Tatsu was a peculiar sort of man. In eighty years of living, he’d never once set foot outside his hometown. Not that he’d chosen to stay — it was more that he’d simply never gotten around to leaving.
“Just once, I’d like to go somewhere I ain’t never been.”
These days it had become his catchphrase, muttered to no one in particular as he sipped tea on the porch. His wife Fumi just said “sure, sure” and let it slide.
Of course, actually getting anywhere meant booking passage on a ship, and starships to distant worlds cost a fortune and rattled your bones the whole way there. Just thinking about the paperwork wore Tatsu out, so he’d pour himself more tea instead. Ten years had gone by like that, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere near anywhere.
One morning, his neighbor Sakai called over the fence.
“Tatsu, don’t you know? This whole town — planet and all — is slowly being carried off somewhere.”
“Carried off? Say what now.”
“It moves so smooth, nobody notices. The ground under your feet’s been on the move the whole darn time.”
Tatsu’s eyes lit up.
”…So what you’re saying is — if I just sit right here, nice and still, it’ll haul me off somewhere far, all on its own?”
“Well. In theory, anyway.”
From that day on, Tatsu stopped moving.
He spread a straw mat on a hill at the edge of town — the one with the good view — and planted himself down with nothing but a boxed lunch and a water flask.
“Today, I set off on my travels. No fare needed. Not one step to walk. I just sit here, and this planet carries me along.”
Fumi was unimpressed. “You’re going to sit up there for days?”
“Hush now. I’ve only just departed.”
From the hilltop, Tatsu looked down at the town. It did seem to be drifting away, bit by bit. The post office roof, the bakery’s doorway curtain — this would be the last he’d see of them. In his heart, he said his goodbyes, one by one. Farewell, bathhouse I visited for sixty years. Farewell, brother I never stopped arguing with. At last, unknown lands awaited —
One day passed. Then two.
On the evening of the third day, footsteps climbed the hill. It was Fumi, carrying a tray with something still steaming on it.
“Dinner’s ready, old man.”
”…How did you know I’d be here?”
“What’s there to know.” Fumi set the tray down and sat beside him. “You’ve been parked on this hill for three days straight.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I’ve been traveling three whole days. I ought to be good and far from here by now.”
“You haven’t gone anywhere.” Fumi laughed. “If the planet’s carrying the whole town along, then the hill, the house, the post office — they’re all moving right along with it. Same speed as you, exactly. That’s why the town never gets any farther away. And I’ve been right behind you this whole time, too.”
Tatsu’s mouth fell open. The post office roof he’d thought was shrinking into the distance sat exactly where it had three days ago. The bakery’s curtain still swayed in the same breeze. He really hadn’t taken a single step — but it seemed nobody had been left behind, either.
“What… So I haven’t gone anywhere at all?”
His shoulders sagged. All that grand travel, and it turned out to be nothing more than an extension of the porch. Fumi giggled behind the rising steam. Sulking, Tatsu reached for his chopsticks and the cooling rice.
— And then, by chance, he glanced up at the sky.
”…Fumi.”
“Hm?”
“Those stars. Were they always there?”
Stars he’d never seen before had come out above the hill. Not just one or two, either. Their shapes, their colors — nothing like the sky he used to watch as a boy. He searched and searched, but not a single familiar star remained.
It had all moved so smoothly that nobody noticed. It wasn’t just the ground underfoot. Over eighty years, the sky overhead had been quietly swapped out too, every last star of it.
”…Seems I’ve gone an awful long way after all.” Tatsu set down his chopsticks.
Fumi looked up at the sky, then at the husband beside her.
“See? You made it somewhere you’d never been, just like you wanted.”
The two of them sat side by side on the mat, gazing up at the unfamiliar stars. The rice on the tray had long since gone cold.