The two of us boarded the Eizan and departed from her dreamworld the same way we had arrived. When we emerged from the tiny alleyway in Tanaka Haruna, the night was still young. The air shimmered as if snow might fall at any moment, and the skin at my temples again felt distressingly taut.
“You know, you’re still a weirdo,” said Endou. “But I guess you’re not such a bad guy.”
“I resent that.”
He laughed. “See you around.”
He raised a hand in parting and walked off into the night. I turned and began the trek back to my lodgings.
The tranquil residential neighborhood reminded me of Mizuo’s fondness for sleep. When we first began dating, her schedule was quite hectic, with time outside class largely consumed by shifts at a local pachinko parlor. When she did have free time, she liked to catch up on sleep, and she could do it virtually anywhere, under any circumstances. She’d curl up like a cat and doze off beside me, and I’d sit watching her at peace, my thoughts wandering. Occasionally, I’d think, What in the blazes am I doing with my life?
I sincerely believed—so thoroughly had lust usurped logic—that the ease with which she fell asleep was thanks to a sense of safety my presence imparted. I don’t think I’ve known such heights of hubris before or since.
Looking back, I’ve a better idea of what was actually happening. What I took for a peaceful nap was actually an escape. I saw Mizuo at rest in my room, when in truth she was aboard the Eizan, swaying with the train’s motions as it traded dark city streets for a mysterious land of green. She’d been whisked away to lush thickets and vast meadows, where the warm, bright sun shines eternal, and the magnificent Tower stands in wait.
I’m not the type to get sentimental about the past. Still, I had to admit that this particular realization imparted a sense of emptiness. My shoes slapped ruefully against the cold asphalt as I made my way home.
By the time I reached Shirakawa Street, flurries of snow were descending upon the world. I felt a sudden hankering for my favorite homemade cinnamon toast, so I stopped by the convenience store to pick up a loaf of bread before the final ascent to my lodgings. Once I had my purchase in hand, I trudged up the tail end of Mikage Street, mentally replaying the encounter with Endou.
I stopped and exhaled sharply, spilling a great cloud of white into the surrounding atmosphere.
What in the name of all that’s righteous had compelled me to console Endou?! This was the man who had accused me of stalking while attempting to conceal his own indecorous behavior!
He had insulted me. He had sealed up my door with tape and turned my cozy home into a kingdom of roaches. But for some inexplicable reason, I’d begun playing the part of the wise elder friend out of some teenage television drama, offering hackneyed advice about why he needed to treat his girl right.
To what end?!
I took stock of the stinking slosh of sentimentality I’d allowed to wash over me. I spat curses at myself.
“Fool! This, after you vowed to do away with emotion and all its absurdity?!”
My brother-in-arms was preparing to lay siege on Christmas fascism, and I was pandering to Endou. How could I face my compatriots now?
I spun the purchased bag of bread angrily at my side and stomped up the steps to my building.
What did I care if Endou was happy—or Mizuo for that matter? It was none of my concern.
I swore under my breath to never again let myself get wrapped up in silly affairs of the heart. Never again.
✦ ✦ ✦
In high school, the biggest event of the year is the school festival. Students are in such a frenzy to prepare that they neglect their classes. They pour their hearts into great, ballooning fantasies of what could be, sometimes going so far as to exult in their own callow adolescence. Then, when the festival itself is over, the students gather round the evening bonfire lit to celebrate all their hard work. The ethereal exuberance reaches its apex. Boys’ and girls’ cheeks flush hot, and in the mesmerizing glow of the roaring fire, they feel as if they—and indeed, the entire reinforced concrete school building—are weightless, floating thirty centimeters above the ground.
It is a heady milieu. Untold numbers of weak-willed students are swept up by the mood, sending them flitting about like mayflies in search of mates. That is to say, the school festival is arguably the single greatest producer of high school couples. It’s a mass assembly line of manufactured romance. For the majority of the student body, it induces a chronic subfebrile state in which the mind loses all capacity for reason. The poor young things fall to delirium. They mistake their mundane existence for something exotic. Their romantic delusions bulldoze the sensory threshold. In the time it takes an onlooker to exclaim “Goodness gracious!” the surrounding streets are already swarming with happy-looking couples walking home from school hand in hand.
As a young man of logic, I detested this facet of the school festival. Each year, my stomach turned at the sight. I saw my peers scurrying for love and perceived them as starving rats wrestling over the last few morsels of food. They were animals in estrus. I laughed ruefully at their plight, quite certain that I myself would never suffer the buffoonery that ailed their minds.
Christmas is the school festival on a nationwide scale. It is the collective derangement of an entire population. The anguished high school student takes solace in the fact that the madness around him is confined to one place. He need merely leave the school grounds, and the oppressive atmosphere fades. But from Christmas, there is no such escape. No matter where you run or how long you stay holed up in your lodgings, Christmas is always there, pressing in on you. Its festive message invades the home screen of your cell phone, the words of college acquaintances, the programs on TV and articles in newspapers and contents of every other medium. Christmas hounds you day and night. It offers no respite.
You try to hide under your blankets, but the awful smiling masses cry out to you, “Wake up! You can’t stay in your room forever! Christmas is almost here!”