Adachi to Shimamura - Volume 11 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

Little Ancestor

WHENEVER I HEARD the cicadas cry, I would catch myself gazing into the distance, just feeling their presence. Times like these, I stepped away from the current moment and allowed myself a little freedom.

Eh, whatever. I put my shoes on, straightened up, and waited a good five seconds or so. Nothing but the drone of the cicadas. 

“Hmm. Welp, guess I should run to the store,” I announced to the door in front of me. Just like that, footsteps erupted from halfway down the hall, as if she teleported.

“I shall accompany you, Mama-san!”

“Ooh, you’re a dolphin today.” 

I turned to find an alien dressed as a dolphin barreling straight toward me. She leapt at an inhuman angle, arcing over my head and landing gracefully right in front of the door. That was all well and good, but…

“Put your shoes on first.”

“Ah, it seems I went too fast.” 

The dolphin walked back over and stuffed her feet into the rubber flip-flops I’d bought for her. Her toenails were sky-blue and sparkling faintly, shaped so smoothly that you might think waves flowed from her digits. I hauled her up and put her on my back, then felt her climb up to my shoulders. This, I learned recently, was a much easier way of traveling with her than letting her run around off-leash. She weighed next to nothing, and for that matter, she could even float in midair. Really, she only sat on my shoulders as a formality. 

“Hold on tight, okay?”

“Okaaaaay!”

I’d heard of a boy on a dolphin, but a dolphin on a woman? Now that was rare. And so I left the house feeling like a VIP. 

Outside, the climbing sun had tugged the temperature up with it, and the brisk morning had evaporated. Idly, I pointed my index finger into the air like an antenna picking up cicada chirps. As they hummed in unison, the vibration shook my memories loose—as though someone had opened the cardboard box where I’d haphazardly dumped all those summers past. When I returned to the present, I caught a glimpse of fins wiggling on either side of my head. 

“You know, I haven’t seen a dolphin since that field trip to the aquarium in grade school.” And I don’t mean my daughters’ field trip—I’m talking about my own. Maybe we should go back there one of these days as a family…

“The aquarium, you say?”

“Ever been?”

“No, but I saw it once when I was watching television with Papa-san.”

“Oh really…” Idly, I decided that if the opportunity arose, I’d bring this kid with us.

Out on the street, the passersby all did double takes at us, which was kind of funny. A dolphin, on land, with a little girl’s face in its mouth. Peak entertainment. 

“All right, dolphin, tell me about something,” I demanded out of sheer boredom as we were caught up at a red light. 

There was a lot about our little freeloader that piqued my interest—I could learn thirty new facts about space simply by walking to the store and back! I tried bragging to my husband about it, but all he said was “That’s great, hon.” The hon really pissed me off. 

“How about you finish telling me about that one thing from the other day?”

“What ‘one thing’?”

“I dunno. I forgot.” I snickered in spite of myself. “Tell you what. You can pick the topic and we’ll just pretend it’s the thing from the other day.”

“In that case, let’s see… Why don’t I tell you about the time Little fed me fish food?”

“Hey, that’s not about space!” 

But it did seem like a funny story, so I walked along listening until we finally arrived at our favorite old supermarket. It was a bit chilly inside, but the seafood smell helped me wake up. A jolt of excitement shot across my skin like static, melting my feet and shoes together into something lighter. 

“Mama-san, the candy section is that way!”

“I’m afraid we’re not going there today, my dear.”

“We’re not? Hmmm…” The dolphin murmured to herself as we walked around the produce department. Then she quietly extended a fin. “The bakery section is that way.”

“Sounds like my little GPS is glitched.” 

On second thought, it might be fun to have a GPS that only gave directions to where it wanted to go. Sort of like a second me. 

“No, wait…I had one of those once…” 

A little gremlin who used to try to drag me by the leg to the candy aisle. Right this way, Mom! Then I’d grab her by the scruff of the neck and carry her over there while she shrieked in delight. Was it the act of grocery shopping with a kid that had put me in the mood to wax nostalgic? Even my youngest never came with me anymore… 

Now I get it. I prodded the dolphin’s little fin. 

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

As we passed by the butcher section, I made eye contact with the old granny who worked there. She was so short, you had to peer over the display case to see more than the top of her little hat. 

“Sup!” I waved, preempting her with a surfer’s greeting. 

“Well now!” Her eyes widened at the sight of the dolphin on my shoulders. “Isn’t it too hot for that?”

“Nah, she keeps me cool in the summer.” Hers was a gentle chill, nothing like winter’s freezing bite. Similar to a blancmange, maybe.

