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.
