ME

by Tomoyuki Hoshino

  “I think so too,” the student said. “It’s just as well that we didn’t stick our noses into it.”

  “Offering unwanted aid often just makes things worse.”

  Nodding in hearty agreement, as if having satisfactorily concluded a day’s work, we resumed our hike.

  We arrived at the summit at precisely noon. There was already quite a crowd, divided into groups, their mats spread out on the ground, where they sat enjoying their lunch.

  We had to go to some trouble to find a place for ourselves. The only open spot was a bit out of the way and near the restrooms. Having been put in charge of food, I had purchased Maisen pork cutlet sandwiches and Kiyōken meat dumplings from the Tōkyū department store in Hiyoshi on my way home.

  The student followed suit and from the bottom of his huge bag he pulled out a cooler containing six cold cans of Silk Yebisu. We clinked cans before chugging the beer in noisy gulps, as was our custom. In that moment of beer synchronicity, we basked in the happiness of our threesome. And if there had been one hundred of us, we would have been just as perfectly matched.

  “I brought these along,” the student said, showing us a deck of flower cards, and so for a while we gambled to see who would pay for the evening meal. It was exciting to see each other’s proclivities and peculiarities—did we prefer the blue-ribbon cards to the red-ribbon cards? Did we go for the boar, deer, or butterfly cards? Did we loathe the rain cards? Were we unable to distinguish the bush clover from the wisteria cards? Did we get excited when we got the high-scoring card of the full moon with the red sky? We laughed boisterously as we realized that, quite unconsciously, we had developed the same reactions.

  “Oh, here are those gentlemen from the trail!” a female voice sounded from behind us—as though summoned by the intensity of the emotion we were experiencing. For a moment the three of us froze, then turned awkwardly around. There was the female gang of four.

  “Because of this,” said one, pointing to her injured companion who was being propped up by the other two, “we’ve only arrived just now.”

  The heels lady hoisted two trekking poles. “Thank you so much! It’s only because of you that we were able to make it all the way here.” The three of us sat dumbfounded as she continued: “You said back there that I could use these on the way down as well. Is that still all right? I’ll send them back to you as soon as I can.”

  It was impossible to respond. We wanted to say that they had mistaken us for others, but somehow we knew better. And yet we couldn’t remain silent either.

  “Of course,” Hitoshi finally replied. “Without them you wouldn’t be able to get down the slope, would you?”

  “I am so grateful. Have you finished your lunch? Would you mind if we joined you?”

  I remained at a loss for words, but in a flash the student declared: “Please, please do. The more the merrier. Unfortunately, we’ve already drunk all the Silk Yebisu.” With that, he stood up and gestured for them to join us.

  But then Hitoshi suddenly added, “Sorry, but we have some private matters to discuss . . .”

  Looking perplexed, the woman turned to the other three and spoke softly. Then she glanced back and said: “Please excuse the imposition and allow us to thank you again when we return these.” They then bowed and departed.

  When they were gone and out of earshot, the student asked Hitoshi, “What was all that about?”

  “I might ask the same of you. What were you thinking just now?”

  “What’s your objection to having a bit of fun?”

  “Don’t you think it’s weird? What’s all this about lending them those trekking poles?”

  “That’s right,” I piped up. “It’s creepy. How do we know they weren’t trying to get even with us for pretending we didn’t see them the first time?”

  “That’s precisely why I urged them to join us. We needed to talk to them to figure it all out. I don’t think they had any sort of trick up their sleeve.”

  “Then what do you think was with the poles?” I pressed.

  This time it was Hitoshi who spoke: “There are three other MEs here on Mount Takao. They were the ones who lent them to the women.”

  “How could that be?” The thought that if indeed we had such doppelgängers it would negate our existence made me reluctant to face that possibility.

  “Come on! It could very well be, and you know it!”

  Hearing Hitoshi put it that way, I could only nod in agreement.

