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.
