“Just order whatever you like, my boy.”
For the first time in quite a while, my uncle Kurehiko had invited me out to get dinner with him at a chain izakaya. It was still fairly early in the evening, yet the restaurant was already teeming with people. As soon as we were seated, we ordered ourselves some drinks—an oolong tea for me and a beer for my uncle—as well as some appetizers to start things off. Shortly thereafter, the waitress brought out two frosted mugs, and we each started sipping our respective drinks without even clinking our mugs.
“You still haven’t told me what the occasion is,” I said. The only times I’d gone out to eat with my uncle in the past were on my birthday or when my parents were out of town. But today wasn’t anybody’s birthday, as far as I knew, and both my parents were home.
“Why, to celebrate you entering high school, of course,” said my uncle.
“But that was months ago.”
“I quit my lecturing job,” he said, then took a drink of his beer. “Think of it as my send-off party.”
“Aren’t you normally supposed to have those with your coworkers?”
“I want to enjoy my food, thank you very much.”
This one little quip was enough to give me a pretty good sense of the kinds of workplace relationships my uncle had fostered at his job.
“So you’re unemployed now, huh…?” I said.
“Watch your tongue,” my uncle snapped. “I’m a professional painter.”
“But you can’t actually pay the bills with that, can you?”
“Income isn’t everything, lad. It’s all a matter of lifestyle.”
“Whatever you say…”
The waitress brought out our appetizers on a tray and arranged them on the table: some edamame, rolled omelettes with dashi, and a plate of grilled shishamo smelt.
“And in any event, I only need to make enough to keep the lights on while I paint,” my uncle said, taking another hearty swig. “That’s how Gauguin did it.”
My uncle, a nearly forty-year-old single man, was officially swearing off being gainfully employed. This seemed like it should have been a death knell for his overall prospects in life, yet Uncle Kurehiko seemed rather optimistic about this lifestyle change. Refreshed, even. Maybe he really had made the right decision by quitting.
“There’s no virtue in simply having a job, I tell you—it’s just suicide of the soul. And everyone knows it, deep down. How did we ever let working five days a week become the status quo? Isn’t it a bit absurd when you really sit down and think about it? What good is financial gain when you have so little life left to enjoy it? It makes no sense. Those labor-loving fools who glorify a hard day’s work above all else need to realize that they’re defending the very slavery that dehumanizes them.”
His rant started off strong…
“Getting involved with other human beings is just a recipe for trouble after trouble after trouble. So why does everyone seem so desperate to connect with others? Are they so incapable of seeing their own worth without having another person to validate it for them? I’ll never be like that. Never, I tell you. I’ll live alone until the day I die.”
…until his fervor ebbed away…
“It’s been quite nice, really. I can sleep whenever I want, wake up whenever I want, head to the convenience store whenever I get peckish, and just paint whatever my heart desires when the fancy strikes me. That, to me, is true bliss. As long as I can make enough to support this lifestyle, I’ll never want for anything more.”
…and the despair finally claimed him, not even an hour later.
“Oh, damn it all—what a waste. What a pathetic, miserable waste. Everything I’ve ever done, all the lofty ideals I’ve fought for… It was all for nothing. Completely and utterly pointless. The apocalypse can’t come soon enough for this godforsaken world, I tell you. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel here, no bright future waiting for any of us. The population’s just going to keep on decreasing as our beggarly government grows more and more decrepit, and calamities both natural and man-made destroy what little infrastructure we’ve built up. Children will be left to fend for themselves, crushed beneath the weight of all the absurd expectations and responsibilities our dysfunctional society has placed upon their shoulders, as the elderly die off one by one. That is the world in which we live, my boy. I’m not sure how anyone can stay sane while living in it.”
My uncle’s newfound zest for life was just his usual jaded vanity in sheep’s clothing.
He really is still the same old Uncle Kurehiko after all, I thought with a shake of my head. At the same time, there was a kind of comfort in that knowledge. This was how I always wanted him to stay—my curmudgeonly uncle with the extremely pessimistic worldview. I wanted to hear more and more of his stubborn, eccentric little rants. I never, ever wanted him to turn into a normal, respectable human being and leave me behind.
“Tell me, Kayato,” he said, addressing me directly all of a sudden as I quietly sipped my oolong tea. “You’re disillusioned with this world, aren’t you?”
“Not sure I’d go that far,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me, boy. I know you feel it too.”
“No, really. I’ve been…enjoying myself a lot more lately.”
“Do you really mean that?” my uncle asked, staring at me with bloodshot eyes.