  He now turned harshly to the student: “And why did you try to pass us off as our doubles with your fawning imitation of them?”

  “Isn’t it normal for young men to accommodate young women who make friendly overtures? Unlike you, Hitoshi-san, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “And you don’t mind it if they can’t distinguish us from our lookalikes—and don’t even notice that we three are all the same?”

  “Do you really have a girlfriend, Hitoshi?” I blurted out, as if considering the possibility for the first time. The very thought that a ME could have a her came as quite a shock.

  He nodded, a grim expression on his face. “Yes, but we’re about to break up.”

  “Things aren’t going well?”

  “It’s not that . . .” he started to say, but his voice trailed off.

  “You think she might dump you?” the student asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re interested in someone else?” This was my question.

  “No . . . You must understand . . . it’s because you two are MEs. She is not a ME; after all, she’s other. That means that she doesn’t really understand me. And my understanding of her thoughts and feelings is only superficial. Since meeting you, spending time with her has simply become too much trouble.”

  “I see,” said the student, mulling it over. “Now that you put it that way, even I get it.” Then he returned to his questioning: “Does that mean that unless we run across a female ME, none of us will ever meet her? And there isn’t any female ME, is there?”

  Hitoshi gave the student a sardonic smile, an icy expression that was already familiar to me. I could feel the temperature drop.

  “Well, yes, that’s the way things are. There is no female ME, and that means we’ll never have women in our lives. And we have no need for them in the first place.”

  “You’re joking! I want a girlfriend! The very idea of dying without ever having had one is awful! Think about the women we just met—they seemed very nice.”

  “What have I just been saying? They must be more than a bit dimwitted if they couldn’t even see that we are MEs. They’re our enemies.”

  “Enemies? But they were, like, totally friendly! I’m sure we would have hit it off. They don’t have to be our girlfriends, but I’d like to expand our trio. Forming companionships by blending into some sort of monolithic existence has become too much for me. I want to see us taking the initiative to increase our numbers.”

  Hitoshi let out a heartfelt sigh. “If you’re a ME, you simply can’t be friends with anyone else. That’s why all along we had it so hard. We MEs are sufficient unto US. Your life experience is still shallow, and so you may not understand that yet.”

  “Oh, I understand all right. I understand it better than you do, Hitoshi-san, and that’s because I was once treated as an enemy.”

  “Really?” I broke in. “This is the first time I’ve heard that!”

  “I didn’t say anything before because I didn’t want to be reminded of something, and, in fact, I was beginning to forget it, but now it’s all come back to me, so I’ll tell you. And I absolutely want US to listen to this.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “When I was in middle school, in my second year, the bullying—on Internet chat rooms, for example—was vicious. By the time I got into my third year, we had a class meeting to talk about strategies for getting rid of the problem. Everyone secretly thought that it was impossible to do anything about it, but then someone came up with a totally
weird idea: We’d go through each name on the class register and, in order, pick out the victim of the week, who, until succeeded by the next kid on the list, would undergo five days of torment. He or she would have to put up with it, knowing that everyone was in the same boat and that the unpleasantness was for a limited time. Everyone would have the experience of being both the victimizer and the victim, thereby understanding the feelings of both and gaining useful knowledge.”

  “That sounds pretty twisted!”

  “Yes, it was. But at the time, everyone went along with the scheme. I should say the guy who came up with it was the class clown, a kid by the name of Kazuya Isshiki. He was clueless but somehow persuasive, precisely because of his manner. He could get along just as well with the cool dudes as with the nerds and was himself a fairly popular guy. So the response was pretty much like, Wow! Even our hard-nosed homeroom teacher thought it might be a viable approach and gave his approval. I threw in my support, partly because I was hoping that with my name—Motoyama—I’d be close to the end of the roster. By managing things right, I might even be out the door of the school before my turn came around. So for the following week the role of bullyee fell to a girl named Mana Aizawa.”

  “Hold on!” I interjected. “Your name’s not Motoyama. It’s Hitoshi Nagano.”

