Chapter 5 Everything To Co
I turned out the light and kept drinking. Thankfully, today I was able to get drunk in a more peaceful fashion.
At tis like these, the quickest way to get back on your feet is to not resist the flow of your emotions, but jump into a pool of your own despair and wallow in self-pity.
My familiar apartnt began to feel a bit different than usual.
With the moonlight through the window coloring the room a deep blue, the night sumr breeze blowing in, and the presence of Miyagi in the corner staring like a sentinel, it felt like a much more eerie place than before. I didn't know my apartnt had this side to it.
I had a sense of being in the wing of a stage. Like as soon as I stepped away from here, it would be ti for my performance.
All of a sudden, I felt like I could do anything. It was nothing more than temporarily forgetting my lack of talent in my drunkenness, but I mistook it for sothing inside changing.
I turned to Miyagi and proudly proclaid:
"In my last three months, with my 300,000 yen, I'm gonna change sothing!"
With that, I finished off the last of the beer in the can and slamd it down on the table.
Miyagi seed unimpressed. Raising her gaze a few centiters at best, she said "Ah," and her eyes dropped back to her notebook.
I paid it no mind and continued. "It's not a helluva lot, but it's my life. I'll make it 300,000 yen that's worth more than 3 billion! I'm gonna work to get back at this world!”
In my intoxicated mind, I thought it sounded pretty cool.
But Miyagi was apathetic. “That is what everyone says.”
Putting her pen aside, she grabbed her knees and rested her chin between them.
"I've heard at least five statents to that effect in my ti. Everyone speaks of extres when death is nearing. Particularly those who can't say they've had a fulfilling life thus far. Under the sa logic by which losing gamblers continue to hope for an increasingly unrealistic turnaround, those who keep losing in life co to hope for unrealistic happiness. Many feel reinvigorated when the closeness of death reminds them of the sparkle of life, and they co to believe that they can do this or that - but those people are making a crucial mistake. They have only just arrived at the starting line. They have only just regained their composure after a long losing streak. Mistaking that as a chance to turn things around will do them no good.
"...So please, Mr. Kusunoki. Think of it this way. The reason your remaining thirty years were so lacking in value was because in them, you accomplished not one single thing. You understand that, yes?”, Miyagi bluntly reminded . "What can a man who would accomplish nothing in thirty years change in a re three months?"
"...Won't know ‘til we try," I argued, but even I hated how hollowly my words rang.
I didn't have to try anything to know that she was right on the money.
"I would consider it a wiser choice to seek a common, average satisfaction," Miyagi said. "There can be no recovery. Three months is simply too short a ti to change anything. That said, it's a bit too long to do nothing. So don't you agree it's more shrewd to accumulate a number of small yet definite joys? You lose because you consider only victory. Being able to find victory in failure results in a minimum of disappointnt."
"Okay, I get it already, you're right. But enough logic already," I shook my head. If I weren't drunk, I may have tried to make an opposing argunt, but I didn't have the energy for that now.
"I'm sure I'm one of those guys who doesn't really understand just how useless he is. ...So, hey, could you tell everything that's gonna happen? How'd I spend those lost thirty years? Maybe if I heard that, I could stop having any unreasonable hopes."
Miyagi didn't open her mouth for a while, then spoke in a way that sounded like giving up.
"I suppose. Perhaps it is best for you to know it all now. ...However, just as a reminder, you need not despair at anything I say. The things I know were possibilities - but now, they are things that will never actually happen."
"I know that. Just gonna be hearing my fortune, sorta. ...And I'm never gonna go nuts over you saying one little thing. It'd only co to that if there were nothin' else to co to."
"I hope it won't co at all," Miyagi said.
There was a sound like the earth shaking. Like a giant tower toppling over. It took so ti to realize the sound ca from fireworks, since I hadn't really gone to see any in years.
They were always sothing I watched through a window. Not sothing I watched while eating food from a stand, nor sothing I watched holding hands with a girlfriend, looking back and forth between them and her.
As soon as I was able to make my own judgnts, I was a social outcast who avoided places with lots of people. Being sowhere like that felt like a mistake, and the thought of eting soone I knew there gave cold feet.
In elentary school, as long as no one forced to, I never went to the park, the pool, the hills behind school, the shopping district, the sumr festival, or any fireworks displays.
Even in high school, I still didn't co anywhere near prosperous places, avoiding what main streets I could when I walked through town.
The last ti I actually saw fireworks being launched was when I was very young.
I want to say that Hino was with then, too.
I'd already forgotten how big fireworks looked up close. I similarly didn't recall how loud they were at that distance.
Does it sll of gunpowder? How much smoke stays in the sky? What kinds of faces do people look at the fireworks with?
Thinking of each individual detail in that way, it was apparent I really knew next to nothing about fireworks.
I was tempted to look out the window, but with Miyagi watching, I didn't feel like doing sothing so miserable. If I did, she'd probably say sothing like, "If you want to see fireworks that much, why don't you go out and see them?"
Then how would I respond to that? Would I tell her I'm too timid to handle everyone's eyes on ? Why was I still so concerned about how others saw when I had so little ti left?
As if to sneer at as I battled my urge, Miyagi crossed in front of , opened the screen door, and leaning out the window began to watch the fireworks go up.
Rather than being moved by the sight of sothing beautiful, she seed to be admiring the sight of sothing unusual. At any rate, it didn't seem that she had no interest.
