Published at 1st of September 2019 7:41 pm

Chapter 10-19

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* 10 *

In autumn, in my second year of middle school, the night before the culture festival, as the classes were finishing up all their presentation preparations, I remembered that this day held great significance in my life.

We were implicitly allowed to stay at school until 9 PM that night, so everyone finished up early so we could have a blast.

It might have been a little after 6 PM. As I took in the breeze on the veranda outside, I watched my classmates making props and rehearsing a play in the classroom.

Suddenly, but not necessarily because anything had happened, I was filled with a feeling of happiness.

As I searched my mind for the cause, I realized it was that girl who would soon become irreplaceable.

I remembered that this was the day. It seemed that this was when I began to fall in love.

As ever, I didn’t know who that fateful girl was, but I gleamed that today would bring the impetus for falling in love with the one who would become my girlfriend.

Thus, I stuck around the classroom as late as I could that day to meet her.

Just past nine, when I couldn’t bear to wait any longer, a classmate spoke up.

“Hey, can somebody take this to the gym?”

I intuitively accepted on the spot, and received a number of props. Among them was a red Santa hat.

I would’ve been willing to just take it by myself, but then from the corner of the room came a voice: “Wait, I’ll help you!”

I looked toward the owner of the voice. It was Tsugumi who came running up to me.

“As I thought,” I thought.

Sleepy eyes, long eyelashes, always thinking. As I said, I’d been searching for a girl with those characteristics, and found a few, but Tsugumi matched them most closely.

I had more or less nailed her as the one who would be my future girlfriend a while ago. And I found my guess to be spot on.

With my future girlfriend before me, I nearly danced down the hallway as I joked with Tsugumi, who had put on the Santa hat.

She smiled at the corner of her mouth, took some reindeer antlers from among the props we were carrying, and put them on me.

The lights were already off in the gym, so it was pitch black. After we put down the props behind the stage, Tsugumi looked at me and grinned mischievously.

“Hey, if we go back, we’ll just have to do more work. Let’s rest here a while.”

I agreed, of course.

We ended up going home together that night. We both seemed sad to leave each other, so we talked for about an hour more on a park bench.

This is where the best parts of my life begin, I thought. I was dizzy with delight.

I would repeat everything the same as in my first life. So I thought. Except, well… what happened in cherry blossom season, in my third year of middle school.

As in my first life, after school, when we were the only two in the classroom, I confessed to Tsugumi.

I was ready to delight, and for her to be delighted, and all of that. But she just looked worried and said “Umm…”, faintly trying to smile.

A few days later, she ultimately turned me down. But perhaps the problem was that I was too cocky.

My confession, in my first life, was said very hastily and with much tension.

Perhaps my desperation managed to move her, and turned a confession that ordinarily would not have won her over into one that did.

The second time, I’d acted more like “Hey, you’ve been waiting, right? Figured I’d confess already.” It wouldn’t be surprising if that

left a bad taste with her.

I could think of any number of other causes, of course. But I had failed to make her my girlfriend. That was what mattered.

* 11 *

After that, oh, it was awful. I never would have imagined what good influences my girlfriend had on my first life.

Having lost my “goddess of happiness” for my second life, I was as powerless as a vinyl bag in a storm.

For the first month or so, I wanted to believe it was some kind of mistake. Thought Tsugumi must’ve had some reason to lie to me.

I earnestly believed that soon enough, she’d come tell me “I’m sorry for lying. There were deep circumstances which made me unable to respond to your affections that day, but actually, I love you.”

But fifty days passed since my confession, and even I couldn’t believe that anymore. It was too late for her to take it back.

It seemed no matter how hard I tried, faithfully recreating the past was impossible from the start.

Why, if I’d known this would happen, I should have just become a prophet.

But it was too late now. Five years had passed since I swam upstream, and my mental and physical ages had mostly realigned.

On a related topic, a life without Tsugumi was so hard to bear that I

stopped really trying to listen to lectures after that, putting me down a few notches in academics.

Don’t underestimate the effects others can have on you, I mean it.

You might think it’s ridiculous that I’d struggle with high school exams with knowledge up to twenty years old.

But hey, you try emptying your head and being stuck back in elementary school for a few years. I think you’ll get what I mean then.

