Category: Uncategorized (page 2 of 5)

August 15, 2023

From Semera, we drove on for sixty miles through the desert, going straight, on the empty road. I looked ahead, seeing the fields or the little eating sheds, and occasionally stared through the window at a hundred white tents pitched on the flat land. How all of you live? Where all of you get food? Well, Afar region is mostly desert. 

The land cruiser parked somewhere. I had dozed off contently as the yellow sunlight fell on me in the front seat. Taking a tour made me not so bad—just follow the guide—I was able to be lazy. “Eat lunch here,” The driver said, “Until another guide come.” I scrambled down from the car. As I looked around I found myself in the small village. The driver led us into the straw hut. There were three square wood tables. And the chickens lay on the mad. I sat at an empty table, facing the Japanese couple, Jun and Tsubaki, a mediocre man and an unattractive girl. The local man gave us cold drinks, and we ate each plate—fried rice with corn, potatoes and carrots. It was good. 

The kids played outside as I sat on the bench in the shade. The three boys broke into trots, fooling around with me; they happily introduced themselves one by one. Every one was so eager to talk with me, that I smiled and muttered some pleasantry. After a while I noticed there was a hint of anger in Tsubaki’s voice. She was frustrated that the new guide had not come two hours after we got here. I knew they were not punctual for appointment and got used to it.

I had had managed a reminder of a dimension of her personality as though to blur out of my mind. But I found myself recalling well enough her bearing toward children. That was yesterday afternoon after viewing Alalobed hot-spring. We visited a small hay barrack, a ground straw and leaves on the floor, and at the stall in the corner. Then the children crowded inside and I went out before I was encircled. They were used to showcasing themselves as Maasai do: one tourist after another gaze them. Being involved in tourism is important for them. They would be welcoming, smiling, touching and taking photos with tourists: the adults manipulate children to receive food and other items. Of course as soon as the children saw the couple, they shouted and swarmed about them, tugging at their hands and it looked such fun that they tried to do it.

The sun seemed to light up them. The other children skittered along, hopping excitedly from foot to foot around the barrack. The couple stood inside the circle, shrieking with delight and comporting themselves with their self-satisfied smiles and smirking. The tour guide became a photographer while the sky seemed more alive than it had been. Stupid. I thought. I nauseated with revolution and loathing. Staying away from them, I became a bystander who despited a shallow couple. The tour guide gave me the cold shoulder, but I never made a smile.

Japanese who visit African country do want photos with children. She solicits African children to take photos with her—not from children. Her belief is that she did do something worthwhile. She believes it sincerely. She posts them on social media that makes her look likable the way she loves children. But what did she contribute for them? If you were serious about poverty, you would not have time for that. A real man never do that. I revere Hans Rosling; I had read the book FactFullness. I am very sorry for Tetsu Nakamura; he drilled wells and constructed irrigation canals for poverty.

Now and then Tsubaki rose to her feet and clenched her fists at her side, looking the road over which we had come. “Now that you say it, the new guide isn’t coming,”I said. “I texted it to the tour company,”she said blankly, wondering about Jun, who sat on another bench with his legs crossed. A boy fiddled with my neckless I wore all the time. She called to the tour company. “That driver said somebody picked up us here, but not come,” her face went grim with anger.

I remembered vividly more of the argument I had had with that woman. On the last night, I had been in my hotel room, googling Kenya Visa. I heard someone knocking on the door. Listening through it I could not of course determine to open the door late at night, but the knocking never stopped. I wondered who was there and finally opened the door. I saw a dark figure of a woman. “Pay!”she said. “What?” “Hotel fee.” “I already paid the tour company, it includes in the tour.” “No. Pay! Eight hundred(About 20 dollar, It was the cheap hotel, in spite of 400 dollar for the tour).“I already paid. Ask my tour company!” “No. Pay!” this stupid bitch hold out her hand. “You’re very rude,”I blurted out, so I made me bring myself under control.” “I call the tour guide now.” I had been waiting for him to answer impatiently. Fuck. “Tomorrow, the tour company pay you. Okay?” I said softly. The stupid bitch slipped back into the darkness.

Tsubaki had been continuing. “Full refund! Okay?”she demanded at last, with some irritation, and she hung up the phone. Her eyes were blank and her lips writhed. “They are looking for someone who can come now, but no one,” she muttered. She had certainly created a tense atmosphere around us, characterized by distrust. The boy had touched my neckless gently or mischievously while she had been silent before the kids.

I opened What’sAPP and typed a message. 

‘We are in Silesa. The new guide hasn’t come for so long. Immediately arrange new guide who take us.’—2:15PM✓✓

“I texted the person of the tour company a message, too,”I hold out my iPhone so Tsubaki could see. “Ah, thank you very much, K-san,”she said soberly. “Maybe reached the boss, but, it would be difficult to be sure.”I said.

A little kid was struggling to open the number pad lock on my backpack I put beside me. Then his brother joined in, and I had been letting the two kids play—I seemed to talk so freely with an open mind. At that point I was praising myself just a little bit. I had been a man who was difficult to get along with kids and pets.

“I’ll definitely get a full refund,”she muttered furiously to herself. “You got a reply?” I asked. “No. Just marked as read,”she said. “Why we have to wait this long?” “Maybe, because of after Corona. They are disorganized and the ways of thinking differ from ours,” I went on. “And I heard the most of organized tour groups were based in Mekele. But we are Semera. Maybe, largely on account of the wars, especially the borders between the countries. Either way, they abandoned us in the desert,” I sighed. Jumping and yelling, the two had opened the lock—000. “Great!”I said to them, turning back to her. “But thanks to you here, this seems to reassure me. My style is acting alone. If I were alone here, now, I just get panicky.”

