Published at 1st of September 2019 7:54 pm

Chapter 50-59

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml



* 50 *

At a glance, everything seemed to be coming together. Almost too well, even.

Tokiwa went to a bar with Tsugumi and stayed there for an hour. After taking her to at the bus stop, he started walking for the train station. That part was his usual routine.

But that day, he took a strange route to the station. He purposefully walked places with few people, went down pitch black residential areas, shopping districts, and alleys.

It was like he was following a self-imposed rule that he had to turn at every corner he felt like turning. Unable to guess his destination, tailing him took a lot of effort.

Maybe he feels like walking alone, I thought. We all have those nights, don’t we?

The air was cold as metal, and the stars shone piercingly.

The lights leaking out of houses seemed unusually lovely that winter night. It was even better with a bit of alcohol.

Finally, the time arrived. Tokiwa was headed for a bridge.

I had done a scrupulous investigation of the town, and I knew there were no places more suited for pushing someone to their death than that bridge.

The railing barely went higher than knee-level. It was easily high enough off the ground for the fall to kill him, but even if it miraculously didn’t, being dropped into the river in frigid December would give him hypothermia and kill him with a heart attack.

By coming to such a place drunk, he was practically telling me to kill him.

I suddenly thought that if I let this chance pass, there would be none to follow. I don’t know why, but I felt like this fourth one would absolutely be the last.

Yes, there would be times when not everything was in order, but if I couldn’t do anything even in this ideal situation, there was no chance I’d be able to in a less ideal one.

I have to finish this here, I told myself.

Tokiwa slowly walked to around the middle of the bridge. I closed the distance between us, keeping my footsteps quiet.

With all this thin snow piled up, it could even be that people would think he slipped, I considered.

Yes, I was oddly calm. Even now, I was able to think about these things as if it wasn’t even real.

My body still didn’t particularly recognize that I was about to kill a man.

It was when I was only a couple meters away, and thought I could just run up and push him.

Tokiwa suddenly stopped - I had no time to guess why - and sat on the railing, as if to peer down at the river.

Then he turned around and offered me his hand. Like he had known I was there all along.

“Hey, you sit down too,” he said, directing next to him.

Many thoughts ran through my head.

How long ago had he noticed me? How far?

Did he know my intent? If he did, why was he making himself so defenseless?

Did he want to talk to me? If he did, why did it need to be here?

If he knew I was tailing him from the start, then did he take those empty paths to reliably guide me along? But what was the point of that?

Maybe he had only noticed me in the past few minutes - if that were so, did it disrupt my plans?

Did he mean to confuse me and take the chance to run away? No, that hardly seemed effective - he should have just run in that case.

I thought all this in a matter of seconds, and unsure of what to do now, I sat next to him like he told me to.

Even then I could have easily pushed Tokiwa to his death. Perhaps I didn’t because I was just too surprised by, or rather curious about, his actions.

In that sense, I played right into his strategy.

* 51 *

“I want you to listen to what I’m about to say in silence, for the time being. But tell me if anything seems to be wrong.”

Homes lined both sides of the bridge, the warm light from their windows reflecting off the river.

The iron railings were so cold it felt like my hands would get stuck. But I had to hold onto them, of course; I could easily fall.

“I know you’ve been following me, more or less. And I’ve gathered enough proof that it wouldn’t be easy for you to get away. Forgive me, but I asked a friend to tail you. Yes, it was a double-stalking, so to speak. …Boy, I never thought I’d get to say that one day.” Tokiwa laughed to himself.

“I don’t understand why you’ve been following me around. After all, while I honestly hate to brag, I’m kind of a saint. I’ve never done anything guilty. I’ve done many things to be thanked for, but never to be loathed for. And it appears the only real link between us is that we’re in the same department at school. Still, I can’t discard the possibility that you may want to inflict harm on me for some unjustified resentment… So I wanted to give this a try.”

I looked straight down. At night, the river was completely black, like there’d been an ink spill.

And I realized that I could use it not only for pushing Tokiwa for his death, but for jumping to mine. That would be one way to resolve things. Never mind if I had the guts to do it.

“I gave you three chances before this. I intentionally fabricated three occasions while you were following me where you could easily inflict harm upon me. …But of course, as you’ve now seen, I allowed just enough time for me to save myself if you did threaten any violence.”

I took my hands off the railing, reached into my pocket, and timidly lit a cigarette.