“Hello, ma’am!” the dolphin greeted her. They were already acquainted enough to make small talk.

“You two are glued at the hip, aren’t you?” the old woman mused.

“Mama-san is a good friend.”

“Friend? But she’s your mama.”

“Nothing wrong with being both,” I shrugged. 

Being a mom didn’t entitle me to anyone’s unconditional love. It was up to each person to figure out what they wanted from a relationship with their mother, then pave the road to it. So if a daughter of mine wanted to be friends, I’d respect that. Hell, even if she wanted to date me, I’d at least hear her out.

As we moved away from the butcher section, the dolphin started peering down at my face. Another novel aspect of this dynamic: having a blue glow orbiting my head. “Is it really so strange to be friends with you?”

“Nah, not at all.” A grin stretched across my face. 

“Hee hee hee! We are inseparable!” she announced as she played the drums on my head with those little fins.

“Yeah, I’d say we’re good buddies, more or less.”

“That sounds just like what Shimamura-san would say.”

“…Heh heh heh!” Yeah, well, I’m something of a Shimamura-san myself. 

After we made it through checkout, we headed for the narrow space along the exterior of the store. There, I set my basket down on the table and started packing the groceries into shopping bags—but with my head tilted down, the dolphin’s tail fin kept swinging and smacking me in the face.

“Hop down for a sec.”

“Okaaaaay!” 

I felt her slide down my back to the ground. Can you believe it? A dolphin with legs! She kept staring up at me relentlessly, so I grabbed the daikon radish and held it up.

“Yaaaaay!” For some reason, she raised her fins in celebration. 

Then I lowered it.

“Ewww.” For some reason, she recoiled. 

It was obvious she was just reacting at random, but I liked it. Being predictable was for squares. After humoring her for a while, I finished bagging the groceries. “All right, let’s go home.”

“Yaaaaay!” She leapt onto my back with the same jubilation she showed the radish.

“That reminds me—don’t your parents ever worry about you?”

“I beg your pardon?” the dolphin asked as she slid her legs back over my shoulders.

“You spend every day at our house. Don’t they ever want to spend time with you?” As a parent myself, I couldn’t help but wonder.

“My mama and papa, you mean? Mmmmm…hard to say.”

“What do you mean?”

“Either seems equally likely.”

“Oh. So they’re flexible.” Frankly, the whole situation sounded complicated. I kinda wanted to meet them. 

And so I strolled home with the dolphin on my shoulders, receiving friendly waves and horrified stares in equal measure. The little cryptid seemed to absorb all the heat from around my face, eliminating the feeling of walking through dog breath. Convenient! 

Along the way, I stopped at the railroad crossing, even though there were no trains coming. Then, once I checked the chalkboard out front to make sure they were open… 

“How about I take you to this hoity-toity cafe for a change?”

“Hoity-toity?!” 

She struck a victory pose, and I smiled. Her thought patterns and body language were identical to my daughter when she was little.

“There’s a banner that says they have shaved ice,” the alien observed aloud.

“Fancy-schmancy, am I right?”

“Ooooh,” she murmured, as if impressed by Earthling culture. 

Welp. Another day of pretending to be classy.

It was a small, old-fashioned cafe with only two tables plus counter seating. The interior was predominantly brown in color—whether due to the wood furnishings or the passage of time, it wasn’t clear. The overall vibe could be described as “cave with stuff in it,” but for a summer day, maybe that was actually perfect. 

“Welcome!” I called out before the owner could, just for the hell of it. The old man looked up sharply from behind the counter, his irritation palpable. Just as I’d hoped, his sour grimace indicated he was not happy to see me. “Guess what? I’m a customer today! Isn’t that awesome?”

“Do you have no perception of how loud your voice is?”

“Nope, none at all!”

“Then I envy you. Secondly…” His gaze shifted to the dolphin, where it lingered.

“Hello, sir!” 

“…Hello there. Never thought I’d live long enough to talk to a dolphin.” He seemed amused—and easily bought. “I always knew you were an oddball, but to think you had a fish for a daughter…”

“Well, my husband’s actually eighty percent merman, so yeah.”

“It all makes sense.”

If you say so, pal. Dolphins aren’t fish, though. 

“My name is Chikama Yashiro!”

“Oh, so that’s what your name is.” I never knew that! Well, someone probably told me at some point, but I forgot. After all, I never needed to use it. 