I texted again.

“Nobody come. We 3 member really really worry it will be dark in the desert. We were left.”—3:23PM✓✓

“If a new guide came now, it would be near midnight before we get there,”said Tsubaki. “No longer do I need dinner or sleep. Take us to get there anyway,” she said flatly. “Yeah,” I agreed. And then I opened the google map on my iPhone—I started where we were. Jun, a mediocre man supplemented by her English, was temporarily isolated.  “From here it’s perhaps about one hundred twenty miles, so we could be there in three or four hours,”I said to a mediocre man, who began to google on his phone set up by Japanese language. “One hundred twenty miles. It’s not that far away, isn’t, it?’’ he went on,“We can still make it. I wish we could go.”

“What should we do? We are afraid of everything.”—4:21PM✓✓

A car pulled up beside the road. I lifted my eyes and we strolled to the land cruiser. Three men had got out out of the car. They were sharped-faced men, and they looked very clean from head to toe. And at the front was a man with black sunglasses, dressed in traditional clothes. He had on a massive silver bracelet. The two man wore new western shirts, blue jeans, and leather shoes. They walked about, bossy in clean clothes, the way atmosphere turned.

A ragged man like a village mayor went to a corrugated iron shed. The young men carried the gunny sacks in their hands and put them in front of the three. The randy man noticed Asian faces and gazed at us. “China!” he said, “What are you doing? China, huh?”he asked. I found that absurd and said. “Sorry, I can’t speak English.” We just stood quietly; he made a mockery of it. “China,”he said again.

We were nervous while the sky started to be covered with cloud. I was bored in a small village, which made the kids scattered. Tsubaki and I sat on the same bench. “I added further pressure to them, by WhatsApp.”I said, having been on my phone. “Oh, I got a reply! I hadn’t noticed.”  

I read out loud.

“I am sorry for the problem we caused, and we understand the frustration we put you through. driver is coming”—4:23PM✓✓

“I never got one reply,”she was frustrated. “They’re licking me.” “Maybe, I shouldn’t reply. Ignoring without thank you,”I said. “Yeah, I agree with you. Leave on read.” she said, “We should make us look steadily stronger—or else they lick us.” “I think so.”

We three had vaguely wondered the village and I asked Tsubaki. “Do you believe that? They say the driver is coming.” “I don’t know. But perhaps they had performed some kind of action,”she looked forlornly at the road. 

“Ah, they are coming.” Then with a little smile she seemed to regain her poise. I could see a land cruiser on the road. The car charged in, it’s wheels screamed, and a cloud of sand from the ground fluffed up and spread out. A lean, quick man in a red t-shirt got out of the car.

March,2020

Since I had lived alone in a cheap, cramped room of my new condo, I had hardly talked with anyone. Until now, I had led the life of a hermit who was voluntarily imprisoned and who would have liked to study hard. For me, Japan was finished. My whole being was directed overseas. I had nothing left but say goodbye. Growing up to be an oddball, I had long since become insensible by being alone.

I had been overcome by Japanese who put pressure on you to conform and no longer wanted anything to do with people who was stuck and buried in their work–including my family and relatives. “What do you do next?” That was what I had expected and counted on. You never understand. I knew I had been guilty of everything myself and I would never accept a single person into my life. At any rate, there was no one to lose by disappearing forever. The outside world was gone and I had peace of mind.

After running in the mornings, I paced to and fro in front of the TV. The world suddenly changed due to the coronavirus, and so did my daily routine. The stock prices plunged and plunged. This was the biggest crash since the 2008 financial crisis, which at the time I was too ignorant to get the seriousness of the matter. Yet this time all the foundation of my existence began to rock. I shuddered with excitement. I was like, “When is the bottom?” I imagined what it would be like if, instead of working, my assets increased tenfold. The more it fell, the stronger yen was. I had to buy dollars…to leave Japan.

Suddenly young people in uniforms disappeared from the streets, and then old memories came over me. How glad I would have been if I had been a high school student. I had detested my old school, where I had made the big mistake, which from then caused me a great deal of distress. And at the same time I felt a deep, joyful consolation that it was a boy, who was a victim of bullying, was salvaged by Corona. Your mother would say: “Don’t go out otherwise you get infected.” Luckily, you would be free from a long pitiful school life. You can create a new life. Surely new world will welcome you and invite you, where no one knew you. 

My standard of living was very low. It all was my fault. I did not make the exertion when I was young, even though I had a rich environment to study, which I felt to be the bitter present. It had plagued me for years and years.

Perhaps I was an oddball; I was not able to do the same things the others did. Now they were doctors, dentists, and entrepreneurs. I had searched their names on Facebook. What was I compared to them? How long would this have taken them? What difficulties would they had bore? This I could not do. If I had had the strength and toughness to make something of myself, everything would turn out differently. I would not have had to become a blue-color worker. I could have been a doctor too.

It was to be quiet and let the old be gone. I believed everything was still possible, all I had to do was study, which I neglected to in high school, and I was left with the strange, yet irrepressible passion of being like my father. It was my destiny to make exertion in the expiation of my endless guilt.

I wished to leave this room as soon as possible, which was too small to place a sofa and in which the whole thing spoke of work and asceticism, where no reminiscences of women could be found. If you look out through the window, there is not anything special. You just see a big house, whose windows were shuttered down all the time, as if to show undue caution, and then you have to go away quickly, so as not to let them think you peek. It seemed to me that I felt cut off from the world, as if there were enemies in this house, whose intention one did not know, and against whom one feigned indifference.

The residents of my condo, head down and slowly walking so withdrawn, sullen, and indifferent. There could be nothing to be done about it. I yearned longingly for the last two year I lived in the Caribbean country. Ah, how often I had greeted strangers and talked with them, how often I had absentmindedly been comfortable and smiled.

