Three Days of Happiness Vol 1 ~ Official Translation PDF

Page | 1 Table of Contents Table of Contents................................................................................ 2 1........................................................................................................ 11 A Promise in Ten Years...........................................

Page | 1 Table of Contents Table of Contents................................................................................ 2 1........................................................................................................ 11 A Promise in Ten Years...................................................................... 11 2........................................................................................................ 20 The Beginning of the End.................................................................. 20 3........................................................................................................ 37 The Seated Monitor.......................................................................... 37 4........................................................................................................ 48 Let’s Check the Answer..................................................................... 48 5........................................................................................................ 56 Everything That Happens from This Point On................................... 56 6........................................................................................................ 65 The Person Who Changed, the Person Who Couldn’t....................... 65 7........................................................................................................ 75 Ransacking the Time Capsule............................................................ 75 8........................................................................................................ 85 Inappropriate Actions....................................................................... 85 9........................................................................................................ 93 Too Good to Be True......................................................................... 93 10.................................................................................................... 106 To My One Old Friend..................................................................... 106 11.................................................................................................... 126 An Argument for a Vending Machine Pilgrimage............................ 126 12.................................................................................................... 147 Page | 2 The Liar and the Little Wish............................................................ 147 13.................................................................................................... 163 A Sure Thing.................................................................................... 163 14.................................................................................................... 178 The Blue Period............................................................................... 178 15.................................................................................................... 194 The Gift of the Magi........................................................................ 194 Afterword....................................................................................... 201 Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.............. 203 Page | 3 Download all your fav Light Novels at Just Light Novels Page | 4 Page | 5 Page | 6 Page | 7  Copyright Three Days of Happiness Sugaru Miaki Translation by Stephen Paul Cover art by E9L This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. MIKKAKAN NO KOUFUKU ©SUGARU MIAKI 2013 First published in Japan in 2013 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo. English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo. English translation © 2020 by Yen Press, LLC Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Yen On Page | 8 150 West 30th Street, 19th Floor New York, NY 10001 Visit us at yenpress.com facebook.com/yenpress twitter.com/yenpress yenpress.tumblr.com instagram.com/yenpress First Yen On Edition: October 2020 Yen On is an imprint of Yen Press, LLC. The Yen On name and logo are trademarks of Yen Press, LLC. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Miaki, Sugaru, 1990- author. | E9L, illustrator. | Paul, Stephen (Translator), translator. Title: Three days of happiness / Sugaru Miaki ; illustration by E9L ; translation by Stephen Paul. Other titles: Mikkakan no koufuku. English Identifiers: LCCN 2020032161 | ISBN 9781975314217 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781975314224 (ebook) Subjects: CYAC: Love—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Universities and colleges—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M513 Th 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2020032161 ISBNs: 978-1-9753-1421-7 (hardcover) Page | 9 978-1-9753-1422-4 (ebook) E3-20200925-JV-NF-ORI Page | 10 1. A Promise in Ten Years When I first heard about the idea of buying and selling your life span, it reminded me of a lecture on morals from elementary school. Our teacher, a woman in her late twenties, posed a stark question to her class full of ten-year-olds who didn’t yet know how to think for themselves. “Now, children, human life is considered to be the most valuable thing of all, completely irreplaceable. If you were to put that in an actual monetary amount, how much do you think it would be?” She paused and made a face at her own question. Apparently, that had been an inadequate way to phrase it. She faced the blackboard, chalk in hand, and froze for a good twenty seconds. During this time, the class gravely considered their answers to the question. The majority of the students liked our young and pretty teacher and wanted to get the right answer to make her happy and win her praise. One smarty-pants offered an answer. “The lifetime earnings of a Japanese salaryman is around two or three hundred million yen, according to a book I read. That should be about right for the average person.” Half of the class looked impressed. The other half looked annoyed. Nearly all the students in the class hated that smarty-pants. “Well, that is true,” said the teacher with a grimace. “I think most adults would give you the same answer. Calculating the worth of a person as the amount of money they make in their lifetime is one way to derive an answer. But I want you to put aside that way of Page | 11 thinking for now… How about this? I’ll make an analogy. Another one of my tricky thought experiments.” Nobody could tell exactly what she had drawn on the blackboard with blue chalk. It looked vaguely like a person, but it also looked like a piece of gum stuck to the road. But that was her intention. “This strange, unidentifiable something has an infinite supply of money. The something is seeking to lead a human life. So what it wants to do is buy someone’s life from them. And one day, you just so happen to cross paths with the something. It asks you, ‘Hey, would you sell me the life you’re about to lead?’” The teacher paused there. “What happens if you sell it?” asked a very serious boy, raising his hand. “You’d die, I suppose,” she said matter-of-factly. “Which is why you’ll initially turn down the request. But the something is persistent. ‘Just half, then. You have sixty more years ahead. Will you sell me thirty of them? You see, I really need them,’ it says.” At the time, I sat there with my fist propping up my cheek, thinking, Ah, I get it. I could sell that much. A shorter but richer life (within reason) was better than a longer but meager one, of course. “But here’s the problem. How much per year will this mysterious buyer pay you for your life span? And let me tell you first—there is no right answer. I just want to know what you think about this and what your answer is. Now, turn to the people sitting near you and discuss.” The classroom began to buzz with conversation. But I did not take part. More accurately, I couldn’t. Page | 12 Because like the smarty-pants who brought up lifetime earnings earlier, I was considered something of a class pariah. Instead, I pretended not to be interested in the discussion and waited for the time to pass. I heard the people in the seats ahead of me saying, “If an entire life is worth three hundred million yen, then…” Well, if they’re worth three hundred million, I thought, then I should be worth three billion. I don’t remember the actual consensus of the discussion, just that it was pointless from start to finish. For one thing, the subject was far too complex for elementary school children to break down. Who knows if you could even get productive discourse out of a group of high schoolers? I do distinctly remember a passionate argument from a girl who had no future, as far as I could tell, that “you can’t put a price on human life.” Sure, if I had a life like hers, I wouldn’t put a price on it, either. I’d probably have to sell it at a loss. Every class has some witty clown, and he was on the same train of thought as me. “If I sold you the right to have my life, you wouldn’t even pay three hundred yen, would you?” he said, to hearty laughs. I agreed with the sentiment, but of course, he was only being sarcastically self-effacing for laughs and attention. He clearly considered himself to be far more valuable to the group than the boring, serious students—a fact I found detestable. However, although the teacher told us there was no right answer, in fact, there was. Ten years later, when I turned twenty, I actually did sell my future life span and received something of value in return. When I was a kid, I thought I would grow up to be someone important. I believed I was exceedingly special compared with my peers. Unfortunately, because my neighborhood was filled with Page | 13 extremely unimpressive parents who gave birth to many extremely unimpressive children, that misconception only grew over time. I looked down on the children around me. I wasn’t clever or humble enough to hide my overbearing pride, and my classmates shunned me for it. They excluded me from their cliques and often hid my belongings when I wasn’t looking. I got full marks on my tests all the time, but I wasn’t the only one. The other person who did was the aforementioned “smarty-pants,” a girl named Himeno. Because of her, I couldn’t truly be the best, and because of me, she couldn’t truly be the best. On the surface, I think, we were always bickering. All we thought about was trying to outdo the other. But at the same time, we were also the only people either of us could really talk to. She was the only one who would accept what I said without misunderstanding it, and I was probably the same thing to her. In the end, we always wound up together. Even before that, our houses were across the street from each other, so we spent a lot of time together as kids. I suppose you could call us something like childhood friends. Our parents got along, and until we started going to school, when my parents were busy, Himeno’s parents would watch me at their house, and when her parents were busy, Himeno came over to our house. We saw each other as competitive rivals but had a tacit understanding that we would play nicely together in front of our parents. Not for any particular reason. It just seemed like a good idea. We might have kicked shins and pinched thighs under the table, but