Allow me to enlighten you on the subject of Daiki Shikama, the man who lost his dream.
The two of us came to know each other upon joining that same university sports club earlier mentioned.
Among the initial pages of this record, I believe I described how a select group of my male peers and I labored in earnest, gorging ourselves on contemplation and fancy as we aspired to ever greater heights. The man standing at the head of that desperate folk dance was Daiki Shikama.
He was our champion. In all our endeavors, he led the charge, running at such a maniacal pace that it was honestly a bit cruel to expect anyone to keep up. And in a certain sense, I suppose it was a blessing not to be able to match him step for step.
Nonetheless, three of us did manage to stay on Shikama’s heels, if only barely. There was Tomonao Takayabu, the steel-whiskered, gentle giant; Kouhei Ido, the very embodiment of worldly jealousy; and of course, yours truly.
We four were the elite, constantly bathed in the disdain and bewilderment of our club associates, both junior and senior. We coronated ourselves the Four Heavenly Kings, and we brandished the fruits of our shrewd fantasies openly, all too happy to garner further incredulity from the unenlightened masses.
As for Takayabu and Ido, I expect that over the course of this record I will be obliged to introduce them in greater detail, whether I wish to or not. I only ask for your patience—and that you not set your expectations too high. All will come in due course, dear readers.
That said, let us return to Shikama.
After graduating from the aforementioned academy in Osaka, he came to study at Kyoto University’s Faculty of Law, where he held himself proud and aloof. Ever a legal text clutched to his chest, he milled about the alleyways of Hyakumanben, completely devoting himself to the tempering of his intellect. He could rattle off obscure legal precedents with ease, vigorously describing why, for example, the legally protected status of a giant flying squirrel depended entirely upon the local dialect of hunters near the forest it called home.
In short, Shikama had a frighteningly sharp mind for detail, and he wasted his talents in a fashion so ostentatious that no one else could ever hope to keep up.
In the spring of his second year, Shikama was overcome with a vague, Akutagawa-esque sense of unease about the future. He announced his retirement from the club, along with his intent to undergo a complete overhaul and inject a dash of color into his until-then barren life. In the end, he managed neither. The failure predictably led to his stagnation. He languished in place, his lips pouring out an ever greater stream of grumbling about his lonely state.
However, you would be sorely mistaken to assume that Shikama’s departure from the club weakened the bonds we shared. Even after he was gone, he continued to reign as our ideological leader.
The four of us cursed Christmas, denounced Saint Valentine, and scorned the cozy couples spaced at perfect intervals along the banks of the Kamo River. We shoved our way past the boisterous, yukata-clad young lovers enjoying the Gion Festival and spat at the wistful romance of the autumn leaves at Kiyomizu Temple. Our months and years in Kyoto were spent constantly on the move, always beset by terrible mental anguish. We stood defiant against the general merrymaking of society.
But for all our valiant efforts, no one seemed to recognize our struggle. Our foe was too great and our band of brothers too small in number.
Shikama resided in the Asukai neighborhood, where he shared an apartment with his younger sister, who was an undergrad in the Faculty of Engineering. I had never met the sister, and all I knew of her came from Shikama. From what I gathered, she was a no-nonsense kind of girl who loved to delve into the collected works of Nietzsche. She also had a very peculiar sensitivity to language—namely, an excessive sense of embarrassment about certain words. For example, she insisted that no one utter the term freckle in her presence. So when Shikama became frustrated with her for whatever reason, he would chase her around the apartment, shouting, “Freckle! Freckle! Freckle!” It was a routine which, by all accounts, she found exceedingly distressing.
The sister’s perception of me was apparently quite warped, having come to know of my person and exploits exclusively through the dark, twisted prism that was her brother. It seemed she and I would go on like that, never meeting in person and never gaining the opportunity to amend the mistaken mental images we’d formed of each other.
Presently, Shikama was in limbo. Having failed the essay portion of this year’s bar exam, he was forced to wait until next year to reattempt. He was already grappling with a rather gloomy outlook on life, and this setback only worsened his plight. He’d bent to the point of snapping, and now he was distending into some incomprehensible fourth-dimensional object. To further compound his misery, we were fast approaching the fifth Christmas since our college careers began. Shikama’s store of patience for the outside world was running thin.
He’d come to my home to open the dreamball as a pleasant distraction from the looming holiday, only to be slapped in the face by a preposterous mix-up. It was the final blow to his already tattered spirit.
✦ ✦ ✦
In commemoration of Shikama’s lost dream, we began to drink.
We scarfed down slices of deep-fried tofu warmed in my toaster oven and slurped on strips of dried squid.
Being men of moderation, neither of us had ever drunk to the point of blackout. We toed the line and quickly backed off, retreating to the commode as necessary to regurgitate any excess. Too many students in this world drink without a proper grasp on their body’s capacity to process ethanol—or even a basic understanding of when to retreat to the porcelain pit. I might have found that fact lamentable, but as a student myself, I merely found it unforgivable. Anyone who honestly intends to extol alcohol as the greatest panacea life offers should be ready and willing to slurp up his own misfired vomit after spewing it all over the steps of his local izakaya.
Shikama reached an arm around the great maneki-neko in the center of my room. He patted it lightly, a grin like the monk Budai’s spreading across his face.
“Why on earth did you bring that here?” I demanded.
“My sister found it. I want you to take custody of it.”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Come on. You love maneki-neko.”
I clicked my tongue and responded, “I prefer not to clutter my room with unnecessary belongings.”
I swallowed my indignation at this flagrant dredging up of past wounds, and we continued to drink like gentlemen. Our conversation grew unrestrained, freewheeling, bounding across every topic that crossed our collective imagination until it threatened to spin entirely out of control. This was a place safe from the Evil Eye. We needn’t hold back. We could gorge our intellects as we pleased.
Soon we had lost the reins, and we paused, asking each other what it was we’d just been talking about, and the search for that answer sparked debate anew. As we argued, we digressed to other topics, ultimately unable to succeed even in retracing our own steps.
“I wonder what he’s up to right now,” Shikama said. His thoughts had turned back to the true owner of the dreamball. “I wonder if things are turning out the way he planned.”
“Who knows?”
“Think about it. While I was writing out nonsense about helicopter pilot licenses, he was envisioning his future. By now, he’s sure to have found a girl he gets along with. He may have even secured that normal job he was pining for. Hell, for all we know, he might even be married by now. And maybe—though I hate to even imagine it—he’s found something resembling happiness in life.”
“It’s certainly possible,” I said.
Shikama let out an anguished groan. A dribble of saliva rolled from one corner of his mouth.
“Damn him,” he cursed.
And with that, he went to lie down on the cold tatami floor and wrapped himself tight in his jacket. For a time, he mumbled to himself. I caught occasional phrases, like “give it back,” “mine,” “my dream,” and “get your hands off of it.” Then he tossed and turned on the floor, as if trying to squirm from reality’s grip. Finally, he grew still.