The Tatami Galaxy Chapter 4

In the two years before the spring of my junior year of college, I accomplished not a single thing of practical use. Instead of building healthy relations.h.i.+ps with the opposite s.e.x, studying diligently, training my body, and undertaking other activities directed towards becoming a productive member of society, I isolated myself from women, abandoned my studies, and let my health fall to ruin. Yet, despite having struck out already, why is it that I continued to labor away hoping for the pieces to fall into place?

I must inquire of the responsible party. Where is the culprit?

It is not that I have always been in this condition.

I was born pure as the driven snow and as charming as the infant Prince Genji; with nary an impure thought in my head, my radiant smile spread the light of love across the hills and valleys of my hometown. I am doubtful whether that is still the case today. Each time that I look in a mirror I fly into a rage, asking 'Why have you become like this? Is this the sum of your current existence?'

There are those who say that I am still young, and that people are things that may yet change.

How ridiculous.

It is said that the child is the father of the man. And with this year, another one will be added to my twenty, and the end of my splendid quarter-century youth will soon approach. What outcome, then, would further clumsy efforts to change my personality bring about? At this stage, if I attempt to twist something that has already set and hardened, the most I'll do is break it.

At this moment, I must pull myself upward into leading a respectable life. I must not avert my eyes from the grim reality that lies before me.

And yet, somehow, it is unbearable to look.

In the spring of my junior year, I shut myself in my 4½-tatami room.

It wasn't the springtime blues, or that I had developed extreme social anxiety. I merely wished to isolate myself from the outside world in this tranquil s.p.a.ce and forge myself anew. I had put the past two years to utter waste, ruining any prospect of a bright future, to say nothing of my grades. Now, facing an uncertain third year, I found that university had nothing to offer me. I believed that whatever arduous training I undertook must take place right here, in this 4½-tatami room.

Terayama Shūji once said, "Throw away your books and go out into the streets".

But back then, I thought—Go out into the streets and do what?

This account, concerning the matter of the 4½-tatami room, was written to raise uncomfortable truths among the general populace. Only a few days ago, I was trapped and forced to wander an endless maze of 4½-tatami rooms, and during this time was compelled to ponder the nature of this matter until I wanted to jump off the Kegon Waterfall.

I, who loved the 4½-tatami so much, embraced the t.i.tle of "4½-Tatami Ideologue". Everywhere I went, I commanded respect and adoration; people turned their heads to watch me, and the raven-haired maidens whispered among themselves whenever I pa.s.sed by.

"That's the famous 4½-Tatami Ideologue!"

"Wow, he's so cool…"

But the day came when even the 4½-Tatami Ideologue had to leave his 4½-tatami nest.

What would drive out someone who was so steadfast in his devotion?

Those particulars are what I intend to speak of.

The main cast of this ma.n.u.script consists solely of myself.

It's quite depressing, but it's mostly just me.

It was the end of my third May in university.

I lived in a boarding house called s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō, which is located in s.h.i.+mogamo Izumigawa. I had heard that the place had burned down in the chaos at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, was rebuilt in exactly the same fas.h.i.+on, and had not been renovated since. If it hadn't been for the light leaking out of the windows, one could be forgiven for mistaking it for an abandoned ruin. When I first visited this place during the co-op a.s.sociation tour after orientation I couldn't help but wonder if I had wandered into Kowloon Walled City. Just looking at its crumbling wooden frame was enough to induce anxiety, and it was probably sufficiently dilapidated that it could be placed on the list of j.a.pan's Important Cultural Properties. Yet if it were to burn down I doubt that anyone would even bat an eye. Even the landlord who lives to the east would most certainly be relieved.

I still remember what happened the night before I embarked upon my adventure as if it was yesterday. I was sitting alone in my residence in room 110 sullenly whiling away the hours, when unexpectedly Ozu came calling.

