for keeping even more trash.

This is what dreams are made of. Yume-no-shima.

Be still, my beating fucking heart.

I walk straight for it.

The place is a park now. It has everything: baseball diamonds, soccer fields, an archery range, a gym, an indoor pool, a bike path. There’s even a tropical greenhouse—and eucalyptus everywhere. I follow Meiji Avenue into the park. I head right, over Eucalyptus Bridge. This place has all kinds of palm trees. One kind after another, almost like a family tree of palm trees. There’s a footpath near the stadium. I follow it.

Doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

I can’t see much. There are bushes and trees in my way. But I feel it. I’m close . To this place—to this Island of Dreams. I keep walking and come to a clearing…

A crater.

Or is it?

A huge bowl opens up in front of me. It looks just like a crater made by a meteorite. The coliseum—the pride of the park. But there’s no one here. Not today, not now. I see no actors onstage at the bottom of the bowl. No gladiators trying to dismember one another. No Ancient Roman orators come back to life. The absence thrills me to no end.

I feel it. It’s here .

But what is?

I don’t know. Not yet.

The bowl doesn’t have seats. Just stone steps that double as seats. I sit down—on the third or fourth step. Some pigeons on the next block take off when I crash the party. I wrap my arms around my knees. I can feel myself becoming part of the stone (hard, cold, artificial). Then I go to sleep. I could almost hear the thud. As I break through.

Through the wall dividing reality and dreams.

Thud .

I’m lying down this time. On that single bed. The bed in that “room”. I was asleep—but I’m up now. I’m holding something. Against my chest. The CD. I was sleeping with Sonny Rollins in my arms. It had to be the CD. Because it’s too important to let go.

Track eleven tells me everything I need to know. The truth. This is no hotel. This is no “room”.

On a Slow Boat to China .

That explains the vibrations—the buzz of the bed. But it isn’t the bed. It’s everything. The whole… vessel.

I’m on a slow boat.

I get out of bed. I know what I’m looking for. Where is it? I take half a step towards the desk. Brush away the heaps of dust. It kind of looks like snow . Something’s speeding up now. Getting faster. Time? I start digging. It has to be here somewhere. That slip of paper.

Found it. My ticket to ride.

The words are a blur. Can’t make them out.

Time is moving dangerously fast now.

Where am I going? Where’s this slow boat taking me? Hope… I still have hope. That I’m getting out of here. But I have no idea where I am—no idea where I’m going—and isn’t that the same as having no way out? The floor rumbles, speaks to me: You’re not going anywhere . The room has shape now. The shape of a cabin. Better hurry.

The rumbling doesn’t stop. It’s hypnotizing. This isn’t the first and you know it’s not the last. There’s nothing you can do, nowhere you can go .

Then I hear another voice. You’re wrong , she says.

Softly.

The window’s boarded up. It won’t let the outside in. The door is no good. The knob is dead. Got to get to the bottom of this. Or do you wanna be a fossil? You wanna turn to dust—trapped in this cabin? No fucking way.

I sail with my mind.

Like riding a dragon. Like in that movie, when the hero flies to the end of the world. To keep the world from ending . The scene plays back in my head.

Back to the bathroom. I step inside. Look at the mirror. It’s still cloudy. I wipe it clean with the bottom of my fist to find myself looking back at me. Is that really me? A question like the last judgement. Yes, I answer.

Yes. This is my life.

And I won’t run.

From my chronicle of failures.

In that moment, I slip through the wall—through the mirror.

Into the real “dream”.

And I don’t wake up.

We read the human genome. Mar. 31: Mt. Usu in Hokkaido erupted— after the region had been evacuated. It was the first time volcanic activity had been predicted beforehand. The leaders of North and South Korea had their first tête-à-tête in fifty-five years. Aug. 12: an atomic submarine sank in the Barents. The entire crew—118 souls—perished. Milošević’s dictatorship fell. Naoko Takahashi won gold in Sydney. The 20th century came to an end.

Right on time. There’s a knock at the door. But you can’t come in if you don’t know the password. Millimetres behind the door, I whisper the prompt: “Chiang”.

From the other side of the door: “Kai-shek”.

Permission granted. I unlock the triple-bolt and let my comrade in. It’s Fumio Narazaki.

“Pretty little mess you got here. How about cleaning up every year or so?”

“I clean all the time—like, every other month.”

“And another thing,” Fumio Narazaki says, “do we need really need a password? It’s not like we’re samurai from the Edo period or something… Hey, where is everybody?” He looks around the room.

“Hate to break it to you…” I make a sour face. “It’s just us. The others are busy with their real jobs…”

“Seriously? It’s just us?”

“Sucks lemons, I know.”

“Shit,” Fumio Narazaki says, “my boss asked me to stay late, too. But I told him to take his overtime and stuff it. I came because you said this was the ‘case to end all cases’.”

“Oh, it is. It’s huge.”

“How huge?”

I point him towards the open notebook in the middle of the war zone that I call my room. Narazaki and I lean in—our heads almost hit—and we re-enter The Incidents of Coincidence. Just like we have since we were kids .

Case one: Private Residence. Arakicho, Yotsuya. An office worker on the way home from a ramen joint broke into her ex-lover’s apartment and killed him. The victim’s wife also sustained serious injuries. The suspect filled their mouths with large quantities of dried seaweed. Her confession: “He was never going to leave her… so I had to do something to shut his lying mouth for good.”

Case two: An office complex in Ryogoku’s third district. A taxi driver deep in debt killed three loan sharks. His weapon: a couple of chanko pots.

Case three: Numabukuro. On Asahi Avenue. A boy (sixteen years old) stabbed a housewife with a thirty-centimetre hunting blade purchased on the Internet . Over ten hours later, authorities learn that the victim was the suspect’s biological mother.