kscans

Chapter 1 - Yutetsu's Dream

It was a memory from long, long ago—from a time when I was just a little girl.

The north wind, sharp enough to slice at their cheeks, whipped up the powdery snow, and a fierce blizzard completely blotted out the view. In the memory, the two little girls wore matching bright red coats and red boots, their gloved hands—each adorned with the same appliqué—clasped tightly together. They stomped their feet in a quick rhythm on the thin layer of snow accumulating on the platform, their breath turning white in the air.

Platform 3 of Nopporo Station. Just as a fine, white decoration began to sparkle on their eyelashes, a single-car diesel railcar pulled into the station. It had a cream-colored body with red lines, and its sides were lined with windows like a bus. It was completely different from any passenger car Tsukie had ever ridden, and her eyes lit up.

"Wow! What a cute train, Akina-chan!"

Akina, her eyebrows now white with snow, nodded happily, her cheeks flushed red.

"It gets even more fun once it starts moving."

The two of them briskly brushed the snow from each other's coats and climbed aboard the car as if in a dance.

They sat down primly in the middle of a long bench seat that ran along the side of the car. The car was sparsely filled with passengers. An old peddler woman with a large bundle on her back set down her load and made herself small in a seat near the entrance. An old man wearing thick, spiral-lensed glasses stood with his arms crossed further back, still as a statue. A woman blowing her nose with a tissue, a young lady with a scarf wrapped all the way up to her eyes—none of them paid any mind to the little girls.

The train departed the station, and as it rounded the first curve, it began to pick up speed. The car started to sway from side to side. It rocked like a pendulum, so much so that it felt like they would tumble right off the seat if they didn't hold on tight.

Before long, the hanging straps began to dance in unison from right to left, matching the swaying of the car. A perfectly synchronized line dance. With each swing, the straps widened their arc, planting a kiss on the metal pipe of the luggage rack that jutted out near the ceiling. It made a sound like this:

Chak.

With a delay of mere hundredths of a second, the straps kissed the luggage rack, one after another, from the front of the car to the back.

Chak, chak, chak, chak...

The rhythm carved out by the straps and the rack—swaying and returning, returning and swaying—continued with a delightful beat. The little girls swayed their bodies left and right in time with the sound, intoxicated by the rhythm. The exquisite harmony of the wheels on the rails and the clacking of the straps. Occasionally, the train would slow for a curve. As the car tilted, the straps would go limp in an irregular motion, swimming in midair as if momentarily bewildered.

A sudden, discordant note. The break in the sound and the movement of the straps was so funny that the girls looked at each other and laughed.

The rhythm of the train on the tracks. The rhythm of the dancing straps. The Yubari Railway, pushing on through the midwinter wilderness, was like a secret concert hall.

The Yubari Coalfield once flourished beyond compare. The Yubari Railway was built and maintained for the coal mines, single-handedly responsible for transporting the excavated coal. Though it was eventually decommissioned as the mines closed one after another, it was, without a doubt, a railway that carried the dreams and futures of countless people—