I fished for more information about Misaki.
“Eh?” The boy blinked. “Well, that girl just recently became a researcher. She’s a normal girl—an adopted child, or some kind of ward of that older woman. The uncle seems to have no interest in religion, which might prove to be a saving grace. No, I guess she’s torn between two things, which is even harder. She always seems troubled, for some reason.”
I was deeply grateful to the boy for this inside information.
When we parted, the boy admonished, “Like I said, don’t do it. You absolutely must not convert. Well, I don’t really care if you convert; if you do, though, don’t have kids.”
I nodded slightly and returned to my apartment.
Part Three
The next day, Misaki and I walked through the city streets. The sky was a cloudless blue. As it was Saturday, there were a lot of people near the station, and it was all a little dizzying for me.
As promised, I’d met her at the neighborhood park at one o’clock in the afternoon, and we’d gone straight to the station. About two hours had passed, and we were still walking. We just kept walking. Although Misaki walked in front of me, ostensibly in the lead, I got the feeling that we’d been walking around and around the same roads for a while.
Still, Misaki’s footsteps remained steady.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Um, where are we walking?”
Misaki turned around. “What?”
“I mean, what’s our destination?”
“We can’t just walk like this?”
I rolled my eyes toward the sky.
Misaki stopped and folded her arms, deep in thought. “Hm. Now that you mention it, it is kind of strange. Thinking about it more carefully, I guess most people do try to go somewhere.”
I had nothing to say.
“Hey, where do you think people normally would go?”
It’s not like I have an answer. To begin with, what in the hell were we doing? It was Saturday, in the middle of the afternoon, and we had met to walk around in the city. Who in the world are we, anyway? If I could answer that question, maybe our destination would change.
At any rate, I asked, “Misaki, is there anywhere you’d like to go?”
“No.”
“Have you eaten lunch yet?”
“Not yet.”
For the time being, we decided to go to a nearby family restaurant.
***
As we entered the family restaurant, Misaki said, “This is the first time I’ve eaten at a place like this.”
I smoked a cigarette. The tip was shaking slightly. It was painful for me. I wanted sunglasses. If I could just have sunglasses, I wouldn’t have to worry about strangers staring at me.
Misaki ordered the lunch special. She ate with vigor while I sipped my coffee.
Dammit, I thought. The caffeine was making it even more difficult to stay calm. Soon, I would start acting suspiciously.
Misaki was rather cheery, however. She looked like she was having fun making some sort of origami from the paper napkins set up on the table.
“Look, it’s finished. Isn’t it amazing?” It was a crane.
“It is amazing. You’re very skilled.” I praised her.
My stomach was starting to hurt, so we left the family restaurant.
We walked for about another half hour before heading to a cafe. I drank some black tea, and Misaki ate cake. I was trying to remember the original reason we were meeting like this.
On that night, Misaki had said, “Let’s go into the city. If we do that, I think you’ll definitely head in a good direction.”
Oh, right. In short, this was another part of the hikikomori escape program, and it didn’t mean we were on a date or anything. And then, there was the previous night. After watching Misaki last night, I was oven more mystified by her true identity. For starters, the evening had erased my theory that all this was just a covert religious recruitment on her part. Given how little she had fit in with the surroundings at the assembly, it was unlikely that she’d zealously try to convert strangers.
In the end, who was she? Even now, she remained a huge mystery. What should I do, hanging out like this with such a mysterious girl? What should I do? Finally, with no idea what else to do, I simply kept silent.
Misaki pulled another book out of the bag that she always carried. This one was The Many Words That Guide You: A Collection of Proverbs That Will Echo in Your Heart. Another strange book… I was no longer surprised.
Moving her cake plate aside, Misaki opened the book on the table.
“Let it be.” Saying this, she intently looked at me. “It seems to be a saying by a man named John. What do you think this means?”
“L-let things be as they are.”
“Ah, that’s a great saying!”
Eventually, our meandering took us back to the manga cafe where Misaki worked occasionally. The man sitting at the register nodded at her. Acting like a regular customer, I took a receipt. Then, we sat down in the very back of the room.
The place was basically deserted.
Drinking free cola, I concentrated on reading manga. Misaki, who sat across from me, watched me and drank orange juice. I was incredibly distracted, but there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like a hole was about to open in my stomach.
Finally, I couldn’t put up with it. There was no way I could read manga like this. I tried speaking. “Misaki?”
“Hm?”
“There aren’t many people in this manga cafe, are there?”
“It’s because of the recent downturn in the economy.”
I looked over at the man behind the counter. “That man, how is he related to you?”
“He’s my uncle. I’m always causing him trouble; but because I’m leaving before long, I think he’ll forgive me.”
It sounded like they had some sort of complicated family dynamic; however, I didn’t want to hear that story, so I changed direction. “Anyway, Misaki, do you enjoy your religious activities?”
“Not really. I trouble people all the time.”
“Trouble?”
“You know—how to phrase it? I disturb the atmosphere. Well, my presence there depresses a lot of other people. Actually, it would be best if I weren’t anywhere.”
