Penguin Highway Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  PENGUIN HIGHWAY

  Tomihiko Morimi

  Translation by Andrew Cunningham

  Jacket artwork based on the character designs by Yojiro Arai

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Penguin Highway

  ©Tomihiko MORIMI 2010, 2012

  First published in Japan in 2012 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2019 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Yen On Edition: April 2019

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Morimi, Tomihiko, 1979– author. | Cunningham, Andrew, 1979– translator.

  Title: Penguin highway / Tomihiko Morimi ; translation by Andrew Cunningham.

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York : Yen On, April 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018060155 | ISBN 9781975382605 (hardcover)

  Subjects: CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Penguins—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M66989 Pe 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018060155

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-8260-5 (hardcover)

  978-1-9753-8330-5 (ebook)

  E3-20190327-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Episode 1 Seaside Café

  Episode 2 Observation Station

  Episode 3 The Forest Depths

  Episode 4 Penguin Highway

  Analysis by Moto Hagio

  Yen Newsletter

  EPISODE 1

  Seaside Café

  I am extremely intelligent and never slack off on my studies.

  That’s why I’ll be very important in the future.

  I’m still only in fourth grade, but I already know all sorts of things—every bit as much as grown-ups do. You see, I always take detailed notes, and I read a lot of books. I’m interested in outer space, living things, the ocean, and robots. I like history, too; I love reading biographies of important people. I’ve made robots in my garage, and Yamaguchi at Seaside Café has even let me look through his telescope. I haven’t actually seen the ocean yet, but I’m formulating a plan to go explore it in the near future. It is important to observe things yourself. Firsthand experience trumps any book knowledge.

  Losing to others is nothing to be ashamed of, but losing to your former self definitely is. I learn more about the world each and every day. I become better than I was the day before. There’s still a lot of time ahead of me before I’ll be a grown-up. I did the math yesterday, and there are still 3,888 days before I turn twenty. By then, I’ll be 3,888 days better than I am now. I can barely imagine how great that will make me. Possibly too great for this world to contain. I believe it will come as a shock to everyone. Perhaps lots of girls will ask me to marry them. But I already know who I’m going to marry, so I’ll have to turn them all down.

  I’ll feel sorry for them, but on this point, I will not budge.

  I live in a suburban town. There are lots of rolling hills and little houses. The farther you get from the station, the newer everything is, and you get more cute little bright-colored houses that look like they’re made of LEGOs. On sunny days, the entire town sparkles like it’s stuffed full of sweet treats.

  Bus lines start at the station, spreading out through the town like capillary veins.

  The last stop of one bus line is near my house, at the front line of the new neighborhoods growing around the station. My neighborhood is laid out in an orderly fashion, and there are still many empty lots that don’t have houses built yet. When the wind blows, the grass growing on these rectangular patches sways, and whenever I see that, I feel like I’m on the savannah. But I’ve never seen the real version, so I can only imagine what it’s like. I’d like to go explore the savannah someday. What would it be like seeing actual zebras galloping across the plains? It must be a sight to behold.

  We moved here from a town on the other side of the prefecture line when I was seven years and nine months old. Four of us: my father, my mother, my little sister, and me. At the time, there weren’t many houses around yet. Seaside Café wasn’t there yet, and neither was the shopping mall we go to on weekends. It was like the earth before the origin of life—empty and desolate.

  Back then, my father took the train from work, then a bus from the station, and as the bus drove, it would get darker and darker outside, which always made him anxious. When he got off the bus, he would see the lights of our house in the distance, like a single building in the middle of a wasteland. He would walk toward that distant glow down roads with very few streetlights, only feeling safe when he heard my sister and me laughing.

  But now the town is much brighter.

  Cute homes are filling in the vacant lots, Seaside Café opened (it has good pastries), there’s a shopping mall with lots of parking, a cram school with a good reputation, a convenience store, and a dentist where pretty ladies work. I really like the dentist because it’s like visiting a space station.

  I have to walk past the dentist every day on the way to school. That walk takes me approximately twenty-two minutes.

  The above was just me practicing writing.

  I write a lot of notes every day. So many it surprises everyone. I think I write the most notes of all fourth graders in Japan. Maybe in the whole world. The other day, I was in the library reading a biography of an important person named Minakata Kumagusu, and it said he took a lot of notes. So maybe I don’t take as many notes as he did, but I don’t think there are many elementary school students like Minakata Kumagusu.

  This habit of mine has made me a better person and helped me pull ahead of the crowd.

