ME

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

  “Yeah, I get it—I believe everything you say, Hitoshi-san!”

  “In the same way, I too have run away from home. That place is no longer important to me. And soon it will disappear from all three of our memories.”

  “Wait, Hitoshi, you’ve also left home?” I asked in surprise.

  “Yeah, so for the time being, I’ll be staying here.”

  “Anyway, let’s have a toast. Cheers to Hitoshi-san’s independence, and to our first meeting!”

  “Cheers!”

  We popped open our cans of Kinmugi and glugged away. It tasted better than any beer I had ever drunk. “Fantastic!” we called out in harmony, our nearly identical voices resembling an overdubbing effect.

  We looked at each other, on the verge of explosive laughter, carried away by the hilarity of it all. Where else could there be such an odd assembly? Such a density of ME!

  Hitoshi gulped more of his drink. “I’ve never felt so carefree with others in all my life,” he said.

  “There’s no other here. It’s like I am you and you are me.”

  “That’s right! Compared to this, it’s family that’s really other!” I exclaimed, determined to stay endlessly high.

  “Family is definitely other. Families are where otherness begins. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “That’s intense, Hitoshi-san, very intense!”

  “That’s because I’ve just made the break. I’ve finally stood up for myself.”

  “So you’ve finally bitten the bullet and moved out.”

  “As I was saying the other day, my parents barely know me, and that’s because from the time I was born they only saw their children as they wished to see them and made sure they were blissfully ignorant of what they didn’t want to know. I grew aware of that long ago but resigned myself to it. Then you two showed up, and I realized I didn’t have any reason to fake it any longer. Take a look at this, for example.”

  Hitoshi passed us two photographs, one showing me staring into the camera, bathed in the light of the flash; the other was much the same, except that it was of the student.

  “The day before yesterday, when this guy appeared for the third time, I showed the photo of him to the old lady and asked her if it was a bit odd: didn’t he strike her as being awfully similar to me? But she blew me off, saying that she couldn’t possibly mistake anyone for her own son and that we’d be in a real mess if I got him confused with me.

  “I kept after her. When she insisted that the faces in the two photos were without a doubt the same person, I said, If that’s the case, I might be that same person myself. Her only response was a sardonic laugh.

  “When the old man came home, I showed him the photos and asked the same question. He ranted at us: This is the first time I’ve heard about this, so why are you coming to me now? He didn’t even know whether they were similar or not. Besides, he went on, when Hiroshi ran off, I was kept out of the loop. Is this the level of trust I should expect around here?

  “This triggered a nasty marital spat: Yes, that is the measure . . . You never make any decisions at home, and so when things go wrong, it’s suddenly all my fault. That’s why I don’t want to tell you anything! You did nothing to build trust in this household, and that’s why Hiroshi left. And now you want to blame me all over again!”

  “But wait a minute,” I interrupted Hitoshi, “your mother immediately assumed that we were perverts or crooks, so it’s not surprising that she wouldn’t have wanted to see my resemblance to her son.”

  “Yes, but there’s some history here: My brother snuck back once. It had been about two years since his disappearance. He’d been living without a roof over his head, and even though I was appalled by his appearance, I recognized him instantly. That’s just what anyone would expect, right? I let him in and gave him some food. When Mother returned, I was prepared for a big emotional scene, but she picked up a bat and sent him packing, insisting that he wasn’t Hiroshi. I tried to stop her, but she was eager to call the cops, and so I had no choice but to let him flee the scene. It wasn’t that she deliberately or spitefully drove him out; she honestly believed he wasn’t my brother, and so in her mind she was merely defending the castle. It really blew my mind. She had adapted what was plainly before her eyes into her own preferred reality.”

  I wanted to cover my ears but found I couldn’t; it was, after all, the voice of the other ME.

  “I had survived my childhood; I saw what had become of my brother, who, having failed to meet the unreasonable expectations imposed on him by our parents, had then been further mistreated. He had been forced without knowing why to explore his own individuality, and so I decided to keep my nose to the grindstone. A steady, humdrum sort of guy, I remained inconspicuous, hiding behind him. But at the same time I demonstrated my few abilities. My capacity for studiousness greatly exceeded his and, mediocre though I was, I managed to get good grades, thereby winning me parental praise. A high point came when I passed the entrance exam for Hōsei. In doing so, I greatly surpassed the academic prowess of my parents, and, in fact, I was bursting with pride.”

  For a moment I felt vaguely resentful, thinking that even now he was hardly a model of humility, but then rebuked myself for being petty.

  “My parents would go out of their way to brag to strangers about their Hōsei son in front of my brother. I really wished that I had gone to a less renowned institution.”

  “It was exactly the same way with me,” said the student. “I got so sick of my embarrassingly doting parents that I had to move out. They would show up for every conceivable university function: the annual entrance ceremony, of course, baseball tournaments, rugby matches, any tedious lecture, parent-teacher gatherings, even term examinations . . . You’d have thought they were the students. They’d take boxes of candy to the dean and buy merchandise stamped with the Hōsei insignia as presents for relatives and neighbors.”

