Chapter 93 - Chapter 0: The Story Before the Story Begins, Part 2
Even though there was plenty of time, as expected, watching movies for hours on end made my eyes tired. I watched three two-hour movies, and when I got sleepy, I took a nap. When I woke up, the sky visible outside the window was stained orange. It was already dusk.
The light of the mobile phone placed by my pillow was blinking. When I started it up, an email from Mom was displayed first. She said she would be late coming home today. Several employees and part-timers hadn't come to work at the bank, and it was a situation where she couldn't possibly leave.
"Alone again... well, whatever."
Both Dad and Mom had been coming home late for a while now. Now, making dinner and eating alone was becoming a matter of course. Just as I was about to lift my body from the bed to check the ingredients in the fridge, I heard the low-frequency sound of a plane's jet engine from afar.
Partly because there was an international airport in the neighboring prefecture, the sight of passenger planes flying while trailing condensation trails was a common one if you looked up at the sky. At night, there was less noise than during the day, and the sound of jet engines could be heard well. The blue and red lights of the wingtips were clearly visible even from the ground.
Even those passenger planes, due to the government's travel restrictions and restrictions on foreign flights, had significantly decreased in number lately. Previously, at this time of day, planes heading west could be seen every few minutes, or even every few dozen seconds.
The sky, where the sun had dipped considerably, was starting to be enveloped in clouds. Come to think of it, the weather forecast said it would get cold tonight. And maybe it might snow.
I thought it would be nice if it snowed. It doesn't snow much around here. Even if it does, it's at most enough to thinly cover the ground, and it melts away the next day. Even so, I liked snow.
Both Father and Mother would be late coming home. Tonight would be dinner alone again. Just as I was about to leave the room to prepare the meal, I noticed that the sound of the plane's engine I'd been hearing since a while ago was becoming abnormally loud. The engine sound wasn't moving away; rather, it seemed to be getting closer and closer.
Looking, the window was also vibrating slightly. Immediately after, the ear-splitting metallic sound of a jet engine shook the whole house and passed over my head. Hurrying out to the balcony, I instinctively caught my breath at the sight there.
The first thing that caught my eye was the figure of a large passenger plane flying at an abnormally low altitude. It was turning its tail toward me and rapidly losing altitude. I even felt like I could clearly see each and every window on the side of the fuselage.
There was no airport in a place like this. While the passenger plane was making its fuselage wobble, it continued to descend diagonally toward the mountain range stretching across the northern part of the city. However, not even a hint of ascending could be felt. As if it had lost control.
With the fuselage tilted heavily to the right, the passenger plane plunged straight into a power line tower at the foot of the mountain range. The spark of the wing tearing through the electric wires was clearly visible even in the twilight, despite being several kilometers away.
Immediately after, the fuselage was sucked into the foot of the mountain in a form that tilted completely perpendicular to the ground. A moment later, a bright red explosion flame rose at that spot. A few seconds later, the roar that seemed to be from the explosion reached the ears of me, who was blankly watching the scene.
I understood that a passenger plane had apparently crashed when I noticed the existence of the smartphone in my hand. Apparently, I had unconsciously started the camera and recorded the whole sequence of events. When I pressed the play button, although the image quality was rough, dark, and extremely shaky, the footage from immediately after the plane passed over my house until it crashed was recorded.
I suddenly remembered the footage of the incident that triggered the war on terror I saw long ago. The terror where two passenger planes plunged into the Twin Towers in America when I was young. Even in that footage shown as part of a class, the plane had vanished as if it had been sucked into the wall of the building. Just like now.
"This is bad, this is bad, what do I do...?"
I understood that I had apparently become a witness to a major accident, but I didn't know what I should do. Report it? Where? 119 or the police? No, even the police and fire department would surely know that a plane had crashed on the north side of the city, no matter what. The explosion sound just now must have roared throughout the city.
Or should I post this video on a video site? It's a recording of an important accident; maybe it would be played 100,000 times in an hour. Not only that, TV stations that saw the video might come for an interview. If that happened, would I get an interview fee?
By the time I thought that far, I remembered that there must have been people on that passenger plane. In that situation, there would certainly be no survivors. After all, it had plunged into the foot of the mountain at high speed. If there were people surviving while the fuselage was in pieces and burning, that would be at a level that could no longer be called a miracle.
"...Anyway, I should report it."
