Vol. 1 Chapter 8

Chapter 8

、v

When I woke up in the morning, my body felt unbearably heavy.

I didn’t have even a shred of motivation.

Dragging myself, I went down to the dining table downstairs. I was practically crawling, so my family looked surprised.

“Sorry”

I said in a gloomy voice.

“I can’t go to school.”

My parents didn’t lecture me. It was the second time.

And just like that, I ended up taking some time off from school due to『feeling unwell.』

As I sat blankly in my room, I sensed my sister standing outside the door after finishing breakfast. But she didn’t come in.

“You okay?”

We talked through the door. It felt almost like I’d become a real shut-in from a drama, and that made it oddly…a tiny bit enjoyable.

“Probably.”

Even as I said it, I wondered if I really was okay.

“Did something happen at school?”

I couldn’t answer honestly. It was too embarrassing, no matter how you looked at it. And explaining it would be way too complicated. So I stayed silent.

“Mom said earlier…you don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”

My sister said it in an unusually gentle voice. Maybe she was trying to be considerate.

“You can still become a decent adult even if you don’t go to school.”

『Is that really true?』I doubted it.

I thought about the『points.』For example, in a job interview, they’d definitely ask:『It says here you dropped out of high school. Why is that?』

I didn’t have the confidence to answer that well. If I couldn’t even explain it properly to my own sister, how could I explain it to a stranger I’d just met? There’s no way.

“I’ll get things together…so just leave me alone for a while.”

That was all I could say. I had no real confidence in that either, but for now, I just wanted to be left alone.

After that, I got into bed and closed my eyes.

For now… I just wanted to sleep like a lump of mud.

Before long, everything inside me started to empty out. I became nothing more than an object that simply breathed and existed, while in the darkness, only my consciousness grew sharper. Ah… I thought. I’m really at the end now. I’m finished.

＊＊

With my eyes closed in the darkness, I was remembering my middle school days. The time when I first became unable to go to school.

Back then, I thought, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

When I went to the classroom, my desk was gone. Looking around, the people nearby were smirking niya-niya. Since I couldn’t sit without a desk, I just stood there, stunned.

When I looked outside the window, I saw what seemed to be my desk and chair, for some reason placed all alone in the schoolyard. Someone must have gone out of their way to come early in the morning and move my desk and chair.

But no matter how long I stood there, no one was going to bring them back into the classroom for me. I had to go get them myself. Feeling fed up, I went down to the schoolyard. As I walked down the hallway, the start-of-class chime rang, making me feel even worse, but since I’d get scolded if a teacher found me, I quietly made my way to the yard without strength.

A light rain was falling.

The dirt in the schoolyard had turned muddy, and it felt cold.

When I finally reached my desk and chair in the middle of the yard, I thought, I’ve reached my limit.

Just like that, I sat down on the chair.

After days of various harassment, my body was exhausted.

The moment I sat down, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to stand up again.

Whatever. I don’t care anymore.

I slumped over onto the desk and closed my eyes.

Back then too, just like now, my body felt heavy and gloomy, and I was simply sleepy, so I wanted to sleep.

I thought, I want to disappear like this.

“What are you doing in a place like this?”

That rough voice pulled my consciousness back, and when I lifted my face, there was the P.E. teacher. Looking around, my classmates, already changed into their gym clothes, were peering down at me.

“Hey, Aoki. Are you messing around?”

The teacher said. Could it be that he thought I had carried my desk and chair out here myself and was pretending to sleep for laughs? No, that couldn’t be it. He probably had a rough idea of what was going on and was deliberately acting like this. Thinking that, I felt he was abnormal, but at the same time, I figured that from other people’s perspective, I was probably the abnormal one, and he looked like the normal one.

When I thought that, it somehow pissed me off. I noticed how bald his head was.

“Shut up, baldy. I’ll kill you.”

When I muttered that, my classmates laughed in a mocking way. The teacher was furious. I wanted to hit someone but I didn’t know who to hit. I’d probably get stopped before I could hit everyone.