Through a wall next door, I had heard a boy’s voice, singing and talking to himself with animated; moaning and then kicking something with all his strength, maybe absorbed in video game. All day long he was home and enjoyed by himself. Perhaps his weird voice stemmed from a developmental disorder such as autism.

On the other side next door, if you made even a slightest noise in your daily life, almost immediately you could hear a flicking sound such as closing a paper door quickly, as if to say: “Shut up!” I assumed he suffered from schizophrenia. What I know of them was that socially withdraw men lived isolated from the outside world. Indeed, of their past lives and origins I know nothing at all.

The way they carried themselves I did not at all like at first. I know the severity of society. There is no mercy for those who is hopelessly　incompetent at work. Consequently he is kick out by it whether you suffer from mental disorder or not. I remembered excuses she made up after she made mistakes at work: “I’m sorry. I’m ADHD.” I did not like it that she was caught up in a tangle of sacrifices and small expedient. It is useless vanity and her work never keep her go forward. Another man, who had Asperger’s disorder, was demoted later. He could not read between the lines, even when I stated clearly, he prioritized his own obsessions.

They would have worked with every fiber of his being, but they were not much. You could observe their folly, but you had to let them go their own way. There has got to be a great clarity inside him, however, and they have no talent for work in Japan, where group harmony is preserved. I would have not long to live in this strange country, for we had gifts, more than a lot of other ordinary people. I was proud that I had while I missed something they had. I missed it.

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.

It was the beginning of April. When I came out of the locker room, three upperclassmen suddenly guffawed. “The ultimate man!” They said, pointing out me.“That’s hilarious.” I did not understand what the bastards meant. What on earth? How dare they? As I ascended the stairway linking the walkway to the main building, I heard one say: “The ultimate was coming.” It was weird and I had a premonition. Then slowly I walked on. 

As I walked through the hallway like I was invisible, I could see sticking their heads out of windows. “The ultimate!”and they burst out laughing. At a recess, one peeked in my class, looking for someone and pointed at me. “The ultimate,”he smirked, disappearing. I felt acutely that new offenses were bound to grow; everywhere I went I was followed by enemies–by darkness, hatred and shame.

The next day the same thing happened over and over. They were persistent and expected me to be the clown. During the recesses I did not leave the classroom that was next to that of upperclassmen expect when I go to the bathroom. But when I walked by, when I met them, they immediately started again. It was quite awful. What is frustrating was that I could not do anything. In Japanese schools, the hierarchy is determined simply by what grade you are, on which it was very crucial you follow the upperclassmen.

I had perceived two opposite worlds that smelled completely different. One contained–punks with blond hair and gals wearing miniskirts and loose socks, juvenile delinquent stories and rumors of pregnancy. Though often a stranger to it, I existed in this world a few months ago. Eventually they hit me again and again: the way to ruin me was violence.

Now I belonged to well-lighted world that was at least familiar to me: yet, at this week, everything looked ravaged and hatred, was mine no longer and rejected me. A new odious feeling came over me. Momentarily I felt superior to my father, who was indifferent to me. I had seen through him and his world, where he was occupied with his study. This meant studying endlessly and it was at all impossible that I reached him. I had been contemptuous of this world, where intelligent people prefer to ignoring, mocking and humiliating to enjoying his real life. At any rate, I would have been in a rebellious phase.

When I left the classroom to go home, Shimada, a biology teacher who used to taught computer to my grade, had the afternoon homeroom. “Look. There comes the ultimate man,”he said, as though to provoke laughter in his class. The trigger was Shimada. I was boiling with anger while the bastards laughed. At the same time I was so apathetic because those who get bad grades were as good as scum, except for the extroverts who popular with everyone. Not studying seemed out of place.

I had done something wrong, with the remain of a piercing in my left lobe. There was nothing in my school bag but my Walkman. It was my own affair to find my own way. It had denied this intimate world that dawned within me.  I was ruining myself in this process. My ground was slipping from under my feet. I was not like the other students, who studied hard to go to an excellent University. Must I resonate with them? Though my sin was not specially this or that, I felt everything had had to happen as it did. I had to struggle with a drive that is considered an“outsider”like permanent contempt.

It was disgusting the way Shimada and the upperclassmen underestimated and teased me. I was ashamed that I was a victim of a kind of bullying, which meant I was a weak person, so I did not dare confide it. In any rate, I was not the character to confess my suffering to a teacher and felt incapable of telling my mother everything properly. I needed someone to take my side. But I knew no one never picked up the side of a dropout against excellent students; people put what is agreeable to them in the right. My whole thing would be regarded as an aberration, whereas no matter how much bullying they inflict on me, I must endure any pain.

They regarded me amusedly, and I was laughed at everyday, every single day. “The ultimate!” They called me that. I was to hear it repeatedly. I had given in thoroughly and become more impure than ordinary students who follow the norm. I considered myself odd, taking a road different from most people. I could have studied hard, but I did not, so I had to be patient. That was all.

There was one boy I failed to ignore. Unlike the other bastards, Ueda was so close I was forced to look at his face inches away. His face was filled with enjoyment. He was smart and popular. All he had to do was to say some loathsome things to me, and his friends would laugh out loud saying: “The ultimate!” This awful things lasted perhaps a few weeks; my condition at that time was a kind of madness.

I had been thinking the way I get him to shut up. At noon recess, I could see the first-rate bastard alone ascending a staircase just by chance. He would say excitedly: “The ultimate.” I could no longer bear that. He was older than me; the school hierarchy was none of my business. Hardly had he arrived on the landing when I grasped him by the neck and squeezed against wall. “I’ll hit you,” I threatened him, looking at his eyes. Startled, he flinched and turned away as though he felt thoroughly ashamed of being underestimated by an underclassman who had been silent. He made no reply, but some students watched us, so I released him. Then he slunk away, blushing.

