I had already endured as much as I could of wretchedness. Under such conditions I could not consider my future logical and good. I was truly alone. There were no help with my problems of adolescence. It was absolutely certain that I escaped from the reality I would never become my father, simultaneously, mocking his audios toil and the difficulty of the path to what they call the genuine vocation.
I rode my bike to and from school along Purple river. I occasionally stopped to be late for school and then I clambered down the riverbank. As soon as I took my seat I became nobody, with a real feeling. I would remain here a little while; no one looked at me. I was free and alone. At heart, however, the misery of the past year and months–the inconsolable gloom–encompassed me. My school life was empty, although I had had a few friends. It was my own affair to come to terms with my self and to find my own way. The river flowed softly and quietly.
What my curiosity sought was from outside world, where high school students work part-time. I simply wished to get rid of my loneliness and imprisonment and to have peace, intending to become at least an ordinary person who carries on with his normal life.
I spent after school working at a bento shop, groping my way forward. There were the students who went to different stupid schools. As I was new, I greeted each one with the shrinking timidity that I felt in the presence of punks. Soon afterwards we were talking with one another. For how long hadn’t I really talked to anyone? I was very glad to be allowed to have a little share in their youth. In a friendly fashion, every one talked with me, laughed, and teased me a bit. I had never indulged in this way I let myself go. I liked it that they did not judge people based on your educational background. I was no longer a solitary boy.
None of them was not going to apply to college, nor was poor. They just wanted enough money for their enjoyment–motorcycle and car, karaoke and bowling and billiard, smoking and hanging out at family restaurant. The lives of ne’er-do-wells sounded interesting. I was much with a few friendly boys. I liked them. Nevertheless, something was lacking in my heart. I had observed that there is a end somewhere, and that everything I should have have and done for myself alone, sinks into an abyssal sea; however it reposed, in my innermost soul.
In my last school year when all students began to talk about university, I had a good time at work. Meanwhile, viewed from the outside, I was going downhill. Working was a distraction when I also begun to think about it. My determination seemed to grow in opposition to my true will– my father, an unpretentious and open-hearted man who finds satisfaction in his study. Too long he had been accustomed to be indifferent to me. Subconsciously, I had been so frustrated and angry with my father.
The autumn came, and I longed for the spring I would go somewhere new and start over fresh. I had no thought to give to the future, to the fate of my vocation. I was so much more interesting in things outside of school rather than learning in the university. I had had a strenuous year at work, and now I felt with comfort and with joy that I was a part of the world, where I barely sensed sad monotony. I wanted only to live in accord with promptings which came from myself.
One evening in autumn I rode my bike on my way home. A man came down the hill as I went up. “Hold on. Look who’s here!” he said in a daze. “K! It’s been a long time. How have you been?” “I’m good, sir,” I hesitated. At the sight of him, the hideous misery before which I fled fell up on me-everything I thought reminded me bitterly of what I had done, and of the total stupid I now was. He was the English teacher at the cram school when I was ninth grade, where he had showed favor to me.
By degrees I heard some anecdotes of him and of her. The past, they were inferior to me, and I felt I was outside the circle. The conversation in an convivial, light tone, which was difficult for me, for I was now truly quite a different person from a boy he had known before. I recalled those days had diminished with time, but now his affectionate approach had brought back a few memories, making me feel too guilty.
It was when I was hospitalized with a pneumothorax that despite working late, he visited me in the morning. He would have spoken in his accustomed humor manner. I liked his comical aspect as well as his teaching. He had expected me. Difficult problems in English that he gave only to me I had been struggling with in the middle of the night.
“Where will you be going to University?”he asked, and his voice were friendly and jesting. It was painful for me–I had desired to live a little more contentedly and easily. “I’m planning to apply to F University,” I said quietly, feeling ashamed. Stunned, he said nothing. We were silent for a little while.“You’ve got to be kidding,” he gawked at me. When he approached me with sympathy and disbelief, my old memories stirred in me. “What’s wrong with you?” he shook me by the shoulders. “K,” he said soberly. “I believe there was some incomprehensible misfortune.” Something within me kept me from the agony that strangled me. “No, no. I’ve been too lazy and comfortable to study,”I laughed a little, which was but pretexts and subterfuges. He appeared to have something else to say, and my half-evasive answers did not please him. He nodded like he understood and left it unsaid. “I see,” he muttered and soon went away.
Now I was pedaling my bike again, but found myself distracted and inwardly restless, and stopped at the cram school, where a teacher I had never seen before stood on the platform. Then I looked thorough the glass at the junior high school students in the bright light, and immediately moved away. How I am born, tortured, and fall considerably short of expectations–what a man is to himself. I wandered aimlessly through the darkness.
