Tyrannosaurus
I went to school today, same as always, carefully tucking into an envelope the clay we'd been told yesterday to bring. Word was we were going to have the kind of class where you made something out of it.
Maybe because we were only in third grade, textbook-heavy lessons were few and far between. Far more often we were nudged into all sorts of hands-on experiences. Even in a country people called an exam hell, they still urged you to try a little of everything while you were young.
I remembered my own childhood—not this one, the one before—and how I'd been shuffled through academy after academy. Taekwondo, piano, and a scatter of other shallow, varied lessons. I never uncovered any particular talent, but getting to try so many things had been fun all the same.
When I stepped into the classroom, Jiyu and Yumi were already in their seats. I tended to get to school early myself, but those two beat me every time. No matter how much you liked school, there was no need to show up this early!
"Hana, hi!"
Jiyu and Yumi waved, bright and glad to see me.
"Yo!"
I answered in my usual pose. We saw each other every single day, and yet I still couldn't keep up with how often Jiyu's and Yumi's hairstyles changed. I was ponytail only. Bora and Haru had offered to do something else with my hair, of course, but I'd shut that down with iron resolve.
No matter how I thought about it, nothing beat a ponytail. Grab a handful at the back, snap a band around it, and you were done—a hairstyle you could finish in ten seconds. I'd worn it down now and then, but most of the time I lived in a ponytail.
"You brought the supplies, right?"
Jiyu and Yumi thumped big lumps of clay onto their desks as they asked. Instead of answering, I pulled mine out of the envelope and set it down beside theirs.
"Didn't forget, so there!"
I might have been a little kid, but I wasn't the forgetful kind. I'd remembered the clay the teacher told us to bring. And even if I had spaced out, I could always have bought some at the stationery shop in front of the school.
We were still squishing and poking at a surprising amount of clay when the activity began in earnest. The teacher came in, offered a few explanations, and told us to make whatever we wanted. I already had an idea.
Beside me, Jiyu and Yumi were busily kneading something into shape. I wasn't about to lose to them, so I started working the clay with my own hands. The chill of it came through, vivid against my fingers.
"Hnn—!"
I poured every bit of focus I had into making what I wanted. Jiyu and Yumi, meanwhile, chattered away the whole time they worked. There I was, bringing an artisan's spirit to every careful press of my fingers...
"Hana, what are you making?"
Curious, Jiyu asked. I'd been waiting for exactly that question. Pointing at my masterpiece, already taking recognizable form, I declared:
"A dinosaur! A dinosaur!"
The creature that sets a man's heart ablaze. Picturing a giant dinosaur thundering across a wide grassland, I was bringing a life into the world.
"Isn't that a monster?"
Yumi made a strange remark, as if she couldn't recognize my masterpiece at all. I filtered out words that weren't worth answering and bent my concentration back to sculpting the dinosaur. Once the shape was finished, I picked up a plastic knife and started carving its expression and its scales.
The work demanded so much precision that sweat broke out on me. Like the master artisans on those living-treasure programs, I was bringing a dinosaur into being with the most delicate movements of my hands. If this had been a game, a system alert would have popped up—Masterpiece Complete!—and slapped an outrageous value on the thing.
"Whew."
Nearly finished, I stole a glance to see what Jiyu and Yumi were making. Yumi was shaping the rabbit she usually liked. Jiyu was forming some kind of round sphere, though I couldn't tell exactly what it was supposed to be.
"Ta-da!"
I had made a Tyrannosaurus. I didn't actually know what a Tyrannosaurus looked like, but if it was a dinosaur, Tyranno was the only one I knew—so I christened this masterpiece Tyrannosaurus.
Jiyu and Yumi seemed to have finished too. They came over and looked at the dinosaur I'd made.
"Pretty good, right?"
I showed it off with pride. Jiyu and Yumi gave awkward little laughs.
"Is it a worm?"
"I feel like I've seen this in a movie somewhere..."
To say that about my magnificent work... They were still little kids, so I could fully understand their lack of an eye for art.
The reaction to my masterpiece was thoroughly disappointing, so I saved it for Maru, who came to pick me up, and showed it to her instead.
"Whoa. Did you make this, Hana?"
"Yeah!"
"You did so well! Did you make a monster?"
Unbelievable... Even Maru, whom I'd trusted, failed to properly understand my masterpiece. I put on a tearful face and told her so.
"Maru, this is a Tyrannosaurus!"
"I...s it?"
"Yeah! It's got arms right here, and this grand, majestic head!"
I turned it this way and that, showing her every angle. But maybe my flashy handling was too much for her to follow—because the dinosaur's head snapped clean off.
"No!!!"
I had no choice but to scream. This was the moment my masterpiece vanished.
"Hnnn..."
Somehow I managed to stick the fallen dinosaur head back on. My heart had nearly dropped out of my chest. The clay must have been hardening. At this rate it would shatter to pieces before I ever got to show it to the people at the lab.
I held the dinosaur as if it were precious. Maru seemed to understand how I felt; she drove with a gentle hand. The rank-beginner Maru of the early days was gone.
Now she drove well enough to put a conglomerate chauffeur to shame. When it came to driving, time really was the answer. No matter how bad someone was, put in the hours and they could drive like an actual human being. Of course, among them were the truly talentless, who could drive for a hundred days or a thousand and still never get it. Weren't there grandmothers who sat the license exam hundreds of times? And stories of people who, the moment they finally passed, went out and totaled the car.
I watched Maru as she drove.
Where had that blank, vacant Maru gone? With her hands on the wheel, she was a career woman through and through. All she was doing was driving, and yet she looked like a different person—from the easy skill with which she turned the wheel, all the way to shifting gears as if it were nothing!
Watching her, I wanted to drive too. In my past life I'd only gotten the license and never actually driven, which made me want to try it even more.
"Maru."
"Hm? What is it, Hana?"
"I want to drive too."
When I said that, Maru glanced over at me, then looked forward again.
"You want to drive, Hana?"
"Yeah! I've even got a license!"
The moment I claimed to have a license, Maru's eyes wavered hard. Is that actually true? That seemed to be the feeling.
"Aren't you an elementary school student?"
"Yeah. I am."
"Then you don't have a license yet, do you? Do you have the card on you, Hana?"
Her question struck dead center, and all I could do was hem and haw.
"I... had one. It's gone."
"Wouldn't it be better to get it later, once you're a grown-up?"
I puffed my cheeks full of air. Hearing her put it like that made me feel betrayed. She got to drive, and I wasn't allowed!
Still, what she said was reasonable. My legs were too short to reach the accelerator or the brake. Even if I somehow managed to press them, my body would sink so low I couldn't hold the wheel. I was that small. A tiny little thing.
I already had the whole concept of driving in my head. That would help enormously when it came time to get a license.
"I'm gonna get my license!"
Starting today, I planned to study for it. I wanted to drive. And I was an adult, so there were no obstacles at all!
But seeing me like that, Maru gave an awkward smile.
"Hana, I think you'll have to get your license in about ten years."
"Maru, I'm confident! I feel like I could drive right now!"
Wasn't it just a matter of putting it in drive and stepping on the gas? Driving looked hard from the outside, but once you actually did it, it was easy. That was why I'd passed on the first try. If driving had been difficult, I wouldn't have gotten the license in one go.
"But you're not old enough yet, are you...?"
"Old enough...?"
"Yeah. You have to be twenty to get a driver's license."
Just as Maru said, I was a third grader, so I'd need at least ten years before I could get a license. I wilted. All I could do was fidget with my dinosaur the rest of the way.