Doing stretching exercises, I nodded for him to continue.
“In my heart, I really do long for that kind of drama because there is truth in those television shows. Because there’s the introduction, development, turn, and resolution, there’s an explosion of emotions, and there’s the conclusion… On the other hand, our lives continually are filled with dim, dreamy anxiety, and there are no easily understood dramas, situations, or confrontations—nothing at all like that… Isn’t that sort of absurd? I’m twenty, and you’re twenty-two, Satou. Even so, we’ve never really loved anyone, hated anyone, fought as a result of love or hate, or had any of those experiences at all. It’s terrible!”
At this point, Yamazaki violently shook me by the shoulders as I stretched my Achilles tendons.
He said, “Let’s try fighting dramatically! Beautifully, swiftly, and roughly! Let’s fight with those concepts in mind!”
“Yeah!” I let out a brave yell and got into my fighting pose.
And so we started beating each other. Our fight was distressingly pastoral. There were some things that hurt, but punches from a weak man hopped up on drugs had limited force.
Yamazaki desperately was trying to make the fight as exciting as possible, and so he began yelling dramatic (although entirely abstract) lines, “Satou, you don’t understand anything!”
I couldn’t let his effort go to waste, so I also shouted something that felt appropriate. “You’re the one who’s wrong!”
“What part of what I’m saying is wrong?!”
I was at a loss, having been unexpectedly questioned in a concrete manner. The fist I was swinging around stopped as I thought about it for a little while. “For example, how about the fact that you went to the Yoyogi Animation Institute?” I responded hesitantly.
As I said that, Yamazaki abruptly aimed a kick at me. “Don’t make fun of Yoyogi Animation!”
“Ow! Why are you suddenly kicking me for real, you—“
“Don’t think you can talk so big even though you’re a hikikomori!”
The blood rushed to my head. “Die, lolicon! Die, you erotic game otaku!”
I swung my right fist as hard as I could, smashing it into Yamazaki’s stomach. He groaned, charged, and tackled me, still groaning as he did. Tangled up together, we fell to the ground. Yamazaki straddled my head; I could see the moon behind him. I would be beaten to a pulp if I stayed like this.
Hooking my leg around his neck, I somehow managed to get out from under him. We were both breathing heavily. Yamazaki glared at me; then, he looked down, giggling. Finally, he sighed loudly, “Ah, that was great.”
I sighed, too.
“It’s not even close to being over yet. Let’s keep fighting until we die”, he said. We kept fighting: Wild kicks and limpid punches, the passionate battle between two weak men. It hurt. It really, really hurt. Yet it was fun—fun and empty. A punch sank into the pit of my stomach, raising bile and making my eyes overflow with tears, and I was happy. Having just been kicked in the groin, Yamazaki looked cool, jumping up and down.
Jeez, what in the hell are we doing? I transferred this doubt into my fist—punched and was punched.
Suddenly, I remembered that it was already July. It wouldn’t be long. Something had to change soon. Likely, I would decide something before long. I was sure I’d be laughing then, laughing and smiling. You agree, don’t you, Yamazaki…?
For now, we were covered in scrapes and bruises. Everything hurt. Our entire bodies ached terribly. One of my front teeth felt loose. Yamazaki had a perfect black eye. My right fist was raw and bleeding.
We had just had our first little fight.
For good measure, I gave Yamazaki one more punch to the face. As I did, he caught my arm, and I tripped and fell. Following up, Yamazaki went on to lock my joints and twist my arm.
“Ow, ow, it’s gonna break, it’s gonna break!” I tried to tap out on the ground.
“I’ll break it, I’ll break it, I’ll break it with a snap!”
I bit down on Yamazaki’s calf as hard as I could. He screamed, “That’s against the rules!”
“Shut up, what do I care? Death to Yoyogi Animation!”
“Like I said, when I hear talk like that, I get really pissed off!”
It appeared that our fight was about to become increasingly, emptily escalated.
Then, we heard, “Officer!”
Eh?
“They’re over here, Officer!” It was a young woman’s high-pitched shout. Yamazaki jumped up immediately and ran for dear life back to the apartment.
Leaving me behind, he had run away alone.
***
Several minutes later, I found myself being hit by Misaki. They were only so-called “girl punches”; because of my fight with Yamazaki, though, I was already a bit beat up, and her blows jangled my bones. Bellowing at the top of her lungs, with what no longer even resembled a human voice, Misaki continued hitting me.
I ducked my head.
Misaki got in several dozen more punches before finally calming down.
In other words, the voice calling, “Officer!” had been Misaki pretending to call for the police. After eating dinner, Misaki had come to the park as usual, where she saw two men arguing loudly and beating up each other. When she realized I was one of them, she’d naturally been upset.
Gathering a great deal of courage, she seemed to have felt that she had to help. Because no one was around and she didn’t have a cell phone, though, she didn’t know what to do. Finally, she decided to pretend that a policeman was right there in order to save me.
“I can’t believe you! I was so worried! I thought you might be killed!”
