The Great Passage

by Shion Miura

What if the interior of a room mirrors the interior of its inhabitant?

The opposite is also true, we absorb and become the things and people that surround us.

He took out a pack of Nupporo Number One, soy sauce flavor, from the cupboard. A nearby discount shop sold this instant ramen by the case at a bargain price, but it seemed suspiciously fake. The instructions were full of obvious mistakes: “Five hundred liters of water will reach the boiling point.” “You should break noodles after throwing them in.” “Enjoy eggs, green onion, ham, and so forth.” Five hundred liters of water seemed altogether too much, but Majime liked the earnest tone of the instructions, and lately he’d been eating a lot of Nupporo Number One.

Majime picked up on her misgivings. He gave an embarrassed laugh. “Usually things are more organized here. The problem is that just as we were finishing up Wordmaster proofs, we had to start editing the Sokéboo Encyclopedia, so everything’s been at sixes and sevens.” At sixes and sevens? He actually uses that expression? The oddness of it struck her. As she was pondering it she stood with a stupid expression on her face and failed to reply. Then she realized he had just said something even stranger than “sixes and sevens.” “Sokéboo?” she parroted, thinking she might have misheard him. “That’s right.” He looked at her quizzically. “Don’t you know Sokéboo?” Of course she did. Socket Booster, aka Sokéboo, was a video game and anime series popular with children and adults alike. Ten-year-old Socket Booster traveled the universe, befriending all manner of creatures on the planets he visited. The creatures of the universe were of every imaginable shape, ranging from adorable to grotesque, and vivid in coloration. Some of them were more popular than Socket Booster. Even Kishibe, who had never played the game or seen the anime, was familiar with several of the characters.

Pokémon