whenever the adults were watching, we were like close friends. I suppose it’s possible we really were. Page | 14 For reasons much like my own, Himeno was despised by the rest of the class. She thought she was smart, sniffed at the people around her, and made no attempt to hide it. So she was shunned by everyone else. Our houses were near the top of a hill, a good distance away from where the rest of our classmates lived. That was convenient for us; we could use the distance as an excuse not to hang out at their houses, and we rationalized staying at home instead. If we really got that bored, we could visit each other and play while we pretended we were there under duress. On summer festival days and Christmas, we would go out and kill time on our own so as not to trouble our parents needlessly, and on family recreation days and open house days at school when our parents could come and watch the class, we pretended to be good friends. It was as if we were saying, “It’s easiest for us to be together, so we choose to be like this.” Rather than beg our inferior classmates to let us join their groups, we much preferred the company of our frenemy. Elementary school was a depressing place for us. The other kids would keep pranking and harassing Himeno and me, which prompted class assemblies. The teacher in charge of our class from fourth through sixth grade understood how this sort of thing went, and unless it was really bad, she was considerate enough not to inform our parents. After all, if they knew we were bullied, that would only make it worse. The teacher knew we needed to have at least one place where we could rest easy and not be reminded of the fact that we were victims. But in any case, Himeno and I were sick of it—sick of the people around us, and even a little sick of ourselves for being unable to have any other relationships with the rest of the class. Page | 15 The biggest problem for us was that we couldn’t really laugh. We never figured out how to react at the same time as the rest of the kids. If I tried to force my facial muscles into that expression, I could almost hear something at the core of myself scraping and grinding down. Himeno probably felt something similar. Even when someone was directly looking for a response from us, we wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. We couldn’t, in fact. The rest of the class thought we were stuck-up and pretentious. We probably were. But that wasn’t the only reason we couldn’t join in with them when they laughed. It was something more fundamental. Himeno and I were helplessly out of sync, like flowers blooming in the wrong season. It was the summer when I was ten. Himeno pulled her schoolbag out of the trash can for at least the thirtieth time, and I put on the shoes they’d cut open with scissors, and we went to sit on the stone steps of the shrine, lit by the setting sun and waiting for something. From our position, we could look down on the place where the summer festival would be held. Stands and carts lined the narrow path to the shrine, with two rows of paper lanterns hanging over them like runway light strips that brought a low red glow to the shrine grounds. The people milling about were in high spirits, which was why we couldn’t go down to be among them. Neither of us said anything, because we knew that if we did, the tears would spill over. So we kept our mouths shut and patiently sat there, bottling our feelings inside. What Himeno and I were waiting for was something that would back us up and help everything make sense. Perhaps we really were praying to the god of the shrine at that moment, with the droning of the cicadas flooding the air around us. Page | 16 As the sun began to cross the horizon, Himeno rose to her feet, brushed the dust from her skirt, and stared straight ahead. “In the future, we’re going to be very important people,” she said in that clear voice of purpose only she possessed. As if she were speaking a simple fact that had just been set in stone. “…How far in the future are we talking about?” I asked. “Probably not that soon. But not that far, either. About ten years, I bet.” “Ten years,” I repeated. “We’ll be twenty by then.” At ten years old, twenty was the age of adulthood and ultimate maturity. As far as I could tell, Himeno’s statement was practical, even probable. She continued, “Something will happen during the summer. Ten years from now, something’s gonna happen for us. Something great. And then we’ll finally be glad to be alive. Once we’re important and rich, we’ll look back on elementary school and say, ‘That school didn’t give us anything, not even a negative example to avoid. They were all idiots. It was just a terrible school.’” “You’re right. They are nothing but idiots. It is a terrible school,” I repeated. Back then, that was a very fresh point of view for me. When you’re in elementary school, it’s your entire world, and it’s difficult to consider it in terms of “good” or “bad.” “The point is, we need to be really important and rich in ten years. We can make our classmates so jealous, they’ll all have heart attacks.” “So jealous, they’ll chew off their own lips,” I agreed. “Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair,” she said, grinning. Page | 17 I didn’t think Himeno was just trying to make me feel better. As soon as she said it, it felt as real to me as a vision of the actual future. The words had the ring of prophecy to them. And it’s not like we can’t be big and famous. In ten years, we’ll show them all. We’ll make them regret mistreating us like this. They’ll see. “…Twenty years old. It’s amazing, if you think about it,” said Himeno, pulling her hands behind her back as she stared at the sunset. “We’ll be twenty in ten years.” “We can drink alcohol. We can smoke. We can get married—well, I guess we can do that earlier,” I said. “That’s true. Girls can get married when they’re sixteen.” “It’s eighteen for guys. But I feel like I’ll probably never get married.” “How come?” “I hate too many things. I despise everything that happens in the world. How can I possibly get along with someone for the rest of my life?” “I see. Maybe that’s true for me, too,” said Himeno, her face downcast. In the light of the setting sun, her profile looked as if it belonged to a completely different person. She seemed more grown- up and more fragile. Breakable. “Well…in that case,” she continued, glancing at me very briefly before looking away again, “when we turn twenty, and we’re important and powerful…if we’re both sad enough not to have anyone to marry…” She coughed, clearing her throat. “…then why don’t we be leftovers together?” Even at my immature age, I could tell the change in her voice was evidence of bashfulness. Page | 18 “What do you mean?” I replied, also feeling awkwardly polite. “…I’m kidding. Forget it,” she said with a laugh, trying to play it off. “I just wanted to try saying that. I know I’ll never be a leftover.” “Ah, that’s good.” I laughed, too. But—stupid as it was—even after Himeno and I went separate ways in life, I always remembered that promise. Even when a reasonably attractive girl showed interest in me, I would firmly turn her down. I did it in middle school. In high school. And in college. I did that so when we met again, I could show her I was a leftover after all. As I said, it was a really stupid idea. Ten years have passed since then. And when I look back, I think, Maybe that really was the most wonderful time of my life. Page | 19 2. The Beginning of the End After the nineteenth instance that day of saying “I’m very sorry” and bowing deeply at the waist, I got dizzy, fell over, hit my head, and lost consciousness—or so I was told. It was while I was working a part-time shift at a beer garden. The cause was obvious. It would happen to anyone if they worked in the sweltering heat without having anything to eat. Recklessly, I walked myself back home to my apartment after that, but my eyes felt as if they were being clawed out of their sockets, so I ended up going to the hospital anyway. By taking a taxi to the emergency room, my already dire financial situation got even worse. On top of that, my boss told me to take some time off work. That meant I had to cut back on living expenses even more, but I didn’t know what there was left to cut. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had a meal with meat in it. I hadn’t trimmed my hair in four months, and I hadn’t bought a single piece of clothing since the coat from two winters ago. I hadn’t gone to hang out with anyone since starting college. I had reasons that I couldn’t ask my parents for help; I had to take care my own income. It hurt to sell off my CDs and books. They were all used and painstakingly chosen with the strictest judgment to ensure I had the best of the best. But without a computer or TV, that was about all I had that was worth any money. Before I said good-bye, I decided to listen to each CD one last time in order. I put my headphones on, lay down on the tatami, and pressed play. Then I hit the switch on the room fan with blue blades that I Page | 20 bought at a secondhand shop, and I periodically went to the kitchen to fill my cup with water. It was the first time I missed any college classes. But I knew nobody would care that I was absent. Perhaps they didn’t even notice I was gone. One by one, I moved the CDs from the stack on the right to the stack on the left. It was summer, and I was twenty. But as Paul Nizan once wrote, “I won’t let anyone say those are the best years of your life.” Ten years from now, something’s gonna happen for us. Something great. And then we’ll finally be glad to be alive, Himeno prophesied back then, and she was dead wrong. Not a single “good” thing had happened to me, at least, and it wasn’t going to get better anytime soon. I wondered what she was doing now. Her family moved away in the summer of fourth grade. I hadn’t seen her since. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But maybe it was for the best. This way, she wouldn’t have to see how dull and ordinary I’d become over the course of middle school, high school, and college. On the other hand, you could also say that if my childhood friend had come to my middle school with me, I might not have turned out this way. Whenever she was around, I was on edge—but in a good way. If I did something stupid, she would laugh at me, and if I did something laudable, she would be frustrated. That kind of motivation kept me at my best, I think. It was a regret that I returned to quite often over the last few years. If my younger self could see me now, what would he think? Page | 21 After three days of listening to the majority of my CDs, I kept just a handful of the most precious and stuck the rest in a paper bag. My other bag was already packed with books. Then I headed out into the city, holding one in each hand. After a while of walking in the sun, my ears began to ring. Maybe it was just a phantom sound caused by the irregular buzzing of the cicadas. It sounded as if one of them was right next to my ear. The first time I visited that used bookstore was last summer, a few months after I started college. I didn’t have a clear map of the area in my head yet, and I got lost on the way. There was a period of nearly an hour when I didn’t have a good grasp on where I was walking. After passing down a side alley and climbing some stairs, I found the bookstore. I tried to go back there several times since, but I couldn’t figure out where it was. When I wanted to look it up, I couldn’t remember the name. It always worked out that I stumbled across it when I was lost. It was as if the store itself was appearing and disappearing with a