Actually, I felt bad for upsetting Misaki, who now had tears in her eyes. I decided to make her laugh with an interesting story. ”Well, in the shade of that bush over there, a girl was being attacked by a pervert. I approached them and intervened, trying to save the girl, but the rapist suddenly flipped out. He pulled a knife from his pocket and jumped me! No, no, it was really dangerous! If I hadn’t been there, someone could have gotten killed.”
“That’s another big lie, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“What were you really doing?”
I told her everything.
After another good outburst, Misaki wore a pained expression for some reason. Sitting on the bench, she muttered, “That’s not good. Don’t fight with your friends. Even as a joke, violence isn’t good—not at all.”
“What are you talking about? Don’t be so serious. It was pretty fun; I’ve never punched anyone or been punched before. I actually feel surprisingly refreshed—“
“I said, it’s bad!”
“Why? Karate is good for you.” I made a show of shadowboxing in front of her. As I mimicked a right hook, Misaki trembled and covered her head with both arms.
“Huh?” I said.
She peered through the openings in her arms at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She didn’t reply but tentatively put both arms down. Once more, I feigned a right hook. Again, Misaki guarded her head with both arms. As her reaction was amusing, I repeated my punching motions several times. In the end, Misaki shrank up, frozen in that position, arms covering her head.
Her strange position caused her sleeve to rise to her elbow, and I took the opportunity to glance at her skin.
By the blue-white light of the streetlamps, I could see that her arm was spotted with what looked like numerous burn marks. They were circular scars, with a diameter of about five millimeters a piece. They bore a strong resemblance to the brands that countryside punks burned into each other to prove their bravery.
As if noticing my gaze, Misaki yanked down her sleeve. In a shaky voice, she asked, “Did you see?”
“See what?” I pretended not to know what she was talking about.
Now that I thought about it, Misaki always wore long sleeves. Even in the recent heat, she’d continued wearing them—but so what?
I spoke to her in a cheerful voice. “What about today’s counseling?”
Misaki didn’t answer. Her body still curled defensively on top of the bench, she shook violently. Even her teeth were chattering.
A rather long stretch of time passed.
Finally, Misaki announced, “I’m leaving”, tottering uncertainly toward the park exit.
From behind, I dazedly watched her leave, debating whether I should call out to her. Misaki stopped in front of the swing set and turned around to ask, “Do you hate me now, after all?”
“What?”
“You probably won’t come anymore now.” She was the kind of girl who would make these strangely decisive declarations. We faced each other, about sixteen feet apart.
Misaki looked me in the eye, soon dropping her gaze. Then, once more, she stole a glance at me. “Will you come tomorrow?”
“If I break our promise, I’ll have to pay a one-million-yen penalty, won’t I?”
“Uh, yeah. That’s right!” Finally, Misaki smiled a little.
I went home to my apartment. After swathing my body in compresses, I slept.
Chapter 08. Infiltration
Part One
It actually might have had something to do with a hormonal imbalance in my brain. Like crashing and receding waves, my mania and depression alternated, and that was how every day went. Just when I thought I felt better, I wanted to die so bad the very next day that I wasn’t good for anything.
Despite using drugs to force myself to be more energetic, I couldn’t carry on once again after they wore off. Shame about my past and anxieties for the future, as well as many other fears, assaulted me simultaneously. This ensuing depression was a rebound from my ultra-high-energy periods and, as such, was completely, horribly severe.
Even Misaki’s nightly counseling, which I should have grown accustomed to by then, remained frightening. Anxiety of an unknown origin had enfolded me, and the very uncertainty of that origin fanned my fear even more.
The initial, readily noticeable symptom was that my gaze stared to wander and I would become unable to look others in the eye while speaking to them. Oh, I was just like some overly self-conscious middle school kid. I felt embarrassed from the bottom of my heart. And because I was aware of that embarrassment, my behavior would become even stranger and more suspicious. It was a vicious cycle.
Anyway, for that night, I tried smoking to calm myself down in front of Misaki. My hands, now prone to shaking, took out a cigarette and lit it, using a cheap lighter. Damn—it was running out of fuel! How can this be? This sucks! I didn’t know what to do with the tobacco and lighter I was holding, but I’d do anything possible to avoid the humiliation of having to put them back in my pocket. I kept trying as hard as I could to light it. Click, click, click, click… I kept struggling and, finally, I succeeded—thank heavens!
I immediately turned away from Misaki and, instead, focused too much on smoking my cigarette. I just kept smoking away, wasting five yen with every puff. My lungs hurt and my guts hurt, too. The end of my cigarette was shaking rapidly. On the back of my neck, a cold, sticky sweat—
“What’s wrong?” asked Misaki. As was usual for our counseling sessions, we faced each other at night on one of the park benches.
“The problems caused by my chronic illness!” I replied.
“What do you mean by ‘problems’?”
That’s what really bothered me. Young girls these days didn’t know anything. Go study a little more! I wanted to yell at her; of course, that would be impossible to do. The awful, useless traits acquired through several years of hikikomori life—my agoraphobia, fear of eye contact, and all my other anxiety disorders—now held me down with considerable power.
Hm… Did I lock my apartment door? Was I certain I’d put out my cigarette? More important: Misaki, don’t look at me like that with those adorable eyes! Not to mention, stop being so silent. Stop watching me without saying anything! It makes me unbelievably nervous. My stomach really does hurt.