  My father knows about this. After all, it was my father who showed me how to take notes. I’m writing this in a lined notebook with a hard red cover that my father bought for me. Whenever I fill a notebook with notes, he’s always really proud. He even gives me chocolate sometimes.

  But writing something like this, like a diary, is fairly new to me.

  Why did I suddenly decide to start writing like this? Well, yesterday, I was talking to my father in the café, and I realized I was facing a major event in my life.

  “It’s good to record your daily discoveries,” my father said.

  So that’s what I’m doing.

  I first saw the penguins in May.

  In my notes, it says, Woke up at 6:30. Father went to work after seeing that me and my sister were awake. Sunny. Humidity: 60%. Gentle
breeze.

  I took my sister with me, and we left the house at 7:35. When it was 7:40, we met up with local children at the park in the center of the neighborhood—the whole place is laid out like graph paper. We left the park listening to the sounds of shutters opening and dogs howling. The vending machines on the side of the road sparkled in the morning light. The wind brushed past our thighs and made the power lines thrash around.

  I really like this time of year. It really clears the mind.

  On the way to school, my sister was super-chatty, saying anything that crossed her mind.

  I left the talking to her and read my notes as I walked.

  We followed the bus route toward Kamonohashi Park, then turned south at the corner with the dentist’s office and walked along the line of zelkova trees. Seaside Café is across the street from the dentist. The café always opens early, so there were people sipping coffee watching us through the windows. I could imagine the warmth and scent of freshly baked baguettes.

  It was too early for the dentist to be open. I remembered I had an appointment that afternoon, so I checked my notes. I made my own dentist appointments. There’s a lady there who is always very nice to me, but she was probably still snoring away in the white apartment complex near the water tower. She likes to sleep in.

  I looked over my list of things to talk to her about, then added a few more. I was able to write notes while I walked as well as read them.

  Then, the sixth grader in front made a surprised noise, and the rest of the group stopped. I was too busy looking at my notes, so I accidentally stepped on the heel of my sister’s shoe. Normally, she would have yelled at me, but this time, she didn’t say anything.

  On the road just left of the dentist was a vacant lot. Surrounded by telephone poles and concrete, this one spot had somehow remained a patch of grass all this time. A large group of children were standing in a line beside it, holding their breath. Everyone was looking at something on the other side of the lot. My sister called out to me. She had her hands clasped in front of her, and her eyes were so wide, they looked ready to fall out.

  A gust of wind blew past, and the grass, dampened by the morning dew, sparkled. I heard a squeaking noise, like feet sliding across the floor of our school. In the middle of the empty lot, a number of penguins were waddling around.

  I had no idea why there would be penguins in our town.

  Not one child moved a muscle.

  I moved closer to observe them properly. It was important to investigate whether these were actually penguins or a breed of crow that had undergone some sudden mutation that made them very short and stout. The other children simply watched. The only sounds were my feet on the grass, the wind in the power lines, and the comical noises made by the penguin-like creatures.

  Even as I approached, the penguins didn’t run away.

  I’d never seen real penguins up close, but these birds looked exactly like them. Their wings were flippers, and they moved around whimsically, always looking like they were about to trip and fall. Very odd creatures—like alien life-forms that had come to earth from some distant planet.

  There was an abandoned motorcycle lying on its side, and the penguins were standing next to it. Just staring vacantly at the blue sky. Their doll-like eyes barely moved at all. Quite a bit of mud plastered their fluffy white bellies. Perhaps they’d been sliding around on their stomachs. I opened a new page in my notebook, wrote the date and time, and began to sketch them.

  Eventually, local grown-ups arrived and chased the children away.

  I wanted to investigate them further, but since being late to school wasn’t an option, I reluctantly closed my notebook. I walked away with the others in my group. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw a group of grown-ups just standing there, staring at the penguins exactly like the kids had.

  I looked it up later and found out they were Adélie penguins. Their scientific name was Pygoscelis adeliae. The book said they lived in Antarctica and the islands around it.

  They do not live in the suburbs.

  The morning classroom was filled with chatter about the penguins in town.

  I was staring at the penguin notes I’d made, and kids who almost never talked to me came over, begging to let them see. Everyone who’d seen the penguins on their way to school was benefiting from their status as a witness to an astonishing phenomenon. Everybody was making such a fuss about it that Suzuki, who’d missed out on seeing them, got angry. Suzuki started talking about seeing penguins at the zoo, insisting there was nothing special about them. What we found special wasn’t the penguins themselves, but their presence in a vacant lot in the middle of town, so I didn’t think he had a point. But when he got mad, everyone got scared, and the class settled down.