Brains are flexible, so any information we deem to be unnecessary is mercilessly tossed out.

Chapter * 12 *

I guess it was my plight, after living a first life with no regrets, to live a second one full of them.

I never asked for a lot. If you ask me, I was pretty humble. I thought my attitude was commendable.

In that sense, I don’t really know what God was thinking. Heck, maybe God just wasn’t thinking. I mean, assuming existence, of course.

Hell, I’m an atheist anyway. Why am I saying all this stuff about God, exactly? Weird.

Well, maybe I’m just borrowing the word “God” to refer to the justice of the world and all that. I suppose that’s it.

* 13 *

So with all that going on, by the time high school came around, I was a very gloomy individual.

If my first-life self saw me, he would never believe we were one and the same, I bet. Or at least it might take him a while.

Ever since Tsugumi rejected me in the spring of my third year of middle school, I gradually started to hate people as a whole. Not like I ever completely hated everybody, but…

Well, I went to a way worse high school than the one I’d gotten into before. And thanks to all the people without a shred of intelligence there, my budding misanthropy bloomed.

The fact that I was one of them, objectively speaking, certainly didn’t help matters.

So I kept putting more distance around me. As a result, I was the epitome of a loner.

I might say my time at school was reduced to nothing but suffering. I feel like for the majority of three years, I was just watching the clock. I might even say that was my entire school life, waiting for time to pass.

I thought that with time, things would get better. But the only thing time does is bring things to their end.

Granted, my problems didn’t get any worse, but they didn’t get any better either.

High school wasn’t made for people without friends. I had no such people to enjoy passing the time with.

As such, I barely even remember my second-time high school years. I even tossed out the yearbook with hardly a glance inside.

It was a painful time. Even class trips, which should have been great fun, were just agonizing.

I remembered others openly treating me cruelly, and waking up in the middle of the night at a hotel to go cry in the bathroom. Those were the kinds of memories I had.

I was always thinking to myself, “Why did it come to this?” and “This shouldn’t have happened.”

But those are feelings anybody can have. It’s basically just self- discrepancy.

And yet my first self never once had those thoughts. Which is pretty strange, now that I think about it.

* 14 *

Was I now paying the price for having too happy of a first life? I wondered.

But then again, I felt like I’d already confirmed that the world didn’t have any sense of fairness. The world I lived in didn’t seem equal enough for that to be true.

I thought that depending on how I went about things, I could’ve lived an even happier life than the first one. My mistake was trying to preserve it.

Say there’s a race with a hundred people, and there’s one guy who places around third every single time, right?

But see, he’s placing third when he’s trying his best to place first. If he were only aiming for third to begin with, he’d probably end up

seventh or ninth.

That’s more or less the mistake I’d made.

* 15 *

However, there was one little thing that temporarily got me back on my feet. Though when I say temporarily, I mean it.

In the winter of my second year in high school, there was a terrible snowstorm one night.

I was shivering and waiting for the bus that went to the train station.

The terminal had a roof, but the wind blowing the snow around made it near-useless.

My melton coat was completely white with snow, and my face and ears were painfully frozen.

There was a warm light coming from a residence near the terminal. The wet road served like a mirror, reflecting a distorted and inverted world.

I found it far more beautiful than all those light decorations which clumsily aimed for beauty.

The bus finally arrived, though it should’ve been there thirty minutes ago.

But before the door even opened, I knew I didn’t have time to get on. I reluctantly watched the sluggish bus drive off.

I looked up to the sky and sighed a white breath.

I was sure I’d catch a cold in this weather, but I didn’t really care so much. I’d have a valid excuse to take school off, right?

I was half-ready to just stay there another five hours and get pneumonia.

But when I sat down on the bench, I suddenly noticed someone similarly waiting in vain at the bus stop across the street.

I knew the girl well, her hair fluttering in the storm. Yes, it was Tsugumi, the one who had rejected me in the spring of my third year of middle school.

“Why?”, I thought first of all. The high schools we went to should’ve been miles apart.

I wondered if, maybe sometimes, she had errands or other business which brought her around here.

I could’ve just asked her, but I couldn’t gather the willpower to speak to her.

