Chapter 6:

Why Would You Get A Job That Involves You Rooting Around In Animal Guts

***

Cows are cute.

Sakaki was on the train, convincing herself of this fact. It wasn’t that difficult. They were cute, right? That’s why she got into this job, right? To take care of things that are cute, right?

So, cows were cute. And they were. Cows are very sweet and docile, with the most adorable faces and voices. Something about their demeanor just begs, “Please be nice to me and provide for my happiness and well-being.”

(Root around in my guts to keep me alive. Feed me medicine to keep me from dying, I'm cute.) Yes, cute, cute animals, just as cute as can be.

And that was why she was using her own savings to go all the way up there. At the bidding of her ex-husband. To do work that she was, technically trained for, but not all that experienced in. As a fallback after losing her job due to a confluence of circumstances that was, for one part of the whole, a lapse in her responsible working habits brought on by mounting emotional stress.

Because cows are so cute, and because she loves things that are cute. Because she loves to keep cute things alive.

As the magnificent landscape whizzed by indifferently, blurred to indistinction, her mind began to wander, and soon she thought about Chiyo, as she often did in her empty moments.

She thought about the idea of knowing that for some reason it’s important for someone to stay in your life for the rest of your life, and the concept of having that person disappear after just a couple of years, leaving you wondering what happened, grasping at hollow memories, in futility embracing the empty air. In her reflections after the fact, Sakaki had come to realize that Chiyo’s friendship had done something important for her that had been impossible previously, and was rendered impossible afterward. Cuteness was important to her because it created a feeling of innocence, a feeling that the world was a benign, hopeful place. To Sakaki, seeing Chiyo’s life, seeing everything going right for Chiyo, seeing her being happy, and cheerful, an overachiever with everything to look forward to, gave her the tranquil feeling that everything was alright with the world despite whatever unease or dread she may have felt in her own skin. To love Chiyo was to love herself. To see sweet Chiyo smiling was to love the whole world.

In that way, Chiyo had become sort a symbol of everything that mattered and was irreplaceable in her high school experience: a special milieu to constantly return to, carefree, oblivious, innocent. An impossible person. An impossible setting, an impossible high school experience, an impossibly magical and perfect experience. (For her anyway. And for most of her friends. But not for all of her friends. Can you guess which of Sakaki's friends had a very bad, bad time during the latter portions of high school in a way that sapped the magic from everything?) What decadent serenity! What profligate bliss! Who is that? Who exists like that, as a person in this world? Who goes to high school at age 10? Who is clever and wise without peer and tirelessly charming and has perfectly conical pigtails that she flies on and a dad that's... Chiyo's dad was... Surprisingly, Sakaki found these parts hard to remember, like it's hard to remember a dream you had when you were a little girl. What was the deal with Chiyo's dad again? But anyway!! Who!! Who has a beachside vacation villa where you can go crack watermelons during the day and set off fireworks at night and have the forbidden truths of reality unveiled by a drunken Nyamo-sensei and Yukari-sensei before you collapse into your bedding and dream beneath the hot night air upon your sleeping form? Who goes to America at age 13 and becomes President when she turns 18? Was Chiyo even real? Was America even real? What was real? This throbbing feeling in her heart, this yearning, this aching. That was real. That was insistently, demandingly real, forcing her out into the hoary frost of awareness every time her senses dulled into a momentary bliss.

Without her even noticing, the clouds had begun to pass over the train that was taking her through the last leg of the journey, travelling beneath a weather pattern that stretched over all of Hokkaido. Soon it started drizzling, and then it began to pour briskly, the rivulets of rain rushed down the windowpanes. She sighed deeply, felt dissatisfied by the sigh, and then sighed again. After that one, relief came, a welcome if small relief. Of course it had been real. Tomo and Yomi had been real. Osaka and Kagura and Kaorin had been real. Yukari-sensei and Nyamo-sensei had been real. Every day in class and after-school, every vacation and graduation and beyond, all real... Chiyo was real, the kamineko, the yamapikaryaa, Chiyo's father, soramimi cake and raspberry heaven, real, all of them real...

Chiyo had been President of America for over a decade by now. and that was real. She was still cute, and sweet, and smart as can be. The Twintail party had swept the Democrats and Republicans in a universally demanded impromptu unscheduled election, creating a one-party Twintail state and changing everything, perhaps even averting some kind of great looming cataclysm. The once-fearsome rulers of America were now docile and mainly devoted to veneration of aesthetic concepts of cuteness. She was, as she always had been, still a flawless superhuman constantly pushing new frontiers of her limitless potential. Transcendent. Something completely impossible and yet wholly plausible, her natural growth rate exponential, encompassing the world in her twintailed embrace. And Sakaki was okay with everything now, okay with riding through the rain with no life plan, at the awkward behest of her ex-husband on her way to save the lives of some cows, because cows are cute. And Chiyo's cute. And Chiyo's real, and everything is real, and normal, and makes sense, and things would stay this way forever and ever and ever.

Sakaki smiled, but only for a little bit.