mind of its own. Only this year had I been able to finally get there without losing my way. When I arrived this time, morning glories were blooming in front of the shop. Out of sheer habit, I checked the clearance racks with the cheapest books they wanted to get rid of outside the front door before going inside. The interior was dimly lit and smelled like aging paper. The sound of a radio was coming from the back. The aisles were so narrow that I could only get through by turning sideways. At last I called out to the shop owner, a timid-looking, wrinkled old man who peered out between stacks of books. The old man never flashed a smile at anyone, no matter who you were. When it came time to check out, he just stared down and murmured the price as he read it off the sheet. But this day was different. When I told him I was here to sell books, he actually lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes. Page | 22 I could definitely sense something like shock in his expression. I suppose that made sense. All the books I was selling were the meaningful kind you wanted to keep around, even if you’d read them dozens of times already. Giving them away would be an incomprehensible act to an avid reader. “Are you moving or something?” he asked. I was surprised at how clear his voice sounded. “No, I’m not.” “Then,” he said, eyeing the pile of books before him, “why would you do such a wasteful thing?” “Paper doesn’t taste very good, and it won’t give me vitamins.” The old man seemed to understand my joke. “So you’re hard up for money,” he said with a scowl. When I nodded, he crossed his arms and said nothing, thinking it over. He decided to go ahead and sighed. “It’ll take about thirty minutes to assess them,” he said, and then took the books into the back. I went outside and looked at the faded bulletin board along the street. There were posters for the summer festival, a firefly-viewing event, stargazing, and a public reading. From over the wall behind the board came the familiar scent of incense and tatami mats, human body odor, and wood. Wind chimes rang from a distant house. When the old man was done judging the worth of the books, he handed me about two-thirds of what I was expecting and said, “Hey, I’ve got something to say to you.” “What is it?” “You need money, right?” Page | 23 “Well, that’s nothing new,” I said, deflecting the question, but it seemed to satisfy the old man. “Listen, I have no interest in finding out how poor you are or how you became so. I just have one question for you,” he said. After a pause, he continued, “Do you feel like selling your life span?” The unexpected sentence delayed my reaction. “Life span?” I asked, trying to confirm what he meant. “Yes. I’m not the one who will buy it, actually. But you can sell it for a lot.” I might have blamed my ear for mishearing due to the heat, but it wasn’t hot enough for that. I thought it over. My initial conclusion was that the old man’s fear of aging had caused his brain to go soft. Upon seeing my expression, the shopkeeper said, “I don’t blame you for thinking I’m pulling one over on you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you think I’m senile. But I’d suggest playing along with this daft old codger and going to the place I tell you about. You’ll see I’m telling the truth.” I took his story with a grain of salt—but it boiled down to this. On the fourth floor of a building not too far from here, there was a business that bought and sold life. The price varied by person, especially with regard to how fulfilling the life you would have led in that time was going to be. “I barely know the first thing about you, but from what I can see, you don’t look like a bad guy, and your taste in books is admirable. Maybe you’ll be worth something.” Page | 24 It brought to mind the memory of that old class on morals in my elementary school years. According to the man, you could deal not only your own life span, but also your time and health. “What’s the difference between life span and time?” I asked. “I guess I don’t really understand the distinction between life span and health, either.” “Don’t know the details. I’ve never sold anything to them. But…you know how some people who are extraordinarily unhealthy manage to live on for decades, and sometimes perfectly healthy folks just up and die? Wouldn’t that be the difference between life span and health? I couldn’t tell ya about the time part.” He jotted down a little map and a phone number on a memo sheet. I thanked him and left the store. But I’m sure anyone would come to the same conclusion as I did: that the “store where they buy your life span” was just a fantasy cooked up by the old man’s desires. He was afraid of his own impending death, and so indulging in a vision of a place where you could buy more life to live was keeping him sane. I mean, it only makes sense, right? A store like that is way too convenient to be real. My expectations were only half-correct. It was not, in fact, an easy-peasy deal ripe for the taking. But my expectations were also half-wrong. There was a store that bought and sold life span. After selling my books, I headed to a CD shop in town. The heat radiating off the asphalt was horrendous, and sweat was pouring Page | 25 from every part of my skin. I was thirsty, too, but I didn’t have the money to spend on canned drinks from a vending machine. I had to deal with it until I got home to the apartment. Unlike the bookstore, the CD shop had air-conditioning. When the automatic doors opened and the cold air engulfed my body, I felt like stretching. I gulped in the air, pulling the coldness deep within me. The store was playing a summer jam that was popular around the time I started middle school. I headed for the counter and called out to the employee with bleached hair who was always there, then lifted my other bag and pointed at it. He looked suspicious. Then his expression changed, suggesting I was performing some act of hideous betrayal. The look that said, “I can’t believe someone like you would be getting rid of so many CDs at once.” In other words, the exact same reaction as the old man’s at the used bookstore. “What’s the situation, man?” the employee said to me. He was a skinny guy in his late twenties with drooping eyes. He wore a T-shirt with a rock band on it and faded jeans. His fingers were always moving about restlessly. Just as I had at the bookstore, I explained why I needed to sell my CDs, and the employee clapped his hands and said, “In that case, I actually have something you might wanna hear. I’m not supposed to tell you about this, but I gotta say, I think you have incredible taste in music, so I’ll let you know, just this one time.” It might as well have been a speech straight out of a how-to-scam-a- sucker manual, word for word. He said, “There’s a business in this town that will buy your life span from you.” “Life span?” I repeated. Of course, this was how I replied the last time. But I couldn’t help myself. Page | 26 “Yeah, life span,” he said, dead serious. Is there some game going around where people tease the desperately poor? I was thinking about how to respond to this when he launched into a quick explanation. It was largely the same as what the old man at the bookstore said, but this guy claimed he had actually gone through with it. I asked him how much he got for it, but then he started playing coy. “I don’t think I feel comfortable saying.” The man with the bleached hair jotted down a map and phone number and gave it to me. As expected, it was a perfect match for the information from the old man. I gave him an empty thanks and left. As soon as I was out in the sun again, the oppressive, clinging heat returned, hugging my entire body. Just this one time would be all right, I told myself. I put a coin into the vending machine just a few steps away and eventually settled on a mild apple cider. I held the can between both hands to enjoy the chill, then popped the tab and took my time drinking it. The unique sweetness of a soft drink filled my mouth. It had been a long time since I had any carbonated beverages, so each gulp prickled at my throat. When I finished the last swallow, I threw the empty can into the trash. I took the two maps out of my pocket and looked at them. The distance wasn’t unwalkable. If I went to that building, they would pay me money to take away my life span or time or good health, according to the story. What a load of BS. I clicked my tongue, wadded up the maps, and threw them away. But I wound up standing in front of the building anyway. Page | 27 It was an older structure. The walls were so darkened with age that it was impossible to tell what color it was originally painted. Even the building itself probably couldn’t remember. It was narrow, as if the buildings on either side were compressing it into a smaller shape. The elevator wasn’t working, so I had to climb the stairs up to the fourth floor. I took one sweaty step at a time up the stairwell, through yellowed fluorescent light and musty air. I didn’t believe the story about them buying up life spans. But I did interpret it in a different way: Perhaps, for reasons the two men couldn’t explain directly, there was some kind of job they were hiring for that involved life-shrinking risks but paid extremely well. The first door I saw on the fourth floor had no sign on it. And yet I was certain it was the place they were talking about. I held my breath and stared at the doorknob for about five seconds, then steeled myself and grabbed it. The space on the other side was unthinkably clean, given the exterior appearance of the building. But that did not shock me. There were empty display cases in the center of the room and empty shelves lining the walls, but all of that seemed natural to me. On the other hand, the room was very strange from a commonsense perspective. Like a jeweler without any jewels. An eyewear shop without any glasses. A bookstore without any books. Until I heard the voice, I didn’t even realize a person was standing right next to me. “Welcome.” I turned toward the sound and saw a seated woman wearing a suit. She stared at me appraisingly through glasses with a delicate frame. She saved me the trouble of asking what kind of a store this was by broaching the topic before I could speak. Page | 28 “Time? Health? Life span?” I was tired of thinking. If you want to have fun at my expense, then go ahead. “Life span,” I said without hesitation. I was going to go along with it. I had hardly anything else left to lose at this point. The vague expectations I had were that my life had about sixty years left, which should buy me somewhere in the ballpark of six hundred million yen. I wasn’t as confident as I was in elementary school, but I was still certain my value was greater than the average person. In other words, I figured each year should be good for ten million yen. Even at this time in my life, I couldn’t escape from the idea that I was special. There was nothing supporting that assumption. I was just dragging the glory of my past along with me. I was refusing to face the miserable lack of good fortune in my life and telling myself, One of these days, I’m gonna hit it so big that all the time I’ve wasted will seem like nothing. With each year I got older, the success I dreamed about grew in size. People tend to swing for the fences the more boxed in they get, and that’s just human nature. When you’re down ten runs in the bottom of the ninth, playing it safe with a sacrifice bunt isn’t going to get you anywhere. Instead, you swing for the big hit, even knowing that the odds of missing are much higher. In time, I even started to think about eternal glory. The kind of