The wind on the bridge was so strong, it took some effort to get it lit.

“Yet you didn’t act. Maybe you had no intention of hurting me from the start, maybe you got cold feet, I don’t know. At any rate, I knew that you were harmless. Even if you had the intent to kill me, it seemed impossible for you to carry out.

“Naturally, it was always possible you would later get serious about killing me. But getting to look at you in person now, I think I know the truth. You can’t hurt me. Just call it a hunch. Or maybe a subconscious feeling.”

I spoke for the first time. “When did you first notice?”

“The week after the college festival day,” he replied. “That was fairly early on, I’d expect? I would think it wasn’t long after you began.”

Exactly right, I confirmed in my head.

“It’s not that I’m lucky, or that I have eyes in the back of my head. I’m not particularly sharp, nor do I have experience being followed. So why did I notice so early? …Simple. Despite how I might look, I’m a highly self-conscious person - unusually so, you could say. I notice when people’s eyes are on me frequently. I read everyone’s actions, any messages directed at me. I’m the kind of person who, if I see the same person three times in a day, will think they’re trying to ambush me.”

“Huh… I didn’t really see you looking around restlessly or anything…”, I said.

He replied unconcerned. “Really self-conscious people don’t let themselves be seen looking around nervously. Rather, they make it look natural. You’d know if you tailed someone else that normal people do baffling things like stop and look behind them more frequently. I actually provided an easier environment for you to stalk me.”

In essence, he’d seen through everything. I let out a deep sigh with the smoke.

Yet I didn’t feel much in the way of regret or embarrassment. I didn’t know how I’d felt so calm just a moment ago. Perhaps I’d already gotten accustomed to Tokiwa knocking me down.

“So what are you going to do with me?”, I asked. “Turn me in to the police?”

“Certainly not,” he shook his head. “You might think that surprising, but… I can’t see what you’ve done to me in the past month as ill- natured. In fact, I think I’d like to thank you. Not that I liked being watched from the shadows, no. What I mean to say is, by you watching me all this time, I’ve come to acquire your point of view. And such a wondrous thing it is; it can’t be found in abundance in this world.”

I didn’t particularly grasp his meaning, but he went on innocently explaining.

“I’ve been rather blessed, but if I had to say I was unhappy about anything in my life, it’s that I’ve been too happy since I was very young. And it’s by speaking as the person I am that what I’m about to say has meaning - happiness gets wearisome when you get too used to it. It’s like eating sugar for all three meals every day. It numbs your tongue, and you can’t taste the flavor anymore. I’m not lying. Almost every day, all kinds of people praise me, innumerable women show their affection for me, and I have the best girlfriend I could ask for… But one day, I realized that I didn’t feel a thing.

“After that, I was putting on a smile, but deep down it was like I was chewing sand. Worryingly, while happy things couldn’t really make me happy, I was easily able to get gloomy and angry over sad and annoying things. I was disturbingly dulled to the positive, but well- attuned to the negative. …Can I have a cigarette?”

I silently passed Tokiwa a Pall Mall and a lighter. He lit it with experienced hands, looked briefly at the Morrissey pictured on the lighter, and handed it back.

I suddenly wondered if Tokiwa knew Tsugumi was a smoker. If he didn’t, I came out just barely ahead in terms of knowing her.

So I clung to that memory, and replayed it in my head. Remembered her pretty fingers holding the slender cigarette.

“But,” he continued after a smoky breath, “when you showed up, it brought about a bit of a change in me. Essentially, by having you following me, I got your viewpoint. The whole time, I was wondering… Not “Why would he want to follow me?”, but “How does he view someone like me?” That was what intrigued me.

Before I went to bed, I always thought back on what had happened that day, and imagined how it would look through your eyes. I couldn’t help myself. I guess people like me get very reflective when they’re alone. Wondering how my words and actions were seen by others, and what meaning the things said to me had - there are people out there who stay up all night thinking about it, you see.”

You didn’t have to tell me that, I said without speaking. I knew it was true of none other than myself.

Tokiwa skillfully spun the cigarette between his fingers, and said “Well.”

“I suppose it was about two weeks after you started following me. I suddenly realized there was a big change going on inside me. It was an unbelievable thing. My numbed senses were coming back to me.”

He said that without irony, as if he was speaking of a truly beautiful memory.