Ever since I had met him in freshman year, I had been inextricably entangled with him. I was too proud to a.s.sociate with lesser beings, so after quitting the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant secret society the only person with whom I had regular contact was this odious imp. Though I detested him for besmirching my soul, I couldn't quite wash my hands of him.

Ozu often visited one Higuchi s.h.i.+ntaro, a resident of the second floor of s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō. He called this person "Master", and each time he came to visit, I could be sure he would show up on my doorstep as well.

"I like what you've done with the place," he commented. "You don't have a girlfriend, you don't go to cla.s.s, you don't have any friends, what on earth do you intend to do with your life?"

"You'd better watch your mouth or I'll bash your skull in!"

"Kill me? Would you really do that? That's cruel of you," he leered. "By the way, I came here two nights ago, but you were out. You weren't avoiding me, were you?"

"I was at a manga café that night, devoting myself to my studies."

"I brought a girl named Kaori to meet you, but since you weren't here I had to take her somewhere else. What a shame."

"I don't need an introduction from the likes of you."

"Come on, don't sulk like that. Here, this is for you."

"What's this?"

"A castella. I got a lot from Master Higuchi, so I'm just spreading the wealth."

"You're actually giving someone a gift? I'm shocked."

"Well, the way I see it, there's nothing sadder than cutting up and eating a big castella like this all by your lonesome. I just wanted you to taste true solitude."

"Oh, I get it. Yeah, I'll eat an extra helping just for you."

"By the way, I heard from Hanuki. You were at the dentist the other day, weren't you?"

"Hrm. What of it?"

"I bet your teeth are full of cavities."

"No, don't be ridiculous. It was a much more serious condition."

"Bull. According to Hanuki, only an idiot would let his teeth decay that much. She said your wisdom teeth are halfway gone already."

Ozu was still part of the secret society I had left behind; in fact, he had risen to a level with considerable control. Besides that, it seemed that he had his hand in a number of other activities as well. Anyone else would think to use all that energy for the good of society, but Ozu would start to complain about his aching joints if you so much as mentioned the word "altruism" in front of him.

"Is this how your parents raised you to behave??" I demanded.

"It is a pearl from the Master's teachings."

"What kind of Master would say that?"

"It would take a lifetime to describe him. His is a truly profound existence."

He yawned and stretched.

"The other day, the Master decided he wanted a seahorse, so I got a tank from the garbage dump and brought it to him. But when we tried to fill it with water, it broke and all the water came gus.h.i.+ng out. The Master's room got completely flooded."

"Hold on, where's his room?"

"It's right above this one."

I was suddenly seized with fury. Just recently, while I was out and about, my ceiling sprang a leak. When I came back the trickling water had soaked all of my books, and the ink on the pages had run together into an unintelligible mess. Not only that, but my computer was also destroyed, and every single electron that made up my data was washed out to sea. Of course, this incident spelled the end of whatever academic comeback I might have hoped to make. I had wanted to march up and lodge a furious protest, but decided that getting entangled with the unidentified resident of the room above me was too troublesome, and in the end I left the account unsettled.

"So that was your work?"

"I'm sure the destruction of your p.o.r.n library was no big deal," he brazenly a.s.serted.

"All right, get the h.e.l.l out of my room. I have more important things to do."

"I was already on my way. I'm going to the master's place for blind hotpot tonight anyway."

I kicked the smirking b.a.s.t.a.r.d out into the hallway and was at last able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Then, my thoughts began to drift back to the spring of my freshman year.

At the time, I was still a sparkling freshman. The cherry trees had shed their flowers, clad now in an invigorating verdant hue. Upon entering the university grounds, each first-year was immediately pressed with club fliers, I with so many that they could not be processed by a single person. Among those sundry fliers, only four caught my attention: Misogi Movie Circle, a mysterious call for disciples, Honwaka Softball Circle, and the Lucky Cat Restaurant secret society. Each of these had its own air of suspicion, yet was its own doorway to a yet unknown campus life, and I was filled with inquisitiveness, thinking that no matter which I chose a fascinating future lay ahead. The only reason I thought this was because I was a hopeless fool.