  “Hey, you’re right! This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What’s your given name?”

  “Naohisa. I’m Naohisa Motoyama . . . Huh? Where did that name just come from?”

  “Because that’s your name, and because I am Hitoshi Nagano,” said Hitoshi evenly.

  “Well, no, that can’t be—”

  “Hey, whatever! It’s a lot better than student. You need a name. As long as you kept insisting you were Hitoshi Nagano, you had to go on being nameless.”

  “Well, this ought to resolve the issue. From now on, you’ll be . . . Uh, what was that again?”

  “Naohisa Motoyama.”

  “That’s pretty ordinary—and hard to remember. How about Naohiro Motoyama instead?”

  “It’s Naohisa, I promise!”

  “Nah, that’s too much trouble. How about just plain Nao?” I suggested.

  “Ah, yes, that’s simple enough,” Hitoshi agreed.

  “But I’ve even got my student ID!” said the would-be Nao as he proudly displayed the evidence. “I’m Hitoshi Nagano all right!”

  “We can’t rely on that. You’re Nao. Or would you rather continue being called the student?” Hitoshi asked calmly.

  Nao shook his head glumly.

  “Then it’s settled, and we don’t have to return to the matter,” Hitoshi declared. “What about the rest of the bullying story?”

  “At first there was a lot of confusion. As it was bullying by mutual consent, there was an element of simple playfulness about it, with the victim finding fun in it too. But Isshiki had, I am quite certain, foreseen it all. His turn came and went, and when we returned to school after Golden Week, the class suddenly resorted to an underhanded trick. No matter how extreme the bullying became, there was no way to interfere with it, because, after all, it had been authorized. So those who had been through the ordeal sought to put it behind them by going after the next kid with particularly vicious zeal. Winter had come when my number eventually came up, by which time it had become quite unbearable. Virtually the entire class was filled with malice, body and soul.”

  “So what did they do to you?” Hitoshi asked.

  “Actually, I don’t remember very well. Hmmm . . . I think that perhaps I was spat upon. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t really recall, except that it was horrible. I knew it would end in five days, but by the evening of the third day, I was on the verge of killing myself. On Friday, when it was finally over, I broke. I was so traumatized that I couldn’t even eat that evening. When I remembered how I had felt, my suicidal feelings returned. Why had I been forced to go through that terrible experience? Really . . . I’ve never even talked about this before. I convinced myself that it wasn’t such a big deal and had largely forgotten about it.”

  Nao said nothing more and the three of us fell silent, until after some hesitation I remarked, on behalf of Nao, my fellow ME: “Yes, I’m sure it happened, but that’s not really the crucial issue, is it? It’s what came afterward, right?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Hitoshi. “I’ll put it quite bluntly: over the next week, Nao laid into the following person with such severity that he can’t even remember.”

  Nao looked catatonic; his face appeared to wither, devoid of all vitality and expression. “Forgive me!” he mumbled in a hoarse voice, wrinkles multiplying as he closed his eyes.

  “No, no—no one’s trying to extract a confession!” I hastily reassured him. “We aren’t asking you anything.” But Hitoshi would not let up.

  “It’s better for you to remember what’s truly important here. Nao, don’t run from it. Don’t turn your eyes away.”

  Tears were dripping from those closed eyes as he sniffled and whimpered. “That’s why I’ll never be able to have a girlfriend,” he moaned.

  “Enough!” I said, wishing very much to move on. “Leave it there!” But now it was Nao who would not let it go.

  “Daiki-san, you just don’t want to see what a sorry loser you yourself are! And that’s why you don’t want to listen. I understand. I was the same once. But it’s still foolish of you not to hear what I have to say. It’s about ME, US. This is the way WE are. Isn’t that why you don’t have anyone special either?”

  The last words struck home. I was momentarily dumbfounded.

  “I’m listening. Go on,” encouraged Hitoshi, cool as ever.