success where everyone knows your name, a success that becomes legend and never fades. It was getting to the point where nothing less would save my life. Page | 29 For someone like me to course-correct and get things right, I probably needed someone to completely and utterly call me out for my delusion. I needed to be beaten down to absolutely nothing when I had no escape and no means to defend myself. In that sense, selling my life span was probably the right choice. Because that was where I learned that not only had I wasted my past, but my future was also destined to be the same. Upon closer examination, the woman in the suit was quite young. In terms of her physical appearance, she was probably somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four years of age. She told me the examination period would last about three hours. She was already typing at the computer next to her. I figured there must be some kind of tiresome paperwork involved, but she said I didn’t even need to give her my name. And in just three hours, she would know the value of the supposedly priceless life I had left to live. They would decide the number, of course, so it wasn’t some fixed value. But it was a standard. I left the building and wandered around aimlessly. The sky was getting a bit darker. My legs were exhausted. I was hungry. I wanted to find a restaurant of some kind where I could sit down and rest, but I didn’t have enough money to do that. Luckily, I found a Seven Stars cigarette and a hundred-yen lighter on a bench in the shopping district. I looked around the area but didn’t see a likely owner. I sat down on the bench and discreetly slipped them into my pocket, then found a side street next to some discarded materials and lit the cigarette. It had been so long since the last time I smoked that my throat felt sore. I stepped on the cigarette and headed for the station. I was getting thirsty again. Page | 30 At the bench in the open area outside the train station, I sat and watched the pigeons. A middle-aged woman at the bench across the way was feeding them. Her outfit was a little too young for someone her age, and the way she threw the food indicated she was anxious. I found it hard to describe how this made me feel. On the other hand, I was intimately familiar with the self-hatred I felt when I realized that the sight of pigeons eating bread was whetting my appetite. If I was any hungrier, I might be down there scrabbling for crumbs with the birds. Please let the price be nice and hefty, I thought. Like most people do when their goods are being assessed, I tried to keep my expectations low. My initial guess was six hundred million yen for my life span, but I decided it was better to go in looking at the lowest possible number so I wouldn’t be disappointed when I got the estimate, even if it was on the low side. The number I arrived at was three hundred million. When I was a kid, I thought my life would be worth three billion yen. Compared with that, this was a very humble estimation. But I was still being naive about my own low value. I remembered how Himeno said the lifetime earnings of the average Japanese salaryman was two to three hundred million yen. But I had forgotten that immediately after the gloomy classmate with the depressing future started talking, I had thought, Sure, if I had a life like hers, I wouldn’t put a price on it, either. I’d probably have to sell it at a loss. I went back to the store early, sat down on the sofa, and was starting to nod off for a bit when the woman called my name and woke me up. She had finished her assessment. Page | 31 I heard her say, “Mr. Kusunoki.” But I didn’t remember telling her my identity at any point or showing her any form of identification. She had the means of learning such things, apparently. There was something about this place that was indeed beyond the bounds of normal understanding. Despite the odds, by the time I returned to the building, I had decided to believe in the incredibly dubious idea that someone could buy your life span for money. There were a number of complex interlocking factors that influenced my view, but the strongest was that woman. Maybe it was illogical to get such an impression about someone you’d just met. But I felt…there was no lie in whatever she did. I could just feel it. There are people who simply despise dishonesty, regardless of any notion of righteousness or morality, regardless of even their own personal gain or loss. She was one of those people, I sensed. When I looked back on this moment later, it was easy to see just how poor my instincts had been. Returning to the topic of my appraisal… When I heard the woman say the number three, my face momentarily betrayed the part of me that hadn’t given up hope, or so I came to understand later. I reacted honestly and instinctually, confirming that my childhood guess of three billion really was correct. The woman saw my look and awkwardly scratched at her cheek with a finger. She seemed to think it wouldn’t be right to tell me the results this way—instead, she glanced at the computer window, typed something on the keyboard, and placed a printout on the counter. “This is the result of your appraisal. What is your decision?” Page | 32 When I first saw the number three hundred thousand on the sheet, I thought it was the amount for each year. If a life was eighty years, that would be twenty-four million yen. Twenty-four million, the voice in my head repeated. I felt all the strength draining from my body. How could it be that cheap? It was at this point that I decided I was suspicious of the place again. This might be some TV show prank or some psychological test. It could even be just a simple and especially cruel hoax… But none of my excuses made a difference. The only thing that provided me any proper measure of disbelief was my common sense. Every other sense I had was telling me that whatever this woman said was correct. And one of my rules in life was that if you were faced with an illogical situation, you ought to trust your gut instinct, not the rationality of “common sense.” I simply had to accept the twenty-four million yen total. Even doing that took considerable bravery. But then the woman delivered the harsh truth. “That means the yearly price is the lowest possible price of ten thousand yen. Your remaining life is listed at thirty years and three months, so you can walk out this door with about three hundred thousand yen.” When I laughed then, it was not because I took her words to be a joke, but because, objectively speaking, it was my life that was the joke. The true value of my life was literally orders of magnitude less than what I thought it was. “Of course, this does not indicate some kind of universal value. That is simply the total we arrived at after measuring you against our standard,” the woman explained. Page | 33 “I’d like to know more about this standard,” I said. She sighed with disgust. Maybe it was something she’d heard thousands of times before. “The detailed appraisal is performed by a different consultative body, so even I do not know exactly how it works. But from what I know, the result is largely influenced by the ability to satisfy certain values, such as good fortune, fulfillment, and contribution… In essence, how happy you will be throughout the rest of your life, how happy you will make others, making dreams come true, and contributing to society all play a big part in the appraised value of that life.” It was the impartiality of it that broke me down. If I only wasn’t happy myself, or only failed to make others happy, or only failed to achieve my dreams, or only did nothing for society—if I had no value in just one of these things, I could take it. But to be miserable, to make no one else happy, to fail to reach my dreams, and to do nothing for society, all at once? What possible hope could there be for me in such a life? And for a twenty-year-old, the remainder of thirty years seemed much too brief. Would I fall terribly ill? Would I meet with some untimely accident? I decided to go for broke and asked, “Why is the rest of my life so short?” “I’m very sorry,” she said, tilting her head, “but any further information can only be revealed to customers who choose to sell either their time, health, or life span.” I stared at her forehead and considered this. “Give me a minute to think it over.” “Please take your time,” she said, but from the tone of her voice, it was clear she wanted me to hurry the hell up. Page | 34 In the end, I chose to sell all remaining thirty years, leaving only three months. After a life of working dead-end jobs and selling my last prized books and CDs, I had lost all resistance to the idea of liquidating everything I had for cheap. While the woman read off every last part of the contract for me, I simply murmured to indicate I was there, but my mind was empty. When she asked if I had any questions, I said, “Not really.” I just wanted to wrap it up and get out. Out of the store. Out of my life. “You can perform up to three transactions in total,” the woman explained. “That means you have two more opportunities to buy or sell life span, health, or time.” I took the envelope with my three hundred thousand yen inside and left the building. I couldn’t begin to guess how they did it, but I did indeed feel as though I’d lost my future. It was as if something that had filled me to the core had been 90 percent removed from my being. Apparently, chickens can run around for a while after their heads are chopped off, and this felt close to that. You could have called me a corpse. Now that my body was all but certain to die before I turned twenty- one, it was much more impatient than a body that intended to live to eighty. The weight of each empty second passing was much greater. When I expected to live to eighty, I always had that unconscious arrogance of knowing I had sixty more years in me. Now that sixty years had become just three months, I was plagued by an insistence that I always had to do something. But for now, I just wanted to go home and sleep. I’d been walking all day, and I was exhausted. I could think about what to do once I’d slept all I could and woke up refreshed. Page | 35 On the way home, I passed a strange man. He looked to be in his early twenties, and he was walking alone with a huge smile on his face, as if he couldn’t contain his joy. It made me furious. I stopped by a liquor store in the shopping area and bought four cans of beer, then found a street cart nearby, where I ordered five skewers of yakitori chicken. I ate and drank my fill on the way home. I had three months left. There wasn’t a need to watch my money anymore. It had been a long time since I last had alcohol. Maybe it was a bad idea when I was feeling down. In any case, I got drunk very quickly, and not even thirty minutes after I stumbled home, I was vomiting. That was how my last three months started. It was about as bad of a start as you could get. Page | 36 3. The Seated Monitor I already felt terrible, and it was a miserably hot night. So when I dreamed, it was very vivid and memorable. After I woke up, I mulled over the dream while underneath my blanket. It wasn’t a bad one. If anything, it was happy. But there’s nothing crueler than a happy dream. In it, I was a teenager in a park. It wasn’t a park I knew, but I was there with classmates from elementary school. Apparently, there was a class reunion going on. Everyone was playing around with firecrackers. The smoky haze was lit red by the sparklers. I was standing at the edge of the park and watching them. How is high school? asked Himeno, who was suddenly there next to me. I tried to glance at her