"Hey now, should you be looking at that too, miss observer? What'd you do if I suddenly took off?"
Still watching the fireworks, Miyagi sarcastically replied, "Do you want to watch you?"
"Nuh-uh. I want you to be gone as soon as possible. Havin' you watching makes it hard to do anything."
"Is that right? Perhaps it may make you feel rather guilty. ...Incidentally, if you were to flee, and make it a set distance away from , I would have to conclude that you were up to trouble and have your life terminated. I would suggest you take care."
"What's a set distance?"
"It's not particularly exact, but I would say roughly a hundred ters."
That's sothing I wish she'd have said to start with. "I'll be careful," I told her.
A sequence of smaller sounds echoed in the sky. The display seed to be entering its climax.
I realized things had quieted down next door. Maybe they'd gone to see these fireworks too.
Then finally, Miyagi began to talk. About everything that could have happened.
"Now then, about your lost thirty years... First of all, your life at college ends in a blink," Miyagi said. "You rely pay bills, read books, listen to music, and sleep - often. It gradually becos impossible to distinguish one hollow day from another. Once that happens, the ti flies by. You graduate college having learned nothing in particular, and ironically, you end up in the line of work you scorned most back when you were brimming with hope..
"You know you should have accepted the reality back then - but unable to let go of the feeling that you were special, believing that this wasn't where you belonged, you could never get accustod to it. You travel back and forth between ho and work every day with vacant eyes, working your body into dust, and with no ti to think, you co to enjoy drinking the days away. Your conviction that you will soday be famous vanishes, and you beco soone quite estranged from your childhood fantasies."
"Can't say that's uncommon," I squeezed in.
"Indeed it isn't. It's a very common kind of disappointnt. Of course, the agony felt will vary from person to person. You, of course, were a person who needed to be superior to everyone. Lacking soone to depend on, you had only yourself to prop up your world. When that pillar crumbled, the pain was enough to set you onto destruction."
"Destruction?", I repeated.
"You ca to realize you were approaching your late thirties. It beca your lonely hobby to ride motorcycles around aimlessly. But, as you yourself knew, it was a dangerous hobby. Particularly for soone who has half given up on life. ...The one small rcy is that when you one day crashed into soone's car, you did not injure any pedestrians, only yourself. But a very severe injury it was - you lost half your face, the ability to walk, and most of your fingers."
It was easy to understand the aning of "lost half your face," but harder to imagine.
Perhaps it was sothing dreadful enough that people would just look at it, and their only thought would be "a place where there was once a face."
"As your appearance was the only thing you could rely upon, you began to consider going through with your last resort. But you couldn't bring yourself to take the final plunge - you couldn't let go of that last sliver of hope. "Even so, maybe sothing good will still happen." ...Indeed, that is sothing no one can fully deny, but it is no more than that - it is simply a kind of devil's proof. That unreliable hope carries you to fifty, until ultimately, you die alone, in shambles and with nothing. Loved by no one, rembered by no one. Grieving that it should not have been this way.”
It was a strange thing.
I was able to readily accept everything she told .
"So, your thoughts?"
"Right, well. First of all, I'm really glad I sold off all thirty years," I replied.
It wasn't crying sour grapes; like Miyagi had said, they were no longer possibilities, but things that would now never happen.
"Heck, I think it might've been better to sell off all but three days instead of three months."
"Well, there is still ti for that," said Miyagi. "You're allowed two more lifespan transactions."
"And you'll be gone once it's down to three days, right?"
"Yes. If you truly can't stomach my presence, then that is certainly an option."
"I'll keep it in mind," I said.
Honestly speaking, having no hope for my three months, leaving just three days seed the more elegant way to do things.
But it was still that devil's proof, the hope that sothing good might happen, that gave pause.
The three months to co and the "lost thirty years" Miyagi told about were entirely different. The future wasn't set in stone.
So sothing good could happen. There could still be an event that made glad to have lived.
It wasn't a zero-percent chance. Thinking of it that way, I couldn't go dying yet.
Rain woke up in the middle of the night. The sound of rain flooding out of the broken drainspout onto the ground was unceasing. I looked at the clock; it was 3 in the morning.
A sweet scent filled the room. I hadn't slled it in a long ti, so it took so doing for to realize it was woman's shampoo.
By process of elimination, it was unmistakably Miyagi who had the scent. It led to think that Miyagi took a bath while I was asleep.
However, it was difficult for to accept that conclusion. I don't an to brag, but my sleeping was light enough that you could probably just call it napping.
Even the smallest sounds like newspapers being delivered or footsteps from the floor above woke up. It was unusual to think Miyagi could take a shower while I was asleep without waking even once. Maybe it blended in with the rain.
I decided to postpone working this out. I felt weird thinking about a girl I'd only just t showering in my apartnt, so I stopped thinking about it entirely.
More importantly, I needed sleep for tomorrow. Getting woken up on a rainy night like this, well, it happens.
But it wasn't easy to get back to sleep. So as usual, I borrowed the power of music. I put one of my unsold CDs, "Please Mr. Lostman," in the player and listened to it with headphones.
This is just what I think, but the kind of person who listens to Please Mr. Lostman on sleepless nights can't live a decent life. I used music like this to excuse myself from having to get used to the world.
Maybe I was still paying the price for it now.
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