“You really didn’t know?” Yukawa asked.
“Like I said, I never really thought about it.”
“I didn’t think you’d need to think about it, being as familiar as you are with the sea around here. Enough to make your own Web site.”
“Well, I don’t go to East Hari much.”
“Really? I thought you had something on your blog about the views from there.”
Narumi’s eyes flared. “I wrote nothing of the sort,” she said sharply.
Yukawa chuckled. “It’s nothing to get angry about.”
“Who’s angry?”
“Well, if you didn’t write that on your blog, I must’ve been mistaken. I should apologize.”
“No need to apologize. Was there anything else?”
“No, I’m fine,” Yukawa said, pouring beer into his glass.
“Enjoy,” Narumi said and left, her shoulders a little slumped.
“So you really found the spot?” Kyohei asked Yukawa. “You know where the painting was painted?”
“More or less,” Yukawa said, pouring some soy sauce into a little saucer in front of him. He grabbed a clump of wasabi in his chopsticks and began dissolving it into the soy sauce. His motions were clinical, a scientist stirring a solution in a petri dish.
“You went all the way out there just to check the view? It bothered you that much?”
“It didn’t bother me. It excited my curiosity. And I believe there is no greater sin than to leave one’s curiosity unsatisfied. Curiosity is the fuel that powers the engine of human advancement.”
Kyohei nodded, wondering why the physicist always made a big deal out of every little observation.
Yukawa picked up the lighter on his dining tray. He pressed on the switch and with a click, a thin tongue of flame extended from the end. Kyohei had a lighter just like it back home. They bought it for barbecues, except they had only actually used it once. His parents were usually too busy for barbecues.
Yukawa used it to light the small cylinder of waxy fuel inside the burner on his table.
“You know what the container on this burner is made out of?” Yukawa asked.
There was a white bowl-shaped saucer sitting on the burner. Kyohei stared at it and said, “It looks like it’s made out of folded paper.”
“That’s right, it is paper. They call these containers paper pots. But don’t you think it’s strange that the paper doesn’t burn?”
“It’s probably coated with something, right?”
Yukawa used his fingers to tear a small piece off of the edge of the paper pot, then picked the piece up with his chopsticks and lit the lighter in his other hand. When the flame touched the piece, it didn’t burst into flame, but instead slowly shriveled into black ash. Yukawa didn’t stop until it looked like his chopsticks were going to catch on fire.
“Regular paper would have burned up the moment the flame touched it. So yes, it has some flame-retardant coating on it. But it wasn’t impervious to the fire, either, which makes me question your theory.”
Kyohei put down his fork and knife and came around to Yukawa’s side of the table.
“So why doesn’t it burn?”
“Look inside the paper pot. There’s veggies, and fish, yes, but there’s also a little soup. Soup is water. Do you know what temperature water boils at? They teach that in fifth grade, don’t they?”
“Yeah, sure. A hundred degrees Celsius. We did an experiment on that last year.”
“I’m guessing you put water inside a flask, heated it, and checked the temperature?”
“Yeah. When it got close to a hundred, the water started to bubble.”
“And what happened to the temperature afterward? Did it keep going up?”
Kyohei shook his head. “No, it just stopped.”
“Correct. At one hundred degrees Celsius, water becomes a gas. Conversely, as long as water remains a liquid, it can’t get any hotter. In a similar fashion, as long as there is soup inside this paper pot, you can heat up the bottom as much as you want and it will never burn. That’s because paper burns at around 230 degrees Celsius.”
“I get it,” Kyohei said, folding his arms across the chest and staring at the burner.
“Time for our next experiment.”
Yukawa moved his beer glass and picked up the round paper coaster from underneath it.
“What would happen if I put this on top of the fuel cylinder in the burner?”
Kyohei looked between the coaster and Yukawa’s face. It felt like a trick question. Hesitantly, he said, “It’ll burn?”
“Probably, yes.”
Kyohei rolled his eyes. “Where’s the experiment in that?”
“Patience. How about this?”
Yukawa picked up a pot sitting next to him on the table and poured some water onto the coaster until it was drenched. Some of the water dripped on the tatami mat below the table, but the physicist didn’t seem to care.
“Now what would happen if I put this on the cylinder?”
Kyohei thought for a moment. This time, the problem didn’t seem so straightforward. “I know,” he said. “It would burn, but not right away.”
“Why not?”
“Because the paper has water in it. So it won’t burn until the water’s completely gone. After the water dries up, it’ll catch on fire.”
“I see,” Yukawa said, his face expressionless. “Is that your final answer?”
Kyohei nodded. “Final answer.”
“Right,” Yukawa said, throwing the drenched coaster on top of the burning fuel. The coaster fit perfectly over the foil packaging around the cylinder, like a lid on a box.
Kyohei stared at the coaster. The middle was starting to get darker. He expected flames to burst up any moment, but after a while, he noticed that nothing had changed.
Yukawa took the coaster off of the fuel cylinder. The fire had gone out. “Hey,” Kyohei said, giving the physicist a quizzical look.
“The important detail here is the container around the fuel. Whether you’re a fuel cube or a piece of paper, you need oxygen to burn. But when I put the coaster on the fuel container, like a lid, oxygen could no longer get into the fire. Now, if the coaster weren’t wet, it probably would’ve burned before the fire went out, and oxygen would’ve come back in. However, because it was wet, it didn’t burn right away, like you theorized. And wet paper is much better than dry paper at blocking the passage of air.”
Yukawa picked the lighter back up and relit his fuel cube. Again, he put the wet coaster on top of it. He snatched it off a moment later, but the fire had already gone out.
“It’s like magic,” Kyohei said.
“Haven’t you ever learned that when oil in a frying pan catches on fire, you shouldn’t pour water on it? The best thing to do is to throw a wet towel over it and cut off the supply of oxygen. Things need oxygen to burn, and without oxygen, fires go out. And if there’s some oxygen, but not a lot, it will burn incompletely.”
“Like what we were talking about today in the car?”
“That’s right,” Yukawa said, lighting the fuel block for third time. “Burning fuel without sufficient oxygen in the air creates carbon monoxide.”
Kyohei thought back to their ride in the van, wondering why his uncle and aunt had looked so put out.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” Yukawa asked. “Your meatloaf’s getting cold.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Kusanagi was at a coffee shop near the north exit of Ekota Station. It was a small place, with room for only three at the counter by the windows looking out toward the street. He sat on the chair in the middle of the counter, drinking water and biding his time. His coffee cup had been empty for the last ten minutes.
When the hour hand on his watch reached seven, he stood and went outside. He walked down the winding one-way street lined with small shops, noticing signs for ramen and a couple of bars. Eventually he emerged onto a slightly wider street, though still too narrow to warrant a center dividing line.