Generally, I could remember faces easily enough, but names just wouldn’t stick. For example, I only had a vague recollection of Adachi-chan’s mom’s name. Was it…Ou…ka? Ouka? Yeah, Ouka. A real sophisticated sort of name.

“You didn’t know? What kind of mother are you?” 

“I’m a work in progress. Go on, kid, order whatever you like,” I told the dolphin. What do dolphins drink, anyway? Sea water, I guess?

“If this is a hoity-toity cafe, then I should like to have a frappuccino!”

“Ooh, you really know your stuff.”

“Heh heh heh… Papa-san tried to order it through the television last night.”

“Well, they don’t have those here.”

“W h a t ? !” 

“Look at the menu. No frap, no puccino.”

On second thought, there probably was a puccino lurking somewhere on there. Frap sounded more like something you could order at Doutor. 

“You’re one to talk, given you’ve never had a frap or a puccino in your life,” the old man snarked.

“Say that again? I’ll have you know I drink coffee with teenagers every day.” That much was technically true. Never mind about the frappu-whatever. “Hey, how about you get the shaved ice? It seems like something you’d like.”

Pretty sure I’d never tried to make it for the kids at home. Plus, I wanted to see if this place actually served it, or if the sign was just for decoration.

“Is it hoity-toity?”

“The hoitiest-toitiest, broski.”

“In that case, I shall have the shaved ice.”

“One shaved ice, coming right up!”

Oh my god, they actually have it. I was mildly impressed. “Make me a katsu curry!”

“Abracadabra, you are now a katsu curry. I assume you’ll settle for an iced coffee.”

“Ideally, I wanted something katsu-related…” 

He shooed me off to take a seat, and as he lowered his hand, he briefly pinched the dolphin’s tail. Evidently, he was curious about it. 

As for the dolphin herself, she leapt over my shoulder and landed perfectly in a chair. She could probably get a job as a street performer with no training needed…or a job at the aquarium…but they only hired dolphins there, and she’d probably be a giraffe or a tiger by tomorrow…and the aquarium at our house was only big enough for little fish… Meh. This plan was riddled with setbacks, so I promptly tossed it out. 

“Look at me, relaxing at a hoity-toity cafe. Clearly, I have acclimated to this planet. Keh heh heh!” She folded her fins smugly across her chest. 

Come to think of it, what brought her here to Earth in the first place? Sightseeing? I gazed across the table at her as I carefully set my grocery bags next to my chair. 

Even in broad daylight, I could see the bounds of space in her eyes. Unnamed galaxies swirled in a vortex while countless undiscovered stars twinkled and faded. The light danced and merged to form complex patterns within the confines of her irises. All of it ultimately drained into the pupils at the center. And from that inky darkness, a new light—a new galaxy—was born. 

For this metamorphosis, there was no end, only limitless beginnings. It was cosmic, and eldritch, and, uh…dolphin.

“What a fishy creature, indeed.”

“Ho ho ho! Not as fishy as you, Mama-san.”

“Excuse you?!” 

Was she trying to insinuate that an ordinary suburban mom was somehow more suspicious than a dolphin sitting primly in a fancy-schmancy cafe? If I asked my husband, though, he’d probably agree with her. A while back he called me avant-garde, and I hadn’t taken even one fencing class! Get on my level. 

“Anyway, circling back to the topic of your parents. Do you not know who they are?”

“Well, I thought about it, but…I don’t think there exists anyone I could reasonably call my mother or father.”

“What?” 

Now they didn’t even exist? I needed answers, and since we had to wait for the shaved ice either way, the little dolphin decided to regale me with her story. 

“In the not-too-distant past, we were all one singular entity; when the world took shape, we just sort of…came into being. But for some reason—perhaps out of necessity, perhaps not—we divided into twenty-eight individuals. In the beginning, only the primary vessel possessed free will, but it evolved in the rest of us over time, or so I was told. I was a late bloomer, so I don’t have all the details myself. But around the time all twenty-eight of us had developed our own consciousness, we realized we didn’t know how we were meant to merge back together.”

“Hah! Dumbass!” Like taking a broken clock apart without making sure you know how to put it back!

“Thus we gave up on the prospect and began to wander the universe.”

“So there’s a whole flock of you out there? I might go blind from all the sparkling.”

“Some float through space, some are in stasis, some run around with a spear… They all live as they see fit.”

“And one eats free shaved ice.”

“Ho ho ho!” The dolphin downed her entire glass of water, then rattled the ice around the glass for fun.

“If you’ve been around since the birth of the universe, then you’ve had a pretty long life, huh?” At least, I assume so. 