“When I woke up in the morning, I was filled with hope for the coming days. When I looked in the mirror, I was glad to be born this way. Walking through town, I adored each and every person I saw. When I saw my girlfriend’s face, I was filled with gratitude for being able to meet her. Flowers were flower-like, rocks were rock-like - their individual qualities jumped out at me. Everything was perfectly normal and as it should be. Too normal, even. And perhaps I’d never before been able to look at the world in such a normal way since I was born. I was going to faint with joy. I was finally able to accept that all-too-common happiness as appreciable happiness.

“At first, I thought it was only temporary. And indeed, as time passed, that joyful feeling lessened. By the time lunch with my friends at school came around, it seemed gone without a trace, like it had never been. But just as I was despairing and looked up…

though quite far away, there you were. Suddenly, my joy was as clear as before. I wanted to stand up and celebrate, no kidding.

“Finally, then, I realized. That happiness was something you gave me. By borrowing your viewpoint to look at myself, I could see the happiness that had become commonplace to me in a new light.”

There, he temporarily stopped.

I had listened in silence, and I understood what he was saying. After all, it was similar to the way I always grieved about my situation more than I needed to, thanks to my memories.

“There’s one thing which you should be aware of. My stalker had to be you. If someone else were to have followed me around like this, I don’t think I would be able to so passionately consider their feelings. So in that sense, I’m very grateful to you. It may sound sarcastic, but… You really resemble me in a way. I don’t mean to displease you, but what I honestly think when I see you is, “With just a single misstep, I could have ended up like him.”

“…I’m convinced we’re the same at our foundation. Alarmingly similar in our initial conditions. I believe it’s possible that coming from the same place, the slightest difference in environment or

twist of fate could result in such a difference. So I know how you feel. I can even imagine what you must think of me.”

Once finished, he took a deep-blue notebook from his bag. “Give me a moment, I’ll be quick,” he said, beginning to write something. Three minutes later, he ripped out the page and handed it to me.

When I saw the paper, I was moved rather than offended.

He explained what he’d written. “I still don’t know why you’re following me. However, if you would continue to harmlessly do so, then please refer to this. I’ve written everything I currently know about my schedule for the near future. It must be difficult work to follow me.

“…Christmas is coming up soon. When it does, my life will be more fulfilling than ever. And if you could see that it is… nothing would make me happier.”

* 52 *

With all the trees and store fronts lit up, Christmas songs playing everywhere you went, and the huge fir tree at the train station, the town was turning the colors of Christmas.

It had been four days since my talk with Tokiwa on the bridge. I continued to stalk him as usual; I was having coffee at a café at the station, waiting for him to show up.

I could get a good view of the plaza from there, you see. Which Tokiwa and Tsugumi often used as a meeting place.

Many of the people sitting around me were either couples or pairs of women.

Every single one of them was deeply entrenched in conversation. I seemed to be the only loner.

I pulled my mug up to my lips and took a sip. The coffee had gone cold and tasted like detergent.

Just what was I doing?

To be blunt, nearly all my reason for tailing Tokiwa had been annihilated. I’d been completely found out.

It would be fair to say it was impossible for me to act out against him now.

So then why did I let my stalking drag on? “To remember.”

My memories of my first life, already so fuzzy, seemed to get even hazier around this time.

It was bad enough that if I wasn’t paying attention, I could even forget that this was my second time living these years.

To be honest, tailing Tokiwa and seeing him with Tsugumi was useful for strengthening my memories.

If I hadn’t done that, by now I’d have become convinced I was always like this from the start.

Or perhaps I would have been happier that way. When I had a point of reference, it made me keep seeing my second life as so much worse.

If I could look on the bright side, even my life now wasn’t bad enough to throw it all away. The college I went to wasn’t so bad, and there were lots of books to read and songs to listen to.

And while she could be hard to understand, my sister seemed to care for me as well.

So what if I was a shut-in for a year? I could just think of it as a gap between high school and college.

Alas, it was impossible for me to think that way. If I could just forget my first life, it would be easy.

But on the other hand, even knowing the pain those memories brought me, for whatever reason I couldn’t bring myself to forget. No matter what, I wanted to remember that the world, my life, had had such wonderful things in it.

I honestly felt it would be better to die cradling the memories of my first life than to try and live my second life happily, if the latter meant forgetting.

Tsugumi arrived at the plaza before Tokiwa. She sat on a bench with a green paper bag under her arm, and looked up at the station clock.

Double stalking… I wondered if the “friend” Tokiwa had asked to follow me could have been Tsugumi.