“I’m going home.”

I grabbed my bag and left the school building. After going through the school gate, I turned around and looked at the school.

Thinking that I would probably never come back again, even though I didn’t have a single good memory there, I still felt strangely bittersweet.

Honestly, I wanted to have a normal youth too. Having friends, a girlfriend, getting excited preparing for the cultural festival, letting loose…I wanted to do those things. What exactly was different between me and them? But since I couldn’t understand that difference, I thought that was why I ended up like this.

After that, on the way home, several guys came chasing from behind and smashed my head open with a metal bat.

＊＊

“Kasuga-san came.”

When I opened my eyes, my mother was standing by my pillow.

“Don’t just come in without permission.”

“So, what are you going to do?” my mother said.

“Tell her I’ve got a cold and can’t meet. That’s what you told the school too, right? So just have her go home.”

“But you don’t have a cold, do you?”

When my mother said that, arguing back and forth felt like a hassle, so I headed for the entrance.

Kasuga’s worried face was there, outside the door.

“What?” I said to her in an irritated voice.

“Huh? Aoki, weren’t you supposed to have a cold?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

Without denying or confirming it, I gave a vague nod.

“Anyway, I brought Pocari and some jelly for you.”

“Thanks.”

As I said that and took the convenience store bag, Kasuga looked at my face curiously.

“What…?”

“No, it’s just…”

“Thanks.”

“No, I’m not asking you to repeat『thanks』in English. Are you faking it?”

“Gohho gohho… Gohho.”

“Are you okay? You just said ‘Gohho’ for a second there. That’s a painter.”

“…Don’t sweat the small stuff. Later.”

As I said that and tried to close the door, Kasuga stuck her foot into the gap.

“Wait.”

Kasuga looked at me with a panicked expression.

“I want to talk.”

Just to test it, I tried forcefully closing the door while her foot was still stuck in it.

“Ow ow ow ow ow, stop, stop!”

Kasuga let out a loud scream, and since it was bothering the neighbors, I loosened my strength for a moment.

“Go home.”

“No.”

“You’re persistent.”

“But…ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!”

I gave up and opened the door.

?||

“You don’t need to worry about something like that.”

Kasuga sat on a cushion in my room and offered empty comfort.

“I wish I had a life where I didn’t have to care about it.”

For some reason, I was sitting on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest.

“Is it becoming a rumor?”

“It’s not… really, no.”

Kasuga’s eyes were darting around nonstop.

“So it is, isn’t it.”

“It’s not like it’s not, but…”

“It’s not like I don’t know that, if I don’t go to school… I’ll lose out.”

“This is serious.”

Kasuga said that in an almost angry tone and stared straight at me.

“Even after things have gotten like this, Aoki, you’re still thinking in terms of gains and losses.”

“Yeah. That won’t change. So just leave me alone already.”

I said irritably.

“Well, whatever. If you’re not coming to school, Aoki, then I’ll just come see you.”

I looked at Kasuga. Was she serious? Probably not. Most likely a lie.

“Don’t come anymore.”

I wondered how I could get her to leave. Maybe just completely ignoring her would work. To make it obvious I was ignoring her, I decided to play a game.

“What game?”

Kasuga showed interest and started talking to me. I didn’t answer and focused on the game screen. With a knife, I kept stabbing passersby one after another.

“That’s pretty gory.”

Kasuga said that and grabbed a controller beside me.

“I’ll play too.”

I let out a small sigh, operated the screen, and switched to two-player mode.

“This kinda reminds me of the arcade, huh.”

I kept playing in silence. Then, on a whim, I stabbed Kasuga with a knife. In the game.

“Oh, you can kill allies too.”

“Yeah.”

Damn it, I spoke.

“This is actually kinda addictive.”

“Right?”

It was a simple video game. You could kill anyone with all sorts of weapons.

