I was 10 years old when the aliens arrived. I remember a couple of days before, Mum driving me and Dad to Haneda Airport, my sweat-sodden t-shirt clinging to my back, Mum telling me how lucky I was to be escaping the dense hot air of Tokyo in August. At Departures, Mum lunged into the hug. I breathed in the scent of Wright's Coal Tar Soap on her neck. The hug went on for a long time and I was embarrassed, but no one in the airport cared, and I was sad when Mum let go.

Dad had a meeting at Regent's University, so I stayed all day in the hotel at Heathrow, watching Attack on Titan, and sleeping. We flew up to Edinburgh the next day. As Dad tells it, on August 5th we cleaned and aired the house, went to Tesco, and got everything ready for Mum's arrival. I have a vivid memory of the next morning, coming downstairs to find Dad transfixed by the news on the TV. All contact had been lost with Japan. No flights had left, all communication channels were silent. Satellites went blind when pointed at the archipelago. The Americans scrambled three fighter jets from Guam. They crossed into the Exclusion Zone, 44 kilometers from the coast, and disappeared. China dispatched a reconnaissance aircraft, but they lost communication with the crew after the plane entered the Exclusion Zone.

Were those thousands of islands still there? Were the Japanese, all 126 million of them, still alive? In the hours that followed, governments issued statements, and emergency summits were held. The Japan Government in Exile was hastily established at Two California Plaza in Los Angeles. JGE offered counsel to the newly displaced Japanese people around the globe, and voiced their concerns to the international community.

August 7th brought an announcement from the United Nations. The aliens had sent a message, consisting of one simple formula. It was a cure for the common cold. The day after that the aliens sent a cure for malaria. A week later, humankind found themselves with a cheap and efficient method for the desalination of sea water.

In the face of these offerings, the world paused. Questions, of course, remained. Who were the aliens? What did they want with Japan? What was happening behind the curtain they had drawn? They offered no communication beyond their offerings. No justifications for their actions, no excuses, no threats. But the unspoken barter was clear — we give you all this, and in return, we take Japan.

There was no further contact for a year. For those twelve months, world leaders expressed concern and argued over how to react, but they took no action. The JGE worked on securing refugee status for the Displaced Japanese, while in Washington, military commanders urged the President and Congress to prioritize recovery of the US bases in Okinawa and Honshu. Then exactly one year after they arrived, on August 6th, the aliens sent a cure for multiple sclerosis. The next year, on the same date, they sent designs for harnessing solar power that took energy yield to unimagined heights. After that, talk of recovering Japan and those trapped inside receded, as every summer, in anticipation of the gifts (they were no longer called 'offerings'), fevered chatter about a cure for cancer took over in the days leading up to August 6th.

The irony of the date was lost on no one. Every year the significance was debated, analyzed, and dissected. The aliens had a name now. In an article in The New York Times, my Dad had called them the 'Sako,' a shortened version of 'sakoku,' the Japanese word for the 265-year feudal period when Japan closed itself off from the world. The name stuck, and Dad became Dr. Takagi, media star.

This story came at me in fragments over the years, but I pieced it all together one long weekend spent online when I was sixteen. To be honest, I went through primary school and into my teenage years barely registering news of the aliens, their gifts, and Dad's role in naming them. I simply knew that I was lonely and missed my Mum.

Keisuke had secured a plum spot over the bow. He and Ami were sharing a tube of Pringles. A cry of "Man overboard!" had gone up minutes earlier, Ami told him, because someone had jumped, and Ami was worried that it was Hiroshi.

"Why would it be him?" asked Keisuke.

Ami smiled and blushed, then play-punched Keisuke on the arm. She's flirting again, thought Hiroshi. Ami's skinny frame and doe-eyed charm had no appeal for him. Her duck face was cute, but her smile was gawky. Keisuke, bronzed, with dazzling teeth, had the athletic build of an Olympic swimmer. He's out of your league Ami, thought Hiroshi, when they met on Prep Week in Seoul. But Keisuke responded to Ami's flirtations. In fact, he encouraged them. Hiroshi did not know why.

In Seoul, Keisuke, Ami and Hiroshi had bonded as the only 18-year-olds. Keisuke had sought them out and drawn them together. Keisuke's father had a belief in the benevolence of the Sako that bordered on religious fervor. "Pop says the Sako have been sent to save us," said Keisuke. "The grace they are bestowing on Japan will soon be shared with the whole world." Keisuke was adamant that the sailing would part The Curtain, reunite Japan with the world, and compel the Sako to reveal themselves.

