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.
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.
"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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.