“It’s only been approximately six hundred years since I developed a consciousness of my own, but I expect to be operational for around eight hundred million. After that, I will enter a dormant period.”

“A what now?”

“For approximately twenty thousand years, I will cease all function and regenerate my microparticles. Then I will resume activity as before.”

“Wow.” She was tossing out the kind of numbers I wished I could see on my bank statements. “Will you operate for another eight hundred million years after that?”

“I am supposed to, yes.”

“So you’re saying you’re immortal.”

“Immortal…?”

“In other words, you won’t grow old or die, right?” I was pretty jealous, more so of the former than the latter.

“Yes, I suppose one might say that,” she nodded offhandedly.

This little creature was more impressive than I would have guessed by looking at her. To think Hougetsu randomly brought her in off the street…not to mention the oddball Adachi-chan. Perhaps my daughter was simply a weirdo magnet. 

“Is it strange to be immortal?”

This little alien seemed awfully concerned about other people’s opinions. If she wanted to live in the shadows as much as she claimed, then why the animal onesies? Did she just want to get a reaction? “I mean, it’s inhuman, I’ll say that much.”

“Hee hee hee! Am I not also human?” she asked, as if to challenge me to a battle of wits. So I looked her up and down, and…well…

“No, you’re a dolphin.” And yesterday you were a jellyfish.

She looked around the room, wiggling her fins, then smiled brightly. “Touché.”

“I should really take up fencing, huh?” 

Apparently, she did want a reaction. Kind of a long wind-up for this punchline, but I digress. Anyway, if she didn’t have a mom or dad, then I was happy being her Mama-san for the foreseeable future. 

As we continued our casual conversation, the shaved ice arrived along with my iced coffee. This heartless geezer was liable to bring me a hot coffee regardless of my order, so I was surprised to find that it was actually cold this time. As for the shaved ice, it was served in a clear, chilled bowl—no fruit or ice cream on top. Then he set down three bottles of syrup: red, blue, and green. “You can add whatever syrup you wish.”

“Yaaaaaay!”

“Hey, how come she gets the VIP treatment?!” And from the same guy who refused to bring milk or sugar for me!

He glanced at the dolphin’s head and replied blankly, “Because I like dolphins.”

“What about me?!”

“At my age, I’m afraid I can’t stomach katsu curry.”

“Sucks for you, then.” I had half a mind to put the syrup in my coffee instead. 

After a moment of hesitation, the dolphin grabbed a bottle and flooded the mountain of ice, staining it bright blue—almost like a metaphor for her presence here on Earth. “By your leave, I shall now partake.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Would you like…some sort of…repayment?” she asked, haltingly. 

“Repayment?” I repeated.

“If you have any requests, let me know. Believe it or not, I am quite capable.”

“Not when it comes to chores.” Be it dishes or mopping, she always seemed to find a way to bungle things. 

“Anything you desire, I can make it happen,” she insisted.

“Riiight,” I replied skeptically. “Look, I dream about world domination as much as the next girl, but…is that really something you’re supposed to have someone else achieve for you? Like, you wanna give me nine trillion yen, that’s one thing… I mean, I wouldn’t say no to nine trillion yen, obviously! But world domination is hard to pass up…”

“Uhhh…” 

Her mouth hung open in visible confusion. To be fair, the difference was proving tricky to put into words. Maybe it all came down to the process versus the conclusion… Gah, I’m too old for this. “My point is, one of these days I’m going to rule the world!”

“Oooooh!”

“You’d better still pay for your food when you’re in charge,” said the peanut gallery.

“Ugh, you’re no fun.” On second thought, never mind. 

Future aspirations were a lot more feasible if you were a kid with years ahead of you, but in my opinion, grown-ups needed a little dream of their own, too. As for the other option, nine trillion yen—asking an alien for money was a mistake in the making. If I had her duplicate the bills I had on hand, I’d end up arrested for counterfeiting, and they’d call me next year’s Miss Eurega. 

“Oh, I know. How about you gimme a bite of your shaved ice?” Like dolphins, it was something I hadn’t experienced in many years, but perhaps it was time to rectify that. “That’s all the ‘repayment’ I’d ever need from you.” 

For that matter, she was eating it on my dime, so frankly, she had no right to decline.

She paused for a moment, grinned, then snatched up a spoon in her bright blue fin and steered a heaping bite of matching blue ice in my direction. “I daresay I enjoy that aspect of you, Mama-san.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I daresay all my aspects are great!”

Neh heh heh heh heh heh!