I had to say something fast. “By the way, Misaki, do you like snacks?” What the hell was that supposed to mean?!
“No.”
“Usually, girls around your age always are eating some kind of snack, twenty-four hours a day, right? Just like a little animal… crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. What’s up with that? Is it because they’re young and have fast metabolisms, so they continually have to replenish their calories or they’ll die? That’s got to be it, huh?”
Should I just die?
She didn’t say anything.
Should I just die?
“I won’t die! And that’s because I’m an energetic man! This overflowing energy is the best! I’m only twenty-two! My future stretches out before me! ‘A neeew toooomorrow is here, one of hopesssss…’” I sang.
Misaki clutched my shirt sleeve.
“Hm?”
“Let’s go into the city, the day after tomorrow”, she said, continuing to pull on my sleeve, “near the station, maybe. Together. Someone important once said long ago, ‘Throw out your books and go to the city’, or something like that. That’s not a lie. It was written in a book I read recently, so it’s about time for us to go into the city. If we do that, I think you’ll definitely head in a good direction. Okay?” Without thinking, I nodded.
***
Misaki’s request had instilled a new fear within me. To go into the city, in broad daylight, with a mysterious girl whose true identity I still didn’t know… No question, this rash action would put an unbelievable amount of pressure on me. Completely overwhelmed by it, I undoubtedly would do something embarrassing once again. There was no chance that I would avoid doing something incomprehensibly pathetic. Ah, I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay locked up in my room.
Regardless, a promise is a promise. I reminded myself that the first step to being an outstanding member of society would be to faithfully honor my promises to others…. I wasn’t a member of society, though; I was just a hikikomori.
Anyway, I felt a sharp pain in my stomach. The tension and unrelenting impatience reminded me of the feelings I used to have the day before a test. For someone whose will was weak like mine, this pressure weighed down heavily on me with a palpable force.
However, just as Dostoyevsky or somebody had written in a story, along with pain that exceeded normal bounds also came an undeniable pleasure. In essence, when stress surpasses a particular limit, humans get high on it for some reason. Getting extremely run down, for example, might make a person rashly agreeable. This feeling, in turn, would raise the excitement and the enjoyment.
“Right, Yamazaki?”
“Yes, sure. I have no idea what you’re talking about, though.”
Today, as usual, Yamazaki had been grinding away at his game since the early morning. His body language somehow suggested that he might be enjoying himself in some ghastly way.
“Let me see how far you’ve gotten”, I said, but he blocked the computer with his body. He must have been making an especially erotic game.
Well, whatever bizarre erotic game Yamazaki was working on meant nothing to me now. I decided I should be eating breakfast right about then and opened the fridge.
“Huh? What, Yamazaki, you’re out of food?”
“Hey, you! Don’t eat someone else’s food every day as though it’s yours! And in their own apartment, no less!”
“No matter what you say, because I sold the fridge in my room to that secondhand shop…” Trying to make suitable excuses, I took some instant ramen from its usual place in the cabinet.
Just then, the doorbell rang. A visitor?
Yamazaki slowly stood up from his computer desk and opened the door in the front hall. Standing there were two religious solicitors. However, today’s solicitors weren’t Misaki and her aunt but a young man around twenty, wearing a suit, and a roughly middle-school-aged boy in a navy blazer. I wondered whether perhaps the routes had been changed.
Either way, the solici
tors’ actions remained unchanged.
“Um, we’re handing out these magazines….” The solicitor handed two pamphlets to Yamazaki. “Uh, see, we’re spreading the word about our religion….”
Yamazaki tried to chase the solicitors away with some appropriate speech.
Watching them, I suddenly had a wonderful idea. Joining them at the front door, I pounded Yamazaki as hard as I could on the back before interjecting, “What are you saying, Yamazaki?! Earlier, didn’t you say that you were interested in such literature?”
“Huh?”
Ignoring Yamazaki, who had turned to give me a look that meant, “What are you talking about, you idiot?” I faced the solicitors and rattled on, in one breath: “Actually, we’ve been interested in your activities for a while. Could we possibly convince you to let us attend one of your meetings?”
Part Two
Last night, when we parted, Misaki had whispered, “Tomorrow, it’s my turn to present at missionary school, and I don’t want to.”
“What’s that?” I asked, and Misaki falteringly described it.
Missionary school was apparently a kind of assembly where “research students” could perfect their skills at “service activities.” The following day, she would have to give a speech in front of everyone.
She used so many technical religious terms that an outsider like me couldn’t really understand what she was talking about. When I tried to get her to explain more fully, Misaki quickly got up from the bench to go home. She left, saying merely, “Anyway, as I have this thing that I have to do tomorrow, we’ll have to go into the city the day after that. Don’t forget your promise.”
That was last night. Today, Misaki’s religious group would hold a meeting, and at that meeting, she would have to play a really difficult role. Having put all this together, an idea struck me. Today was the perfect opportunity to find out who Misaki really was! Summoning my courage, I begged the solicitors, “Please, take us with you and allow us to observe!”
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