Shikama had a weakness for two types of women: those with bold, confident demeanors and those with sickly constitutions.
Of course, when I say Shikama had a weakness for such women, I do not mean to suggest he pursued them. He was, after all, our famously austere leader. Shikama was perfectly content with looking. All he wished to do was stare at the women of his affections quietly and from a distance. He carried a mental map with him that highlighted the locations of all women he deemed currently worthy of his notice. This included individuals like Miss Arita, who ran the register at the university’s Central Cafeteria; Miss Mitamura, who worked at the local Kentucky Fried Chicken; and Dr. Nikawa, who was in the employ of the Baptist Eye Institute. These activities of Shikama’s provided vital respite from his days steeped in the study of legal precedents and principles.
He’d also become quite infatuated with a particular student in the Faculty of Law who worked evenings at the convenience store near his lodgings. It seemed that over time she’d grown aware of the heated stares he cast when “conveniently” dropping by the store or passing her at school. Shikama explained that she now grew visibly suspicious whenever she caught sight of him, to the point that he feared rather than relished in any legitimately fortuitous encounter around the city. If anything, this detail proved anew what a perfect leader Shikama was for us. I saw the way he spent his time consumed by one fruitless struggle after another, always jammed between a rock and an insoluble dilemma, and I knew there was no one more suited to show us the way.
At long last, Shikama had information to relay. Our meeting was to take place at the KFC in Kitashirakawa, the workplace of his beloved Miss Mitamura.
When I walked into the shop, the girl in question smiled at me from behind the register. Her face struck me as slightly more gaunt than usual. I noted that the shop was already accepting reservations for meals of Christmas chicken.
Shikama had a thick legal text spread out on the table and was wearing a surly scowl. An endless stream of holiday tunes floated through the shop, with lyrics about keeping warm by the fire, bonding as a family, snuggling close with your special someone on Christmas Eve, and ensuring gastronomical yuletide happiness by placing a reservation today. The deceitful strains curled about our ears and probed at our psyches.
“This may very well constitute torture,” Shikama muttered as I sat down.
I’d have thought it prudent to change venues, but Shikama was obstinate. He would not capitulate to Christmas fascism. His battle against the cultural onslaught continued around the clock. Every year, he pushed himself to the point of breaking, and come Christmas morn, he’d develop a fever and be forced to spend all day in bed.
I worried for his health.
I glanced at the counter, where Miss Mitamura was milling about behind the register.
“Has she lost more weight?” I asked.
“The poor girl can’t catch a break.”
“Seems like it’s getting worse by the day.”
“The real villain is that damn stepfather of hers. I wish her mother would do something about him.”
“Well, that scoundrel of a boyfriend isn’t helping matters.”
“Poor thing.”
“Such a tragedy.”
We continued on like that, lamenting Miss Mitamura’s life circumstances. We cursed her sadistic boyfriend, who used to play American football, and fumed about her deadbeat stepfather.
Miss Mitamura worked herself to the bone to help her family make ends meet. About half a year back, she’d been forced to quit school to take on more hours, as her stepfather was constantly drunk and preferred chasing get-rich-quick schemes to holding down a stable job. The girl, bless her soul, refused to abandon her family and did everything she could to help her mother keep the household afloat. This in spite of the fact that the stepfather was also abusive; he’d get violent, even making moves on his own stepdaughter.
To top it all off, she just couldn’t seem to break things off with her hypermasculine boyfriend. The man entertained urges of a most deviant nature, such that any time spent together offered no respite for poor Miss Mitamura. He couldn’t keep his paws off her.
In truth, Shikama and I had history with the man. His current twisted nature was almost certainly rooted in a thoroughly emasculating defeat he’d once suffered at Shikama’s hands.
In any case, Miss Mitamura bravely soldiered on through her bleak situation. It was the heart-wrenching tale of a determined heroine beset by every possible difficulty. The story of her life could have been easily mistaken as a lost chapter of Shugoro Yamamoto’s Lives of Great Japanese Women. And every moment we spent imagining the details of that life tightened the vice on our chests. We prayed she would find happiness and live out her days in peace.
Alas, no matter how fervently we poured our minds and souls into those prayers, I knew that Miss Mitamura would reject them. For one thing, she was far too proud to accept others’ pity. And critically, the stepfather and boyfriend didn’t exist. They were figments of Shikama’s and my imagination.
Fantasies like this defined us. Shikama and I were battered and beaten, our minds subjected to countless days of voluntary, self-generated abuse. Together, we lamented the abominable state of the modern world, rotten to its very core. Though, in truth, I at times had to admit some confusion as to whether it was the world that had rotted or ourselves. Either way, the great majority of our days were consumed by these vast, demanding fantasies.
As Shikama once put it, “You and I spend ninety percent of our day to day inside the mind.”