For one day, for two I did not encounter Ueda. He seemed to have vanish. I hardly believe it and I constantly lay in wait. When I walked past him a little distance away, he did not pay attention me as though I was nobody. It was an unprecedented moment I thought he might be afraid of me. For a whole week nothing happened about me, and I began to regain my peaceful equilibrium.

One day I walked calmly across the locker room. Suddenly I grasped it that Ueda came closer to me. “After school, come to the school gate,”he said with unwonted seriousness. “If you’ve got something to tell me, do it right here.”I said. “No. The school gate,”he came closer, again radiating influence. His followers looked at me with a sense of amusement. “How many your fellows do you think there’ll be?” I asked, superciliously. “The school gate, anyway,”he said, his face twitched and disappearing.

I was startled and frightened. From this time on my thought fixed on Ueda. I was certain that he had found other means of torturing and using me. In the meantime, miserable though I was, I did not regret at having done so at the landing. I began to feel stubborn. There was no turning back. I was ready to accept the inevitable.

As I climbed down the staircase alone I realized I had underestimated these bastards. In the square in front of the school gate were a dozen or so upperclassmen, against whom I had held a grudge. I was teased to begin with and stopped irresolute at the foot of the staircase, where Ueda stood right up against me. He instructed me to the corner. He poked me in the ribs a few time. “You must apologize to me,” he said. “Get down on your knees. Lick my shoes.”I tried to thrust myself toward the gate but he stood blocking me.

Ueda was embraced by all upperclassmen who seemed to become brothers–“What an idiot. The ultimate,” they chuckled. Numerous students, meanwhile, passed by me one after another, as though they avoided getting into trouble pretending not to notice or looked down on me with contempt. I began to feel acutely the hatred and rage to the intelligent students, who would have only one genuine vocation–doctor, lawyer or scholar–like my father.

“You can’t do anything on your own,” I said. “I came by myself. You surround me with your fellows, who tease a shit out of me.” “I was talking face to face!”he said, blushing. “Look around. You unite, laughing at me.” “Anyway, apologize.”

I had been humiliated enough–by the bastards who moved closer and closer to me. Although I knew they were far from violence, I wanted them to hit me as the punks did until they felt better. I was preoccupied with myself. And I longed desperately to be alone. I did not know what to do, unable to escape. “If you never call me ‘ultimate,’ I’ll apologize.” I blurted out. Ueda said nothing. I seemed to be caught forever in this impasse. I stood before them and trembling inside from exertion.

“I’m sorry,”I said. 

“The ultimate!”they burst into laughing.

There was a roll call in gym class. The teacher would read my name. No sooner had I answered “Hai” than a student did “Absent.” We were told to make teams of five to play basketball. As usual, I slip in where there are not enough in a group. But this time, I was the only one left, the teams of five arrayed, everyone sitting on the floor holding their knees. “Excuse me, sir. Where should I go?”I asked. “You don’t have any friends, eh?” He said bluntly; I heard a giggle.

I had almost decided to give up everything at that time. From the third semester of my first year, the computer classes had began, but I sometimes skipped school, so I could not keep up with them. I thought I failed to earn its credit. It occurred to me that one thing no longer existed in me, which went with me throughout my middle school years: the wish to become a doctor and to please my parents.

So I wanted to quit the school to be able to start over. But unfortunately, I was supposed to take the remedial classes, which meant I could go up a grade. I was reluctant to comply. And at the beginning the spring break, I went to the teachers’ room, but Shimada, a computer teacher, was not at his desk. Exposing myself to the teachers, who glanced at me, I was left standing in the middle of the room.

Shimada, a portly man with grey hair, entered, saying: “I have to teach for one idiot like you,”he said with contempt. “Excuse me sir,” I bowed. He kept uttering a stream of curses and calling me disgusting; I thought that I would hit this touchy bastard so that I would be expelled from school.

At any rate, I had no motive to do the final report I was ordered to turn in that was an event proposal. But my mother quickly made it using her word processor instead of me. The next day I handed it to Shimada at his desk. The pages of the report he flipped idly through struck both of us dumb. He was astounded at the quality and the title–“Dog Lovers Gathering”–with some adorable puppies. All of a sudden embarrassment and disgust came over me–the way my mother did it to her own taste. After leaving the room. I must have been a laughingstock, because they had the impression that I smoked with punks. Thus I had passed to the next stage.

In April, I went into the new class. Still, my classmates seemed to be alien to me as I remained alien to them. The trouble with a loner is that there were the school annual events, especially the freshmen welcoming excursion to the amusement park, where we are free all day. The happy,  joyous students enjoy themselves while I would be out of place there. How can a boy enjoy riding a roller coaster alone? Nightmare. Also I was unwilling to act with the childlike geeks. There was no other way for me to get my mother to call in sick.

I got acclimated to aloneness. There was something which separated me from them. Everybody take care of studying that was not worthy from my eyes. I was not going to walk the path taken by the so-called brightest students, who had no alternative but to study. Often I have thought; Is studying valuable for life? Was it the solely important thing? With stubbornly disobedient heart, I did not do any study and remained a stranger in a gloomy disposition. My grade was the bottom of the class. It was okay because I did not want to be a human being who lost his mind. I thought they were crazy. I had felt different from them, watching them with some mockery. However I found no delight in myself. I had no dream.

