Water Moon

Five Years Later

College. Marriage. Kids. These were the big decisions that people believed mattered. They were wrong, of course. In reality, it was the choices that people didn’t even realize they were making that set the course of their lives. The shifts were small, even minute, but, by the tiniest of angles, they pointed one in the direction of what was going to happen next.

In Keishin’s case, everything that was going to define the rest of his life was decided the second his eyes shifted from the instant spicy pork ramen to the chicken-flavored one, then back to the pork. He reached for the bright red pack and dropped it into a green plastic basket. This was not the time to experiment with new flavors. His flight to Switzerland was at six the next morning, and the last thing he needed was a bad stomach. In less than twenty-four hours, he was going to stand in front of an auditorium filled with scientists and press and announce the greatest scientific discovery of the last five decades. He rehearsed his speech in his head. His phone rang over his thoughts. “Okaa-san?” he answered.

“Keishin, make sure that you do not eat anything spicy before your flight,” Takeda Izumi said from the other end of the line. “You do not want to have a bad stomach before your speech.”