That would have meant the worst - that the day we met at the library, Tsugumi knew that I was stalking Tokiwa.

Even the way she cordially talked to me could have all been to hide her intentions, I considered.

In a few minutes, Tokiwa appeared on the plaza. When Tsugumi saw him, she held up the bag and proudly showed it to him. Tokiwa

reacted with exaggerated surprise.

The contents of the present could have been an early Christmas gift, or a birthday present.

If Tokiwa’s birthday was the same as mine, December 24th, then it wouldn’t be odd if Tsugumi gave him a birthday present a week early to prevent overlap.

After taking the present, Tokiwa looked in some direction as if noticing something. Indeed, it was in my direction - it seemed he’d noticed I was here standing guard.

And then he waved at me, of all things. Such innocence.

I hurriedly lowered my head, hiding in their blind spot. My face was hot all of a sudden, and I clutched my head.

Truly, what on earth was I doing?

* 53 *

I didn’t lift my head up for a while. After about ten minutes, thinking they would have left the plaza by now, I was about to raise it.

Just then, I noticed for the first time that there was a girl sitting to my left.

And this was funny - as she sat four seats away, she was holding her head in much the same way as me.

A man and a woman sitting in a café, quite a distance apart, and yet acting in just the same way. How odd.

It seemed even odder when I realized it was Hiiragi.

Then I remembered, that’s right, she was stalking Tokiwa too.

I wondered, then, if Tokiwa knew about Hiiragi as well, and instructed her to keep doing it, even going so far as to politely write out his schedule.

He had told me “My stalker had to be you,” but it seemed to me that it could have been Hiiragi, too.

Because in terms of his reasons for “why it had to be me,” Hiiragi and I were like twins.

Hiiragi got out of her seat and went to the counter to order a refill of coffee. She didn’t seem to have noticed me.

She was wearing an unfashionable white sweater, her outfit yet again completely different from what I last saw her in. Yet it strangely suited her.

Some people just aren’t suited for a refined look. Yeah, I’m probably one of them too.

Once Hiiragi got her refill, she went to the condiment bar, took the lid off her paper cup, and began dumping in ridiculous amounts of sugar.

I wish you could’ve seen it. It was like her objective was to make a thick soup.

She took her sugar-with-some-added-coffee drink back to her seat and savored it, drinking with both hands.

All of a sudden, I felt there was something stunningly nostalgic about it.

It’s like the feeling when you listen to a hit song all the time, then don’t listen to it for years, and then you hear it on the radio again a decade later.

My eyes were fixed on Hiiragi drinking her coffee for a while. But I really didn’t have a clue what my brain was so nostalgic about.

Yet it could certainly not be directed toward anything else, that much was certain. It was definitively coming from Hiiragi.

Of course, Hiiragi had long been a friend of sorts. We were classmates ever since middle school.

But that just made it stranger. Why such a sudden longing over someone who’s stayed around me for so long?

She shouldn’t have been giving me such a sensation.

Finally, I succeeded at finding a good, proper word for the sensation.

Deja vu.

I had seen this very sight once before.

No, more than once - countless times, I’d seen Hiiragi just like this, at this angle, in this café.

It wasn’t a memory from my second life, so by necessity it was a first-life one.

Something overlapped with Hiiragi. Immediately, I was struck with great unease.

Had I? Had I been making such an unbelievable mistake?

Hiiragi looked up, and we finally met eyes.

No, we never spoke up to each other. We’d gotten good at communicating intentions with our eyes alone in our third year of high school.

Hiiragi’s eyes spoke volumes. Just two or three seconds of contact told me a great many things.

So… by the time she looked away, I was already convinced.

She had memories of “the first time.”

* 54 *

Why had I been so convinced Tsugumi was my former girlfriend in the first place?

Indeed, it was true she satisfied the characteristics I remembered: “Sleepy eyes, long eyelashes, always thinking.”

But was there not a single other girl like that? Had I really been weighing every possibility?

I looked over at Hiiragi again.

It went without saying. Her eyes were always sleepy. Her eyelashes were long. I didn’t know if she was thinking behind those sleepy eyes or not, but she got along with me rather well.

I finally understood everything.

That my mistakes had begun much earlier.

That my choices were even more foolish than I thought.

In short - I was not the only one who had my role taken away.

The one I had confessed to in middle school was a mistaken identity; the girl for whom I’d commit murder to get back, the wrong person.

The couple I had been forever watching from the shadows were our doubles.

