Free Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami

cancer cells, the flowers were blooming. Against the background of a wall that rippled like white cloth, they scattered on the ground or suddenly danced up in the wind.
    I'm cold, as if I were dead, Lilly said.
    She was shaking and pulled me back toward the car. The classrooms seen through the windows seemed ready to devour us. The desks and chairs in regular rows reminded me of a mass grave for unknown soldiers. Lilly was trying to escape the silence.
    Running with all my might, I cut across the grounds. Lilly yelled after me.
    Come back, I'm begging you, you just can't go!
    I struggled up to the wire fence around the pool, and started climbing it. On the water below, ripples and counterripples blended into each other, looking just like a TV screen after all the day's broadcasting has ended. The water glittered, reflecting the lightning.
    Do you know what you're doing? Come back, you'll die, you'll end up dead!
    Her arms hugging her body, her legs twisted around each other, Lilly was yelling in the middle of the grounds.
    Tense as a deserter from the army, I dropped down beside the pool. Thousands of ripples were forming constantly, the water looked like translucent jelly—I hurled myself in.

    Lightning lit up the inside of Lilly's hands on the steering wheel. Blue lines lay buried in the transparent skin, water drops rolled down her muddy arms. On the road like a twisted metal tube, the car ran along beside the barbed wire enclosure around the Base.
    "Hey, I completely forgot."
    "What?" she asked.
    "In the city in my head I forgot to put in an airport."
    Strands of Lilly's mud-smeared hair clung together. Her face was pale, tiny veins pulsed in her neck, her shoulders were covered with goose pimples.

    I saw the water drops rolling down the windshield as being just like the round beetles of summer. Just like the little beetles that reflect the whole forest on their rounded backs.
    Lilly kept mixing up the accelerator and the brake, her white legs stretched out stiffly and she shook her head violently to clear it.
    "Hey, the city's just about done, but it's a city under the sea. So what'll I do about the airport, don't you have some idea, Lilly?"
    "Look, cut out the stupid talk, I'm scared, we've got to get back."
    "You should have washed off the mud, too, Lilly, won't it feel bad when it dries?
    It was beautiful in the pool, the water was glowing. That's when I decided to make it an undersea city, you know."
    "I said cut it out! Hey Ryū, tell me where we are now. I don't know where we're going, I can't see too well, hey, pull yourself together. We might die, dying is all I've been thinking about. Where are we, Ryū, tell me where we are!"
    Suddenly a metallic orange light flashed as if exploding in the car, Lilly wailed like a siren and let go of the steering wheel.
    At once I pulled the hand brake and the squealing car slid to the side, mauled the barbed-wire enclosure, hit a light pole, and stopped.
    A-ah, it's a plane, look, it's a plane!
    The runway swarmed with all kinds of light.
    A sheaf of searchlights revolved, the windows of buildings twinkled, guide lights along empty spaces flashed.
    The deafening roar of the sparkling, polished jet standing beside the runway shook everything around.
    There were three searchlights on a tall tower. After their cylinders of light passed us—necks of dinosaurs—the distant mountains shone. One lump of rain over there, cut away by the light, congealed into a sparkling silver room. The strongest searchlight turned slowly, lighting fixed areas, lighting another runway a short distance from us. We had lost our willpower in the shock of impact. Like cheap robots wound up and set to walk a certain direction, we got out of the car and walked toward the runway, closer to the jet roar shaking the ground.
    Now the light picked out the sides of the mountains in the opposite direction. Its huge sweeping orange circle peeled off the night, easily peeled off the night stuck to and wrapped