What is the nature of these inscrutable urges that drive us? If we had chosen to live our lives in the manner society prescribes, we may well have been granted ordinary happiness, complete with tickets to join in on Christmas festivities without reserve. We may have never conspired to reenact the Eejanaika Uprising—lack of historical parallel to our plight notwithstanding.
It’s easy for us to obfuscate, portraying our actions as a righteous rejection of mediocrity. We like to style ourselves as unwilling to settle for a cookie-cutter existence on account of our insufferable greatness.
But in truth…
In truth, my compatriots and I would on occasion feel otherwise. There were times when we begrudgingly admitted that an ordinary, cookie-cutter happiness might not be so bad.
✦ ✦ ✦
Shikama and I were still braving the icy wind on Mount Daimonji. We refilled each other’s sake cups and continued to gaze upon the Kyoto night as we turned our thoughts to the events of the past five years.
We hadn’t yet worked out the details, but we felt quite certain that somehow, in some way, everyone else in the world was fundamentally mistaken. We knew it had to be so, because it was impossible that we could be the ones in the wrong.
We repeated that declaration to ourselves over and over like a mantra. But the more we recited it, the more we had to admit that the lights of the city had chipped our armor, and their warmth had found purchase to seep into our souls.
The meat on the grill was nearly done. Shikama plucked a charred piece of eryngii mushroom with his chopsticks. As he did so, he began to relate a very strange story:
As one approaches Tofukuji Station aboard the Keihan train line, the Japanese Red Cross Kyoto Daiichi Hospital is just visible above the residential jumble. It is a wide, squat piece of architecture reminiscent of a fortress or an old, abandoned factory. In fact, if you were to miss the symbol of the cross on the building, you would never guess it was a hospital at all. And while large medical centers always seem to manifest a strong, frightening presence, I have yet to encounter any that rivals the Kyoto Daiichi Hospital’s unnerving aura.
A very long time ago, Shikama paid a visit to a woman undergoing treatment in that hospital. (However, to be abundantly clear, this is merely a dream he once had.)
At the time, Shikama was residing in a one-story apartment building near Hyakumanben.
Though he now displays considerable diligence in his studies for the bar exam, at the time, Shikama was known to his peers as a prolific sleeper. It is a well-known fact that college students rank behind only infants in the amount of sleep they require each day. And if my own experience is anything to go by, all hours of slumber past the eighth are spent wandering myriad dreamscapes. Excessive sleep is completely unproductive—but it does produce dreams.
At any rate, let’s get back to the story. Shikama found himself in his apartment, where he was busily tapping away on his cell phone, absorbed in a text message exchange with an unspecified recipient. He did know that the person on the other end was a woman and that the two of them shared a warmth suitable to acquaintances who have spent a good deal of time together. Beyond that, details were vague. Shikama couldn’t discern her precise identity or how he had come to be texting her. However, he knew that the exchange was bringing him a great sense of fulfillment.
At some point, Shikama learned that the woman on the other end was currently hospitalized, and he promptly decided to pay her a visit.
When he arrived, she was asleep in bed. The hospital room was devoid of any other occupants. In fact, aside from the immaculate white bed and the patient herself, it was devoid of anything. Even the view from the window was blurred out by a dismal gray rain.
Shikama felt an overwhelming desire to whisk the woman away to some other place. He felt her condition would only worsen if she stayed there in the hospital. But before he could carry her out, he had to wait for the rain to let up. Consequently, there was no need to rouse her from sleep just yet. By the time the rain cleared, surely she’d wake on her own. Shikama settled in to wait, lowering himself to a stool at her bedside. He stared off into space, waiting for her slumber to end.
Eventually, he realized the truth. She would never wake. He suddenly recalled that she’d been sleeping for a hundred years. And as soon as that fact resurfaced in his mind, he noticed that she was already dead.
Shikama stood up forcefully, as if trying to dislodge the strange dream from his mind. He turned to the tiny spindle of Kyoto Tower in the distance and shouted, “Dammit all! I won’t give in!”
And then, with pursed lips, he quietly added, “When do I get my turn to be happy?”
He shook his head, looked at me, and said, “I’d implore you to pretend you never heard that.”
In the time we’d spent grumbling atop the mountain, our bodies had grown so cold that we began to think the back doors to our souls might freeze solid. We put out our fire and began the hike down.
“Are you quite sure you don’t have any plans for Christmas Eve?” asked Shikama.
“What’s with the sudden concern?”
“Because if you do, by all means, don’t mind me. I’m perfectly able to carry the uprising out on my own.”
“You insult me, my friend.”
We made it off the mountain and parted ways at the canal just off the street leading to Ginkaku Temple. Shikama mounted his beloved bicycle and gallantly sped off along Imadegawa Street.