At the time, I still had sort of a half-resentment for Tsugumi. She hadn’t accepted my good will, so now I wasn’t going to give it to her.

A selfish excuse, yes. But if I didn’t shift the blame onto someone else, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

But now that Tsugumi was right there in front of me, I found there was a part of me that was glad. I had to recognize that, at least.

I gave Tsugumi a rude glance, but she didn’t seem to notice it. Maybe I was so insignificant to her that she’d long forgotten about me.

Shivering in the cold, she seemed so lonely.

I felt like she could use someone warm beside her.

Of course, this was just me making false assumptions and fantasizing. Because when I thought “someone,” of course I meant myself.

But I told myself that was what she was thinking. A happy misinterpretation.

The illusion that I might be needed by someone actually felt pretty good.

I succeeded in convincing myself that “Hey, that girl needs me after all.”

After all, people can use misunderstandings as food to keep living. Religion’s a good example… nah, I kid. Don’t wanna make anybody angry.

* 16 *

I had lost a lot of enthusiasm for life, but encouraged by my auspicious misunderstanding, I was determined to get my happy days back.

First on the agenda was studying like mad to get into the same university as Tsugumi.

It’s not that I was frantically studying, actually. Rather than focusing on studying, it’s more like I stopped focusing on anything else. “Concentration by elimination,” maybe? Has a nice ring to it. I did away with all choices that weren’t studying.

It’s a dangerous method to be sure. If you mess it up, it’s an easy way to make yourself otherwise-talentless with nothing to live for. But I guess I hung on by playing music as I studied.

I never considered myself much of a music fan before. I only really cared for John Lennon. Mostly because in my first life, whenever my girlfriend had a spare moment, that’s what she’d play.

Strangely, Lennon-related memories stood out a little bit more than others. Well, I suppose his music survives the ages, so maybe it’s not that odd.

I read in a magazine once that a good song, even if it doesn’t suit your mood at all at first, grows on you as you listen to it again and again.

I used to only listen to your typical karaoke songs. But in my second round of high school, I heard “Yer Blues” on the radio, and immediately realized how familiar John Lennon was to my ears.

Since then, I would always play Lennon while I studied.

Finally having a clear goal in mind, I got more serious with high school.

Until then, I’d been checking the clock fifty times a class, hoping it could go just a little faster.

But the moment lectures became something that mattered to me, it started passing in the blink of an eye.

I’d practice rote memorization even on the bus and the train, and after I got in the habit of spending a fixed amount of time at my desk at night, I stopped having sleepless nights worrying about nonsense.

I’d spent altogether too much time thinking about unimportant matters, that’s for sure.

By cramming an extraordinary amount of info into my head in such a short time, old memories got pushed aside, diminished in importance.

My final year of high school was actually a rather peaceful one. The part I remember most was the finale, the exam cramming in early winter. Memories of being cooped up in my room studying.

The smell of coffee filled the room, and the speaker on the left of my desk softly played Strawberry Fields Forever. On the right was a small desk lamp, the only light.

Behind and to the right of my chair was a heater, angled just right so it wasn’t blowing hot air directly at me.

Once every two or three hours, I’d get my coat on, go outside, and take in the wintery air.

If the weather was good, I could see the stars. Once I’d had my fill, I would go back inside, warm my hands with the heater, and return to a world of only myself, textbooks, and music.

It wasn’t so bad, actually. Maybe there was even a soothing, self- satisfying quality to it.

In the end, I stretched my academic skills as far as they could go. And miraculously, I was able to enter the university I went to in my first life.

It was a wonderful feeling. I had finally gotten my confidence back. I felt like I could do anything then.

So that was good. Things were going good so far.

When the college entrance ceremony was over, I looked around for my former girlfriend… for Tsugumi.

And yes, I did find her, but this is where the problems began.

Three years was plenty of time for things to change. And I had thought I was ready.

* 17 *

After the ceremony ended, I hurried over to the entrance of the hall, and there I waited for Tsugumi to pass by.

Of course, I hadn’t done that thorough of a check to make sure she actually did go to the same college as in my first life.

If nothing was necessarily going to be the same, perhaps even because of the fact that Tsugumi and I didn’t get together, it was a clear possibility that she went to a different one.