Ami's parents were zealots of a different order. The JGE had splintered into ideological camps, and a group called The Kyoto Faction claimed their compatriots trapped behind The Curtain needed help; the spirit of Yamato damashi demanded action from all patriots now living abroad. It was their proposal that a ship full of willing Japanese should sail to the aid of the motherland. Ami was one of the first volunteers, and her parents' approval was enthusiastic. Her Mum and Dad ran a graphic design company in Houston and work commitments, they said, kept them from this initial sailing. But they would come next year for sure, and join Ami at her grandmother's house in Nagasaki. Soon, Ami would be getting ready to call them. She had promised that they would be on FaceTime when she crossed into the Exclusion Zone.

In Seoul, Hiroshi had told his new friends how Mum had changed her flight plans a week before they left Tokyo, because her boss had insisted that she attend a strategy meeting. The story brought Ami to tears. When Ami and Keisuke asked about his father, Hiroshi shrugged and told them that he and his father had different opinions on the sailing. They were unaware that he was the son of the famous Dr. Takagi. Last night, drunk on the sake Keisuke had smuggled aboard, Hiroshi told them the story about the bridge, the last conversation he had had with his Dad.

The ship sounded three bells. They were 90 minutes out.

"Are you gonna FaceTime your Dad?" Ami asked Hiroshi.

Hiroshi slipped down in his plastic deck chair, closed his eyes, and felt the August breeze warm his eyelids.

"You're a Japanese person who has never been to Japan," Hiroshi told her.

The smell of fresh coffee hit Hiroshi as he came downstairs to the kitchen.

Good morning.

Risako was sipping from a mug cup at the kitchen island. She had been staying overnight more and more. The affair, when he first became aware of it, bothered Hiroshi. When his father stopped trying to hide it, it enraged him. Even though she was born and raised in Edinburgh, even though her English was native, Risako insisted on speaking Japanese with Hiroshi. She thought she was doing Hiroshi some kind of favor, no doubt, helping him to keep up his Japanese. But his Japanese was just as good as hers. And anyway, Japanese with a Scottish twang was an assault on his nerves.

Hiroshi took a croissant, gulped down some apple juice, and turned to leave.

And Happy Birthday, said Risako.

"Yeah," mumbled Hiroshi, happy to close the door on her dingbat Japanese.

Aaron opened the door and invited him in. As Hiroshi was taking off his shoes and his sodden jacket, Aaron went away and came back with a towel. Hiroshi handed over the Nintendo game console he had promised to bring.

"Take good care of it."

"I will, I will. Just till you get back," said Aaron.

Two years ago, Aaron's family had left Los Angeles when his father took up a teaching position at University of Edinburgh. In California, Aaron had Japanese friends, and so on his first day at secondary school he laser-beamed on Hiroshi. Aaron told Hiroshi how he missed the Japanese restaurants in Santa Monica. Edinburgh had nothing that compared.

"There are great sushi joints in Tokyo, dude, right?" Aaron had asked.
"I guess so," said Hiroshi. "I mean, I was 10 when I left."

Hiroshi followed Aaron into the living-room. "So you're doing the sailing. Wild, dude, wild," said Aaron, opening up a bag of weed.

The American President was on TV, addressing a rally in Knoxville, Tennessee. "There are no aliens! The Japs are doing it themselves!" said the world's most powerful man. The crowd hooted. Hiroshi's Dad said the man was Commander-in-Chief of a military rendered obsolete by the Sako, and his chest-puffing was to be pitied. Still, it bothered Hiroshi that this was the line the President was peddling — that it was a national conspiracy.

By the Japs.

The crowd whooped again. Hiroshi watched the scene and felt his thoughts cloud. The Japanese doing all this themselves? Ridiculous, it made no sense. But in a world where aliens now existed, sense no longer applied.

"Man, that dude," said Aaron. The tone was non-committal — it could have been condemnation, or support.

"You agree with him?"

Aaron wrinkled his nose. "Wow, no way man. No way."

Hiroshi was wondering whether to believe him, when Aaron said, "But it ain't aliens."

Aaron licked his roll, held up the spliff, and examined his handiwork.

"Who is it then?"

Aaron smiled, as if this was exactly the question he hoped Hiroshi would ask.

"God."

Aaron said it simply, matter-of-fact.

"It's the Bible man, Garden of Eden, forbidden fruit. He's re-setting us. This is the test. The cures? The technology? Think about it dude — they're manna from Heaven. And they are going to keep coming. But we can't have everything. Adam and Eve my man, they had it all. Paradise! In return, God said Do Not Touch This One Thing. You have to stay innocent and trusting. The Tree of Knowledge? That's Japan, dude."