“By the way, Kasuga, why are you wearing your hood?”

When I glanced at her, at some point she had pulled up the hood of her hoodie and was playing the game with her knees hugged up.

“This way, it feels more like we’ve hit rock bottom, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t really get it.

“Wanna try it too, Aoki?”

So I tried copying her. Somehow, it really did feel like I’d properly become a complete burnout.

“You’re right.”

“And if we turn off the lights too, it’d be perfect, right?”

I used the remote to turn off the room lights.

“Like this?”

Without saying anything, Kasuga gave a firm thumbs-up.

We played the game together for a while. My sense of time drifted away.

Eventually, I got bored.

With a machine gun, I massacred all the students in the school in the game, and at the end, I blew off my own head with a grenade and killed myself. Then, joking around, I looked at Kasuga and went,『Heh heh.』

“Hey. Don’t pretend like you’ve gone crazy.”

Kasuga let out one big yawn, stretched her body, and then…

“Even killing people gets tiring, huh.”

Saying something like a psychopath, she lay down on the bed.

“Enough already, go home.”

As if she hadn’t heard me, Kasuga said,『Come over here.』

When I turned off the game, the room suddenly went completely dark.

As I approached her, she lightly pulled my hand. Just like that, I lay down on the bed too and we ended up facing each other.

We stared straight into each other’s eyes.

“Continue what we did the other day.”

I said,『Why?』

“If we practice, maybe both our bodies and our hearts won’t hurt anymore.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“If I wasn’t your first time, then it’d be fine for you even if it was with Soyama-kun, right?”

“…No.”

I averted my eyes from Kasuga and turned over to face the other side.

“Go home.”

When Kasuga left the room, for a brief moment, the warm-colored light from the hallway outside shone into the room, and then it disappeared.

And the darkness returned.

!9

After that, Kasuga came to my house a few times, but each time, I had my mother turn her away. Whenever Kasuga came, it unsettled me. I just wanted things to stay as quiet as possible.

I didn’t do anything in particular. The days passed meaninglessly.

Even though I had stopped going to school, my family treated me completely normally, in a lukewarm kind of way. But now, even that mild acceptance was painful to me.

“Naoto, your friend.”

Hearing my mother’s voice, I said,『Then have them go home.』

“It’s not Kasuga-san. Today, it’s Naruse-san.”

“…I’ll go.”

Compared to Kasuga, Naruse was someone I wanted to see even less, but even so, I couldn’t bring myself to send her away without meeting her.

Naruse was standing outside the front door.

“Are you okay?”

Naruse had an awkward expression. I figured I probably had the same kind of look on my face.

“Naruse, let’s go outside for a bit.”

For some reason, I didn’t feel like letting her into my room. It was messy and in disarray.

As we walked outside, I tried looking for a decent place on Tabelog, but gradually, I started feeling like I couldn’t trust the ratings people had given. So in the end, the two of us went to a family restaurant at night.

“Aoki.”

After we sat down, neither of us could think of anything we wanted to order, and it seemed Naruse was the same, so we talked for a while without ordering anything.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

I wondered what kind of relationship we had now. I couldn’t find the right word for it. It felt like the two of us existed somewhere within countless gradients that couldn’t be named.

“Naruse. Why did you stick that note on the blackboard?”

“It wasn’t me.”

For some reason, Naruse said that with frightened eyes. I stared at her. I couldn’t tell if she was lying. But just the act of doubting her like that somehow made my chest ache.

“I didn’t do it.”

“Then who did—”

I got that far, then thought,

“…No, it doesn’t matter.”

So I said that, and then, wanting to change the mood, I pressed the call button.『Naruse, is the drink bar fine for you too?』It didn’t feel like the kind of atmosphere where I could order something like a Japanese-style hamburger steak with multigrain rice and salad set. 『Yeah』.『Then, two of those』. I ordered from the waiter, and the two of us went to get drinks.

“Aoki, when are you coming back to school?”