Not just Tokiwa. Tsugumi, too, was the same kind of doppelganger.

And my real girlfriend had always been right there beside me. Hiiragi. The only one who hoped to match me in misery. It was her.

* 55 *

When I realized my former girlfriend was right there, was in a similar situation, and experienced the same kind of anguish… on the contrary, I wasn’t happy.

In fact, it only seemed to deepen my despair.

Why? Well, even if Hiiragi here was my real girlfriend, the one I loved more now was Tsugumi, the “fake” who better resembled her from my first life.

I wasn’t concerned as much with “original or copy” as with “who will make me feel the same way as the first time?”

The genuine article had changed, so I had little interest in her anymore. The right answer isn’t always right, you could say.

A mistake just doesn’t seem worth fixing once the mistaken party goes on with it for ten years.

What’s more, I was dejected knowing that Tsugumi who I sought was not my former girlfriend at all; effectively a complete stranger. There was no longer any foundation for her and I to get together now, was there?

The eternal bond I believed in wasn’t with the girl on the plaza, but with the girl with head in hands beside me.

Looking Hiiragi over with the consideration that she was my girlfriend the first time around, I felt like I was looking objectively at my own second-self.

I knew to a dreadful degree how people who knew me in my first life would react to seeing me now.

No, it wasn’t a very good feeling.

For these reasons, it was not a fateful reunion.

As my “true first girlfriend” looked lonesomely over the plaza, I felt that she needed someone warm beside her.

And just this one time, I feel like I wasn’t mistaken.

But I didn’t speak to her, and left the café.

Because just like I didn’t need Hiiragi, but rather Tsugumi, she didn’t need me. She needed Tokiwa.

It just wasn’t going to work out. But that all started with me.

If I had not made my mistake in love at first sight, perhaps Hiiragi and I, though not living a perfect recreation of our first lives, would be happy together.

No, I couldn’t deny that we could have been even happier than before.

And if I hadn’t messed things up with not just Hiiragi, but with my sister, my parents, Usumizu, all those people, there was no doubt they would have lived ever so slightly happier lives.

That’s around where I cut myself off from thinking about it any more.

I give up now, I thought.

It seemed like it was about time to just forget about my first life entirely.

* 56 *

I lit up a cigarette and prayed the world would end.

A vehement prayer for everyone who knew me and everyone I knew to just vanish.

Then I’d be able to do it all over from the start.

At the time, I was living with absolutely no connections to anyone. I was fed up with the uncertainties of other people.

I knew how difficult it was to live completely and utterly alone. But to live something incredibly close wasn’t so difficult in this world. There are lots of people who die unknown and not knowing anyone themselves.

After I got home, I smoked like a chimney in winter.

My sister fumed amid the fumes. She told me to stop again and again. I just ignored her.

I wanted my apartment and my head to be filled up with smoke. I didn’t want to see a thing, I thought.

Me flat-out ignoring my sister’s complaints was unprecedented, so she was thrown off. Though a typical braggart, she was a coward at her core.

When she saw how I was acting different than usual, she simply withdrew and said nothing more.

By the time I finished with my twelfth cigarette, my sister asked with hesitation, “Big brother, you always said you hated smoking. Why’d you start?”

After taking a puff from my thirteenth, I answered “Maybe because I lost everyone who cares.”

According to my unreliable memories, in my first life I had smoked incessantly up to a certain point.

But then I quit. Because my girlfriend was worried for me.

She didn’t mean to blame me, but said something along the lines of “I don’t want you to make your life shorter,” and that did it for me. It felt ridiculous to willingly shave away at the time I could spend with her, after all.

And yet now, in my second life, I had no one left who worried about me. Not a single person who cared about my life getting shorter.

In fact, maybe I smoked even more than necessary for that very reason.

My sister didn’t seem to understand my statement. Because I made it sound like until recently, I did have someone who noticed and cared about me.

But, well, she didn’t press it any further. She seemed to understand that I probably wouldn’t answer anyway.

Instead, she slowly approached and gently reached her hand for my mouth.

“…Well, I care. Please stop.”

Then she took the cigarette in her fingers and pulled it out.

I took a look at her. She looked at me with her usual sober eyes, but she seemed to be blinking more.

I lit a new cigarette and released a mouthful of smoke. My sister started hacking and coughing.

I took a piece of paper out of my pocket and gazed at it. It was Tokiwa’s schedule.