sidelong, but her face was blurry. I didn’t know her after age ten, so I suppose my brain couldn’t imagine how she looked. But my dream self thought she was utterly beautiful. He was proud to have known her for years before that point. I’m not really enjoying it, I said honestly. But it’s not the worst. I guess I’d say the same, agreed Himeno. Secretly, I was happy to hear her teen years were miserable, just like mine. I find myself thinking, she went on, that life was fun back then. Back when? I asked. Page | 37 Rather than answer, Himeno crouched down and looked up at me. So are you still a leftover, Kusunoki? I suppose, I replied, watching her closely. I wanted to see her reaction. Oh, Himeno said, smirking a bit. Well, I suppose I am, too. Then she grinned, her cheeks dimpled, and she added, That’s good. Right on schedule. Yeah, right on schedule, I agreed. And then I woke up. It wasn’t the kind of dream you were supposed to have when you were twenty. It was so childish; I felt disgusted with myself. But a part of me was desperately trying to cling to the memory. I didn’t want to let it melt away into nothing. It was true that when I was ten, I didn’t really like Himeno all that much. Whatever affection I held for her, it was very small. The problem was that a “very small affection” was something I never felt for a single person after that point. Perhaps that seemingly tiny bit of tenderness was actually the greatest I would ever feel in my life—and I didn’t even notice it until long after she was gone. After I had memorized all the tiny details of my dream about Himeno, I lay there in my bed, thinking about the day before. I had gone to that faded old building and sold all my future life, except for three months. It wasn’t like some waking dream that seemed unreal in the light of the following day. It was an utterly real experience in my mind. Not that I regretted selling the vast majority of the rest of my life span on a sudden whim. And I didn’t suddenly realize the value of Page | 38 what I’d lost. If anything, I felt relief, as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. The thing that kept me attached to life was a shallow hope that maybe, just maybe, something good might happen in the future. As baseless as that hope was, it was extraordinarily difficult to give it up. Even the most worthless human can hope for that improbable stroke of luck that wipes out all that misfortune. That was my salvation, and my trap. In a way, having someone definitively tell me, “Nothing good will happen in the life ahead of you” was kind of liberating. Now I could die in peace. At this point, I might as well enjoy my remaining time. I wanted to be able to say, “It was a crappy life, but once I accepted my death, the three months were pretty happy in the end” when my time was up. First, I’d go to the bookstore and read some magazines, then think about what to do with my time, I thought—and then my doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting a visitor. Nobody had visited me once in the last few years, and I couldn’t imagine it happening in the next three months, either. Someone got the wrong door or was raising funds for charity or was looking to convert new believers. In any case, I didn’t have a good feeling about it. The bell rang again. I bolted to my feet and immediately felt a return of the powerful nausea from last night. I was hungover. But I managed to stumble over to the entryway to open my door. Standing outside was a girl I didn’t recognize. And next to her was a wheeled suitcase that clearly belonged to her. “…And you are?” I asked. Page | 39 She gave me an exasperated look, then irritably removed a pair of glasses from her bag and placed them on her face, glaring at me as though the answer should be obvious now. And then I knew who she was. “The one who appraised my life span yesterday…” “That’s right,” she said. The impression her suit left was so strong that I hadn’t recognized her at all in plain clothes. She wore a cotton blouse and saxe-blue denim skirt. Her black hair hung down to her shoulders and curved inward a bit, though I couldn’t tell that yesterday with it tied up. I sensed a note of loneliness in her eyes. Below her skirt, her slender right leg had a large bandage on the thigh. The wound must have been deep, because I could see it even through the bandage. At our first meeting, I couldn’t pinpoint her age as anything more specific than eighteen to twenty-four, but seeing her now, I had a much better idea. She was about my age. Nineteen or twenty. But what was she doing here? The first thing that popped into my head was that she came to tell me there was a mistake in the appraisal. She got the number of digits wrong. Maybe she mixed it up with someone else’s results. A part of me hoped she was here for an apology. She removed her glasses again, neatly tucked them into their case, then stared at me with emotionless eyes. “My name is Miyagi. I’ll be your monitor from now on,” she said and bowed to me. Monitor. I’d completely forgotten. She did mention something like that, I now recalled. I also remembered how overwhelming the nausea was and ran to the bathroom to throw up. Page | 40 When I emerged from the bathroom with a completely empty stomach, Miyagi was standing right on the other side of the doorway. It might have been her job, but she didn’t know how to keep her distance. I pushed her out of my way to get to the sink, where I washed my face and gargled, slugged down a cup of water, then returned to my bed on the floor. My head was killing me. The humidity wasn’t helping. “As I explained to you yesterday,” said Miyagi, who was standing next to my pillow now, “you have less than one year of life left, so from now on, you will have a monitor at all times. Furthermore…” “Can you go over this later?” I asked, outwardly annoyed. “As you can see, I’m not in a great condition to listen now.” “Very well. I’ll wait.” Then Miyagi took her suitcase to the corner of the room, placed her back against the wall, and sat down, cradling her legs with her arms. And then she just stared at me. Apparently, her plan was simply to sit in place and monitor me from there, for as long as I was inside my apartment. “Treat me as though I am not even here, if you’d like,” Miyagi told me from the corner. “Don’t mind me. Just live out your life like you always do.” But her reassurance did not change the fact that I was being watched by a girl who could not be two years apart from me in age. I couldn’t help but be aware of her, and I stole a glance in her direction. She was writing something in a notebook. Maybe she was making some kind of observation record. It was unpleasant, being scrutinized like this. I felt the side of myself that was facing her prickling, burning from her gaze. Page | 41 She had indeed given me a detailed explanation of the monitor role yesterday. According to Miyagi, many of the people who sold their life span there grew despondent and desperate when they had less than a year left and started causing problems. I didn’t ask what “problems” these were, exactly, but I could guess. The reason people follow the rules is because of the weight trust and reputation hold in life. But when you know for a fact that your life is about to end, things change. Reputation doesn’t go with you to the afterlife. So to prevent people who sold their life span from becoming erratic and harming others, they set up the monitor system. Anyone with less than a year left received a monitor. If they started acting inappropriately, the monitor would immediately send word back to base, and they would cut you off right there, regardless of how much time was actually left. With a single phone call, the girl sitting in the corner of my room could end my life. However—apparently, this was shown through data to be an effective method—once they were just a few days from death, people stopped feeling the urge to harass others. So when there were only three days left, the monitor would leave. I’d only be alone for the last three days of my life. I don’t know exactly when I fell asleep. The next thing I knew, my headache and nausea were gone. The clock said it was around seven in the evening. It was about the worst possible way I could have spent the first day of my last three months of life. Miyagi was still there, unmoving, in the corner of the room. I endeavored to go about my normal business while not thinking about her. I washed my face with cold water, changed into a pair of faded blue jeans and a ragged T-shirt, then went out to buy dinner. My monitor followed me about five steps behind. Page | 42 I had to shade my eyes against the powerful light of the setting sun. The sunset was yellow today. The cicadas were buzzing from the distant woods. Smaller automobiles passed sluggishly on the road next to the sidewalk. Eventually, I arrived at a pit-stop restaurant along the old national highway. It was a wide, squat building with trees behind it that grew over the roof. From signs to roof to walls, it was hard to find a spot that wasn’t faded with time. Inside the building were about ten vending machines lined up along the wall and two narrow tables with pepper-flake shakers and ashtrays on them. The music from a few arcade cabinets that were at least ten years old played from the corner, which brought the faintest touch of warmth to the lonely, run-down interior. I put three hundred yen into a noodle vending machine and smoked a cigarette while I waited for the machine to prepare my bowl. Miyagi sat in a round chair and looked up at the one fluorescent light that was flickering. How was she going to eat while she was monitoring me? I didn’t think she could go without food and water, but she was just creepy enough that I had to wonder if that was true. She was like an automaton, I guess. Barely human. When I was finished slurping down cheap-tasting tempura soba—at least it was hot—I bought a can of coffee from the beverage machine and drank it. The heavily sweetened iced coffee seeped into the dried-out husk of my body. The reason I was choosing bad food out of a vending machine when I only had three months left to live was because I didn’t know anything else. The person I’d been never had the option to go a little out of his comfort zone and eat at a fancy restaurant. My last few years of poverty had completely sapped me of any kind of imagination. Page | 43 When I returned to the apartment after my meal, I took a pen and my notebook and decided to put my future actions into a list of bullet points. At first, it was easier to think of things I didn’t want to do rather than things I did, but as I wrote, some things I wanted to accomplish before I died came to my mind. Things to do before I die - Don’t go to college - Don’t work - Don’t hold back when you want something - Eat something delicious - Look at something beautiful - Write a will - Meet with Naruse and talk - Meet with Himeno and tell her how I feel “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” I turned around saw Miyagi standing behind me, rather than sitting in the corner. She was looking over my shoulder at what I was writing. To my surprise, the item she was pointing at was Meet with Himeno and tell her how I feel. “Does a monitor have an obligation to spy on their target and intrude with advice?” I asked her. Miyagi didn’t answer my question. Instead, she told me, “This Himeno person has been through a lot. She gave birth at age seventeen. Then she quit high school and got married at eighteen but was divorced a year later. Now that she’s twenty, she’s living with her parents and raising her baby. Two years from now, she’s Page | 44 scheduled to kill herself