I shall now write of Tomonao Takayabu.
We first met in May of my initial year of college, a period of fresh-faced, mortifying innocence too embarrassing to bear remembering. However, I shall never forget the astonishment that accompanied my first glimpse of Takayabu.
I’d been formally accepted into that certain university sports club and was attending my first weekend meeting. Those of us new to the club had yet to establish any friendships, so we each stood isolated, quivering as the upperclassmen swept their eyes to and fro in harsh appraisal. My own eyes were also shifting about the room, desperately seeking someone I could latch onto, when they happened to alight upon a most singular presence.
He was a giant. A creature measuring a full two meters in height, and he was clad in a jacket of dubious taste, lined with an astonishing number of pockets. The top of his head resembled a roc’s nest. Every part of his jaw from chin to cheek was covered with dense stubble like iron sand. His eyes shone with excessive curiosity.
I felt certain I’d stumbled across some guardian beast who had occupied a corner of the club room since time immemorial. He radiated an aura impossible for any mortal man. He was a monster. One glimpse of the beast, and I lost all hope for safe passage through my college career. Creatures like that preyed upon the weak. Their eyes sought out trembling youths like me and thought nothing of trampling us beneath their giant claws. A dizzying, dark future unfolded before my eyes, and I very nearly fainted on the spot.
However, when it came time for the new membership to offer self-introductions, the unthinkable occurred. The beast took a step forward and announced, “Hi. My name is Tomonao Takayabu.”
I couldn’t believe it. This monster whose appearance spoke of half a decade spent sitting in a cave at Cape Muroto, features roughened by the harsh winds and surf, was the same age as me! I found that exceedingly hard to accept. I began to suspect that some indescribable evil was nested inside his soul. It was the only explanation I could devise for his warped exterior, and as a natural result, I avoided interaction with him to the greatest extent possible. His was a mystery that far outstripped my then-limited powers of comprehension.
It would be a great while yet—a year and a half, to be precise—before I grasped the Sophoclean tragedy of Takayabu’s nature. But eventually, my eyes were pried open to the truth. A single beam of light descended from heaven, piercing the storm clouds that had heretofore obscured my understanding. I saw that inside the ogre’s body was trapped the delicate soul of a yearning maiden. His giant frame was a cruel excess thrust upon him by genetic chance. His strange multi-pocketed jacket was but a beloved possession he favored for its convenience. The roc’s nest was an extreme case of bedhead, and the perpetual five-o’clock shadow was in actuality quite charming. His eyes shone with innocence, and they were in fact very round and cherubic, almost to the point that one might call them cute.
True, Takayabu did possess an immense physical strength. He was slightly eccentric. But he was certainly not dangerous. The man was a saint largely misunderstood by the outside world. He was kind and sensitive, fiercely loyal in friendship, and diligent about his schoolwork. He hid a formidable intelligence, read countless books, and kept all potential female partners at arm’s length. He had a free and confident command of knowledge on all things military, history, natural science, computing, and anime. Takayabu walked the path of his choosing with his head held high.
I’ve heard many tales of the fabled “super nerd,” but Takayabu remains the first and only specimen I’ve ever encountered.
✦ ✦ ✦
Takayabu resided in the Shimogamo Izumigawa neighborhood, bound on the east by the slowly flowing Takano River and on the west by the dense north-to-south stretch of natural forest known as Tadasu-no-mori. It was an area where one opened windows to sounds of birdsong rather than traffic, far removed from the hustle and bustle of Kyoto. The physicist Hideki Yukawa had once resided in one of the area’s old mansions.
To get to Takayabu’s building, one first had to follow a narrow alleyway whose entrance was secreted away among the rows of old homes. Wooden fences pressed in on both sides as the alley twisted and turned its way into the neighborhood’s depths. Some stretches were bathed in deep shadow by the treetops poking up and over the fencing. In all, it lent the way to Takayabu’s apartment building the air of a hidden passage known only to a select few. You felt as if you were en route to some fabled den of vice, your excitement getting the better of you as you imagined wine and women in the garden of bliss ahead. But when you emerged from the alley, you were greeted not by a line of bunny girls, arms signaling the way to an adult playground, but rather by Takayabu’s quiet abode, the Shimogamo Yusuiso.
Each time I made the trek over and laid eyes upon the building, the first thought to enter my mind was: Ah. It’s still standing.
According to urban legend, the building had existed since antiquity, partially destroyed only once during the Onin War of 1467, shortly after which it was reconstructed and remained to this day. Architecturally speaking, Yusuiso was a typical two-story wooden building. However, numerous unplanned expansions over the years had distorted it into a grotesque structural mess resembling a natural rather than a manmade design. The ground floor jutted out substantially on the eastern side, like the distended abdomen of some ailing biological organism. I’d heard that this cryptic, bloated addition contained the living quarters of the building’s landlord, but I’d never confirmed it—nor even the landlord’s existence—with my own eyes.
Takayabu lived in the second unit on the ground floor.
One of his four walls was occupied with a bookcase, the poor thing packed nearly to bursting with Takayabu’s extensive collection. Another wall was a mess of audiovisual equipment, the cords and attachments so tangled they’d woven together into a giant biomechanical construct. At the third wall was a small desk on which rested the computer Takayabu had constructed himself from parts accumulated over time. The device remained powered on in perpetuity.
It’s often said that a person can be understood through a glimpse of his living quarters. The sense I got from Takayabu’s was that of intense and exhilarating intellectual curiosity.
The first time I visited Takayabu’s lodgings, I found my friend hunched over his coffee table, hands deftly sorting and assembling an array of tiny ink black objects.
Peering over his shoulder, I inquired, “What, may I ask, are those?”
“Parts for a wooden model kit. It’s a replica of a device used in physics experiments. You know, like in a lab. At least, it will be once I’m done putting it together.”
He motioned toward another corner of the apartment, adding, “There’re some finished ones on display over there.”
I looked in the direction indicated and found an array of tiny instruments atop a stack of old textbooks. Like the one currently in Takayabu’s hands, they were fashioned of wood. But they’d also been painted and varnished so carefully that they gleamed like metal. It was fine work. According to Takayabu, they were all re-creations of lab equipment one might have observed in high school physics lectures during the Meiji Era. Of course, being fashioned of wood, they were not actually functional and could thus be used for no purpose beyond decorating the room of a hobbyist.
“I know they don’t do much,” Takayabu said, now fiddling with another bit of wood, “but they’re kinda fun.”
“Fascinating. You’re really quite skilled at this.”
“I just think they’re pretty to look at, y’know? Instruments and models from the olden days.”
He looked up at me and gave a wide, confident grin—or at least, I assumed as much. Thanks to the deep forest of whiskers concealing his mouth, all I actually perceived was a slight twitching of his cheeks.
Perhaps, I reflected, his motive for growing out his beard was tied to some latent urge to flee deep into a forest and remain hidden there for the rest of his days. Or perhaps it was a biological signal—a warning to predators to stay away, lest they bear the wrath of his painful quills. Quite honestly, any cute, soft-skinned girl would be reduced to a bloody pulp if she ever attempted to nuzzle her cheek against his. Perhaps this was why there had never been any nuzzling of cheeks in Takayabu’s life, kindhearted man that he was. With each passing day, the beard grew only denser and the likelihood of nuzzling more remote. And for that, I considered Takayabu a deeply respectable man.