Yukimura had been smiling a lot lately. Perhaps he always did, but I hadn’t noticed, given his presence was as thin as wrapping plastic. Plus he wasn’t an otaku. Otaku are still identifiable; mention Akihabara, and people might think, “Ah, that guy.” But Yukimura has nothing recognisable. He was neither here nor there, sometimes boldly crossing the street at a red light, sometimes not.
But then, he was recognisably happy.
“Something good happened?” I asked.
“Do you know what a melon is?” he queried.
“The fruit, melon?”
He furrowed his brows and nodded. “I might be the only person who just found out melons are a fruit.”
So this was what Yukimura told me: A week ago, in the dead of night, he heard a girl singing, “Melon~ Melon~.” The next day, he mentioned it to his mother, who told him casually, “Perhaps she was asking her parents to buy a melon?” Confused, Yukimura replied, “But what is a melon?” It was then he realised that there was a fruit called melon.
His mother hastily took out a thermometer and checked his temperature. He found her concern silly. “After all, nobody knows every fruit in the world”, he thought. But when he saw melons prominently displayed in supermarkets, advertised on train billboards, and a search on his phone yielded 186 million web pages about melons, he began to understand that the silliness wasn’t his mother’s, but his own. That day, he bought a box of the green fruit, tasting it for the first time.
The biggest mystery unsolved, Yukimura thought, was still the girl. He decided to stay up, waiting for the singing to return. As he ate melon and watched the moon, he pondered how the girl was a portal, destined to pull him from a world without melons to one with them, though the reason remained elusive.
The Melon Girl didn’t appear that night.
The next day, he bought thirteen melons from the supermarket, delivering them to his neighbours while casually inquiring if any young girls nearby were fond of melons. “I even asked in online forums, explaining the mystery I had encountered. Some said I was crazy, which I’m not. Some suggested I’d seen a ghost, maybe.”
I thought it would make a nice short story.
“So in the end, you found the girl?” I asked, pen in my hand, taking note.
“No luck.”
“Hm? Then why are you happy?”
“Don’t you think the story is wonderful?”
“It is.”
“And look, I, the man who never knew melons, am the protagonist!” he exclaimed.