by jumping. And her last message will be extremely dark… If you go to see her now, nothing good will happen. And Himeno barely remembers you. She certainly doesn’t remember the special promise you made when you were ten.” I could barely speak. It felt as if all the air in my lungs had been sucked out. “…You know that much about me?” I mumbled at last. Desperately trying to hide my panic, I asked, “Based on what you just said, it sounds like you know everything that’s about to happen, too. Is that right?” Miyagi blinked a few times, then shook her head. “What I know is what might have happened in your life ahead, Mr. Kusunoki. At this point, such information is pointless, of course. By selling your life span, your future was greatly changed. And out of those things that might have happened, I only know the most important events.” Without taking her eyes off the notebook, Miyagi reached up and pulled her hair back behind her ear. “It seems Himeno was someone very important to you. The plot synopsis of your life was all about her.” “Only relatively speaking,” I protested. “It just means nothing else was very important to me at all.” “You may be right,” said Miyagi. “All I can tell you now is that going to see Himeno would be a waste of your time. It will only ruin the memories you have of her.” “Thanks for your concern. But they were ruined long ago.” “I’ve still saved you time, haven’t I?” “Maybe. Anyway, are you allowed to just tell people about the future like that?” Page | 45 She looked curious. “If I might turn the question back on you, why did you assume I shouldn’t?” I couldn’t come up with a good answer. If I tried to use that future information to cause trouble, Miyagi could simply call back in and have the rest of my life cut off. “In essence, we just want you all to live the rest of your lives in tranquility,” she explained. “That’s why I am giving you advice based on your future and warning you away from actions that might harm you.” I scratched my head. I wanted to snap back at her, to tear into her. “Maybe you think what you’re doing is helping me avoid hurt or disappointment. But couldn’t you also say that what you’re doing is robbing me of the freedom to be hurt or disappointed? Let’s say… Let’s say I actually wanted to hear that from Himeno directly, not from you, so that it could wound me. All you’ve done is stuck your nose in where you’re not wanted.” Miyagi sighed with obvious annoyance. “Oh, I see. I thought I was just being a good person. If that were the case, then maybe what I said would have been careless. I’m very sorry,” she said, then bowed to me. “But let me also say,” she continued, “that I wouldn’t go in expecting much in the way of fairness or integrity from what’s going to happen next. You sold your future life away. That means you leaped into a world that works on cruel and illogical principles. There is almost no point in arguing for your own freedom or rights here. You did this to yourself.” Then Miyagi returned to the corner of the room and wrapped her arms around her legs again. “But for this one time, I will choose to respect your freedom to be hurt or disappointed, and I will not comment on the other items on Page | 46 your list. Feel free to do as you wish, so long as it does not cause undue harm to others. I will not stop you.” That’s already what I was going to do. You don’t have to tell me, I thought. I did not miss the look of faint sadness that crossed Miyagi’s face. But I didn’t think that hard about what the expression might mean, either. Page | 47 4. Let’s Check the Answer From here, my idiocy only accelerated. I told Miyagi, “I’m going out to place a call. I’ll be right back” and left the apartment. I was going outside because I didn’t want her listening to my conversation, but no surprise, Miyagi followed me right outside. It had been ages since I called anyone. On the screen was the name Wakana. I stared at it for a long time. In the trees behind my apartment building, the summer insects were buzzing and chirping away. Apparently, I was feeling nervous about hitting that last button. Thinking back on it, ever since I was a child, I had almost never invited someone else to hang out or reached out to make conversation. I’d lost many opportunities that way, but I’d also escaped just as many troubles and hassles. I didn’t feel anything about it, regret or satisfaction. I stopped thinking about it. In the few brief seconds of emptiness that followed, I pressed the call button on the phone. Once she actually picked up, I could handle it. I knew well enough what to talk about. The sound of the ringtone ratcheted up my nerves. One, two, three times. Only at this point did I consider the possibility that the person on the other end might not answer. I had gone so long without using my phone to make calls that a part of me just assumed that if you placed the call, the other person would obviously pick up, no matter the time or place. Four, five, six times. Apparently, Wakana wasn’t in a position to answer the phone. A part of me felt relief. Page | 48 Once the ringtone sounded for the eighth time, I gave up and pressed the button again to end it. Wakana was a girl from college from the year below me. I was going to ask her out for a meal. And if things somehow went well, I was going to ask her to hang out with me the entire time until my shortened life came to its end. The loneliness suddenly surged up from within me. Now that the end of my life was clear and imminent, the first noticeable change in me was a new, alien desire to be around people. I just wanted to talk with someone, badly. Wakana was the only person at college who showed any interest in me. We met at that same used bookstore this spring, when she had just started school. She was utterly absorbed in a dusty, tattered old book, and I sent her a look that said, “Move it, you’re in my way.” Somehow she interpreted that as “That guy’s totally staring at me—I don’t recognize him, but do I know him from somewhere?” It was the kind of mistake new students tended to make. “Um, have we met before?” she asked me timidly. “No,” I said. “We haven’t.” “Oh. I’m sorry,” Wakana said, realizing her mistake. She looked away awkwardly. But she recovered promptly and grinned. “Then I suppose this used bookstore is where we met?” Now it was my turn to be taken aback. “I guess so.” “Yep. It’s wonderful,” she said, and she put the book back on the shelf. A few days later, we were reunited on the school campus. Since then, we’d shared lunch on a few occasions and talked at length about books and music—even blowing off our classes to do so. Page | 49 “You’re the first person my age I’ve met who reads more books than me,” Wakana said, her eyes sparkling. “I’m just reading them. I don’t get anything out of it,” I replied. “I don’t have that part of my brain that’s supposed to keep anything of value from them. I’m just pouring out soup from a huge pot into a little tiny dish. As soon as it hits the dish, it’s spilling over, and the whole point is gone.” “Is that how you describe it?” Wakana asked curiously. “It might not be helping you consciously, but even after you ‘forget,’ I think everything you’ve ever read is still somewhere there in your brain, finding a way to help you in ways you don’t even realize.” “That might be true in some cases. But for me—speaking only from personal experience—spending all your time reading as a young person is unhealthy. Reading is for people with nothing else to do.” “You don’t have anything to do, Kusunoki?” “Not really. Not aside from my job,” I replied. She gave me a very broad smile, jabbed me on the shoulder, and said, “Then I’ll give you something else.” Then she grabbed my cell phone and entered her own e-mail address and number into my contacts list. If I had known that Himeno had already gotten pregnant, married, had her child, and divorced, and had completely forgotten all about me, I might have actually made a move with Wakana. But in the spring, I was still preserving my promise with Himeno and was determined to be a leftover at my twentieth birthday. So I never reached out to Wakana, and if she called or texted me, I always let the conversation die within a few messages or minutes. I didn’t want to get her hopes up. Essentially, I always had the worst timing imaginable. Page | 50 I didn’t feel like leaving a message. Instead, I sent Wakana a text of what I was going to say over the phone. Sorry this is coming out of the blue, but do you want to go somewhere tomorrow? I put together the message very carefully, not to be too blunt, but not to destroy the image she had of me, either. A reply came back at once. I won’t lie—it was a relief. There was still someone out there who cared enough about me to write back. Unusually for me, I felt like responding immediately, but when I opened the message, I realized my mistake. The reply was not from Wakana. If that were all, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But the sentence I saw on the screen of my phone said, instead, that the address was currently inactive. Wakana had changed her e-mail address and not informed me. She had decided there was no need to maintain a line of communication with me. Of course, it could have just been a mistake on her part. It was possible she would reply very soon with an update about where I could reach her. But I was already fairly certain. My time had passed. From the way I stared emptily at the screen, Miyagi sensed what had happened to me. She approached me and peered over my arm at the screen. “Let’s check the answer,” she said. “The girl you just tried to call was your final hope. Wakana was the last person who might have loved you. If you had given her a second thought in the spring when she hit on you, I think you would have been lovers in a close relationship now. The value of your life probably wouldn’t have fallen so far…but you were too late. Wakana doesn’t care about you anymore. In fact, she resents you now for not Page | 51 returning her affection, and she wishes she could show you the boyfriend she currently has.” Miyagi spoke so distantly and dispassionately that it was as if I wasn’t even there. “There will never be another person who tries to love you from this point on. When you only see other people as tools to ease your own loneliness, they often pick up on that.” I could hear bright, cheerful voices from the apartment next door. It sounded like a number of college students, male and female. The light from the window looked far brighter than what was coming from my window adjacent to it. The old me would not have bothered to form an opinion about this, but right now, it stabbed me to the core. At the worst possible moment, the phone rang. It was Wakana, calling back. I was going to ignore it at first, but I didn’t want her to try again later, so I answered. “You called me a moment ago, Kusunoki? What’s the matter?” she asked. I’m sure she was speaking the same way she always had, but after what Miyagi had just said, it sounded critical. Silently asking, “Why are you bothering to contact me after all this time?” “Sorry about that. It was a mistake,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. “Oh, of course. I’m not surprised. You’re not the kind of person who calls other people,” she chuckled. That, too, seemed tinged with mockery to me. As in, “That’s exactly why I stopped bothering with you.” “Yeah, that’s true,” I said, thanked her for calling back to check, and hung up. The room next door seemed even louder and brighter. Page | 52 I didn’t want to go back inside, so I lit up a cigarette right there. After smoking two of them, I headed for the nearby supermarket, took my time