I put it on the ashtray and held my lighter up to it, but I couldn’t bring myself to burn it.

Because though it wasn’t much, it did mention things about Tsugumi. Regrettably, even if it was just a scrap of paper, I figured anything to do with her was to be treasured.

I put my cigarette out in the ashtray and took a book from the desk to read. But it wouldn’t stay in my head.

Had I really ever thought that I would be able to kill Tokiwa?

And if I had miraculously succeeded, did I honestly believe Tsugumi would come to love me instead?

I really must have been crazy to think that.

Maybe as a defense mechanism to cope with the shock, I soon found myself sound asleep.

As if hoping to induce necrosis in my brain cells, I slept for fourteen hours.

When I woke up the next morning, my sister was gone.

The next day, and the day after, she showed no sign of returning.

* 57 *

In the end, I gave up on my plans to kill Tokiwa.

But, irritatingly enough, I came to learn that wishes are always granted just when you stop wishing.

A week passed in the blink of an eye, and the tail end of December arrived.

After my sister disappeared, I applied for every part-time day job I saw. I had enough emails about them to fill my entire schedule for December if I felt like it.

Not that I was interested in earning money from them. I just wanted to empty my head.

I wanted to forget a lot of the things that happened. And since I had no reason to tail Tokiwa anymore, I had a lot of time on my hands.

I was asked to do a lot of one-day jobs, like working as a waiter at a packed hotel, helping with stupid holiday events, and doing traffic control - I let these consume my days.

I always hated working with strangers, and as was common with this kind of work, I was irrationally scolded by energetic full-time employees.

There was nothing fun about it, and it didn’t even help lift my spirits, yet it was better than doing nothing.

When I got home late at night, I’d drink cheap whiskey on the rocks, skim through books my sister left behind, and when I got sleepy, crawled into bed while listening to music.

The cessation of thought is easy once you get used to it. In no time at all, the memories of my first life grew hazy.

One day, while walking home through piles of snow after work, I looked at my phone to confirm my plans for tomorrow and noticed an answering machine message.

Thinking it came from my college, I deleted the notification without even checking. No doubt it was something along the lines of “make up your mind, are you dropping out or not?”

The thing was, though, it was an answering machine message. That meant it came from a public phone.

It’s another testament to my idiocy, but at first I thought it was from Tokiwa, then immediately afterward got my hopes up thinking “Wait, hold on, could Tsugumi have called?”

Even now, I had that unfounded hope that Tsugumi would come save me when I was in trouble. I doubt anybody could save me from my stupidity.

Of course, Tsugumi had no way of knowing my number or anything in the first place.

The message was from my sister. Her voice was just barely audible. “Big brother, I want you to come home. …Um, it’s really bad between dad and mom right now. It would be fine if they divorced, but… I don’t know if that’s how it’s going to end. …I mean, I don’t really know if you coming home is going to do anything. But I don’t know what else to do.”

After a few seconds of silence, she ended with a whisper. “Hey, big brother… I really don’t like to do this.”

Neither did I.

* 58 *

I didn’t feel like going straight home, so I didn’t turn at the corners I should have, and did turn at those I shouldn’t.

I was sweating from work, and my body felt chilly in an unstable way. It was a truly awful kind of cold.

Without even being aware of it, I was humming Radiohead’s “Creep.”

Miserably, I knew the feelings of that song all too well in my second life. Because I wasn’t someone wonderful who could match with Tsugumi.

While walking down the shopping district to the train station, I saw around ten kids in elementary school uniforms putting on a performance with handbells.

I found myself stopping to listen. Looking closer, there were kids playing other instruments like accordions and sleigh bells too.

It was some fine music. The apparent teacher conducting them looked like he was having a blast.

Past the shopping district, I reached the residential district.

There I found families outside their houses, smearing them with absurd amounts of decorations and lights.

The children were frolicking, and the parents diligently put up the decorations on the walls, trees, and fences. I watched from a distance.

Seeing this from not too far away, I was startled. Why are they so different from me?, I thought. It felt like we weren’t even the same species.

After some time, the children said “One, two, three!” Then the colorful lights lit up all together, at once turning the house into what looked like an amusement park.

It was a splendid thing, and it certainly echoed images of Santa Claus and reindeer.

I left the residential district, as if running from it. There were lots of happy houses around, and I wouldn’t be able to stand watching the same thing repeatedly happen.