Hiroshi wished he knew The Bible better. He couldn't tell if this was bullshit or genius.

"This ship you're going on? You're defying God, man. You think you need to know, that you'll have everything, but all that awaits you is a fall from grace, dude."

Aaron lit the spliff, and took a big puff.

Hiroshi had to hand it to him. He'd seen a lot of online chat about conspiracies and stuff. But God taking Japan to test mankind? This was a new one.

Aaron was back staring at the TV. Hiroshi thought he'd been forgotten, until Aaron spoke again.

"You're sailing straight into Hell."

Hiroshi realized he had been naive to think his father would not know he had secured a berth. Dr. Takagi was waiting for Hiroshi when he came home.

There was a moment just before the sabbatical year in Edinburgh when Angie had urged her husband to use the time in Scotland to bond with the boy. That message, like so many other things, had been forgotten in the feverish clamor generated by the alien arrival. The ensuing media career was fortuitous. Hiroshi was only 10 then; he had no grasp of the financial struggle of so many Displaced Japanese who lost not only their homeland, but were impoverished overnight. Gordon, Angie's Dad, had let them stay with him for a few months, until they fell out about Masayoshi only speaking Japanese to Hiroshi.

The media money was coming in by then and they could afford to move out. Dr. Takagi had provided a good home in Edinburgh, and had employed Risako to make sure the boy was properly looked after when he was away. Yes, he could have handled the relationship with Risako better. He had let euphoria get the better of him, and he regretted that. There was no point in telling a 10-year-old boy about a foundering marriage, that Angie was having an affair with her boss, that she had stayed behind that summer to have one more night with her lover. There was certainly nothing to be gained from telling him now. Angie, like all things lost to the aliens, had taken on a mythic quality, and to go against that was sacrilege.

It was in March that Dr. Takagi realized his son had fallen for Kyoto Faction propaganda. He should have acted on it then. Was it too late now? He should have done a better job of reminding his son of Japan's punishing summer heat, and the bone-dry winters that made his skin itch. Hiroshi, who inherited his mother's fair hair and pale skin, seemed to have no memory of being bullied at school, of being called 'the American,' of the day an unhinged man on the Marunouchi line babbled in English at him about John Lennon and Prince Harry. Dr. Takagi had thought this lack of memory a blessing, but now he could see it was a curse. Hiroshi, like many Displaced Japanese and in tune with so many people with no real lived experience of the country, imagined Japan as a crime-free, litter-free, well-mannered paradise. The truth was more complicated of course. He should have told Hiroshi about his own grandfather, who was in the Home Guard in Kyushu during the war. After the Emperor's surrender speech, their commanding officer had addressed them and said that even though they were officially being demobilized, they should not go home, but instead head to the hills in Nagano and form partisan brigades, and mount resistance to the occupying Allies. "Here was a man," grandfather had said, "who had seen Hiroshima, who had seen Nagasaki, but still wanted to fight."

The soldiers went home.

There was a Japan Hiroshi did not know, that he had never even glimpsed. Last November, Dr. Takagi had tried to explain this to Hiroshi. Oscar Wilde once commented, he told his son, that the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. Hiroshi's reply was to yell that he didn't care what some dumb professor at Dad's university said, and to then run out of the house, the front door open and banging in the wind.

Dr. Takagi felt a twinge of envy for Angie. She never had to deal with the teenage years. He immediately reproached himself for being so churlish. If Angie were in Scotland and he were trapped in Japan, would Hiroshi be making the sailing? Would Angie be able to talk him out of it? He felt certain that she would manage the task better than himself. I'm simply not built for this, thought Dr. Takagi.

But he had to try.

