I sat for a while in my sweat-drenched nightclothes, shivering and disconcerted. When I finally found the strength to stand, I ran a towel under the sink and used it to rub myself down, then changed and returned to the safety of my futon. I pulled the blankets tight around me and began reading Natsume Soseki to calm my nerves.
My choice of text, unfortunately, had the opposite effect. The passages of Light and Darkness left me feeling more suffocated yet, until I found it difficult even to draw breath. I tossed Soseki aside, just in time to coincide with the distant, tinny blare of an unfamiliar horn. I tilted my ear to the window.
I’d heard that sound before. It always came late on winter nights when the frigid air outside my futon threatened to turn my toes to ice. It was the strange jingle of a ramen cart. A few times, I’d hurried out into the cold after it. My chase was always in vain. I was never fast enough to catch it, and believe me, dear readers, it is a terribly hollow feeling to be outrun by a ramen cart.
Each time, as I trudged back home under the stars, I recalled a story my father once shared about a cart that went by the name of Cat Ramen. Thirty years ago, at the height of an era of student protests and campus strife, my father had spent his college days in a neighborhood not far from my current one. He claimed to have eaten a meal at Cat Ramen once. When I first heard the tale, I assumed my father was talking about a normal ramen cart with a slightly eccentric name. But he insisted that the broth used for the ramen was made from actual cats. He claimed that, as he ate the meal, cat bones were clearly visible swirling around in the cart’s large, bubbling pot.
My father had always enjoyed pulling my leg about every subject imaginable, so I knew better than to take him at his word. Still, he adamantly claimed that Cat Ramen had served one of the best meals he’d ever eaten.
I’d come to believe that maybe, just maybe, the unseen cart that kept passing beyond my fingertips was the fabled Cat Ramen. Whenever the jingle pricked my ears, I found it difficult to suppress a surge of hope.
Thus it was this time, too. I was hesitant to leave the safety of my warm futon, knowing the awful chill that waited outside. Nevertheless, my curiosity won out. I gritted my teeth, changed clothes once again, threw a coat over my shoulders, and dashed out into the Kitashirakawa night.
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In the end, I failed. I managed a brief glimpse of the mysterious cart in the distance, vanishing into the suburban darkness. Cat Ramen had slipped by once again.
Oh, how I wished to taste the ramen my father had spoken of.
Thoughts of my father and mother suddenly welled up in my breast. Given my greatness, I typically feel no need to defer to others. But there are a select few to whom I am forever indebted: namely, my father, my mother, and the global ecology. To these three, I owe respect.
One might even say that my bitter fight through this mortal existence, each day a valuable step toward realizing my lofty ideals, is my way of repaying that debt to my parents. My valiant struggle is a tribute to them, a way to show appreciation for my father’s generosity, which towers among the highest peaks, and my mother’s, which runs deeper than the sea.
At the present time, the fruits of my labors have proven wholly inadequate to quell their sense of worry and dismay. Whenever my mind touches upon that fact, my resolve admittedly wavers. My chest ever so gradually deflates, and my shoulders begin to slump. It is an alarming divergence from my usual confidence—and one that leaves me concerned for my own future.
Truth be told, I hadn’t been in contact with my family for some time. I wondered how my parents were doing.
In May of my fourth year at college, when I fled my duties at the research lab in the Faculty of Agriculture, I returned to live with them for a short time. Eventually, I was obliged to return to Kyoto to take care of assorted irksome odds and ends. On the day of my departure, my father handed me a letter.
I did not open it until I was aboard the train to Kyoto. The content was presented in a very fatherly manner, well reasoned and logically compelling. He wrote of the major decisions that shape our lives and of the many things we should take into account as we make those decisions. I was already grappling with a sense of uncertainty that I did not fully understand. My father’s well-argued advice only compounded my indecision.
The letter concluded with, To my son, my greatest pride and joy.
I puffed up with a great sense of importance. Why shouldn’t my father rejoice? Any man would be thrilled to have a son as great as I am. But even as I thought that, I felt more uncertain than ever about the path that lay before me.
As I walked the nighttime street, mulling this over, I fell victim to the sort of youthful anguish entirely unbefitting a man of my station. Distress gnawed at my heart. I attempted to distract myself with some manner of cheerful fantasy, but I found it difficult to concentrate.
At some point, I began to fear that the evil eye was trained upon me. It was threatening to throw my mental homeostasis into disarray, crush my solemn dignity, and drag me from the heavens of lofty contemplation back to earth. This had to be the work of the eye. Where was it lurking? What could I do to finally free myself of its influence?
I clutched at my breast, trying to calm my nervous soul. I shuffled through the dark neighborhoods restlessly, already near the outskirts of Tanaka Haruna.