“I don’t know.”

From a nearby table, the nice smell of steak drifted over.

I pressed the drink bar lever and poured some cola. After pouring a little, I stopped. Do I really want to drink cola right now? After thinking that, I almost laughed. This is ridiculous. To actually put into words something like, do I really want to drink cola right now? Anyone who does that is probably starting to go a little crazy.

Dragging along that strange feeling inside myself, I pressed the lever for orange juice and mixed it in. Orange cola…that still sounds kind of good. Then I mixed in herbal tea and Calpis, and at that point, everything was ruined.『Hey, stop that.』Ignoring Naruse’s voice, I kept mixing everything together.

And just like that, a black drink was completed.

“You know how there’s this thing called a desire for destruction?”

When I said that, Naruse gave me a look like she didn’t understand at all.

“I’ve been thinking… maybe I actually wanted things to turn out like this.”

“Why would you say something like that?”

“Right now… I feel relieved.”

I took a sip of the black drink. It tasted like a lump of malice from this world.

【Can you believe that something pure can exist within impurity?】Kasuga’s words came to mind.

I swallowed the entire black drink in one go.

“This is my fault. I think I brought it on myself.”

We returned to our seats and faced each other.

“Hey.”

Something I wanted to ask came to mind. Why hadn’t I asked it until now?

“Naruse, what do you even like about me?”

Probably because I was scared.

“Aoki is…”

Naruse paused there for a moment, thinking, and then said,

“Kind.”

I felt like anyone would be kind to someone they liked.

“That sounds like a pretty standard『reason for liking someone.』”

Naruse looked at me expressionlessly.

What am I even saying?

“Isn’t there something more…something beyond that safe, template answer?”

I thought she might get angry, but Naruse kept a serious expression.

“If you ask me that all of a sudden, it’s hard.”

“I’m not gonna get mad or anything, so try saying something more honest, even if it’s blunt.”

Naruse continued, folding her fingers as if counting something.

“I don’t like good-looking guys. Maybe it’s nice that Aoki isn’t handsome. Also, I’m honestly not good with people who have too much communication skill. I don’t like people who read the room too well and I don’t like people who can’t read it at all either. Aoki’s kind of moderate in that way, which is nice. And when I’m with someone too fashionable, I feel like I have to try hard too and I don’t like that either. But if someone’s too unfashionable, that’s a problem too. Aoki’s clothes are just normal. Also, it’s tiring to talk with someone who’s too dumb but it’s the same if they’re too smart. But people who are just right in every way like that are actually pretty rare. So maybe that’s why I ended up liking you.”

So that basically meant I was just at the right level of average. I almost let out a wry smile.

“But if that’s the case, then maybe it’s already over.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think I’m the kind of person you like anymore.”

I didn’t think it was a difficult question. For example, would my sister still marry her current boyfriend if he became unemployed? No way. The me now, who had fallen to the very bottom at school, felt almost the same as being unemployed.

“And besides…I think you already know what I’m really like but I’m probably a pretty unpleasant person.”

“Then Aoki, try saying what you like about me.”

“I like everything.”

“Cut that out. I don’t need that. Not that kind of answer. Be more blunt, more honest. I showed you my unfiltered thoughts too. Now it’s your turn, Aoki.”

I thought about it.

Why did I even like Naruse in the first place?

“For now… because you’re cute.”

“I already know that.”

“And… because you’re kind.”

“That’s just a generic line too.”

“Wait. I’ll think seriously. Umm…”

I closed my eyes and seriously tried to come up with something.『Nice face』,『cute』,『beautiful』,『pretty』,『just really cute』. What else was there?

“There’s gotta be something more!”

Naruse lightly stepped on my foot.

“……………Maybe there isn’t.”

“There isn’t, huh.”

Naruse slumped down on the family restaurant sofa, losing all strength.

“…Because you’re cute, smart, cute, refined, can read the room, cute, and kind?”

