Chapter Two:
A full moon illuminated the landscape around Narita Airport as the plane came in to land, its solitary eye gazing through the cloudless night on trees and planes and asphalt. The flight had been smooth and uneventful – eight hours direct from the sunshine state; Queensland, Australia. For as long as she could remember, Quinn had dreamed of visiting Japan – the home of cherry-blossoms, Yakuza, samurai, anime, and sushi. As a kid she had been obsessed with drawing, mimicking her favourite characters from One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh. Through high-school she studied the language but she was one of the few girls who finished Year Twelve without having been to the land of the rising sun.
Quinn had never been allowed to travel. Her father, when he was alive, had kept her close-by while he desperately sought to cure her of an undocumented genetic disorder. She was the metaphorical girl in the bubble – protected and fussed over and never allowed to live because everyone was so worried that something terrible might happen. After he died, her mother had been too afraid to let her get more than two hours from home. She had grown up isolated from her peers, tarred with names and teased for being shy. By the time she turned twenty there was little reason to obey the rules her mother tried to maintain. There was little enough time left in her hourglass to warrant wasting it.
Japan. She had wanted so much to see the country in spring, when the cherry-blossoms were in full bloom, coating the streets and paths in their pink petals, but she had missed her opportunity amidst a series of last minute tests organized by her mother. She had tried to argue that there were always more tests, that she would still be around to have them when she got back. In contrast, her opportunities to travel in spring were limited by the very thing that the tests were about. Her mother understood, Quinn knew she did, but that didn’t mean that she could go. In the end it had been a fortuitous delay, aligning their trip with the first new showing of work in several years by her favourite artist, Robert Chaff. And so, she and Stevie were flying into Japan in the height of summer.
When she stepped out of the plane at Narita airport it was a humid twenty-eight degrees, even though it was after nine in the evening, and the heat was compounded by the labyrinthian structure of the airport. The orderly lines of the place struck her first, the systematic process that governed every action taken by each of the airport employees. Cleaners moved around the rooms and corridors with precise trajectories, their mops never going where they didn’t need to be – no wasted movement, a dance of compressed energy perfected with practice and effort. Not that any of that limited the sheer enormity of the place.
Stevie bought a bottle of ‘Happy Up!’ and a can of iced coffee from a vending machine while an eager little woman helped Quinn to get her bearings in the enormous terminal. The place stretched on for what seemed like miles. Quinn felt lost before she had any sense of the location and, without guidance, she imagined that she and Stevie might spend their entire two weeks endlessly roaming the wide halls of Narita International Airport.
They followed arrows and signs illuminated in neon, until they were able to purchase the necessary train tickets and descend even further into the depths. Eventually, the two of them settled down to their strange Japanese beverages while they waited for the futuristic NEX, a train lined in chrome and what looked like liquid-light, to carry them to Tokyo.
Quinn and Stevie had met in high school. They were both social outcasts, but Quinn had never heard the story that had resulted in Stevie’s exile from the realm of influence occupied by the other girls. She imagined that it was something simple, something juvenile, that had brought about the animosity. Quinn liked to believe that Stevie had shown up one of the school’s rich bitches. That she had scolded one of them with her silver tongue, or pointed out one of their fake noses to a potential boyfriend. She had never asked though. Quinn liked the fact that Stevie was willing to befriend her too much to question how she had ended up with such a low social status.
Darkness slid by outside the immense, empty, train. Stevie slept for most of the journey while Quinn pressed every button she could get her hands on. She reclined seats and extended food trays, flicked through television stations filled with layers of fluoro text that flashed around talking heads, and finally resorted to turning the lights above their seats on and off just so she could admire the way they faded so smoothly. A magazine had been left in a pouch several seats behind them and Quinn browsed the articles with enough linguistic knowledge to read most of the words. As the train neared Chiba City, Quinn watched the lights glimmering in the distance with tired wonder.
Japan was a theme park. A wonderland of light and rain and warmth, all mixed with efficiency and seamless technological integration. She plugged her headphones into the train’s windowsill and watched as music videos for J-Pop and K-Pop Stars played automatically on the headrest of the seat in front of her. Lyrics scrolled along the window and all she had to do was touch in the right spot to cycle through the six supported languages. On the roof of the train, information about where they were headed progressed down the carriage like the opening sequence of a Star Wars film. She was overwhelmed.
An hour later the two girls were laughing, dragging their suitcases down a bumpy Shibuya street to their hotel, under the diffuse light of the moon.
They were woken early on the first day by a sunrise close to five a.m. and the two of them groggily showered and dressed to venture out into the bustling metropolis. Stevie had compiled a travel guide for their journey – parks, bookstores, and shops – while Quinn had only one real item on her two week agenda: the opening of the Robert Chaff exhibition at Mori Art Museum, Roppongi. She had every intention of soaking up all that she could about the country – but that was what she was looking forward to most.
Quinn had specifically packed light, which left her with an immense bag that she hoped to fill with books and clothes and mementos from the trip. Japan was an holistic experience for her, one that she knew she would never have again. It seemed so pointless to cram it full of every possible activity when what she really wanted was to simply be a part of it and to forget her real life and her real limitations. Those things belonged in Australia. They belonged with the labs and the tests and the constant reminder that no one could understand or fully explain what was wrong with her.
That no one knew why she was dying.
