The Train to the City

For as long as he could remember, ever since he was 11 or 12, Haruto had been taking the train to the city.

It began one day when Haruto, still an elementary school student, sat in his room and stared at the ceiling. It was a plain sort of room, with wooden walls, paper doors and tatami floors. The boy had strict parents and no particularly strong interests, so his room was always uncharacteristically bare for a child his age.

As he laid on the floor looking upward, Haruto watched a beetle march along the underside of the wooden beam that ran the length of the room's ceiling. He stared at it with the tight focus of a predator stalking its prey but made no move. The ceiling was much too high for his short stature to reach and he was unbothered by its presence. The boy had no particular love or interest in bugs like many of his classmates, he had simply lived his young life in a house in the countryside full of them and had grown to tolerate their existence.

However, something about the way the beetle scurried along the center of the perfectly straight beam in a perfectly straight line made Haruto think of the railroad. The train tracks carved a similar line through the rural village he called home. Though he seldom crossed paths with the rails, for his way to school led him in the opposite direction, he could sometimes hear the distant chug chug chug of the trains or the screech of their horns as they made their way through Haruto's sleepy, unimportant village.

A few trains a day stopped at the tiny station that served as the sort of village center. Even more passed through without stopping on their way to bigger, busier and more impressive towns. The trains that did stop were usually the smallest, oldest and ricketiest wooden boxes that passed through.

Haruto had taken the train several times before into the neighboring town with his mother when he was younger. It felt big and busy compared to his village, but it had never excited him and he had little interest in returning.

Regardless, the sight of the beetle had impressed the idea of trains upon the bored young boy. Without another thought, Haruto left his room, shuffled down the hall and leapt from the floor down into his boots in the genkan and hurried outside, sliding the door shut behind him with a clatter. As he left the old wooden house with its paper walls and pitched, tiled roof, he passed the garden where his mother, wearing her green yukata with the sleeves rolled up, was engrossed in her vegetables and took no notice of him.

When he reached the narrow dirt lane that slithered its way between the houses and farms like a snake, he broke into a run. Haruto had no particular objective in mind other than to reach the train tracks. As he went, he passed by houses that looked like his, others that resembled little more than cobbled together shacks and more than a few rice fields and vegetable gardens like his mother's. His path crossed open fields where the late afternoon sun shined brightly, dense patches of woods where the branches stretched across the trail like a tunnel, and little bridges barely wide enough for one person at a time that crossed meandering streams.

Soon enough, he reached the tracks. They were made of wood and metal and ran along a gravel path that stretched to his left and right as far as he could see. Haruto's mother had warned him to stay away from the tracks as the passing trains were dangerous. The message had only really set in, however, when he read a comic set in the West. In the book, a lady was tied to the tracks by evil bandits as a massive steam engine barreled towards her. The hero, a daring cowboy who always knew what to do, saved her at the last possible second. The story had ended happily, and as far as Haruto was aware there were no bandits in his village, but it had nevertheless left an impression on the boy.

He stood for a long moment, waiting for a train to pass or anything to happen at all. The tracks remained as peaceful and quiet as ever, however, and he grew bored, so he decided to turn right and follow the tracks along to where he knew the tiny station at the center of the village would be.