“You could just leave the group.”
“I can’t. I have to do something to repay my aunt.”
“Misaki, you don’t really believe in God, do you?”
Misaki put her cup of juice on the table. It made a small clank. “I do think it would be nice if God existed. If I could, I’d like to believe, but it’s rather difficult.”
She sounded disappointed. In a discouraged tone, she gave an abrupt hypothesis. “To start with, if God really existed, He would have to be a terrible villain. Thinking about it comprehensively, I’ve come to that conclusion.”
“Huh?”
“Well, for human beings, the ratio of painful things to enjoyable things has to be about nine to one. One time, I wrote it all down in my notebook and calculated it.” Misaki took out her secret notebook and spread it open on the table.
“See, there’s the pie chart. If you look, you can see clear as day that the happy times—the times when you think, ‘How fun! I’m glad I’m alive!’—don’t make up even one tenth of life. I worked this out properly with a calculator, so there’s no mistake.”
I rather wondered what kind of calculation methods she’d used, but Misaki didn’t show me any other pages. I had no intention of going out of my way to infringe on her privacy further.
Misaki continued, “That’s why. Any God who would purposefully create such a painful world must be a really terrible guy, don’t you think? It’s a logical conclusion, isn’t it?”
“Misaki, didn’t you just say that you wanted to believe in God?”
“Yeah. I do want to believe. I think I wish that God did exist. I mean…”
“You mean?”
“If that type of bad God did exist, t
hen we could go on living in good health. If we could push the responsibility for our misery onto God, then we would have that much more peace of mind, wouldn’t we?”
It was a complicated discussion. I folded my arms and pretended to think deeply about it, but my mind wasn’t working properly.
To begin with, Misaki, how serious about this are you? You’ve been smiling bizarrely for a while now. From start to finish, I felt as though I’d been trapped in a deceptive fog.
In the end, though, her words sounded honest and heartfelt. “If I could believe in God”, she whispered, “I could become happy. God is a bad guy; even so, I know I could become happy.”
“The problem is”, she continued, “the problem is… I have a poor imagination, so I can’t believe in God very easily. Look, couldn’t He create some really showy miracle for me, just like He does in the Bible?”
She was the kind of girl who said these unreasonable things.
After we chatted for about an hour longer, I decided it was about time to leave. When I went to pay, the man behind the register said, “Don’t worry about it. Please, be kind to her.”
I felt that this was a strange thing to say to a guy getting to know a girl Misaki’s age, but the man’s weary expression was strangely compelling. I bowed my head slightly and hurried for home.
***
Back at my apartment, I was incredibly surprised.
In the middle of my room, a life-sized, mannequin-like doll had been set up. Wobbling with each step, Yamazaki circled the doll.
“Welcome back, Satou! This is our object of worship.”
I was speechless.
“The other day, I heard that a school acquaintance’s older brother had a Ruriruri[26] life-sized figure he bought a long time ago that he didn’t know what to do with. Right away, I did everything I could to get it! Please, Satou, you worship her, too—this pale, young, little, adorable Ruriruri!”
The doll seemed to be some anime character. Yamazaki was prostrating himself before a life-sized doll that was modeled after a girl in the upper years of elementary school.
Looking around, I saw that the metal tin where we kept our drugs was empty. Yamazaki had finished all the rest.
“Yes, I believe I did use the drugs! I experienced the greatest trip of this century. Yes! This time, I had a real epiphany. Indeed, Satou, I’ve seen the very structure of this world.” After rubbing his forehead at the feet of the doll, Yamazaki suddenly stood up and faced me.
“I just kept thinking and thinking, ‘what are we missing?’ There’s something missing from us. There’s a big hole in our chests, so I wanted something to fill that hole. I wanted something to make me content. That’s it. Yesterday, our religious observation reinforced my meditation on the subject. Everyone is uncertain. In this incomprehensible world, we want to be ordered around by someone else, and that’s why we made God. The dual antagonism between God and Satan explains the world more easily. You see? That strong, simple story! I honestly was affected!
“Unfortunately, that God isn’t suited for us because that God is incredibly frightening. As you can see from the illustrations in ‘Awaken!’—he is incredibly realistic and not at all cute.” Yamazaki picked up the pamphlet lying in the corner of the room and held it out to me.
“Please, look at the special feature for June, ‘Guardian Angels: They Are Always Protecting You.’ In their religion, angels look like this.” Yamazaki had opened to a page featuring a realistic illustration of a muscular man with wings on his back.
Yamazaki ripped the pamphlet into pieces. “I don’t need an angel like this!” he screamed. “What is he, some kind of bodybuilder? When you say ‘angel’, I think of something more, you know, beautiful and moe moe and loli loli…”
Many, many memories of erotic games where an angelic girl appeared as the heroine flashed through my mind.
“That’s right! Don’t you see, Satou? Now is the exact time for religious reform!”
I was still speechless.
“Our object of worship is this Ruriruri doll! And I am the founder of the sect!”
I gently tapped Yamazaki on the shoulder.
