STORY 1
Wake Me from this Dream
A pulsing, numbing pain ran from the deepest folds of Toshihiko’s brain into the tangled tendrils of his nervous system. On the back of his retinas, dull reds and blues pulsed and flashed, their faded hues like washed-out dollops of distempered paint. A strange sound filled his ears, like the grinding of unoiled gears.
Toshihiko awoke.
Fat beads of sweat clung to his forehead. They felt cold on his skin.
Sitting up on his thin, single-layer futon, he quickly shook his head a few times before taking in a deep breath.
He felt a pain in his chest.
Lowering his head, he pressed his fingers against the back of his neck and was met with a sharp jolt of displeasure.
He felt like he’d just had a bad dream. He couldn’t remember what it was, but somehow, he was sure it hadn’t been pleasant. He thought he remembered there being a woman with plastered-on makeup; her bright red lips had twisted into a crumpled smile as she let out a shrill squeal of a laugh.
His forehead was sticky with sweat. His heart was beating fast.
Beside his bed stood a table whose plywood veneer had begun flaking at the edges. On the table was a twelve-inch tube TV, left on. The screen glowed in monochrome static, the snow-like pattern punctuated by pulsing flashes in the signal, each flash accompanied by an abrasive noise like a cicada’s call.
When did I fall asleep? Toshihiko wondered.
Irritated, he reached out to switch off the source of his nightmare (or at least, what he thought had been the likely source).
When he flicked the TV switch, the room went suddenly dark. He looked to his alarm clock. A little past six in the morning.
Pressing the thumb and forefinger of each hand against his throbbing temples, Toshihiko slowly got to his feet. He went over to his window and threw open the faded curtains.
Early morning sunlight filtered through the cracked, frosted window and filled his cramped four-and-a-half tatami mat room. But to the man newly awakened from a nightmare, even that gentle light felt sharp enough to slice into his flesh.
It stung his eyes.
As if chased away by the sun, Toshihiko retreated into the darker, malodorous kitchen. A pile of old dishes had amassed in the sink. Among them were rice bowls with dried-on grains, plastic spoons stained yellowish brown from instant curry, and glass cups half filled with cola long since gone flat.
Toshihiko pushed the dirty dishes to one side of the sink and turned on the tap. When the water gushed out, it smelled of chlorine. He cupped his hands and delivered a drink to his mouth.
Clouded with impurities, the water’s unpleasant taste struck the back of his throat. With an equally unpleasant sound, Toshihiko spat the water back out.
He felt nauseous. Fighting the sensation, he took in another mouthful of water, then spat it out again, repeating the process two more times.
Beside the sink sat a small bar of soap, cracked and dried out, with spots of mold growing on its surface. Toshihiko picked up the soap and rubbed it back and forth between his hands. Hardly any bubbles formed, but he used it to wash his face anyway.
He let out a deep sigh.
He felt the slightest bit better now.
Next to the sink was a single gas burner—lonesome, rusted, cheap. Toshihiko filled a pockmarked aluminum kettle with tap water and placed it on the cooktop.
He pressed the gas burner’s ignition switch. No flame appeared. Grease and dust had gummed up the auto-ignition mechanism, leaving Toshihiko no choice but to use a 100-yen lighter instead. He nearly burned his fingertips in the process, but at least he got the burner lit.
He reached into an adjacent cabinet with a fallen-off door and retrieved a jar of faintly moist instant coffee and a cup with a chipped rim and a panda on it. A crack ran right down the panda’s face. He absentmindedly tapped his fingers on the cup’s handle while he waited for the water to boil.
As Toshihiko stared at the kettle’s spout, which contained a few extra bends beyond the ones it came with, he found himself suddenly overcome with sadness. Tears began to well in his eyes.
Next year, I’ll be thirty, he thought. I can’t believe it.
He felt keenly aware of the loneliness that came with solitary living. It crawled stickily up his back like a slime-coated slug.
Eight years had already passed since he dropped out of college.
Time has gone so fast.
If he had graduated like he was supposed to, found a career like he was supposed to, he would probably have been promoted to section chief or some other managerial role by now. At the very least, society would have recognized him as a respectable, working adult.
He could have owned his own home, albeit a modest one, in which he could have lived happily with a wife and child.
When he pictured it all, a masochistic smile came to his face.
Toshihiko was lazy by birth. He was under no illusions—attempting to delude himself otherwise would have been far too much work. When he was still in college, he never went to his classes. Nor did he go out with any girls. He was the kind of person who avoided interacting with other people.
It wasn’t that he lacked that common, human desire to go out and have drinks with friends, go on dates with women, and share in other such social experiences. If anything, he desired them even more than the typical person. But Toshihiko was excessively timid and shy to a fault. He found himself unable to approach members of the same sex, let alone women.
He was a pitiful man.
Not only was he timid and shy, he was unkempt, unclean, and indolent.
He wasn’t simply lazy; he took laziness to the extreme.
Needless to say, he truly loathed having to work.
The entire history of his work experience could be summed up by day-wage part-time jobs taken up only by necessity whenever his funds ran dry—jobs he dropped as soon as possible. Consequently, his life was one of constant and extreme poverty.
Most of his meals came ready-made in packets. His biggest luxury was the one beef-and-rice bowl he allowed himself per month.
After all other expenses were accounted for, he had hardly any money left over to spend on clothing, and the clothes he wore showed it.
Had he some fashion sense, he might have been able to make it work, but he didn’t, not even a shred. When he chose to loiter around the neighborhood outside his shabby apartment, it was in a sweat-stained T-shirt and outmoded bell-bottom jeans.
Take a moment to consider how cold the world would be to a man in his thirties, with no style, no money, no guts, no ambition, no friends, no hygiene, and a greater-than-average longing for the opposite sex.
To make matters worse, Toshihiko was short. His face was, as a matter of course, ugly. His hair, matted with grease and sprinkled with dandruff, was dreadful. His angular, bony features resembled the leftover parts of an amberjack fish, already gutted and filleted, and his eyebrows were off-putting and scraggly like dried kombu flakes. Below his bulbous nose rested slug-like lips that carried a vaguely oily sheen. Meanwhile, his eyes—somehow only his eyes—were round and pleasant, even innocent, in a way.
Each of these parts had been assembled into a countenance that was as clumsily put together as a face could be. If he were to work up the courage to approach anyone and offer them his diffident smile, that person—no matter how kind or compassionate—would likely turn tail and run.
Of that, Toshihiko was all too aware, painfully so.
The awareness shackled him, gradually drawing him ever deeper into the shell of his social phobia. He avoided social engagement, afraid he might offend anyone unfortunate enough to interact with him.
Toshihiko put a scoop of the instant coffee powder into his panda bear cup. Then he poured in the boiling water and swirled the contents. Wisps of steam ascended to his nose, but the stale coffee offered no aroma.
As he sipped the coffee, devoid of any flavor but bitterness, Toshihiko returned to his four-and-a-half tatami mat living space.
With the grunt of a man twice his age, he sat cross-legged on his futon mattress.
He let out a short sigh.
His mouth felt scratchy, but he didn’t think the bad coffee was to blame. A stabbing pain throbbed in his head, and he felt nauseous. He hadn’t felt right since he woke up. If anything, the nausea in his chest was gradually worsening, like some insect had eaten the upper half of his torso away.
Toshihiko shook his head vigorously a few times, then downed the rest of his coffee in a single gulp.