Seabed Slow Read Part 6: Airport

Hi, and welcome back to Seabed! This will be a very quick one since the scene itself isn’t very long, and only a few things really stand out in my mind about it.

Back in the regular story, we join Takako and Sachiko at an airport, bound for Paris – city of culture and, of course, Parisians, who are known for being quite rude. And by ‘rude’, I mean there’s a rare culture-bound psychological condition, primarily afflicting Japanese people such as Sachiko and Takako, caused by the sheer disparity between the reputation of Paris as a place of art and culture, and the attitudes of the Parisian people at large. It’s called Paris Syndrome, and knowing about it probably isn’t going to help us analyse the story in any way, but since this is a psychological type of VN I thought I might as well bring it up.

More significant, in a meta-narrative kind of way, is the fact that the two are travelling at all. We’ve already discussed ‘a town surrounded by mountains’, and the ‘closed circle’ formation of mystery stories; to have them so easily break the circle at any point is almost an authorial statement to say “Sorry, this isn’t that kind of mystery.”

We also seem to have advanced in time a bit; last time we left the two they were high schoolers, and now they’re at least of driving age. We know this because they’re running late, something Takako blames on Sachiko’s slow driving, and Sachiko blames on Takako oversleeping. They also have what looks like new sprites to match, although it might just have been a while since I’ve seen them.

Takako showing off her new shirt.

What follows is probably the most significant exchange in the scene: Sachiko talks about preventative driving.

“It’s based in foreseeing the possible dangers on the road. You might be going too fast without realising it. A car might appear in the opposing lane. A pedestrian might jump on the road.”

Takako makes light of this, but from a reader perspective, this is one of those moments of setting up irony for a future incident – with the twist that if the incident happens to Sachiko, as I suspect it might, it will end up ironic either way. Either it will be something she foresaw but couldn’t do anything about, it will be something she didn’t foresee despite being cautious enough to look ahead on the metaphorical road, or it will be something she can’t possibly have foreseen despite looking. All of those possibilities will now have an extra little sting in the tail.

If something being repeated was enough to make it significant, I’d probably be looking for some deeper meaning in the words ‘boston bag’ and ‘castor wheels’ right now; they get repeated a lot, named fully every single time. I think it’s just stiffness in the text, though. Takako’s boston bag is apparently significant enough to warrant a little extra description – an antique-looking thing, with a lot of freight seals in different languages, and apparently manages the odd feat of being both extremely heavy – enough to make Takako, who as we remember, is tall and seems at least passably athletic – and having barely anything in it, since Sachiko makes the point that Takako is travelling light with the intention of buying clothes at her destination ‘again’.

This implies a few things. Firstly, there’s a certain socio-economic implication here: Paris is not a particularly cheap city to visit, especially if you plan on buying clothes and supplies while you’re there. At least the flight isn’t that expensive – I did a quick search, and tickets from Japan to Paris are apparently about 600 or so dollars at today’s rates, provided you’re willing to stop a couple of times on the way. ‘Again’ implies that they make or have made at least a number of similar trips, which assumes some level of disposable income. Secondly, of course, it implies that Takako is a relatively good traveller, able to find the facilities she needs when she reaches a location, and isn’t particularly tied down by material goods.

Another thing mentioned in passing is that Sachiko is proficient with English, enough to at least understand simple airport announcements. Might be relevant later.

Other than that, the two are bickering more or less like a married coupled, and the scene closes with Sachiko almost leaving Takako behind, leaving her friend to run behind her.