  “You don’t have to tell us!” I then snapped in irritation, trying to silence him, even as I turned to Hitoshi. “This is a matter of ME, and so you can already clearly imagine it. Are you going to force him to speak?”

  “Daiki-san, can you really imagine it?”

  I nodded. As much as I might want to shake it off, a scene was being reproduced in my mind, however vague: indelible, ineffable, indepictable. It wasn’t on the level of assaulting a girl but appeared nonetheless to be a terribly brazen act, going far beyond a typical middle-school prank and causing a deep and permanent wound. Whether it was a fading memory of mine or of Nao’s, I could not tell. I wanted very much to stop thinking about it but kept being assailed by intense and painful sadness.

  “Nao, it wasn’t your intention,” said Hitoshi. “You were acting out of an insane rage; you’d been set up, baited by the others. They’re the real bastards. You didn’t mean to do it. At the time, you’d just been bullied yourself.” He was sermonizing in the tone of some religious guru.

  “You can say all that, but the fact is that I’m the one who did it, and it can’t simply disappear. And it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t already have something inside me to make it possible.”

  “It’s something the three of us did—it’s not just you, Nao. We all had that something inside us, and we have to get past it together. None of us can do it by himself. But if we join hands, we’ll manage it, don’t you think?”

  My words served only to trigger another outburst; Nao started howling.

  The nearby picnickers stared at us. Our boisterous laughter had suddenly given way to a flood of tears—perhaps they thought we were drunks or troublemakers, already hitting the bottle at noon. But they were no doubt unaware that we were MEs. Not knowing that we three were the same person, they would probably likewise be unable to distinguish one of us from the other.

  I was feeling distress and anguish. An aspect of my own character had been revealed, and I wanted to avert my gaze. And yet, though I was in a state of misery, I was also experiencing a wild sort of catharsis. In any case, I was now useful. Never before had I been able to perfectly understand another human being or been granted just the right amount of strength and authority to act. In that instant, both Hitoshi and I were beings of s
ignificance, our lives now possessed of meaning. Even if the other was nothing more than US, with a veneer of self-sufficiency, this was for the two of us a precious moment.

  * * *

  In the afternoon we strolled down the main trail, the Omotesandō course. On the way we hung around Yakuoin Temple, known for its winged goblins, and then spent an hour in Monkey Park and the Wild Plant Garden, observing simian ecology.

  “Why haven’t we met the three MEs yet? Perhaps they’ve been avoiding us.”

  We’d had our minds on them the whole time, our eyes darting restlessly about as we encountered other groups of hikers.

  “Isn’t it possible that, in fact, our three doubles don’t exist?” I was still skeptical, suspecting that the young women had followed us for the sake of revenge.

  “When the time has come,” Hitoshi speculated, “we’ll meet them whether we like it or not. And then there will be nothing but MEs. And then it will be as though even a hike up Mount Takao yields nothing but . . .” He trailed off as we watched the monkeys grooming one another.

  “Is it Our Mountain?”

  “Hmmm . . . Yes, why not? I think that things will be more peaceful if WE lived separately from ordinary folk who are non-WE.”

  “Yes! I feel on top the world when I’m hanging out with Mizonokuchi or enjoying myself with you two. As long as it’s the three of us, I’ll do whatever I can. So if it’s just us living together, we’re sure to have a promising future, right?”

  “Well then, shall we create it? Our Mountain.”

  “Let’s go for it!” Nao exclaimed. “But I think the first thing we’ve got to do is locate those MEs. It would be great if we ran into them in a place like Shinjuku and could confront them . . .”

  “And once we spot them, should we bring them here? That would be a bit inconvenient.”

  “Wouldn’t it be all right just to take them home? My place is no mountain, but it’s a starting point.”

  “In that case, you can count me out,” grumbled Hitoshi, throwing cold water on my banter with Nao.

  “Well, you’re the chief ME in Our Mountain!” I exclaimed.