All of myself had been overcome and died. The past rose up in my soul. I had experienced on my body that I needed pain, in order not to come up with the wrong path. I had heard of Shiota having been expelled from school for violence, and of Abe, with wavy, bluish hair, dropping out against the school rules. The former was a prodigious artist and the latter loved playing guitar. In truth, I suppose that I liked to study very much. My school had an ideal environment for studying, where all students were to enter University. If I had studied very hard and gotten good grades, I had must gotten along with my classmates, who would have a veneration for me.

Have they given up on their dreams? In their subconscious, were they confronting with the reality that your dreams would never come true? I can never transcend my father, no matter how hard I try to study. Bringing it home to teenagers is brutal. Life is torture.

I would not obtain salvation by means of studying. I just wanted to find tranquility in my heart. My goal was refuge from suffering, especially aloneness.

As rainy season and the summer vacation passed by, weariness had come over me, getting a bit heavier everyday. I grew angry and patient, whenever I walked by the upperclass students. When the school festival approached, I was filled of suffering and worry–the students would be scattered in the school for the few days. It was nothing but very thing which I had already experienced for the hours and days I saw how alone I was. 

Now, I had to experience it again. After the morning assembly, I wandered downstairs, where there was the deserted locker room. However, salvation from suffering had not been found out here–my locker door was getting dented day after day; it was the verge of breaking down.

It was Sunday afternoon in January. I helped Kuwata re-dye his hair black in the bathroom of Murai’s house. After brushing it, he looked at mine. “K, your hair is a little lighter too.” he said. I used to bleach it during summer vacation to make me cool, but I had put it all back before the start of the second semester. As he said, I kind of knew it was losing its color. I would be called over the PA system in my school. “You had better dye yours,” he picked the back of my hair. “I’ll blacken it.” I doubted if he would be doing it right because I found he shallow and dishonest.

“Before that, pay the money back for the previous karaoke.”I said, holding out my palm. “I’II do it. I’II do,” he studied his reflection in the mirror and made a wry face. He insisted that instead of returning the money, he would dye my hair by using the rest of the dye bottle he had bought. “Sit down there,” he said. I refused to, but he pushed my shoulders down.

I knelt on the bathroom tiles. I was faint-hearted enough to be under his thumb. He begun to brush my hair. In the bathroom there were also Murai and Shiota, an eccentric person with artistic talent. Although he has a pierce hole the size of coin, I had been impressed by his playing piano. However, a certain memory came bak to me. I had been seventh grade and read manga he had drawn, where he represented vulgarity, malice and inhumanity.

There was something fishy around me. “It’s okay. I’ll do it myself,” I said. “Wait. Don’t move. Close your eyes in case liquid drips.” I did as he said. Kuwata was taking his time. I heard three boys chucking, perhaps thinking a cunning plot. Still I was kneeling, head bowed, eyes closed. Somebody grabbed a fistful of my hair. Perhaps Shiota handled it roughly. “Poor thing. Ha-ha! Poor thing. School tomorrow. What is he going to do? Ha-ha!”Murai asked. “Shhh!”said Kuwata. “What happened?”I asked. “Good, good, very nice.” he said.

That was the part about Murai that I really hated. The way the more punks are in his house, the more he harmonizes with them. I knew deep down he looked down on me.

They released me. “It’s done. You have to leave the dye for a while,” said Kuwata. I rose to my feet, went to the changing room and surveyed my hair in the mirror. Of course, nothing happened. After fifteen minutes, it had not changed at all. When I turned around as I eyed it with a sense of relief, I realized he dyed my back hair only blond. Its color was very uneven. Shiota gave me vulgar rough. I was about to cry. How am I supposed to get home?Kuwano said; “You looks so cool, I’ll introduce you to beautiful girls, who would love you.” They burst out laughing.

“Give me my money back,” I said. “The dye bottle empty, because of you,” he said. “This was very expensive.” Shiota and Murai was chuckling. I was convinced the money would not return to me. I did think they always humiliated me. I had been foolish enough to try to get along with them. After all, Shiota handed me a towel to cover around my head.

Shiota and I were on our way home from Murai’s house. “Kuwata is such a jerk. I haven’t got my money back from him either. That’s who he is,”he said. I remained quiet, thinking he might take his side. “You should blacken it immediately,” he said. I nodded like I understood. “I’ll get it right away for you.” He would be able to get it easily. Shoplifting. I thought. “No. Anyway, I go home … Then, I’ll buy it myself,” I said and changed the subject. “Do you keep practicing piano? You are talented.” He looked away from me, saying: “See you.”

The next morning I did not get up out of my bed. After eating lunch at home, I could barely work up the energy to go to school. It was also common for me to attend from afternoon classes. When I enter the classroom with my school bag during lunch hour, my classmates would pretend not to see me while  I feel lonely. At any rate, I would be told to repeat a year because of the lack of my attendance days. 

It was the fifth period ethics class. From my seat in the corner of the classroom, I looked out through the glass window. It was raining outside. I was occupied with yesterday’s nightmare. The drops of rain scattered down and the dew on the leaves in the darkness was akin to tears. 

Murai never visited me. I wondered if he felt guilty. A week later, Okada, who went to the same stupid school as Kuwata and Shiota, came to my house for the first time. I felt something odd. When we were ninth grade, for some reason, he had refused to go to school; I called him from time to time, only to talk his mother. Now he was standing in front of me. He had reddish hair with a earring in his left lobe.

“Lets’ hang out,” he said. “Everyone is waiting for you in the park(at that time, some parks were hangouts for juvenile delinquents).” “Sorry, I didn’t feel like doing that. Maybe some other time.”I said, and just as I closed the door, he jerked its knob by the hand. “Come. Come out.” “No,” I tried to close it, but he kept doing. “Please. You won’t stay so long there. Come.” I reluctantly went out. I thought this was the last time I would see them, so I made up my mind to go there. “I know what you mean,” I said. “We’ll compensate you for something,” he said soberly.

