“Good morning, everyone.”

The voice belongs to my friend Saya’s big sister (currently employed by the Regional Life Information Section at the town hall). This place, Itomori, is a dinky little town with a population of fifteen hundred, so most people either know each other or at least know someone in common.

“Here are the morning announcements from Itomori.”

The slow stream of words from the speaker is clipped into phrases. “Here are… the morning announcements… from Itomori.” There are speakers outside, too, all over town, so the broadcast echoes off the mountains and overlaps with itself as if it’s being sung in rounds.

Twice a day, morning and evening, this disaster-prevention radio broadcast plays throughout the town. Every house has a receiver to faithfully relay the daily announcements about local events: the schedule for the sports meet, how to contact whoever’s in charge of shoveling the snow, yesterday’s births, today’s funerals.

“With regard to the Itomori mayoral election, which will take place on the twentieth of next month, the town election management committee has—”

Click.

The speaker over the lintel falls silent. Gran can’t reach it herself, so she’s pulled the plug. She’s past eighty and wearing her usual traditional kimono, but even so, the gesture wordlessly conveys her anger. Even as I’m impressed by her chilly ire, I grab up the remote and turn on the TV without missing a beat. Picking up where Saya’s sister left off, the smiling NHK news lady starts speaking.

“We’re now just a month away from a visit by a comet that appears only once every twelve hundred years. For a few days, the comet is expected to be visible to the naked eye. With the celestial show of the century just around the corner, JAXA and research institutes worldwide are scrambling in preparation to study it.”

There’s a line of text on the screen—Comet Tiamat visible to the naked eye next month—and a blurry picture of a comet. Our conversation has lost its momentum, and the only noise comes from the three of us taking our meal and the NHK broadcast. Our soft clinks and clicks sound a bit guilty, like whispered chatter during class.

“…Just make up with him already, wouldja?”

Out of nowhere, Yotsuha says something tactless.

“It’s an adult problem,” I snap at her.

That’s right—this is an adult problem. Stupid election! Somewhere in the wind, a black kite gives a rather silly-sounding cry: Piiihyororo.

Saying bye to Gran in unison, Yotsuha and I head out the door.

The summer copper pheasants are crowing up a storm.

Traveling down the narrow paved path that runs along the hillside and descending several stone-walled stairways, we emerge from the shadow of the mountain into direct sunlight. Below us is a round lake, Itomori Lake. Its calm surface reflects the morning sun, glittering and glaring as though nobody’s watching. The deep-green mountains form their ranks under white clouds in a blue sky, and a little girl with pigtails and a red school backpack skips along for no reason. Then there’s me beside her, the dazzling, bare-legged high school girl. In my head, I try adding a grand string score to the scene as background music. Ooh, it’s just like the opening of a Japanese film… In other words, we live in the boonies—very Japanese and a few decades behind the times.