The old man nodded in response to Mahito’s question. “I can sense you.”
“Even though you can’t even see your surroundings?”
“Of course. Like the scenery, it’s unclear to me what kind of features you have, what color your skin is, and whether you’re a man or a woman,” said the old man. “Nonetheless, I know you’re there.”
“Are you a sorcerer?” Mahito asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t sound sure. Even though you’re referring to yourself.”
“I’ve been unsure about myself for a long time,” the man responded.
Mahito noticed something odd, then. He usually sensed the souls of human beings as shapes: they could be spiky, shriveled, weak, or quivering as if reverberating. They fluctuated. However, this old man’s soul revealed little fluctuation. He was like a grassy field with no wind, a sea with no waves, a blue sky with no clouds.
No, Mahito realized. The more appropriate comparison was to a rock.
He had a soul like a boulder by the side of the road. Unadorned, unpolished, unmoving, unwavering. It just passed the time in tranquility, quietly gathering moss.
That was the shape of the old man’s soul.
No matter how mild human beings might be, no matter how old they got, their souls wavered. Even after the passage of years, preconceptions didn’t vanish entirely and people found it hard to dispel their greed and conquer their fears.
But the old man was different.
His soul was peaceful. He had fully accepted that he would wither with time, and that was why he wouldn’t waste his life in unnecessary distress. It was almost like a truly natural existence.
Mahito had never encountered a human being like that before.
The tunnel became Mahito’s temporary nest.
He brought in a hammock he’d found and hung it from the tunnel’s pipes, lounged in it, and passed the time engaged in activities like reading. He’d gotten the idea from a movie he’d once seen about a castaway on a desert island. The castaway had reclaimed a measure of ease by erecting a hammock. It looked comfortable, so Mahito tried it and found he liked it.
The city’s noise didn’t quite reach the interior of the tunnel, leaving only a vague susurration that Mahito rather enjoyed. The tunnel was a good environment for peace and quiet.
As Mahito relaxed and acquired knowledge from the books he read, he would sometimes stare at the ceiling or look down at the old man sitting in the corner, whose position and expression rarely seemed to change.
“How do you survive?” Mahito asked. “I don’t get it.”
Mahito had decided not to kill the old man. The old man didn’t get in his way. He was quieter than a stray cat and only ever sat there, cooling his heels. If his presence or absence made no difference, then why bother getting rid of him?
Mahito had once heard the expression “Man is the thinking reed.” He liked the humorous way it expressed human frailty through a comparison to weeds, as well as the way it turned the human soul’s captivity to reason into a point of pride.
But the old man was a reed that didn’t think. Actually, he was so silent and motionless that he was more like moss. The old man was just there, never speaking.
Sometimes Mahito would notice that the old man had gone missing from his spot; then, just as abruptly, he would back again, asleep in his corner. The man must have been eating somewhere, but he didn’t appear to gain weight. If the typical body weight starts at 100 percent, when the man’s dropped to 80 percent, he likely went somewhere to consume just enough to bump it back up to 100.
That manner of existence was incredibly instinctual, more like a natural phenomenon than a life.
“Maybe that’s why you can see me,” Mahito speculated absentmindedly.
He hadn’t really been addressing the man, but when he spoke those words to himself, it sounded like he was. When he noticed that his words didn’t cause the slightest ruffle in the old man’s soul, he decided to address him directly.
“How long have you been here?”
“Well, I suppose I’ve passed a few winters here, but I’m not certain,” the old man answered with a quiet mutter.
Mahito felt that occasional conversation was only natural when two living things were sharing company, both with souls and aware of each other.
“Don’t you get bored?”
Mahito spoke casually, and the old man responded in kind.
“I forgot how to be bored.”
Mahito continued to question the man. “What do you do all the time?”
“Nothing. I just listen to the sounds.”
“Sounds?”
“The sound of the flowing water,” the man responded.
“Is that fun?”
“No. But I’ve forgotten how to have fun, so it doesn’t bother me.”
Mahito thought that made sense and nodded.
Maybe the old man’s soul had worn away to the point that he didn’t find boredom unpleasant. Or maybe his soul was less worn than polished. City people always wanted more and lamented discomfort. Momentary satisfaction only made them greedier, so they acquired negative emotions and their souls bloated. The old man’s soul, on the other hand, was slim, even stylish.
Fattened souls, when satiated, gave birth to the fear of losing the satisfaction of the moment. Thus, they changed, and that produced curses.
“Do you—Come to think of it, you got a name?”
The old man stared into space for a moment. “I got rid of it. If you need to call me by a name, use whatever name you like.”
“Are there humans without names? Even curses have names.”
“I don’t meet people, so I don’t need a name.”
“But you must have trouble without one,” Mahito said.
“What would I need a name for?”
“For your grave.”
“I don’t need a grave with my name on it. They’ll put me in a mass grave or I’ll rot away where no one can find me and return to dust.”
“Can’t you understand a joke?” Mahito said.
“Oh, were you joking?”
The old man didn’t laugh and neither did Mahito.
Mahito sensed a youthfulness behind the man’s aged exterior. Perhaps an innocent personality, purified through his lack of attachments, had made him younger than he looked.
Mahito’s interest in the old man increased. He had never encountered a human being like this before and had never sensed a soul with this shape. The old man was a curious specimen to him.
What kind of life had he lived to turn out like this?
And how much fun would it be for Mahito to mess around with a soul like this? What mischief could he get up to with such a soul? What kind of curse would such an individual give rise to?
Intrigued, Mahito questioned the old man.
“Why are you here?”
“Why?”
The old man looked up at the ceiling through the hair that covered his face.
Scars obscured the place where his eyes had been. Mahito knew the old man couldn’t see anything, but apparently when humans think, they turn their gaze upon empty space. Noticing that, one of Mahito’s areas of curiosity was satisfied.
“Well, you weren’t born and raised in this tunnel, were you? You’re a human being, so you must have lived in that noisy city.”
“Yes, that’s right,” the old man agreed, “Once upon a time, I led a busy life. I inherited a house, I worked, I saved money and cared for a family.”
“So you had status.”
“By society’s standards, yes,” said the old man. “When I think about it now, though, none of that meant much.”
“Why did you start living like a rat in a hole in the ground?”
“Because I lost everything I had—my status, money, even a place to be.”
“You lost it?” Mahito asked.
“I got swindled. That was when my eyes were burned and I lost all light.”
Mahito remembered the company Jogo had attacked.
“Someone tricked you,” Mahito said. “You must’ve been gullible.”
“Well, I didn’t mind the deception.”
“You’re a strange old man. You get your kicks out of being tricked?”
“Yes, because I was in a position that invited others to attempt to swindle me. It was an old friend and my wife who did it,” the man explained without flinching. “They made the burning of my eyes look like an accident and claimed they had to take care of me. Then, before I knew it, they had stolen control over all my affairs.”
“That’s pretty harsh, but you talk about it like it happened to someone else.”
“They were in love, but neither one loved me. And that hit harder than the actual deception.”
Mahito had difficulty interpreting the old man’s words.
Love. Was that really such an important thing? Human beings were obsessed with it, Mahito knew. Some curses came from love, and some of those were incredibly fearsome. However, Mahito didn’t understand how the mechanism of human love was any different from a cat’s attachment to its favorite blanket.
“Didn’t you curse the people who tricked you?” he asked.
“Not particularly,” the old man replied.