I was ashamed of myself for being excited about interviews and such until a moment ago. I tucked the mobile phone gently into my pocket and tried to run down the stairs to report to 119. But, it wouldn't connect. I thought the lines might be jammed with people all over the city who had seen the sight just now and were reporting it, but the power to the phone wasn't even on to begin with.
The plug was in, and there was no sign of a malfunction. Thinking maybe..., I pressed the switch for the fluorescent light in the living room, but this also didn't turn on. Earlier, when that passenger plane crashed, it had cut the power lines on the tower with its wing. Because of that, a power outage was occurring.
I thought a mobile phone might connect, but this one also seemed to have jammed lines. It wouldn't connect to the police or the fire department. For the time being, I wrote an email to Mom, but for some reason, it couldn't be sent.
"What should I do..."
On top of the power outage, I couldn't even contact my family. It seems social networks like Twitter are usable even during disasters as long as the internet is alive, but unfortunately, no one in my family, including me, had an account. For now, I told Dad and Mom through a free calling app that a plane had crashed and a power outage had occurred, but there was no reply, perhaps because the two were still at work.
Suddenly, I became anxious. The riots overseas that have been shouted about so much lately. Could the crash just now be because of that? The plane just now, as far as I could see, didn't look like the engine had stopped or the fuselage was broken. And even though the ground was approaching, there wasn't even a sign of decelerating or making an emergency landing. To me, it looked as if the fuselage had lost control, as if the pilot had disappeared.
Fearfully, I operated the smartphone and browsed a news site. Then, on the top page, the headline "Riots Occur in Tokyo" was jumping out. Finally, the infection had spread to Japan too.
But the reality of it didn't well up in me. The moment the plane crashed, which I had just witnessed, had more impact than the fact that infected people had occurred in Japan. Still, the riots by the infected had only as much weight as an event in some far-off country. If a riot actually occurred in front of me, my way of taking it might change, but now it only had about the same impression as a disaster that occurred in a distant prefecture.
In the event that infected people were confirmed in Japan, it had been circulated in the neighborhood association's circular yesterday that an evacuation center would be opened at the nearby junior high school. Should I try going there, just in case?
The phone won't connect due to the power outage, and on top of that, infected people have appeared. Since I only confirmed the latter on a news site, there's a possibility of it being a hoax or a misidentification, but the fact that a plane crashed in front of me cannot be moved. Just in case, it might be okay to go to the evacuation center and check for information. Since the school also has emergency generators and disaster radio receivers, accurate information should gather there.
And a rescue team to rescue the passengers of the plane would also be formed. In that case, there's a possibility that the junior high school will become its base. In actual past crash accidents, school gymnasiums and schoolyards have been used by rescue teams and the JSDF. Since manpower will be needed for that setup, it might be okay to try going as a volunteer. Either way, rather than staying in a pitch-black house, it's better to go to the school where electricity might be usable.
I was using such things as excuses, but the truth was I was just anxious about waiting for Dad and Mom to come home alone in a dark house. I witnessed the sight of hundreds of people dying in an instant right in front of me, and on top of that, news that the infectious disease troubling the world had landed in Japan came in. I couldn't contact my parents, and the house remained without power. There's no one who wouldn't feel lonely with this.
Fortunately, the junior high school designated as an evacuation center is at a distance of about ten minutes on foot from the house. I can just go for a bit to gather information, or wait for the power to be restored. It's a distance where I can return immediately if anything happens.
Thinking that way, my resolve to go to the junior high school solidified. Just in case, I sent an email to my parents saying I was going to the junior high school, which is the evacuation center, and left a note in case it didn't arrive due to some mistake.
I was about to leave the house as I was, but I thought about whether it was okay to go in plain clothes, so I changed into my high school uniform. Even though I graduated, a school is a school. And my homeroom teacher from when I was in the third year of junior high should still be working at the school. I don't want to be seen in a pathetic appearance.
There would be no need to bring a change of clothes or anything. The house hasn't collapsed, and household goods haven't been washed away by flooding. If it becomes necessary, I can just come back again. Thrusting my student ID for identification and my wallet into my pocket, I left the house.
Outside, neighbors were out on the road, gazing in the direction where the plane had crashed. People were leaning out from the balconies of houses, pointing at the foot of the mountain, which was the crash site, or taking pictures with mobile phones. The town, where all the streetlights and lights of houses had gone out, was starting to be enveloped in darkness.
I'm waiting for your opinions and impressions.