In front of my house is the park. We were ascending the stairway to it. I was reminded of going to school with him singing the popular songs–WANDS,T-BOLAN, and B’z–when we were seventh grade. We were long distance runners. After running under summer sun, we once enjoyed swimming.

In the darkness they had smoked their cigarettes. Leaning around the pull-up bars were Shiota and Abe. By them Murai was standing. Okada, whose cigarette was burning in his holder, and I walked over them. Suddenly, Shiota hit me, followed by Okada. I tried to run away. “Where are you going?”Abe jump-kicked me, Murai laughing and laughing. Shiota hit me again and again, banging the back of my head against the ground. I could see stars both in the sky and in my head. I did not get up until they were finished. 

I staggered dizzily home from the park. After a couple of hours the telephone rang in the dining room. I went to answer it.“I’m really sorry … sorry … sorry … so sorry … Forgive me …”the voice was Okada.

Suddenly accepting the fact I am probably considered a low rank boy, it was hard thing. Ever since that day, I had not spoken to anyone. Sensing the atmosphere, I shrank back.

In my class were no jocks or no queen bees. This is a private school, where you study hard to go to an excellent University. While a handful of students belong club activities like soccer, most go home or the prep schools after school. It dawned on me I had never been in the high rank, where the explicit, straight talkers dominate a class. It was just that I was in the “popular group” that was little less than second rank whose boys play dirty pool as ignoring one. I came to miss my classmates in Junior high school, where the cool boys, popular with the girls, are assertive.

At recess I was left completely alone. I put my face down on my desk to pretend to sleep. During lunch, I hung back and kept to myself and could observe how they all blended, clustering into their cliques and groups. The “popular group” I had been in made a circle. Their true colors of the group were all different, and there was no one who took the lead, like what he says goes. Of the three prospective boys, one was popular but calm, another outgoing but so mean, and the third very good-looking but a video geek–something was not right. In any case, it was too painful for a boy to be isolated in the class. Ever since that day, I had tried to find my niche.

After lunch, I could play basketball with some classmates, that was it. Then recess come between classes. I could talk to a few boys who would not ignore me out of sympathy, however they never talked to me. I could stand by the geeks talking about their nasty fetishes that grossed me out, about video games I was not interested in, and about fashion despite their unfashionable hair styles with awful glasses.

However, in my high school days, I had almost picked this circle, where I was welcome there. I walk over to them. The mood is convivial. They fool around like schoolchildren do. I cringe off, never wanting to be a part of them. Then I push myself to move seamlessly in the low rank, without overstaying. 

Autumn was coming. I did not too particularly care about studying; rather, I would have wanted friends. My only two middle school friends were busy studying, so I remembered Murai who lived in my neighborhood. Although I had got along with him for long, I wondered if he was my friend, because when I was hospitalized with a pneumothorax–which caused me a failure of the high school entrance exam–he did not visited me in the hospital.

I gave a call to visit him. Then I started spending many of my after-school in his house. He was introverted but somehow sociable, so he has friends, including bad boys. His house was a place the punks hung out. I had fun because I did not know their world–smoking, singing karaoke, talking about the pretty girls and riding scooters without a helmet(illegal).

One of them, Kuwata, a jock who is highly popular with girls who long for him to see, got me to talk with a girl on his cell phone. I was a nervous wreck and asked her a question, “What are you studying in your school? For example, math A or I.” “Sure,” she said. Kuwata whispered next to me, “You are stupid. Why would you ask her such a boring question? Say something more interesting.” It occurred to me the students in my school shared common trait: most of them had study-based conversation. He was absolutely right. They went to low rank high school, where the stupid boys and girls go. I was so inept in getting on in the world.

They enjoyed life more than the students who go on to University. On the weekends the school is closed, Kuwata dyes his black hair–especially blond–like the punks express themselves against society. He gets up in the early morning to play soccer and then goes to McDonald’s, where he hangs out with the wrong crowd, laughing and joking. Sunday afternoon, Kuwata, Murai, someone else, and me enjoy karaoke, during which Kuwata’s pager ring ceaselessly. You can see some girls appearing in front of him and disappearing together. However, I pick up the tab for him from time to time, anticipating he will not return the money.

I had estranged from studying and felt out of place in my school. Following Kuwata where he goes seemed to ease the pain of my being alone. He was a smooth-talker, hyperactive and really good-looking. Thanks to him, I was able to befriend a girl who was very easy to talk. Encountering so many punks around him was eye-opening.

After school, basically Murai visits me and we head to his house. While we hang out, Kuwata emerges out of nowhere, but his PHS and pager ring incessantly, and the next thing I know he was gone. At times he brought a few delinquent boys in Murai’s house or mine and made fun of me.

Among them was Abe, who was very good at playing guitar. He had wavy, bluish hair. When we were eighth grade, he talked enthusiastically about Western music, especially Deep Purple, Sex Pistols and MR.BIG—I was much interested in his familiarity with them.

One day, when we were in Murai’s house, out of the blue, Kuwata said: “I’ll make a man out of you. Let’s do katapan.”(The character kata means “shoulder,” pan does “punch.” One punches the other in the upper arm around the shoulder. The other have to show his strength by enduring. This is repeated to one another until either of you surrenders.) “You are strong … I don’t want to …” I was scared, knowing he would not go easy on me.“Everyone is doing. An everyday occurrence. My fellows turned blue, swelled,” he laughed quietly. “If you are a man, you must do. You understand?” he teased me.