  I couldn’t suppress a sarcastic question: “Aren’t your parents Hitoshi’s parents?”

  “Uh, well, yes, you have a point there.”

  “But who cares about any of that now? Our camaraderie trumps all this parent stuff,” Hitoshi said.

  I nodded in agreement; he was right. And so I went on listening in spite of myself.

  “It might have been my brother’s individuality that made him forego college and instead train to become a hairdresser. He was defying the opposition of our parents. He kept saying that he didn’t want to simply take the expected route: Hey, Father, Masae-san, aren’t you the ones who are always talking about how we should stick to our chosen paths? That’s why I don’t want to go to university! At the time I thought he was being a fool—I thought that he could respect his own individuality while still setting his sights on a degree.”

  Hitoshi stopped for a moment and grimaced, as if silently reprimanding himself. “I was quite the opposite. When I gloated about somehow managing to get into Hōsei, Haruka called me a dope. Haruka is my sister, by the way, one year younger than me. She says that I’ve been brainwashed by our parents. At dinnertime, since she was in middle school, anything—even the mention of baseball—would get them to talk about Hōsei. You say you’re making your own choices, she’d observe, but in fact it’s our parents who are deciding what you’re going to do. And what’s really pathetic is that you don’t get it. They’re somehow afraid of Haruka, but they dote on me. Hōsei for them is like a Vuitton bag.

  “Younger siblings learn from their older brothers and sisters and are the wiser for it. My brother provided for me a model of what not to do. But he had no one to teach him. For all their sermons about the need for individuality, our parents were themselves garden-variety philistines, their entire lives focused on imitating others and worrying about their public image. With people just like them all around, they didn’t have a clue just how monstrous they were. It’s these regular people, I tell you, who are the worst. How was my brother supposed to follow his own path when he was surrounded by them? What does it mean to li
ve as an individual? How does somebody learn to be one?”

  Hitoshi’s voice quavered slightly. There was a burden he was bearing—as was I. Listening to him talk about Hiroshi, I couldn’t help revisiting my own failed path. The vividness of it all struck at me like an old but still painful wound.

  “Even given his difficult circumstances, my brother, in his own way, was extraordinary. He took all sorts of lessons and was sent, for example, to a school that taught seven different languages. He tried hard to cultivate his own likes and interests, even as he endeavored to read our parents’ mood, desperate as he was for their approval. They, however, saw only what they wanted to see—and that was the image of the successful people in their midst. To them, being an individual simply means being someone who has come up in the world.”

  “But why did he decide to become a hairdresser?” I asked, my voice going hoarse.

  “Don’t laugh, but he got hooked on the idea from a TV documentary. It was just before the ‘charisma boom.’ My brother was hardly glamorous, but he could sure wield a pair of scissors.”

  The student wiped his eyes. My heart was breaking too. All three of us were filled with the burden of disappointment. This was not only the story of Hitoshi’s brother; it was also the story of all three of us.

  “As a young child, my brother was actually quite spoiled. Our parents imagined that his poor schoolwork was a consequence of his environment, and that if that his environment were altered, he would mature and manifest his true worth. This notion underwent a radical shift when he failed to pass his high-school entrance exam. With his hairdresser dream shattered, he really began to hear it from them. At the same time, I now became the focus of all our parents’ hopes and aspirations. Sensing that they were more interested in the image of banal success than in me, I tried to adapt to it. And in the process, I sought my own satisfaction. The result was that I wound up at Hōsei and then employed in the Saitama Municipal Office.”

  Tajima’s words were now spinning around in my head: You’re lucky to even work here. I could very well have been Hiroshi. But I wasn’t. Neither was Hitoshi, nor was the student. And that was because we had all “lucked out.” But had we really?

  Hitoshi looked at me and nodded. The gesture seemed to suggest that he had read my mind.

  “Yes, I was lucky to have landed that job. Even now I take pride in having done it all my way. I haven’t had extravagant hopes, and I haven’t given up and sold out either. Though my life has been dull and modest, my position has enabled me to hold my head high. Or so I thought. But it was all quite different . . . That became clear to me just three days ago.”

  Hitoshi’s face hardened and he started stammering. I opened a can of Nodogoshi and handed it to him. He took a long swig and thanked me, then sighed deeply before continuing.

  “I’m a caseworker for the welfare benefits department, processing applications. There’s a lot of pressure to toss people back even before they get their feet dry, but I’ve done what I can to say no. Having a sense of which way the wind is blowing in the office, I set myself a monthly quota of forms that will get approved. Even if it’s a thankless job, I’ve developed a good reputation.

  “So one day, I was on the verge of rejecting someone. I had deliberately kept the man waiting, which must have put a lot of pressure on him. I looked neither at the papers nor his face, and instead loudly told him to drop the case. I hadn’t allowed him to get a word in edgewise, when suddenly I heard him emit a strange sound. Startled, I gazed at him for the first time and saw that he was both laughing and crying. I wanted to die right there on the spot—for that man was ME.”

