No one gets to live by their own principles once you become a working adult. Everyone has to suppress their true selves.
Thus, that simple “’Gratz!” from Tousuke was a sign to me that I had cleared the first hurdle—and that even more formidable obstacles awaited me ahead. I wondered if I should even be thankful for it.
I emptied the can and retrieved another from the fridge. On the short trip back to the office, the overly chilled beer in hand, I staggered, slipping on a badly written CV that had fallen onto the floor.
I picked up the CV that had attempted to wound me. It was distressingly smooth to the touch. I thought for a moment of throwing it away but instead returned to my desk and sat down, the book still in hand. I read over the tidy self-introduction and personal statement that had been written in ballpoint pen.
Find meaning in your life by being helpful to every single person you meet, not just some theoretical individual.
Be ambitious in your hopes and dreams, but don’t just stare into the far distance.
Cherish every step of the journey.
There is joy in seeking common ground in every conversation.
It was lies. All lies.
But that was to be expected. I was by no means such an upstanding person.
It was idiotic, but I also did not care to give up the lie. It was my ability to survive that had gotten me this job offer after all. I had obtained the means to live. I was not wrong in this.
It was fine if you had the ability and the looks and the means to live however you wanted, but that was not me.
And that was fine.
Living life as someone other than yourself.
I wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t be wrong.
I…was simply not wrong.
…Was I?
Perhaps it was both the power of the alcohol and my own sense of relief from the job offer that lowered my defenses. Those sort of thoughts that I would never usually care to think began drifting through my head.
By not being myself, I had gotten results. However, that did not feel like my own success.
From here on out, I was going to have to live half my life with something that I had obtained by disguising my own self. A stifling life, one that deep down I could not fully consent to.
So then, what had the twenty-one years I had lived up until now all been for?
Was there even any point to the past three years I had lived? My head swirled with the knowledge that that wasn’t the problem, that that was not what was wrong here. This was all because of the alcohol and because of the job offer.
What if I could live without worrying about my abilities and my looks and my surroundings—without having to make those calculations every day?
If only I could just be an idealist.
What if there had been something I had wished more strongly to obtain by my own hands? I shook my head.
No such thing existed.
So that I could rid myself of these pointless thoughts, I drained the second can in one go. However, once I had begun sinking into the bog of these booze-muddled ponderings, all I could do was sink in deeper. By the time I rested the weight of my fevered head onto the desk, stacking a fourth can along the edge of it, I had lost not only all my defenses but my reasoning.
And then, I realized it.
It was not a distant memory. It was there, stark.
I lifted my hot and heavy head and rested my fingers on the mouse. I moved the arrow-shaped cursor down to the lower left, hovering it over a folder. I double-clicked, finding only a single image file inside. My fingers were trembling solely because of the alcohol. I steeled myself and once more double-clicked with unnecessary speed.
The image that opened was a photo, taken three years prior. I regarded the photo through eyes swimming in a swaying skull. The price of my haircut aside, I had not changed one bit. In the line of my surprised gaze in the photo was a smile that was no longer in this world.
A sigh slipped from my lips all on its own.
“Hey, Akiyoshi.”
My own voice was much higher than I thought it would be.
“I’ve got a question.”
I could feel my own thoughts curdling in my mouth.
“What did you want to be…?” I asked, though I knew I would never receive an answer to that question. Still, I wanted to know, more than anything, what it was that Akiyoshi was thinking back then. I wished someone could at least impart that much knowledge to me, someone who could accomplish nothing as himself.
“It was all a lie in the end…”
The words that we exchanged. Mine…and Akiyoshi’s.
I remembered how we were back as freshmen. I tried not to remember, but the seams of the barrel burst, and the memories came flooding out.
When I first met Akiyoshi, I thought she was nothing more than a troublesome person, but I accepted the way she was, and we became friends. Akiyoshi was always spouting her ideals, and under her influence, at some point I began to have dreams of my own. I even thought that within those four years I might find it, that ideal self of mine that Akiyoshi spoke of.
But it was too late for that. There was no going back now.
Now, I was alone.
“Maybe things would’ve been different if you were here,” I called to her, but of course there was no reply. She could no longer speak to me.
And so my life as a university student had come to an end—exhausted from job hunting, grumbling into my beer cans, unable to do a single thing.
I could not become the person I wished to be; I had no idea who that person even was in the first place. Four years were going to pass me by without me so much as receiving a sign that those ideals of Akiyoshi’s were ever going to become a reality—even if there were still ten months left.
“The world could change tomorrow.”
Akiyoshi had said that once. I heard those words in my head as clearly as if they had been spoken yesterday. My own mind was slipping, taunting me.
“If there was a reason for everyone to put down their guns as one, then all wars would end tomorrow.”
You did say that, huh?
Stupid. These stupid, stupid, stupid ideals.
“So, there’s nothing that will ever be too late to change.”
Stop it.
It hurt. It hurt so badly.
The pit of my chest ached.
“…Are you saying that there’s still time?”
These last three years of mine… Could I still make them mean something? If I could still make it in time, like Akiyoshi said.
Maybe I did want to change something. Maybe there was something I wanted to change about myself.
I no longer knew who it was that I wanted to become. Without Akiyoshi, I had no idea.
You can’t change the things that you don’t understand.
So then, what could I change?
In the photo, Akiyoshi was smiling. A smile all her own, utterly unlike the one that I or the other job hunters who had been present in that office had worn.
Suddenly, the scene I had witnessed just before boarding the elevator that morning flashed before my eyes. I saw again that girl from my university, who was accomplishing all that I had in three years just by flattering a salaryman.
“That girl was part of Moai,” I told Akiyoshi, but she did not reply. She was gone, after all. Never in all this time had that fact been as clear to me as it was right now. If the Akiyoshi in that photo had heard what I was presently saying, she would have been shocked. She might have been disappointed, or even angry.
However, all we have is reality. Reality is what’s here with us right now, and the end result of all that Akiyoshi had left behind was the job hunter I had seen today. Thus, in the end, Akiyoshi had ended up a liar.
Even now, it still aches me somewhat to think that she would ever be deemed that way.
…Something I wanted to change.
“Like…making that lie Aki…yoshi told…into a reality…”
If only.
As I spoke my slurred words with my clumsy tongue, though I had no real goal or concrete plan or means, I felt a flame burning in my aching chest. It was not a raging fire, just a quiet, smoldering, little ember.
It was around then that I blacked out.
The next morning when I came to, I found myself curled up on the floor beside the office chair that I should have been sitting in. The flooring beneath me was sticky. Before I even moved, just as I was registering what sort of a position I was in, I realized that the flame inside my chest was still burning.