A melodic chime rings, alerting Akira that Yoshiko has entered the virtual world. He transports himself to her store and finds her outside in the English garden she has created, populating the scene with butterflies. Akira listens to the sound of her wings, watches her hooves kick dirt into the air that glitters like a cloud of fireflies. An ellipsis appears in the air, telling Akira that Yoshiko is typing. It soon disappears without a word sent.
“Is your microphone not on?” Akira asks. He moves closer to Yoshiko and strokes her mane.
“Sorry,” she says. “I guess I needed silence for a while. It’s nice to have so much control here. These butterflies, the fish in the lake over there, the way the clouds in the sky morph into impossible shapes—my mother’s face, the Eiffel Tower, a grand piano.”
“They’re beautiful,” Akira says. He extends a hand into the air and waits for an iridescent butterfly to land on his palm. In the distance, Akira can see a tiny figure standing on a dock over the lake, a little girl. “Who is that?”
“My daughter,” Yoshiko says, barely above a whisper. She gets up and moves toward the garden’s fence, stares out at the lake. “Ten thousand in-world gems to transform a video on my phone into a virtual model. If I press play, she’ll dance like we used to every day after she came home from school. She’ll laugh and say again, again, faster, faster. I don’t know what I expected. But it’s not her. If I press play now, she’ll fall into the lake. I’ve done it once already, clutching her hand as we sank below the surface.”
“I thought you had changed your mind about all of that,” Akira says.
“A few good days doesn’t change anything,” Yoshiko says. “My daughter is still in pain and can’t communicate with me. No one can help.”
Yoshiko bows her head and flaps her wings, sending a cloud of dirt and glitter into the air. Akira wants to ask more about her real life, wants to admit he has seen her at the market, but it doesn’t seem like the right time.
“What do you want me to do?” Akira asks. “I’ll do anything.”
“I just want you to stay here with me and not talk,” Yoshiko says.
Back at the printing press the next day, Akira works furiously, shifting gears only to bundle the stacks of newsletters with pieces of twine. The faster he works, the sooner the time will pass and he can return to his pod at the virtual cafe to check on Yoshiko. Has he misinterpreted their relationship? Akira’s sure she was simply having a bad day. Seiji has given him new pages to print and told Akira that, compared to other things he will print for him, these pages will be among the most important. Instead of something far-reaching like planetary destruction or the altered migration patterns of marine life, these deal with topics on a much smaller scale—family and community. “People have forgotten how to care for each other, for themselves. We can’t expect them to care about the world if they don’t care about what’s in front of them,” Seiji explains. Throughout the day, Seiji leaves Akira for extended amounts of time, returning frequently to check on his progress. Akira believes the old man simply likes the company.
“People don’t understand us,” Seiji says, noticing Akira looking at the family photo. “Most people don’t want to understand. My daughter says I killed her mother, groups me with those terrorists because I share some of their beliefs.”
“Do you miss her?” Akira says. He regrets opening his mouth, stops working for a moment, waits for an answer.
“Where were you during the attacks?” Seiji asks.
“I wasn’t born yet.”
“I was at a toy store. When I left to go to the Metro, the entrance was blocked. I didn’t know why.” Seiji places a hand on Akira’s shoulder. “We all share the blame for Aum Shinrikyo’s crimes. But I am no terrorist. I love my family. I think about Yoshiko every day. It’s easy to be lost in fear. It brings people together, often for the wrong reasons.”
Akira looks back at Seiji’s family photo on the wall and notices a glimmer of similarity between the little girl and his Yoshiko. She said she no longer talks to her father. But a lot of people don’t talk to their fathers and the name isn’t uncommon. How do you ask someone if their mother died in a terrorist attack when you met them in a suicide forum? Yoshiko flies away whenever Akira asks for a sliver of her real life.
Akira looks into Seiji’s worn eyes, sees an emptiness that is all too familiar. “I know,” he says. “I mean, I believe you’re not a terrorist.”