Takeru was, more or less, an ordinary ten-year-old. The one thing he had going for him was his eyesight — sharp enough that he liked to brag about it. And it was those eyes that spotted the strange thing a month ago, before anyone else did.
Takeru’s town sat on a small planet. At night, a much bigger neighboring planet filled half the sky. It had always shown the same face, a familiar, pockmarked one. Takeru had named every crater on it: the Frying Pan, the Spilled Milk, the Sleepy Eye. He could point to any of them with his eyes closed.
But one day, near the very top edge of that face, a line appeared that nobody had ever seen before. It was straight — straight as if someone had drawn it with a ruler.
“Mom, that’s weird, look.”
His mother looked up at the sky through the window and went quiet for a moment.
”…You’re right. It really is straight.”
Every few days after that, another line showed up. Each new line met the last at a crisp, clean angle, and slowly the whole thing turned into a sharp-edged, perfect shape. It looked as if someone were pressing a ruler against the sky every single night. Of course, nobody could actually do that.
“Hey, what happens once all the corners are there?”
“Who knows,” his mother said. “Even I don’t have an answer for that one.”
She wasn’t the only one without an answer. The whole town started talking about the shape. A notice went around the neighborhood. On the blackboard at the community hall, someone kept a tally of the corners, adding one every morning. Some people said more corners meant something good was coming. Others said it was a bad omen. By the time a rumor made it all the way around the neighborhood, it usually came back with a few extra details tacked on.
Why was it so straight? Why did it keep growing? Nobody could answer either question. And because nobody could, everyone was afraid.
Eventually the town made a rule: close the shutters facing that side before bed. Not looking at it, apparently, was the safest option. Grown-ups seemed to feel better once they’d decided not to look.
“Takeru, you’re not allowed to look that way anymore either.”
”…Okay.”
Really, he hated it. He was the one who’d found that line first. He didn’t want to close the shutters. So Takeru pretended they were broken.
Mr. Fukuda came to fix them — the man in town who could fix anything. He set down his toolbox and went straight to work pulling the shutter apart. He didn’t look the least bit scared.
“Mr. Fukuda, aren’t you scared of that shape?”
“Which one?”
“That straight line thing.”
Mr. Fukuda glanced up at the sky and gave a short laugh through his nose.
“Oh, that. Nothing to be scared of.”
“But nobody’s drawing it, and it’s still perfectly straight.”
“Something that’s been spinning round and round,” Mr. Fukuda said, turning a screw, “if nobody stirs it up and you just leave it alone for a long, long time, the edges line themselves up straight, all on their own. That’s just how it works. Leave a thing alone long enough, and it gets neater, not messier.”
Oh. Is that all. Takeru felt a little relieved. Then, almost without thinking, he pointed at the familiar face on the other side.
“Then what about the bumpy side, over here?”
“That side’s the opposite,” Mr. Fukuda said, hands still moving. “All those dents are from things crashing into it, over and over, for ages. Scars, basically. That’s the side that’s taken a beating.”
Takeru looked at the pitted, familiar face. The Frying Pan. The Spilled Milk. The Sleepy Eye. Every crater he loved, the ones he could name with his eyes shut — all of it was scar tissue.
This was the face that had taken every hit. The straight-edged side hadn’t been hit by anything at all. It had simply been left alone. Untouched by a single thing, it was quietly becoming perfect.
“There, all fixed,” Mr. Fukuda said, and left with his toolbox.
That night, every shutter in town facing that direction clicked shut, tight.
Takeru couldn’t sleep. He got up quietly and pressed his eye to the gap in the shutter. The familiar face was still the same craters it had always been. The Frying Pan, the Spilled Milk, still right where they’d always been. Come to think of it, no new dent had shown up in a long time.
On the other side, with no one’s hand anywhere near it, a new line stretched out, straight as ever. One more corner had been added.
Takeru was the only one watching.
Takeru closed the shutter.