  Even before Hitoshi uttered that word, I had sensed what was coming. The student seemed to have had the same intuition. In our mind’s eye we could see that man, who, upon discovering himself there before him, must have felt a sense of relief—Ah, I am saved!—even as, confronted with his own ugliness, he contemplated killing himself. No doubt he felt as though his very soul, already on the brink of exhaustion, had again been shaken.

  “I decided to process his application. In fact, since then I have processed all of them. I now understood: Why was I even working in the municipal office? Why was I so eager to use unsavory methods? Because I did not want to wind up like my brother. It wasn’t really for my own sake. Instead, I wanted my parents’ approval; I didn’t want to end up a dropout. I had been living for so long without facing up to anything.”

  Hitoshi stared off into the distance. Neither the student nor I had anything to say. The only sound was that of the three of us breathing. We were sitting cross-legged, hands on our ankles, our upper bodies nervously twitching. It was apparently a shared tic of ours, manifesting itself when we attempted to suppress our emotions. We likewise each had our socks pulled down, so that our heels were half exposed.

  “It wasn’t just my brother who had his life snatched from him. So had I. Even though I had endeavored not to wind up like him and to find a happy and successful path for myself, I had really been working to satisfy our parents. My role was to compensate for his failure.

  “On reflection, it occurred to me that by leaving it all behind, he had, in fact, found his own way, and that it was I who was the real victim. As insufferable as my condition was, I remained in the nest because I had been made to cover for him and was now obliged to care for our parents. Dropping out wasn’t an option either, as without me, the entire household would collapse. In other words, my brother had made the first move. And as the price for his freedom, I had been sold to the family as a stepchild. My brother had won out, with me left in wretched misery.

  “I felt a wave of loathing and disgust surging up within me and was seized by a murderous rage. I was sure that if I remained I would slaughter them all. The murder scene was horribly vivid in my mind, and I thought that I would have no alternative but to die along with them. But then I realized that perhaps my brother had opted to disappear rather than commit just that grisly act. He hadn’t left because he wanted to take charge of his own life; it was rather because he had been forced to choose between killing himself and killing his parents. He had opted for a way out. In his mind he may have committed murder-suicide, but I was able to grasp that he hadn’t actually gained his freedom. So with that understanding I had only to disappear myself. And so here I am.”

  All three of us sighed deeply. We then raised our cans of beer, sipped from them, and set them down again at the same time.

  The path of Hitoshi’s emotions was the same as the one I was experiencing myself. Yet it was all that of his absent brother. Whether mine, Hitoshi’s, or Hiroshi’s, our paths were identical and indistinguishable.

  I suddenly understood the true nature of the spell that I had cast on myself: I had not even been aware that I was in such a state but had rather been seeking to escape and had repeatedly fallen into oblivion. Each time I had cut off the past, flitting back to the present, so that the fleeting moment was all there was. That was my misery, as it was Hitoshi’s.

  It was I who at last broke the silence: “Hitoshi’s brother, it turns out, was a ME. I don’t mean that I am your brother, but rather that he is one of US.”

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized that I had merely verbalized the obvious. Hitoshi and the student were both smiling.

  “My experience was quite different, and yet I too have been unable to put up with having my own life simply thrust upon me.”

  “But you seem to have grown up with more or less the same experiences, Daiki.”

  “To be honest, I’ve been asking myself whether I might actually be your brother.”

  “Well now—”

  “It’s not important, now that the three of us are together.”

  “Yes, it’s true that we know without saying so that each of us is the other and the other is each of us. It’s like some sort of Zen telepathy!”

  “One sometimes hears the expression about understanding another person without words, but I never believed it un
til now. This is great!”

  “Nobody thinks that the other is really himself. Perhaps because it doesn’t occur to anyone that the other person might be oneself, that people don’t try to understand each other so then, in fact, they don’t.”

  “So does that mean there are others . . . ?”

  “Yeah. Me, Daiki, you, my brother, the guy who came to apply for welfare . . . And there are more, countless other MEs.”

  “Hitoshi-san, that’s why you don’t even have to say it!”

  “Ah, yes indeed.”

  A series of faces floated up in my mind. All were ME; I wondered whether, one by one, I would meet each one of them. And if they were all ME, we would have perfect mutual understanding—100 percent. It would be safe to trust. There would be no need to push the on button.

  “As of tomorrow, the world will change.”

  “In three minutes and twenty-eight seconds.”

  “Cheers!” We clinked beers.

  “For all we know, there are other groups of ME doing the very same thing right now!”

  “And yesterday there may have been those who did likewise.”

  “Three minutes is a long time. I’m going to drink now.”

  “Me too.”

  “So let’s finish our drinks and then raise a toast anyway. ”

  We closed our eyes and chugged our beers loudly. The taste was no longer ambrosial, but we did not care. I momentarily set my can down, as if to catch my breath. In the same moment Hitoshi and the student did the same, and then together we all belched.

  “No need to ask how we shall survive in the new world that is dawning, now, is there?” the student remarked.

  Hitoshi and I both shook our heads. I looked down at my cell phone. “Tomorrow has arrived!” I said.

  We raised and clinked nearly empty cans, then again shouted, “Cheers!”

  I had come to see quite clearly who I was: I was ME.