While walking aimlessly, I arrived at a small convenience store I often went to. I considered passing it by, but thought it over and went in.

Fighting the urge to warm my hands with some hot coffee, I grabbed a bottle of whiskey and took it to the register.

At the counter was Hashibami, the usual clerk. She was a tall woman, but definitely not the modeling type, and she didn’t seem to know what to do with that height herself.

I judged she was about three or four years older than me. Her hair was light brown, her voice low like a heavy drinker, and she gave me a general impression of frankness.

I tended to visit the store around 11 PM, upon which I always bought a long can of low-malt beer and a box of Pall Mall Reds.

I wasn’t fussy. In fact, since I wasn’t fussy, I just bought the cheapest things I could to satisfy me.

Since I bought the same thing so many times, she came to know my face, and after that, took to immediately preparing a box of Pall Malls as soon as she saw me walk in.

No doubt when Hashibami saw me, she thought “Ah, it’s the cheap beer and smokes guy.” Kind of embarrassing.

Since she always prepared, I couldn’t bring myself to suddenly say “Five boxes of Peace, please.” So I’d been smoking the same brand for months.

But that day, when I brought up whiskey and a chocolate bar, no cigarettes, Hashibami seemed a bit confused. She bagged the items a little more awkwardly than usual.

“No Pall Malls today, huh. Did you quit?”, Hashibami modestly asked as she handed me the bag.

I liked the way she put it, as well as her genuinely surprised expression. It calmed me down a little.

Of course, I was just happy to have anyone show some interest in anything I did. Even if it was just some shopping.

“No, I just wanted to surprise you,” I said. I hadn’t joked around with anyone in a while.

“Well, you succeeded,” Hashibami laughed. “So it’s not that you’ve quit, then?”

She thought for a little bit, then said “Oh well,” and lifted up a little vinyl bag at her feet to give it to me.

“Those are some past-expiration-date cigarettes. Personally, I never knew cigarettes had an expiration date. I mean, it’s typically not a concern for those who smoke them. My manager actually told me to throw them all away, but that seemed like a waste, so I’ll give them to you.”

I looked in the bag. It was an assortment of unpopular brands, about twenty packs in all.

“Is this okay?”

“Well, no, it’s not. But I think it’s a good thing.”

While I puzzled over whether it was right to accept them, Hashibami leaned on the counter and tapped me on the shoulder.

“I’m the anti-Santa Claus. Rather than give good children toys, I give bad adults beer and smokes. Because they’re the ones who really need presents, not the good kids. …So go on, take them and leave.” I smiled bitterly and asked, “You hate Christmas?”

“No, I love Christmas. Always have, since I was a kid. …The problem is, I’m in no position to take part in what I consider Christmas.

When it comes to Christmas in this country, there are some high hurdles for me.”

There were other customers lining up, so I thanked Hashibami and left.

I quickly got to smoking one of the cigarettes I’d been given, and wandered the wintery town at night.

I stuck my free left hand into my pocket. Because it was cold, yes, but it was also a habit of mine. I couldn’t help putting my free hand in my pocket; if I didn’t, I just couldn’t keep it calm.

I’ve thought about why, and I wondered if it was because I was used to having someone’s hand to hold when I walked in my first life, but never did in my second.

Like my hand was lonely. There’s the theory about people smoking because their mouths miss sucking their mother’s breast, so you never know.

I walked around looking for a good spot, then found a great one in the park.

It was a small park under a bridge, surrounded by withered trees, empty cans and paper bags scattered about, holes all over the fence. Just the kind of place I liked.

I sat on a bench and put out my cigarette on a handrail. The red embers scattered, a few of them falling to the ground and quickly vanishing.

I opened up the whiskey and drank it straight. The bottle had chilled considerably by now, but just one sip made my belly warm.

I had only meant it to be a joke. I just wanted to walk around drunk all night and numb myself a little.

But… if I fell asleep drunk like this, I really might freeze to death, I began to think.

My body quickly absorbed the alcohol and I felt my senses get numb. Plus I was feeling pretty sleepy.

Thanks to Hashibami, I was feeling just a little better about myself, like I could maybe actually do it.

And if I had been feeling just a little worse, I don’t think I would have been thinking about suicide like this.

The most dangerous times are when you’re feeling down in the dumps, and only recover halfway.

I was excited to have been given this sudden chance.

It’s strange, but when you get to this stage, regrets are comforting. If it’s a strong enough emotion, anything is comforting.