He hit me. Murai guffawed when I swatted at his thick, clenched fist. “No. It really hurts. You got me.” I laughed a little, as if I joked around. “Come on,” he said. I was afraid he would blow up, so I punched him lightly. “Be serious.” Kuwata said matter-of-factly and hit me again, Murai laughing and laughing.

When I entered high school, the two freaky students floated. One dropped out of school after the school camp in April. He sort of stood out; stating messages clearly and lacking the ability to read between the lines. Not saying something directly is a core part of Japanese culture. Every time he uttered some words, the others had virtually fallen silent, with several jaws hanging slightly agape.

The other was an introvert, who spoke little retreating into a shell. On top of all that, he had a strong body odor. When the boys walked by him, one sniffed the air and pinched his nose, grinning, Before physical education class, you have to do change into your gym uniform in the jam-packed locker rooms. As he had his clothes off, the boys covered their noses and mouthes, making comments about him being smelly. And then one day, I happened to see him weeping alone in the locker room. “What’s wrong?” I asked in a small voice. He said nothing and left the room. During lunch and recess, he hung back and kept to himself, and he concluded that he was chronically absent from school.

I suppose the freaky boys were very sensitive and felt alienated from the class, where a sense of comradeship began to grow. Unfortunately both of them could hardly contain or express themselves. As a result, they quickly ran into problem. They were shunned in the class where in less than a month the hierarchy would be determined by simply conversational skill―or the lack of it.

Unlike the students of the highest rank casually talk with anyone, the serious student―such as a boy belongs to a student council―often talked to the teachers. He was the the kind of boy who even in his shirt buttoned all the way to the top and tucked into his pants. He was quite a bore who snitched to the teacher on the boys who did not follow the rules of the school; isolated, he subsequently transferred to another school. 

With a twinge of guilt, I had felt relieved those had not been me. However, I had fantasized about the student life in the higher rank earlier that month. I was not appealing when I was a junior high school student. I was a nerdy studious boy with only two friends who talked about nothing but study. Of course I was in the low rank, so I was going to change myself dramatically in my high school, where nobody know me.

In the beginning, I worried about student’s perception of me studying hard in my junior high school. I wanted to avoid the label like a nerd. In whispers: Outcasts, The introverts. The others. “Studying is the only thing you’re good at,” equipped a girl, the former classmate. Her words has been echoing in my mind ever since she said that.

Apart from that, I hated the rules of the school: no dyed hair, no perms and no piercings. Interested in fashion, I had wore a fluorescent colored T-shirt beneath my high school uniform―the way the cool boys of the high rank do―so that you caught a glimpse of my neckline. And then I pretend to be indifferent to studying lest I was defined as a nerd. Actually, I had studied a little, but at the same time getting bad grade seemed very cool. I had never seen a boy who was good at studying dating a good-looking girl.

I felt especially strange, as if I was the other. In the first month, I was pleasing to the girls in my grade and the next thing I knew I was in an influential group of several boys, with whom I enjoyed taking some Purikura(you pose with your friends on a photo booth that dispenses very small photo stickers), which was swapped with the hot girls whose notebooks were full with its stickers. Girls approached me everyday. I was elated. 

The members of that group were from the high rank. Maybe I was the only person from the low one. Beyond my ability, I could not have caught up with the things around me, learning how they blended. I was shy, so there was an awkward moment whenever I talked with him alone with fear that my true colors might expose. Can you imagine a studious boy in a corner of a classroom surrounded by the extroverts?

A month later, I was standing by myself in the back of the classroom during recess, watching the others laughing and talking. In this morning, when I was about to join the group saying “Hey, dude,” the silence dropped, no one paid attention to me, and no one spoke to me. I was very sensitive to my feeling that things might never really change. I knew that an amorous boy, who confined himself to pleasing girls, did not like it that I was popular with the girls. Perhaps he would had spread bad rumors about me. He had a way with words, which brought home to me the reality that I was not the kind of person in the high rank. I found myself disappearing into aloneness as though the tide ebbed away.

I had already decided not to say Good morning to passers-by when running in the morning, because I felt that I obliged him to―while acclimating to Japanese life. Japanese never greet strangers. If I was a part of his group, where we interact with our own interest, we would greet one another with much jollity.

After leaving that agency, I did not belong anywhere, not even to a small gathering, and was an outsider. As the outsider, I could keep to myself, be anonymous, be invisible. No different than I was a boy. Feeling free, I could go the other way.

I recalled the worst three years when I was a high school student. In Japan, there is something like a hierarchy system from elementary to high school―it is roughly comprised of three main ranks. In the highest rank is the extroverted like Jock and Queen bee that included bad boy and girl―it was no matter if you are intelligent or not. Mostly they are good-looking, appealing and vibrant, and everywhere he goes he blends. As an exception, if you are a promising athlete regardless of your character, you can definitely be here.

The students of the highest rank casually talk with the teachers, who tend to favor them. They dominate the class and manage the important events: sports days, school festivals, and school excursions. They are dating among them and feel somehow superior to any other students, who would bolster up the class; hitting the “like buttons” on Instagram or on TikTok―the number of your likes are proof that you are popular.

A large majority of the class are in the second rank―ordinary students preserving the harmony in the class. Unlike the assertive ones of the top rank who get carried away, they are not that prominent―no eccentric. They are plain students with Japanese-style common sense that saying anything that might disturb atmosphere in the class risks plummeting down, where they never ever want to go.

Some students are in blurring of the rank line, like middlemen between the top and the second rank; reading the atmosphere and sucking up to the popular ones. They simply have ambition to rise in the class.

I am sure that mediocre students who take a back seat can have a stable school life, because the ruling clique, now and then is sharply split by a row over trifles that are none of their business. The awkwardness those bastards display in each other’s presence, while you can devote yourself modestly to what you want to do in your school life: club activity, studying, or hanging out with your friends.