Shaking off my hand, Yamazaki continued ranting. “Those who believe will be saved! We must make something we ourselves can believe in order to bring meaning to our lives! And the meaning will be how we live on with our incredible new religion!”
Stalking around and around the room, he raised his fists, howling. He was screaming about anything that came to mind.
Eventually, Yamazaki ended up clinging pathetically to the life-sized doll. “I can’t keep living like this”, he whispered. His eyes were open wide.
I made him some hot coffee. Yamazaki drank his coffee, tears in his eyes.
I, too, felt like crying.
“By the way, Yamazaki, what are you going to do with this doll?”
“I’m giving it to you, Satou. Do whatever you want with it.”
Chapter 09. Days of the End
Part One
To a hikikomori, winter is painful because everything feels cold, frozen over, and lonely. To a hikikomori, spring is also painful because everyone is in a good mood and therefore enviable.
Summer, of course, is especially painful.
It was a summer loud with the sound of cicadas. From morning to night, they kept whining and whining. The summer was also cripplingly hot. Even if the air conditioner ran constantly, it remained hot. I didn’t know if my air conditioner was wearing out or if this summer was just especially hot. Either way, I was thoroughly boiled.
Sometimes, I wanted to yell, “Whoever is responsible, show yourself!” I didn’t even have the energy to do it, though. The summer heat had worn me down completely. My appetite was depressed, and my nerves were exhausted. No matter how much Lipovitan D[27] I swigged, my weariness was impossible to dispel.
Only my next door neighbor was energetic. He unabashedly made noise. From early morning until the middle of the night, anime songs rang out at loud volumes. He said that recently, he needed only four hours of sleep a day. He was working hard on his creative projects, with the help of anime songs. Bloodshot eyes flashing, he vigorously applied himself to these meaningless activities.
One day, Yamazaki said, “I’ve finally gotten through a big part of my game.”
“Oh, really?”
“Tomorrow, I’m going to start making a bomb.”
“What?”
Without answering, Yamazaki silently gnawed on some white bread. It was a pretty half-assed breakfast. As I wasn’t as lazy as he was, I properly toasted my bread and quickly fried an egg.
“Like I told you before, don’t take food out of other people’s fridges without permission.”
I pretended not to know what he was talking about.
***
Misaki was wearing long sleeves even though it was summer. She was in a good mood, though.
“This is so fun, so fun, so fun”, she said. She really did seem to be having fun. She was swinging happily on the swing set.
Of course, tonight felt tropical. It was so hot that I sweated even without so much as speaking.
Misaki, however, seemed cool enough. Hair streaming behind her as she energetically swung back and forth, she said, “By the way, Satou, do you want to eat the leftover cat food?”
At some point, the park’s black cat had gone missing. It had been quite a while since he had shown himself. Either he had been hit by a car and gone to heaven, or he’d taken off on a journey somewhere.
At any rate, I turned her down. “I don’t need it”.
“I stocked up on that cat food. Ah, what a waste.”
Jumping down off the swing, Misaki stepped into the cozy sandbox next to the jungle gym. Picking up a green shovel that one of the neighborhood kids had left behind, she started making something in the sandbox.
I asked, “What is that?”
“A mountain.”
She was right. It certainly was a mountain. Set in the middle of the
sandbox, it was a sharply peaked mountain. It angled steeply, like Mount Fuji drawn by Hokusai[28], thus looking as though the slightest vibration would make it crumble. But the sand mountain soon was perfectly complete. It was wonderful work, using sand wet with the evening dew.
Clapping her hands to brush off the sand, Misaki circled the mountain once. She looked expectantly at me.
I said, “It’s a nice mountain.”
A little smile on her face, Misaki shouted, “Yaaah!” and aimed a forward kick at the mountain. “Things with shape will one day fall apart.”
“That’s right.” I nodded.
***
There was actually a huge variety to the books Misaki pulled out of her backpack, night after night. She apparently borrowed them en masse once a week from the library. There were novels, poetry collections, practical guides, and reference books. Misaki read books of all different shapes and sizes, and then she would read them to me.
“Well then, the text for tonight is The Last Words of Famous People. Its title refers to the words that exemplary people leave behind at the moment of their deaths….”
Refers to…?
“Let’s think about what life is!” she cried.
It was a dramatic line, and I was done in by Misaki’s ability to make such grand, unusual declarations with an utterly normal expression. Then again, seen from another perspective—well, compared to yesterday’s topic of “Let’s think about what it means to live”, it wasn’t that big a deal.
Regaining my composure, I urged her to continue, and Misaki immediately started reading the text aloud.
The book collected the last words of famous people from all around the world, from ancient times to modern days. I listened quietly and respectfully. As she read from the book, however, Misaki seemed to grow bored with it, and her theme changed along the way.
“‘More light…’ Well then, whose words could these be?”
What, a quiz?!
“Three… Two… One… Time’s up! The answer is Goethe. Well, that line is too cool, isn’t it? I think that Mr. Goethe must have thought it up far, far ahead of time.”
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