circling through it, and picked up a six-pack of beer, some fried chicken, and instant noodle cups. For the first time, I dipped into the three hundred thousand yen I got for selling my life span. Given the occasion, I wanted to splurge on something, but I didn’t even know what would count as “splurging.” Miyagi carried a basket of her own and inserted a large number of very bland items like nutrition bars and mineral water. I didn’t find it strange at all that she would buy such things, but try as I might, I was unable to summon a mental image of her actually consuming them. She was so lacking in humanity that the most primitive and human of acts—eating food—didn’t match my image of her. Inside my head, I told myself people might mistake us for a couple that lived together. It was a very stupid—but pleasing—fantasy. I even hoped that some of the people who passed us might share that illusion about us. To be very frank, I found the presence of this girl named Miyagi obnoxious at all times. But for many years, I’d held a secret attraction to the idea of going out in casual clothes with a girl I lived with to buy food and alcohol. I sighed with envy whenever I saw others doing this. So even if she was only there to monitor me, the late-night shopping run with a girl was enjoyable. That happiness was empty. But I couldn’t deny I felt it. Miyagi went to the self-checkout register and paid first. We returned to the apartment carrying bags of food. The clamor from the gathering next door was still ongoing, and I could hear constant footsteps through the wall. Page | 53 In all honesty, I was jealous of them. I’d never felt like this before. I usually looked at people obviously entertaining themselves and thought only, What exactly makes that fun anyway? But now that I was conscious of death, all the values I had twisted and perverted in my own way were straightening out, returning to their proper nature. I began to desire companionship, as anyone else would. At a time like this, most people might seek the solace of family, I thought. Whatever your circumstances may be, family would always be on your side, so you should go back to them in the end. At least, that was a line of thinking I was familiar with. But family isn’t a warm embrace for everyone. I was determined not to contact my family during my final three months of life, no matter what. I had very little time left, and I was absolutely certain I did not want to go out of my way to make that time more unpleasant. Ever since my childhood, my younger brother had stolen my parents’ affection from me. He was better at everything, for one thing. He was honest and upfront, and he was tall and handsome. From age twelve to his current age of nineteen, he had never been without a girlfriend when he wanted one, and his college was better than mine. He was athletic, and he even pitched in the national tournament for high school baseball. There wasn’t a single area where I had the upper hand. When I stopped improving and actually regressed, it only cast my younger brother, who was growing greater by the year, in sharper relief. It was only natural that their love favored him over me. Even though they treated me like a failure, I didn’t think it was unfair. In fact, it was true that in comparison, I was a failure. If we had been given equal amounts of love, that would be unfair. I would have done the same thing as my parents in their position. What’s wrong with loving Page | 54 the one who deserves it more, and investing in the one who will actually offer a return? There was almost zero chance that going back home would allow me to live in the warmth and comfort of my family’s unconditional love or whatever you wanted to call it. I had better odds of knocking on my neighbor’s door and being accepted into their party. While I heated up the water, I drank a beer and gnawed on the fried chicken. By the time my instant ramen was ready, I was already good and tipsy. Alcohol was a universal panacea at times like this. As long as you drank the right amount. I approached Miyagi, who was writing in her notebook in the corner, and asked, “Want to drink with me?” I didn’t care who it was; I just wanted someone to knock it back alongside me. “No thank you. I’m working,” she said, without looking up from her notebook. “I’ve been wondering—what are you writing?” “My observation record. Of your actions.” “Oh, okay. Then let me help you out. I’m drunk right now.” “I suppose you are. You certainly look drunk,” Miyagi agreed. “And not only that. I want to drink with you.” “I know that. You just said so,” Miyagi grumbled, looking annoyed. Page | 55 5. Everything That Happens from This Point On I turned out the lights and continued drinking. Fortunately, I managed to get peacefully drunk that night. Sometimes it’s best not to fight the flow of feelings, but to leap into the abyss of despair headlong and wallow in the muck of your own self-pity. It can be the quickest way to get back on your feet. My familiar apartment began to take on a slightly different meaning. The moonlight coming through the window was tinged with navy blue, and the night breeze of the summer filled the space, which felt alien and strange with Miyagi lurking in the corner like some kind of haunting spirit. I never knew this room could feel this way. I felt as if I were in the wings of a stage. That if I stepped out, my act would finally begin. Suddenly, I felt as though I could do anything. It was only because being drunk made me temporarily forget my own incompetence, but in that state, I mistakenly believed that something about me was shifting. With great pomp and circumstance, I announced to Miyagi, “With the three hundred thousand yen and three months I have left, I’m gonna change something.” Then I drained the last of the beer in my can and set it down violently on the table. Miyagi’s reaction was cold. She raised her eyes just a few inches, asked, “Is that so?” and returned to her notebook. Page | 56 Undeterred, I continued, “Yeah, maybe it’s three hundred thousand yen, but it’s my life. I’ll make it go farther than thirty million or three hundred million. I’ll work my ass off and hit back at the world.” To my drunken mind, this sounded extremely badass. But Miyagi was not impressed. “Everyone says something like that.” She placed the pen down beside her, cradled her knees, and rested her chin between them. “I’ve heard that line almost verbatim five times already. As death approaches, everyone’s ideas get more and more extreme. The effect is especially pronounced among those whose lives have been unfulfilling. It’s the same reason that people who keep losing bets aim for increasingly unrealistic jackpots to win it all back. People who have spent their lives failing have to grasp for improbable happiness, I suppose. When death is imminent, they can finally see the relative brilliance of life regain some semblance of vitality. They fall into the trap of thinking, ‘I was worthless before, but now that I’ve realized my mistake, I can do anything,’ and they end up believing that fatal misconception. They’re only standing at the starting line. It means that after a long losing streak of gambling, they’ve finally regained their wits. Nothing good comes from assuming this is your chance for a once-in-a-lifetime jackpot. Mr. Kusunoki, think carefully about this. The reason the price for the rest of your life was so low is because you would have been unable to achieve anything in your remaining thirty years on Earth. You understand that, don’t you?” she said. “If you weren’t going to accomplish anything in thirty years, how do you expect to do anything in three months?” “…Never know unless you try,” I argued, a trite sentiment. It made me sick to say it. The truth was obvious, long before I tried. She was absolutely correct. Page | 57 “I would think it wise to seek a more mundane sort of satisfaction,” Miyagi said. “There’s no taking it back at this point. Three months is too short of a time to change anything. But it’s also too long to spend doing nothing. Don’t you think it would be smarter to find for yourself small but certain bits of happiness instead? You lose because you try to win. Finding the little victories amid your loss will leave you with less disappointment in the end.” “Fine, fine, I get it. But I’m tired of hearing about the right way to do things,” I said, shaking my head. If I weren’t drunk, I might have continued arguing with her, but in this state, I didn’t have the willpower to overturn her wisdom. “I probably just don’t fully understand how incompetent I am as a person… Will you tell me everything that would’ve happened? How was I going to live the next thirty years? Maybe hearing that will keep me from hoping for too much.” Miyagi did not speak at first. After a while, she sighed with resignation. “Very well. Perhaps it would be better for you to learn everything at this point… But I’ll tell you now, just in case, that there’s no need for you to self-destruct after you hear me out. What I know about is what might have happened but is now guaranteed to never happen.” “I get it. What I’m going to hear is more like a divination… And if I can say one thing, it’s that there’s never a need to self-destruct. It just happens when there’s nothing else to do.” “I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that,” Miyagi said. There was a rumbling in the distance, like some gigantic tower crumbling to the ground. It took a while for me to realize it was a fireworks show. I hadn’t actually gone to see any in years. It was always something I watched through the window. I never bought fresh festival food from the cart to eat for the show. I never Page | 58 looked back and forth from the fireworks to the face of the girlfriend whose hand I was holding. From the moment I was old enough to understand, I was an outcast. I avoided places full of people. When I found myself in those situations, it felt like some kind of mistake, and the thought of running into someone I knew there was terrifying. In elementary school, I never went to the park or the pool or the hills behind the school or the shopping district or the summer festival or the fireworks show unless someone forced me to go. As a teenager, I stayed away from recreational places and avoided the major streets when I walked through the city. The last time I watched a fireworks show was when I was very young. Himeno might have been there with me at the time, I think. I’d already forgotten how big fireworks were when you saw them up close. I didn’t remember how loud the sound was in person. Did the smell of gunpowder fill the area? How long did the smoke hang in the air? How did the people look when they watched the show? As I considered each of these points, I realized I knew almost nothing about fireworks. The temptation to look out the window swept over me, but I couldn’t debase myself like that with Miyagi watching. If I did, she would probably say something like “If you want to see the fireworks that badly, why don’t you just go watch?” And what would I say in response? Was I going to admit I would be too distracted by worrying about other people looking at me? Why did I care about what other people were looking at, when I had so little time left to live? Miyagi crossed in front of me—practically mocking my silent battle against temptation—opened the screen, and leaned out the window frame so she could watch the pyrotechnic display. It seemed as if she Page | 59 was marveling at something rare and strange, rather than taking in the wondrous beauty of it. Whatever the source of it was, she had some kind of interest in the show. “Oh, really? You’re gonna watch that, Miss