What is horrible is how unassuming they are. With hindsight, they adjust themselves to the high rank―like a relationship between superiors and subordinates. For example, the arrangements of roles such as a sports day―which attracts people’s attentions: the teachers, the families and the locals―can not begin without kind of show-offs. The most horrible thing of all is when they follow a leading figure who can use his strength to ostracize one.

In a state of anarchy are the low rank students. Each student has his unique characteristic and tend to go his own way. Basically, they are isolated, and a couple of groups, for example, are made up of otaku―obsessive fans or fanatics, video game or anime geeks, nerds. They are out of style―that was really wack―but impressively hard-core.

In retrospect, some geeks were wearing their thick glasses and deeply absorbing in a dating simulation game, Tokimeki Memorial( it was popular in the 90’s)―with pink fantasies for virtual girls not real ones who turn away. After a decade, maybe they got a school girl fetish for the idol groups like AKB48. And obsessive fans of Evangelion enjoyed their world, where they imitated its characters and laughing with each other. They would not have noticed that they made the others cringe.

The low rank students include nerdy studious boys who are mute. He will continue study hard for years to come, and the next thing you know the brain that you looked down on grow up to be a doctor or innovator. And a video games geek is a modern gamer who dreams of playing in Esports, a form of competition using video games, and of earning prize money.

I believe those who focus on one thing have the potential to be winners in life. Oddly, over the years, a beautiful girl in the high rank find herself developing her sense of her type from the cool guys to kind of dull ones or middled-aged men, both in a high standard of living. I always wonder what had happened to the innocent girls.

Have you ever tried to bully or harass? If not you, then who? I think somebody else are getting tortured at work, where his employer pays a salary. But if he is a student, he himself pays for school, where he feels pain. If you kick out him, what is left for him?

Since that time, I had suffered from keloids on my neck for twelve years. I had at times had a recurring nightmare of the look on her crooked face. If these were healed, would this painful memory obliterate from my mind?

Matsu had spoken between the lines and I actively had focused on scanning for meaning. Neither were not open-minded or optimistic. My answer never satisfied her. Even years later, I would never be able to devise the effective means to her own satisfaction; I had happened to hear about her: “It’s a little cruel, the way Matsu do to the students, who are men.”

*

On the last day of my practice, Matsu showed me the paper―“FINAL EVALUATION,” the title read. On a scale of “Excellent,” “Good,” “Passing,” and “Failing,” I scanned the categories: Behavior, Communication, Teamwork, Motivation, Documenting, Understanding, etc. My heart pounding, I shifted my gaze to the check boxes … All items were “Failing.” Maybe only one “Passing,” but it did not matter. There were obviously the occasion like rudeness in the early days, but it was very different now.

My real concern was for “Success” or “Failure.” The bottom of them … “Failure.” I panicked. I never heard that anyone failed in spite of making it to the end of their practice. Because of that I had been devoting my effort to passing it as a slave student, who could bow, apologize, and report every trivial thing I had done. The practice made absolutely no sense. Screw it, everything became meaningless. 

I started flashing back through all the time I had been at violations, discrimination or any other type of complaints against me. That was quite unfair. It occurred to me that after apologizing, she had been in a little bit better mood, but had once failed to expel me.

She did not explain why she rejected me; I felt my face going pale. After less than a minute, ignoring me with her determination, she approached Umeno, who sat at the desk within hearing distance where she would submit the paper that needs the boss’s approval. It dawned on me she was going to ruin me. Just the sight of her despicable face and her dead fish eyes, there being the staff enjoying talking with each other, drove me really mad.

I was about to scream and throw a huge tantrum. I could picture me in my mind, jumping out, hitting her face so hard that blood gushed from her gross mouth. If she is he, I could. I would knock him, hit him over and over again until his mouth stooped making any disgusting noise.

Resisting the instinct to ruin her, I was trying to relax and hold myself loosely and I saw Umeno look at the paper, tilting her head thoughtfully; I listened, absorbing as much as I could. Umeno seemed to point out that it needed modifying to all the items. Matsu’s eyes were cloudy and her mouth slack with emptiness. There would have be so much more she wanted to tell her but her face just twitched. 

Umeno handed it back to me.“Here you go, it’s up to your teacher to decide whether you success or not.” It was pretty abstract. Matsu was forced to correct several of them―from “Failing” to “Passing.” The comprehensive evaluation did not change. I could feel my fury at her rising once more.

The other students seemed to feel a sense of accomplishments, Whatever his level of them otherwise, I thought I was so much better than them.

Siting on a stool, I did not know how quickly time flew―the staff disappeared, except for the sound of Umeno and Matsu scuttling about. Then I would had wandered in the dimly lit staff room, feeling like I was forgetting something.

I had to be strong and patient, making me think that I was not a loser, who never gave up―I had achieved something challenging; preserving group harmony and saving face for those involved with me then keeping hopeful right to the end.

To show a sign of courtesy, I approached Matsu getting ready to leave. “Thank you very much over two months,” I bowed far deeper than usual. “Otsukaresamadeshita.” “You’re welcome,”she said flatly, as if to have nothing further to say, leaving the room where Umeno was working alone.

Over time I found myself developed an increasingly violent temper. I jumped to my feet, darting downstairs and looking for Matsu, who had as good as ruined me. At this time of night, the lights had been dimmed in the whole floors that was empty. I was standing at a point for a while. I did not know how long I remained there; at the same time it was significant period, I suspected I was likely to crumple my paper in front of her face … I laughed, as though I had gone mad, and with the back of my hand, I wiped my tears from my eyes.