  Suzuki took a look at my notebook and snorted. “You like drawing that stuff?”

  “You wanted to see them, too,” I said.

  “I’ve seen them before,” he insisted. “I don’t care.”

  Hamamoto joined us. “You don’t?” she asked. Suzuki stuck to his guns but seemed less sure of himself. Hamamoto was always very confident, and even Suzuki was reluctant to mess with her. She looked at my notes and said, “Interesting. Penguins sure are cute!”

  Hamamoto’s skin was really fair, and since her hair was a light-chestnut color, she looked like she’d moved here from somewhere in Europe. We’d only been in the same class since April, so I’d barely spoken to her. It was extremely rare for her to come over and look at my notes. The penguin sightings were simply that astounding.

  I spent the entire day thinking about penguins.

  Where had they come from? That was the problem.

  During classes, I considered six possible hypotheses for the penguins’ manifestation. As I was scribbling with my ballpoint pen, the teacher came over, looked at my notes, and smiled. I don’t think it was obvious what I was writing. I was using a shorthand I’d invented myself.

  By the afternoon, Suzuki’s anger had diminished the penguin fever considerably. Hamamoto was playing chess in the corner with some other kids. She spent a lot of time trying to get people interested in chess. Suzuki was making a ruckus in back with Kobayashi and Nagasaki.

  While I was reading over my penguin manifestation hypotheses, Uchida came over.

  Uchida was also someone I hadn’t been in classes with until this spring. The two of us had formed an explorers’ club. The club’s charter was to explore the town and map its secrets. We’d had to do a presentation like that for social studies and liked it so much, we’d decided it was our mission.

  “Wanna check out the water tower on the hill after school?” Uchida asked.

  “Not today,” I said. “I’ve got to go to the dentist right after school. But my schedule’s open in the afternoon this Sunday, so let’s do things properly then.”

  “Mm, sounds good.”

  Uchida drifted back to his own desk.

  I wasn’t sure if Uchida was interested in the penguins or not. He could be very quiet sometimes.

  Whenever I had a conversation with him, I always felt like I was talking too much. I constantly made up my mind to try to talk less but then got carried away and forgot. I just couldn’t stop myself. I think important people ought to know how to hold their tongues.

  On the way home from school, I stopped at the dentist.

  The reason I go to the dentist a lot is because my brain is extremely powerful.

  My brain consumes a lot of energy, and sugar is the main source of the brain’s energy. That’s why I’m always eating too many sweets. Of course, I should make a point of brushing my teeth properly before bed, but my brain is so powerful that when evening comes, I get too sleepy to hold a toothbrush and don’t have time to stop and brush my teeth.

  But I don’t mind going to see the dentist. I really like it there.

  The dentist’s waiting room is always extremely quiet, and it smells of medicine. There’s a silver mobile of fish shapes hanging from the ceiling. There are a
rtificial potted plants by the window swaying in the draft coming from the air conditioner. The white couch is cold to the touch, and the white floors are sparkling clean. There’s a transparent magazine rack with lots of big magazines with beautiful photographs.

  I always imagine spaceship terminals will be just like this.

  There was one other patient in the dentist’s waiting room listening to the whir of equipment from the examination room. It was Suzuki. He looked surprised to see me but quickly recovered.

  Like I always did, I took a magazine from the rack, spread it out on the glass table, and started reading.

  Suzuki had the loudest voice in our class and was very strong. The boys under his command obeyed him without question. That structure was fascinating, and I had been studying it, recording notes I called Observations of the Suzuki Empire.

  Suzuki was sometimes mean to Uchida or the other boys. Stuffing rags in their desks, getting in their way when they tried to go to the bathroom, ordering his minions to give them the silent treatment, or scribbling all over their notebooks. It seemed like that was Suzuki’s idea of fun, but I thought he was wrong about that. In my opinion, inconveniencing others for your benefit requires a good reason and appropriate countermeasures. Suzuki had no justification, though, and never bothered taking any countermeasures.

  I shut the magazine with a snap, and Suzuki jumped.

  “Suzuki,” I said. This seemed to surprise him even more.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “You’ve got it, too? I can tell by looking at you.”

  “Got what?”

  “Stanislaw Syndrome. Your teeth get full of germs, and the only cure is to have them all pulled.”

  “What? Never heard of it.”

  “Oh? You didn’t know? I already had all mine pulled. If they pull them all at once, you won’t be able to eat, and you’ll die. So they pull a few each week. Then, they replace the ones they pull with artificial teeth. I’m pretty sure you’ve got the same thing.”