Monitor? What if I just run out while you’re not looking?” Without taking her eyes off the fireworks, Miyagi snarked, “Did you want me to keep an eye on you?” “Nope. In fact, I want you to go away. It’s hard to do anything with you watching.” “I see. You must feel quite a lot of guilt, then. Just so you know…if you run away and get beyond a certain distance from me, that will be seen as a sign of intent to cause trouble for others, and your remaining life will be subtracted so that you die. Be careful.” “How much distance are we talking about?” “It’s not an exact rule. I suppose it would be about a hundred yards.” I wish she’d said that earlier. “I’ll be careful,” I told her. There was a series of quick pops in the sky. The fireworks display was heading into its climax, it seemed. The clamor from the room next door had quieted down. Maybe they’d gone out to see the show. At last, Miyagi began to talk about the things that “might have happened.” “Now, about your lost thirty years… First, your college life ends shortly,” she said. “You make enough money to get by, read books, listen to music, and sleep—nothing else. Your days are empty and interchangeable, until it’s hard to even distinguish one from another. Once that happens, they will simply fly by. You graduate college without having gained anything of true substance, and ironically, you end up in the line of work you despised the most when you were Page | 60 younger and full of hope. If only you had given up and accepted the simple truth back then. Instead, you were unable to get over your memory of the time you were ‘special,’ and your belief that this isn’t the place you really belong prevents you from ever settling in. You go back and forth from home to work every day with dead eyes, working yourself to the bone, without the ability to think about anything else, until the only pleasure you have left in life is drinking. Your ambition to be great and important one day fades, and you lead a life completely adrift from the ideal adulthood you envisioned as a child.” “Doesn’t sound that out of the ordinary,” I interrupted. “True, it is not an uncommon story. It is a very commonplace despair. But the suffering that people take from it is what varies. You were a person who needed to be better than everyone else. And without a partner to help you find mental solace, you had to support your entire world by yourself. When that solitary pillar breaks, the agony that results is plenty enough to drive you to destruction.” “Destruction?” I repeated. “The next thing you know, you’re heading into your late thirties. In your solitude, the only hobby you have is riding a motorcycle around without a destination. But as you know, motorcycles are dangerous. Especially when the person riding it has largely given up on his own life… The silver lining is that you don’t hit a car some innocent person was driving or run over a pedestrian. You merely fall off the bike on your own. But as a result of that accident, you lose half of your face, the ability to walk, and most of your fingers.” It was easy to parse the meaning of “losing half of your face” but very hard to actually imagine it. It probably meant I was in such a horrific state, the only thing anyone might recognize is “the place where my face was.” Page | 61 “You considered your appearance to be one of your better points, so this leads you to consider making the ultimate decision. But you are unable to take that final plunge. You can’t give up that last little drop of hope—the hope that someday, somehow, something good might happen. It’s a wish no one can take away from you…but that’s all it is. It’s a kind of devil’s proof. You will live on this feeble hope until the age of fifty—but without anything to show for it, you finally fall apart and die alone. Unloved and unremembered by anyone. And to the very last moment, you will lament, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’” It was a very strange thing. I found I completely accepted and believed what she told me. “So what do you think?” “Let’s see. First of all, I’m very glad I decided to sell off those extra thirty years,” I replied. I wasn’t just acting tough. After all, what Miyagi called “what might have happened” was now “what would never happen.” “But I do wish I hadn’t bothered with the three months and just sold down to three days.” “You can still do that,” Miyagi said. “You can sell your life span two more times.” “Once I’m down to three days, you won’t be hanging around me anymore, right?” “That’s correct. If you really dislike me that much, that is an option you can choose.” “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said. As a matter of fact, given that I had no hope with three months left to live, the wiser choice seemed to be selling off everything but the last three days. But I held off on doing so, because even now, I had Page | 62 that hope, that devil’s proof, whispering, “Still, something good might happen for you.” The three months ahead of me were completely distinct from the lost thirty years Miyagi told me about. The future wasn’t set in stone. Maybe something good would happen. Perhaps I would experience something that made me glad I kept living. The chances weren’t zero. And that meant I couldn’t yet give in to the allure of death. I woke up to the sound of rain in the middle of the night. The patter of droplets spilling onto the ground from the broken rain gutter was unavoidable. I checked my clock and saw that it was after three o’clock in the morning. A sweet scent hung in the air. It was something I hadn’t smelled in a while, so I found it quite difficult to identify what it was: women’s shampoo. By the process of elimination, it had to belong to Miyagi. All I could assume was that while I was asleep, Miyagi had washed up. But I found that conclusion very hard to accept. Not to brag, but I always slept so lightly that I might as well have been dozing. I woke up at the slightest sounds, like the newspaper being delivered or footsteps from upstairs. It didn’t make sense that I wouldn’t wake up at all while Miyagi was showering. Maybe it had been lost in the sound of the rain. I decided to accept the conclusion. It was strange to know that a girl I’d just met had taken a shower in my own living space, but I chose not to think about it. Besides, I needed to get my sleep for tomorrow. Awake in the middle of the night during the rain, I had nothing to do. Page | 63 But I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep on my own, so I decided to enlist the help of music. I put one of the CDs I didn’t sell, Please Mr. Lostman, into the player near my pillow, then listened with headphones. It was a pet theory of mine that anyone who would listen to Please Mr. Lostman on a sleepless night would not lead a proper life. I used this music to forgive myself for being unable to fit into the world, and for not trying, either. Maybe now I was paying the tab for that choice. Page | 64 6. The Person Who Changed, the Person Who Couldn’t The rain was still falling in the morning. It was strong enough to be an excuse not to do anything after waking up. But it did give me plenty of time to think about what to do next. I stared at my bucket list. Miyagi came over and asked, “How do you plan to spend today?” I was used to hearing bad news from her, so I steeled myself to not react, regardless of whatever she might tell me. But Miyagi only stared at the list. Apparently, it was just a simple question. In the light of the morning, I considered Miyagi again. As I had noticed from the very first time I met her, Miyagi had a fairly pleasing appearance. In fact, let me be clear. Physically (and strictly physically), she was exactly my type. Cool, calm eyes; a gloomy brow; pursed lips; a well- shaped head; soft hair; tense fingers; thin, white thighs—once I got started listing the features I liked, I would never stop. That was why I felt so badly self-conscious about my every action from the moment she appeared at my apartment. In the presence of a girl who matched all my favorite features, I couldn’t even yawn for fear of looking foolish. I wanted to hide every sloppy expression and exhalation from her. If my monitor had been an ugly, fat, slovenly middle-aged man rather than a girl, I would have relaxed and been able to think honestly about what I wanted to do. But with Miyagi here around me, I felt especially ashamed of my twisted desires and pathetic hopes. Page | 65 “This is purely for my own curiosity,” said Miyagi, “but are the things written on this list what you truly, personally want to do?” “I was just wondering that myself.” “I hate to say this, but to me, this looks like a list of things you think someone else is likely to try doing before he dies.” “You might be right,” I admitted. “The truth is, I might not really want to do a single thing before I die. But I can’t just do nothing, so I’m copying someone else.” “Even still, I would think there’s a way that’s better suited to you,” Miyagi said enigmatically, then returned to her usual location. Later that morning, I arrived at a conclusion. I needed to be truer to those twisted desires and pathetic hopes. I needed to be crasser, more self-interested, more vulgar, and truer to my base instincts over these last three months. What did I even have to lose at this point? There was nothing for me to preserve or protect. I glanced at my bucket list again, summoned my willpower, and called someone I knew. This person answered after a few rings. The rain was over by the time I reached the train station, umbrella in hand—another perfect example of what massively horrible timing I had. With the earlier rain simply gone and replaced by blue skies, the umbrella I carried around felt as superfluous and out of place as if I were walking down the street on ice skates. The wet asphalt gleamed in the sun. I went into the station to escape the heat, but it wasn’t any cooler in there, either. It had been a while since I last rode a train. I entered the waiting area of the platform, bought a cola at the vending machine next to the Page | 66 trash can, then sat down and finished the drink in three gulps. Miyagi bought a mineral water and drank it, eyes closed. The sky was visible through the windows. A faint rainbow hung in the distance. I’d completely forgotten that was a thing. I knew—should have known—what a rainbow was, when they happened, and how people reacted to them. But the most basic fact of all, that they were things that existed, seemed to have completely left my mind at some point. As I stared at it with new eyes, I realized something for the first time. I could see about five colors in that massive band of light spanning the sky—two short of the proper seven. Red, yellow, green, blue, purple. Which ones was I missing? I had to envision an imaginary paint palette to recall that it was orange and indigo. “Yes, you probably should look at it closely,” said Miyagi at my side. “This could be the last rainbow you ever see.” “True,” I said. “And I might never use this waiting area again, and I might never drink another cola, and this could be the last time I ever toss an empty can.” I hurled the soda can at a light-blue trash bin. The clinking sound was loud in the waiting area. “Everything could be the last time. But it was that way long before I sold my life span,” I said. On the inside, however, Miyagi’s words filled me with alarm. Rainbows and waiting rooms and empty cans were one thing. But how many times would I get to listen to a CD between now and my death? How many books could I read? How many cigarettes could I smoke? Those thoughts left me feeling shaken. Dying meant doing nothing ever again but being dead.