The Children Who Dream in Cicada
The Children Who Dream in Cicada is a magical realism novel focused around four main characters as they attempt to discover what happened to their missing peer, Masumi Miyamoto.
Takahiro Okada endures a vivid dream which leaves him thinking about it when he wakes up the following day. His father notices his strange mood over breakfast and suggest he takes a break from studying to do something else with his day. The weather forecast suggests the rainy season is coming earlier than expected, which is followed by a news report about a missing boy: Masumi Miyamoto, a classmate of Takahiro’s. Takahiro watches the full report, which states that his classmate disappeared the Friday before.
Upon taking advice from his father, Takahiro spends the morning in Tokyo. Whilst walking through the back streets on an early Sunday morning in the rain, Takahiro comes across a cafe called The Cicada Coffee House. With Masumi Miyamoto on his mind he enters the strange cafe through a door before ordering a coffee and sitting in the corner towards the back. The cafe is quiet and empty, there are two others in the cafe which stretches back into the street. After a few moments he finds himself in an almost mediative state, thinking about the school boy on the news. An image enters his mind, a boys hand in the dirt in the midst of a forest with rain falling down. This is followed by the hand twitching before he snaps out of his meditative state. He finishes if coffee and leaves for home.
At the same time, Akari matsuo finds a bird under a tree, which speaks to her and tells her it has broken its wing. She decides to take care of it, and carried on to the shop where she was planning to shop. Once there she encounters Kazuya and they befriend each other when Kazuya asks if he can cook for her, to test his ability.
Once Takahiro gets home, he finds his father packing up some fishing equipment and goes with him fishing after being invited. Whilst coming off the fishing lake, Takahiro and his father meet two strangers, Akari and Kazuya, who are collecting insects in a jar to feed to Ren. After finding out about the bird, they reveal that they to Takahiro and Hachiro that they found a package on the way here that must have fallen off a delivery truck. Addressed to Goro Yoshida. Hachiro says he will take them all to deliver the package and when they arrive they meet Goro. Goro is the year above them in junior high and was good friends with Masumi, so much so that they only really had each other to talk to at school. [what’s in the package?]
Hachiro begins talking to the shopkeeper about the missing Masumi and Goro, owner of the package interrupts saying how he will find him.Takahiro, Kazuya and Akari talk to Goro briefly before he takes his package and leaves.
The next morning [Monday] the missing boy report is on the news again, and at school no one is themselves, the seat where Masumi sits is empty. Takahiro decides to skip the rest of the day and head back to the cafe. When he arrives the cafe isn’t there, or at least where he thought it was. As he starts to leave confused, the rain starts to comes down and a light fades on behind him. [The coffee house only appears in the rain. It’s purpose is to connect people looking for missing people to the place where the person is] This time when inside, another image enters his mind, the feeling of being buried underground just like in his dream.
Following this, Takahiro takes the train back to Nakano and walks past Masumi’s house to see the two detectives leaving, the detectives are detective Kobi and Hirota. Two senior detectives in the Tokyo Police. He stands for a moment and as they leave they spot him, both parties hold their glance and Takahiro turns and walks away. Driven by what he saw in his dream and his encounter with Goro he decides to tell him what he knows and takes him to the spot where the cafe appears.
When inside, Goro experiences with Takahiro the same visions. Which they can only believe are about Masumi and his location. Clues give away small details such as trees, soil, certain body parts, shadows, sounds, weather.
From this point onwards, Goro, Takahiro, Akari and Kazuya combined with Ren, work together to track down the missing boy. At the same time as the police investigation is underway, at some point in the investigation their paths will cross. Eventually Masumi’s body is found through the visual clues and the deductive reasoning of the four main characters in collaboration with the detectives and Masumi is revived.
Roles of characters
- Takahiro - Protagonist, has dream followed by visions of Masumi’s whereabouts.
- Hachiro - Father to Takahiro, looking for job, eventually gets one in the local grocer’s.
- Akari - First person to find Ren, usually stern, wants to help find Masumi.
- GorÅ - Friends with Masumi before he disappeared.
- Kazuya - Meets Akari after she finds Ren, also wants to find Masumi.
- Masumi - Goes missing Friday after school, investigation is trying to locate him.
- Ren - Talking bird, found by Akari. Has a nest near the forest, spots Masumi the Friday before.
- Det. Hirota - Head of the Masumi case.
- Det. Kobi - Partners with Det. Hirota.
notes.
. Ren is a bird found by Akari that can talk to humans, she has an advantage when helping them locate Masumi because she is able to cover long distances quickly by flying [once her wing is healed, usually takes 2-4 weeks after lots of food and water]. Ren is also a very wise and knowledgeable character, and a very logical thinker.
. Masumi goes missing on the way home from school when he goes into a forest at the side of the road near his house to think and be alone. When he is inside he falls down a hole and becomes trapped their unconscious. The cicada insects which are underground in the soil sense he is there and communicate to the characters through the coffee house his whereabouts in an attempt to save Masumi’s life. In the meantime they feed him tree sap and water to sustain him despite his unconscious state.
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