Ebizuka was one year my senior and had belonged to that same certain university sports club.
From the day I joined, I felt a rift between us, of width and depth rivaling the Japan Trench itself, and I knew we would never bridge the gap. He was the type whose blood ran pointlessly hot. He felt constantly driven to prove himself a man among men. Whenever I stood within speaking distance of Ebizuka, I felt uncomfortably warm, as if the air around him was perpetually five degrees higher than any other part of the room. It was a given that an intellectual like myself could never find common ground with such a hotheaded brute.
Back then, Shikama was still a member of the club, too, and both he and I found ourselves routinely subjected to Ebizuka’s stares of disapproval. We in turn despised him just as passionately.
Ebizuka lived life according to a code. It was an old-fashioned and stuffy one, and its tenets meant everything in the world to him. These were not the dear old virtues of yesteryear, long abandoned by a cold, modern world. Rather, Ebizuka seemed to have assembled a random assortment of indicators with no rhyme or reason, which he used as his own personal metric of masculinity. To Shikama and me, both men of logic, it was the behavior of a deviant.
For example, in Ebizuka’s world, a man was not a man unless capable of drinking prodigious quantities of alcohol. Anyone unable to hold his liquor was a lowly pest. At club parties, my compatriots and I were obliged to scuttle about restlessly, lest Ebizuka’s attention alight upon us. Ido seemed to have been born under a particularly unlucky star, as he was always most prone to garnering Ebizuka’s attentions. It grew so intolerable, Ido took to take refuge in the bathroom for much of the duration of every party, just to avoid Ebizuka’s constant proffering of drinks to be chugged.
In good weather, the club organized barbeques on the Kamo River Delta. I’d lost count of the number of times we’d fantasized about pushing Ebizuka into the surrounding waters.
In Ebizuka’s eyes, hazing was perfectly acceptable social behavior. He relished the role of the panzer, bulldozing any man of moderation under his ruthless treads. Frankly, his behavior was an affront to alcohol aficionados the world over. Takayabu, while clutching a handle of shochu to his breast, had once remarked that it is the height of folly to waste good liquor on someone who doesn’t enjoy it.
Similarly, Ebizuka was fond of excessively spicy food. Anyone who couldn’t handle copious amounts of cayenne pepper was a lowly pest. He ordered his ramen and curry loaded with as much spice as the shop would provide. Shikama found this particularly abhorrent, calling it an abuse of the worst kind.
“Spiciness is the sensation of your tongue’s taste receptors dying!” Shikama had exclaimed. “That tingling you feel is a literal chorus of death cries from your body’s lovely little cells!”
We prayed for the day that a great, chronic ulcer would form in the pit of Ebizuka’s stomach and finally put an end to this madness.
If he’d simply enjoyed spicy food, we wouldn’t have had any qualms. It was the fact that he forced himself to eat such foods for the sake of his ridiculous code. “Real men need fire in their bellies!” he’d declare, and then proceed to shovel down mouthful after mouthful though clearly on the verge of tears. It was detestable. It was an affront to spicy food aficionados the world over.
And then there was Ebizuka’s take on tobacco. He smoked so heavily, I half expected his lungs to dissolve to mush. Anyone who smoked with filters was, to him, a lowly pest. Real men needed full, undiluted hits of tobacco. Thus Ebizuka made a point of only smoking unfiltered brands so everyone around would know just how rugged he was.
I am quite fond of smoking myself, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of maximizing daily consumption just for appearances. The whole point of a predilection is to enjoy oneself. A man should settle into the rate of consumption that personally appeals to him. Ebizuka’s approach was sacrilege to the whole culture of smoking.
There were numerous other facets to Ebizuka’s code. He lived chained to them, such that I could only conclude that he passed his days in a constant state of misery and indignation.
He idolized Ryoma Sakamoto and endlessly repeated this particular saying attributed to that samurai of yore: “The purpose of coming into the world is to accomplish one’s duty.” Ebizuka adored these words despite the fact that he’d clearly failed to accomplish anything with his own life. Sakamoto might have been a very respectable individual, but the act of worshipping a man doesn’t inherently confer equal stature.
At parties, Ebizuka liked to pull out a large decorative sword and swing it around in circles. He dubbed this activity his Festival of Ryoma. Every time my compatriots and I saw it, we felt a great surge of pity and contempt. About halfway through our second year, we admittedly began to derive a perverse sort of pleasure from the show. But that certainly never translated to affection or respect for the man.
My tense relationship with Ebizuka continued in that manner, without any particular surprises, until the early summer of my third year, when Mizuo happened to become a part of our club. The twisted tale of discord that subsequently unfolded between us is a memory I have no desire to dredge back up.
✦ ✦ ✦
Thus spake Shikama:
“Imagine the verdant fields of a ranch. A lush carpet of green stretches in all directions, as far as the eye can see. In one round, fenced-off plot of this ranch lives a flock of sheep. Most of the sheep munch on the grass and laze about peacefully, not a thought in their minds. They are content with the lives they lead.
“On the other hand, some of the sheep are plagued by a persistent yet vague concern. I look like a sheep, they think to themselves, but is that truly what I am? And if not a sheep, what am I?
“Others take a few timid steps beyond the gate and swiftly return, boasting of their grand adventures in the outside world to anyone who will listen. Still others sit in audience to these stories with rapt attention.
“Then there are those who step outside the gate and wander away, never to return.
“Among all these different sheep is one lone specimen who stands a fair distance off from the others. He knows full well that he is a sheep and has no desire to venture beyond the gate—honestly, he finds the prospect rather terrifying. At the same time, he is not happy with his life within the fenced-off plot.
“To a casual observer, this sheep doesn’t appear much different from the others. But when you watch him closely, you find that he’s constantly engaged, silently and with great concentration, in producing the most elaborate and exquisite piles of excrement you’ve ever seen. Yes, they’re just clumps of sheep dung. But they’re incredibly ornate. Ultimately, however, that doesn’t change the fact that they’re made of shit.
“That sheep is me.”