It all starts to seem like someone else’s business. When it gets really bad, you can even delight in despair.

That’s why I did all I could to think about sad things. I tried to be one of those guys who recalls all his regrets on the brink of death.

I tried to seriously face up to the thoughts I’d been avoiding before. My head was murky with weariness and alcohol, so I couldn’t remember very well. But a few blurry images came to mind when I thought “regrets.”

One of them was, naturally, a vision of “what if things had gone better with Tsugumi.”

I saw in my mind us talking aimlessly about trivial things, like we had done that day at the library.

But that wasn’t all the vision was. I saw one wonderful thing after another that “could have happened.”

I won’t bore you with every single one.

But I was a little surprised to see such a vision.

I came to understand, as I thought about these happy possibilities, that there had been these fragments of happiness scattered all around.

Yet I was ignorant to them all, or at times even stomped them into bits myself.

And why? Because I was only ever thinking about my first life.

* 59 *

I think I might have sat on that bench until four in the morning.

I couldn’t stop shivering, and I started to cough like I was sick, but I showed no signs of dying; I was just very cold.

So I eventually went home, pulled the blankets over me with shivering hands, and slept.

I remembered how when I was in elementary school, when I really didn’t want to do something, I bathed in icy water to try and give myself a cold. It never worked out.

I woke up in the dim afternoon, turned on the heater, and forced some cereal and milk into my empty stomach despite having no appetite.

I went outside and smoked the cigarettes Hashibami gave me. I was feeling pretty sluggish, but it wasn’t a cold or pneumonia. I was healthy, just without energy.

By the time I went back inside, my plan was settled.

I thought what I’d do was, I’d continue soaking in part-time jobs like this, and once I’d saved up enough money, I’d leave on a journey. I’d go as far south as I could. And then once I ran out of savings, I’d be a vagrant or something.

Essentially, I thought I’d imitate my former best friend Usumizu.

I know it’s crazy, but that’s really what I wanted to do. Yeah, I’d just have the occasional meal to look forward to, and for entertainment I could look at the stars and flowers, and listen to the birds and bugs, and the weather would be my biggest worry in life. That’s what it’d be like.

And I thought while living the vagrant life, I might just meet Usumizu who was doing the same. And then we might be best friends again, like we had been the first time.

We’d share pieces of bread, have turf wars with other vagrants, work together to gather cans, and compete over silly things like who could get more. Just like that.

Every day, we’d sleep under the stars and wake up with the sun. Then I just wouldn’t care about my first life anymore, just bare necessities.

Boy, wouldn’t that be real living.

But there was a part of me that looked at that fantasy soberly.

In the end, I’d probably never meet Usumizu, wouldn’t be suited for a vagrant’s life, and would just die alone kicking and screaming. Saying “It shouldn’t have been this way” to the end.

If I died, though, nobody would care. Well - maybe my sister would shed some tears for me.

Despite appearances, she was a sweet girl who looked out for her brother. Lately I’d come to realize that part of her hadn’t changed. She came to my place because she couldn’t stand home, yeah, but I feel the other half of it was to console me.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I like to think I’m free to think what I like.

I wondered what would happen to my family if I were gone.

Maybe it’d just break up, increasingly unable to keep itself together.

Or maybe without me, the three of them would come together for each other to fill the gap.

Either way, it seemed like a much better situation than what it was now.

It wasn’t a spirit of self-sacrifice that made me feel ready for death; I just thought, if my passing brought about some good, that would be nice. It was a personal concern.

My thoughts of self-abandonment deepened. Ironically, the moment I discarded all attachment to the world, I could see the world’s charms.

While I thought of “the world I lived my life in” as a good-for- nothing place, when I took away my involvement, it was stunningly beautiful.

A while later, I headed for my part-time job of the day. Even the cheap Christmas decorations I saw on the way were enough to move my heart.

The faint snow dyed orange by streetlights was a sight I couldn’t tire of, and I even enjoyed taking a close look at the shape of every little icicle hanging from a roof.

I was like a visitor to the town who had never before seen snow.

It became very clear to me. Even things you don’t hold much value for - as soon as you lose them, or as soon as you realize you did, you start to see them as irreplaceable.

The moment you think you want to die, life starts to sparkle, and the moment you think you want to live, death starts smelling sweet.

But as much as I understood that, until I had truly lost everything, I couldn’t really feel that way.

It’s not something people are all that capable of adapting to. Talk about inconvenient.

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