So you're determined to go?
Yes.
Can I ask why?
Mum.
Father and son sat in silence, Dr. Takagi looking at Hiroshi, Hiroshi looking at the mantelpiece.
I know you miss her.
Hiroshi missed coming home from school to bean cake and oolong tea. He missed the way she dried his hair after a bath. He missed how he fell asleep with her rubbing his back when the eczema patch was itching.
Yes.
I miss her too.
Hiroshi glared at his father.
Really? Ehm, Risako? Really?
Dr. Takagi sighed. You'll understand when you're older. It's complicated.
Hiroshi stood up. Complicated? What happens if the Sako drop The Curtain tomorrow? What happens if Mum comes to Edinburgh? How much more complicated is it going to be then?
Dr. Takagi watched Hiroshi pace around the room. That's not going to happen, son.
Dad, I'm not stupid. You love this new life. Big media celebrity, the hot girlfriend! You're glad Mum is out of the picture!
Hiroshi could see his Dad calculating his words. The pause, the silence, the professor getting ready to make a pronouncement — God how Hiroshi hated when he did this!
There's no way of getting out of Japan Hiroshi.
How do you know?
Because if there was, your Mum would have found it.
Hiroshi felt tears stinging his eyes. This constant manipulation! He strained to stop his voice from breaking.
Maybe not! Maybe she was glad to be away from you!
His cheeks flushed. It had come out more vicious than he intended. But it was out there now, no use taking it back.
Dad lowered his head. That might be true. But she lived for you. If there was a way from there to here, to be with you, she'd have found it.
Hiroshi stared at his father, his blood rising.
There it is, the professor speaks! I'm surprised you didn't say 'Gotcha!' at the end.
Dad stood and went to the window.
You're 18 now son. Don't talk like a . . .
Hiroshi stepped away from his father.
Like a what? Like a brat? Is that what you want to call me? You know Risako would call me that when you were away on your trips.
Dad blinked, trying to stay calm. It was only once. And it was years ago. She's not your mother. She'll never be your mother. But she looked after you well.
Hiroshi sat in the armchair and folded his arms. Why did he always defend her?
Dad came back and sat on the couch opposite Hiroshi. When you were little, Hiroshi, you hated brushing your teeth. It drove your Mum crazy. She warned you that you were storing up trouble for yourself, but you wouldn't listen. You were determined to do things your way. Remember?
Hiroshi said nothing.
You ended up with a really bad toothache. I know you remember that, screaming the house down because of your pain. If 18-year-old Hiroshi had a time machine and went back now, you would tell 8-year-old Hiroshi to brush his teeth. But would he listen?
Hiroshi grunted. What was this shit?
When you are 25, you'll look back at 18-year-old Hiroshi and wish you could tell him not to get on this boat.
Does he ever get tired of the sound of his own voice? thought Hiroshi.
You're eighteen now. I can't forbid you from sailing. And I can't think of anything more to say to dissuade you.
Then shut up! I'll be happy with Mum in Japan, and you can live your celebrity life here with Risako.
Hiroshi wanted to stop talking, annoyed that he sounded like he was 12 years old again.
And the Kyushu Maru doesn't bother you? asked Dad.

In the hours after the aliens arrived, the Kyushu Maru, a Japanese fishing boat, was found drifting just outside the Exclusion Zone. The boat was fully operational, with no marks at all. On board, the crew of four fishermen were dead, their bodies burnt to a crisp. Hiroshi's Dad sided with those who thought the boat must have been right on the line of exclusion when the aliens dropped The Curtain.
No, it doesn't bother me.
Dad shifted in his seat, then settled his gaze on Hiroshi. I'm going to tell you a story, and I want you to listen to the end son. Don't interrupt.
Hiroshi exhaled sharply, arms rigid across his chest, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he sank deeper into the armchair.
There's a bridge in Okayama that goes out over the Seto Inland Sea. The drop from the walkway to the water is 60 meters. It's a popular suicide spot. Going on that kamikaze boat is like jumping off that bridge and plunging into the freezing water. Hiroshi tutted. Dr. Takagi spoke a little louder.
Very occasionally, someone survives the drop and is rescued. When that happens, they always ask that person one question: What was going through your mind when you let go of the bridge? At the moment you committed to the jump? And they all give the same answer.
I'm not interested Dad! Tell your stupid stories to Risako! shouted Hiroshi, and with that he stood up, strode up the stairs and slammed his bedroom door shut.

Hiroshi opens his eyes. In his half-doze, he had been aware of Ami talking with her parents. But now Ami's parents fizzle away, and all the other phones die, too. Everyone is up on deck, looking towards home.

A quiet descends.

We must be near The Exclusion Zone, thinks Hiroshi. He feels a sweat form on his temple.

Ami pulls at her blouse, loosening a button. She clears her throat. "That story, Hiroshi, that you told us last night? The one your Dad told you? About the bridge? I've heard it before."

Hiroshi and Keisuke look at her, waiting for her to go on.

"I know the answer to the question they ask the survivors. About the thought in their head as they commit to letting go of the bridge."

Keisuke sits forward. Drips of sweat fall from his forehead and splash silently on deck.

"So what is it?" asks Keisuke.

Ami looks out to sea, to where Japan should be, to where Japan perhaps used to be. Hiroshi is looking there too, through the haze, remembering hugs and bean cake, and Coal Tar soap, hoping to find answers, hoping the world makes sense. Ami is about to speak, but the answer comes to Hiroshi before she opens her mouth, and as the haze begins to crackle, he realizes he has known the answer all along.

"I'm making a mistake."