“But that means it doesn’t have to be me, right? All of that can be swapped out. There could be another『girl like Naruse』at a different school, and she’d be fine too.”

Naruse’s voice rose slightly, sounding angry.

“More precisely, there are different kinds of『liking』. The reason you like me, Aoki, is because of admiration. You only liked me because my『points』were high. That’s all there is to it.”

“I admit it.”

“Then we’re both guilty.”

“Maybe.”

“But I think all the guys who’ve liked me before were probably just into my looks…what do you think I should do?”

“I don’t know. I mean, you do have a nice face.”

“Maybe I should just go to school with my face wrapped in bandages every day. But then no one would come near me.”

Saying that, Naruse gave a self-deprecating, faint smile.

“For now, I guess what we learned today is that neither of us really had much of a reason for liking the other.”

“…Sorry about that.”

“But when you really think about it, are the reasons people fall in love with someone really that clear-cut?”

I didn’t know. If anything, it started to feel like liking someone based on『points』was actually more reasonable.

“Got it. Let’s just give up on that. Let’s accept that it’s just how things are.”

“But I don’t want something normal. I don’t want an ordinary kind of love. I want a boy who really, really loves me and I want to really, really love him back, and for us to be completely in love with each other, and if we can’t stay together until we die, then I don’t want it. I want to spend all kinds of time together like that, and even when I become an old woman, I want someone who will still love me. Don’t you get it?”

“That’s impossible. For anyone.”

“But if it’s not like that, then there’s no point in me being in a relationship. That’s why I don’t want to do things that are meaningless or trivial. I want eternity. I want something pure.”

“Why?”

“To put it your way, people’s『points』go down eventually. As you get older, your points keep dropping. Looks are cruel. For women, they drop first. And watching things gradually fall apart like that, feelings start to fade. I can’t stand that.”

But still… that’s just how it is.

When I stayed silent, Naruse let out a weak sigh.

“In the end…what kind of reason is the right one for loving someone?”

□□

Unable to just go home like that, I kept walking. I didn’t want to go back to my house. I had nowhere to go. Same as always. I wanted a place where I could feel at ease. It doesn’t exist in this world. I really felt that, from the bottom of my heart. I found myself thinking, like some middle schooler’s poem, that it’d be nice if I could just melt into the night and disappear.

『You’re a pest, a creature that only harms this world』 another version of myself said inside my head. It didn’t feel like self-pity mixed with self-hatred, it just felt like a harsh fact. I’m trash. Trash is me.

As I walked, staring at the ground like that, I passed by Kou-chan’s apartment nearby.

For some reason, I stopped.

I had a feeling he was there.

A run-down apartment. I climbed the old wooden stairs that made you wonder how many years it had been standing, and opened the door. I figured it wouldn’t be locked anyway, and sure enough, it wasn’t.

Inside, the room was completely dark with no lights on, not even the glow from appliances. Normally, there’d at least be a standby light. Come to think of it, I couldn’t even hear the sound of a refrigerator. Kou-chan’s room felt like time had stopped.

“Oh, it’s you, Naoto.”

In the darkness, Kou-chan looked at me with a frightened expression. Why did he look so weak, so lacking in confidence? His helplessness made me feel uneasy too.

“Kou-chan, what are you doing?”

“You want some too?”

Kou-chan was smoking something like a cigarette. But it wasn’t a cigarette. I had a bad feeling and said,『I’m good』but he replied,『Don’t hold back. There’s more』and pointed to the leaves of a plant on the balcony. Isn’t that supposed to be gardening…? It’s not like I was holding back, but after a while, Kou-chan skillfully prepared it and handed the suspicious thing to me.

“Here.”

“The room’s really dark.”

“They cut off the electricity.”

“Kou-chan, are you okay?”

Kou-chan didn’t answer that at all. He rolled up the leaves, lit it and handed it to me.

Everything felt like too much of a hassle, so I took a drag.