After lectures, I directed my steps towards the university clock tower. It seemed that many circles were holding new member information sessions in that vicinity.

Around the base of the clock tower milled throngs of freshmen, their faces still blus.h.i.+ng with springs of hope, as well as crafty circle members, eager to prey on those same hopes. Thinking that among these countless circles lay an entrance to the phantasmic illusion of the entrance to a rosy student life, I wandered around in a lightheaded daze.

It was there that I ran into Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant secret society. I thought it absurd that a secret society would advertise itself as such so blatantly on a flier, but it was, as I learned afterwards, a real secret society.

I was approached by the chief of the Library Police division, a man named Aijima. He wore gla.s.ses, which automatically made him look clever, and outwardly he was quite welcoming, but for some reason I had the impression that he wasn't really being sincere.

Aijima took me to the law school courtyard and began to make his case. "It'll be fun, and you'll be able to meet a lot of new people!" he wheedled.

I considered his offer. It was true that my social circle was exceedingly small. During the college years it was important to mingle with the students that wriggled through the halls of this inst.i.tution and broaden my horizons, for it was through these repeated interactions that I would build the path to a s.h.i.+ning future. I must admit that my reasons for joining the secret society were not limited to practical considerations; I was intrigued by the mystique of belonging to a secret society. I repeat: I was a hopeless fool.

What is the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant?

Its purpose is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, but of one thing I am certain: there probably is no purpose.

The Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant was simply a name for the tenebrous conglomeration of a number of smaller organizations, the names and purposes of which defy belief.

The important ones, then: the print shop, which forces a stable of star students under house arrest to pump out report after report for sale to other students in need; the Library Police, which enforces the collection of overdue library materials; and the Cheery Bicycle Corps, which tends to the sacred duty of organizing bicycles on campus. Of lesser importance were the school festival planning secretariat, the Eizan Electric Railway Research Society, the Pillow Talk Youth Commission, the Sophistry Discussion Group, and a number of other clubs, research groups, and even cults.

It was generally held that from a historical standpoint, the origins of the secret society lay in the print shop; thus, the chief of the print shop commanded the entire society. Though it was unclear whether such a person actually existed, there were many theories. Some people held that it was a young raven-haired maiden, others that it was actually an elderly law school professor, and others still that it was a lecherous masked freak who had been roosting under the clock tower for twenty years. At any rate, I was merely a minion in the Library Police who would never have the opportunity to come into contact with this person.

At Aijima's invitation, I joined the Library Police. "For the time being, you'll be working with him," he told me, pointing at an eerie fellow of ill portent standing underneath the cherry blossoms in the law school courtyard. For a moment, I thought it was a h.e.l.lish apparition that only I could see.

That was my first meeting with Ozu.

There's a famous novel about an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find that he has turned into a giant insect. My own metamorphosis was not that dramatic. I woke up as the same old me, in the same squalid room that I had gone to bed in the previous day. Then again, some might not see a difference between me and a giant insect to begin with.

The hour hand on my clock pointed to six, but it impossible to tell whether it was morning or evening. I pondered the matter while lying in my futon, but I had no clue how long I had slept.

I wriggled around for a bit before sluggishly rising from the bed.

All was quiet.

I brewed some coffee and ate a bit of castella. After finis.h.i.+ng my primitive breakfast, I felt an urgent pressure on my bladder and got up to head to the communal restrooms near the entrance of the boarding house.

Opening the door of my room, I stepped onto a tatami mat.

How strange.

I looked over my shoulder. My chaotic 4½-tatami room was right there. But on the other side of the door in front of me, I could see an equally chaotic, completely identical room. It was as if I was looking into a mirror.

I pa.s.sed through the door into the other room. Without a doubt, it was my room. The feel of the tatami mats when I lay down, the crowded bookshelves, the broken television, the writing desk I had been using since I was in elementary school, the dust-covered sink—it was all familiar to me.