It was even possible that Tsugumi had long since found a job for whatever reason.

Fortunately, there was only the one exit. So if she was there, chances were slim that I wouldn’t see her.

Plus, I had honed my sensor for distinguishing between Tsugumi and other people. I’m not even kidding. If you’ve ever had an intense love for someone when you’re young, you’ll know what I mean.

The new students, of which I was one, would see people they knew and cry exaggerated shrieks of joy at recognizing each other.

It looked ridiculous to me, and probably everybody else. But I doubt they cared, they were having too much fun.

I was envious, to be honest. Unfortunately, there was no one I knew, and if there were I don’t think I’d want to talk to a single one. So I didn’t get to do any of that.

But if when I found Tsugumi and called out to her, she yelled with excitement to see me again like the other girls, that sure would’ve made me happy.

That idea alone is probably what’d kept me going for about half a year.

By this time, I had become pretty economical. Since my life was lacking in joy, whenever I came upon the slightest happiness, I ruminated on it and got all I could out of it, like licking every bit of an ice cream cone.

I had my hair neatly cut, wore a necktie, and loosened my face muscles for my reunion with Tsugumi.

And then the time came.

I only saw just a bit of the back of her head among the crowd, but I was certain. It was Tsugumi.

I wasn’t sure what to say to her, so I started by walking over.

There was a strange pain in my chest. My breathing grew irregular. The few meters felt like hundreds.

When I was close enough that I felt confident she could hear me, I was about to just call out her name, “Tsugumi!” -

But no voice came out of my open mouth.

I felt my temperature plummet.

* 18 *

My former girlfriend was walking, arms linked, with a man I didn’t know.

And if it were only that, perhaps I would have been able to handle it.

I mean, we had been apart for three years. And other guys certainly wouldn’t leave such a charming girl alone.

I didn’t really want to think about that reality, but I thought I was prepared for it.

Tsugumi would have gotten lonely. So even if she had found someone to replace me, I couldn’t rightly blame her.

But when the man walking alongside Tsugumi looked for all intents and purposes the spitting image of myself from my first life - well, that was a different story.

That man who walked with Tsugumi, his height, his actions, his voice, his speech, his expressions, everything was identical to my first self.

As I’ve said before, my memories of my first life weren’t concrete, but he perfectly matched characteristics like “friendly smile” and

“melodic voice.”

“Doppelganger” came to mind.

But there were some problems in considering the man to be my doppelganger. That is to say, my first and second selves had become quite distinct in every sense.

So oddly enough, if you compared me with the man walking with Tsugumi who appeared to imitate my first life… it felt more like I was the fake.

If there was a doppelganger here, it felt more reasonable to assume it was me, not him.

I knew then that I had failed. Had been I able to exactly recreate my first life, I would have surely become the man before my eyes.

It was now no wonder why I hadn’t been able to date Tsugumi. Because the second time, I had a replacement.

* 19 *

I hadn’t felt such animosity for someone in a long time.

Until then, I couldn’t really muster the energy to loathe anyone. Because to consider someone a villain, you need to see yourself on the side of justice, right?

I couldn’t do that. I knew better than anyone that on the second loop, I was a worthless human being.

The most resentment I’d held prior was the vague bitterness I felt toward Tsugumi.

But this time, I was filled with rage.

I could only stand there dumbfounded, shouting in my head “Hey, that’s not right! That’s MY role!”

What can I say? If Tsugumi had merely gotten a boyfriend, I could live with that. Heck, I might even think “I’ll take her back,” tell myself “I’m way better than him!”

Now that I could really get fired up over. A battle to take back my destined partner.

But that it was none other than myself who took Tsugumi from me… Alright, well, maybe that’s not the right way to say that. Basically, someone who assumed the position I had in my first life, and grew up to be exactly like I had then, appeared to be Tsugumi’s boyfriend.

So she had chosen him as “a more perfect me.”

So here I had to ask something. “Can I beat myself?”

Had I been competing with a different type of man, I could have found my own virtues to emphasize.

And I could be sure Tsugumi would fall for those. What you’re looking for in a partner doesn’t change that easily.

But competing with a man who was the exact same as me? I didn’t know how I could win then.

Because I had to admit, he was superior to me.

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