The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

VOICES IN THE NIGHT

All day long, Masako had wondered whether she should tell her mother about the incident at the station. And by the time she arrived home, she’d decided it was the right thing to do. Funnily enough, though, her mother didn’t seem in the least bit surprised.

“Well Masako, there’s something I didn’t tell you about before, because I didn’t want you to worry,” she said with a frown on her face.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s not such a big deal as it might sound, but your father quit his job.”

“He did? Why?”

“Well, his company didn’t have as much work to do as they had before, so they needed to let some of the workers go.”

“Let them go? But that means he didn’t quit, right? He was fired!”

“I guess so. But there’s really nothing to worry about. Your father is lucky. He’s a skilled engineer. So he’ll have no trouble at all finding a new job. In fact, he’s already received an offer from another company.”

“Oh, I see.”

Masako couldn’t help but think it might have been better for her parents to tell her what was going on.

I’m an adult, too, she thought to herself, so I’m old enough to be told things as important as that. She felt especially frustrated with her father, and wished he would stop seeing her as just a child. So she decided to confront him about this on the way to the station the next day.

“So, dad, have you already decided on your next job?”

she said, out of the blue.

Her father’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Oh, so you know about that?” he said, then laughed out loud. “I guess you must have overheard me when I came home the other night, did you? I came home a little drunk and was probably talking louder than I should have, and complaining about how the company was going to ‘give me the chop’. I probably woke you up.”

Suddenly, Masako understood where Yoshio’s night vision might have come from.

“Did you say ‘give me the chop’?” she asked in a voice that was also a little too loud.

“I did,” answered her father. “But there’s no need to shout!”

“But I figured it out! The head Yoshio saw — it was yours!”

Poor little Yoshio must have overheard his father’s voice in his sleep and conjured up the image of a bloody severed head. Masako couldn’t help but giggle at how silly the whole episode had been, and so she told her father all about it.

“But this time might be a bit more difficult than last time,” she continued. “We need to tell Yoshio that you were fired. Then we need to tell him that there’s nothing to worry about.”

Masako’s father smiled and patted her on the shoulders with his large, warm hands.

“Oh Masako,” he said with a proud look on his face. “You’re such a clever girl. A born psychologist!”