Just like that, the two of us lay down side by side, rolling onto Kou-chan’s ever-present futon, staring up at the ceiling.

“I never thought you’d turn into this much of a messed-up adult, Kou-chan.”

I found it funny and casually said something pretty awful.

“I wonder if I’m even an adult.”

Kou-chan said that like he was completely at a loss.

“You’re already at that age.”

“Yeah… I guess.”

A sluggish atmosphere settled in, and my body started to feel heavy.

“Hey, Naoto. How much debt do you think I’ve got from loan sharks?”

“I don’t know. And I don’t want to hear it.”

“About two million.”

“That’s pretty impressive.”

I was more surprised that Kou-chan even had the guts to go that far.

“Don’t end up like me.”

“You’re pretty lame, Kou-chan.”

Kou-chan’s futon smelled like the old Kou-chan I remembered. Which meant it stank. There was no way his futon would smell like roses, so I thought calmly that at least I hadn’t completely lost my sense of reality.

“You know, back then… I wanted to become like you, Kou-chan.”

“I know.”

“You know… hey… why do people end up becoming failures? …”

At that point, my consciousness cut off.

＊＊

The knife at night. A boy. A middle schooler.

On a pitch-black road at night, I was there with him, just the two of us.

His points were 32.

Looking at his face, I definitely recognized him.

“I hate people like you the most.”

“Same here.”

I let out a sigh. I didn’t know how to make peace with him.

“But I think it’d be impossible for just one of us to keep living on our own. Either way.”

I said that calmly. It was strange that something so obvious hadn’t made sense to me until now. I probably understood it in my head, but there are things that, for people, just understanding in your head isn’t enough.

That’s probably what it is.

“No.”

He said that in a trembling voice, pointing a knife that gleamed in the night at me.

“I absolutely don’t want to become a filthy adult like you.”

“Give it up.”

He charged at me.

His knife plunged deep into my stomach, and my body was dyed in dark red blood. The word『initiation』came to mind.

“I need you too. I can’t live with just myself. But you can’t live with just yourself either.”

Before long, my body began to swallow the knife and his arm. Within the thick, flowing blood, his body was slowly being pulled. Gradually, he entered into me, and we became one.

“I don’t want to die.”

Those were the last words I said.

＊＊

In the morning, I heard birds chirping and thought, ah, it’s a morning-after chirp. My first『morning-after chirp』… in a loser’s room.

I pushed myself up. Looking down, Kou-chan was still asleep, showing an unkempt sleeping face.

His stubble…it’s gotten pretty long, I thought. Just from his appearance alone, he didn’t look like someone with a proper job at all. And then I noticed something else. Kou-chan’s early baldness was progressing…

At this rate, in a few years it’s going to be tragic, I thought, imagining the apocalyptic future of Kou-chan’s hair as I straightened my clothes and stood up.

“Mm. Oh. Morning.”

Kou-chan’s eyes suddenly opened.

“Naoto, you were just about to leave without saying anything, weren’t you?”

“You caught me?”

Kou-chan stood up in just his boxers, put on a pair of jeans that made it hard to tell whether the damage was intentional or just from wear, and came outside the room to see me off.

The sunlight outside was dazzling. Maybe because I’d been in Kou-chan’s dark room the whole time.

“Naoto.”

Kou-chan called out to me.

I turned back.

Shabby Kou-chan.

This was probably the last time I’d see him.

“Just so you know.”

Kou-chan suddenly put on a serious face, looked straight at me, and spoke in an oddly formal tone.

“You go your own way.”

With a smug look, Kou-chan said it.

“So lame.”

I burst out laughing. Thinking that he had probably gone out of his way to come up with and prepare that line made it even funnier.

“Kou-chan, just so you know, ending with that line is seriously ridiculously lame.”

Laughing, I waved at Kou-chan, then went down the apartment stairs. Still laughing, I felt like I might start crying a little. The stairs creaked, like they were about to break. Under the white light, my shadow stretched out across the asphalt.