I returned through the doorway, only to be met with the same sight. Through long years of zealous training, I had learned to control my emotions and keep a level head, but even I was not prepared to deal with the abnormality of my room cloning itself.

Now that it was impossible to exit through the door, the only option was the window.

Drawing open the usually permanently closed curtain, I could see the light of a fluorescent lamp through the frosted gla.s.s. I threw open the window and gazed upon the sight of my own room. Gingerly stepping across the window frame, I examined the furnis.h.i.+ngs of that room, only to come to the same conclusion.

I returned to my original room and smoked a cigarette to try to calm down.

Thus, I embarked upon my eighty day expedition through that 4½-tatami galaxy.

My odyssey took place in a number of basically identical 4½-tatami rooms. I would therefore like my readers to have a clear image of what this room is like before I proceed.

First, to the north is a door, about as flimsy as an infant's teething biscuit. It's still covered with a lively a.s.sortment of raunchy stickers from the previous resident of this room.

Beside the door is an absolutely filthy sink and countertop, filled with hair styling products, a portable stovetop, and all manner of rubbish. It's guaranteed to put off even the most determined chef. I vehemently refused to try my hand at cooking in this dismal kitchen, clinging to the old adage that a man's place is not in the kitchen.

Most of the north wall is taken up by a closet strewn with drab clothes, unread books, papers that I can't bring myself to throw away, and an electric heater to keep the icy fingers of winter at bay, among other odds and ends. My personal reading material is also hidden there.

The east wall is taken up by by bookshelves, besides which are a vacuum cleaner and a rice cooker, neither of which I feel much inclined to use.

To the south, there is a window, with the cherished desk I have been using since elementary school occupying the s.p.a.ce beneath. I rarely open the drawers, and have long since forgotten what lies within them.

The s.p.a.ce between the bookshelves and my desk is a no-man's-land, where junk that has nowhere else to go is tossed; I refer to it as an exile to Siberia. I had always known that someday I would have to make a complete survey of that chasm, but somehow could never work up the courage to venture in. If I were to ever go in, the chances of me ever escaping with my life would be exceedingly slim.

On the west side, there is a broken TV and a small refrigerator.

And thus we return to the north wall.

It only takes a few seconds to go around the entire room, but it has come to feel like an extension of myself.

Why did I choose a 4½-tatami room in the first place?

I once knew a person who lived in a 3-tatami room, but he was even more aloof than me and refused to go to cla.s.s, instead spending his days absorbed in Heidegger's Being and Time. He was so obstinate in his convictions, and became so withdrawn and set against the world, that last year his parents had to come and take him home.

2-tatami rooms certainly exist within Kyoto. Unbelievable as it may sound, near Jōdoji there are rooms that consist of two tatami joined end-to-end. If you were to sleep in one of these hallway-like rooms, there's no doubt that your body would begin to stretch out.

There's a frightening rumor on the street that there was a student who saw rooms consisting of a single tatami in a certain lodging house near Kitas.h.i.+rakawa's Baptist Hospital, but the student mysteriously disappeared a few days later, and one by one his friends all came to untimely ends.

And then there is the 4½-tatami room.

Compared to 1, 2, or 3-tatami rooms, 4½-tatami rooms are elegantly organized. You can lay out three tatami side-by-side, and then lay a fourth across the ends of the three. The remaining s.p.a.ce is filled by the remaining half tatami, creating an invigorating square. Beautiful, isn't it? Two tatami can also make up a square, but the resulting s.p.a.ce would be exceedingly cramped. On the other hand, if you were to make a larger square, it would become as s.p.a.cious as Takeda s.h.i.+ngen's lavatory, and you would need to navigate it carefully lest some disaster befall you.

After entering university, I became an ardent champion of the 4½-tatami room.

7, 8, and even 10-tatami rooms exist, but can the people who reside therein truly say that they are fit to control such a s.p.a.ce? Do they know each and every distant corner like the back of their hand? With great power comes great responsibility. We humans are capable of controlling rooms no larger than 4½-tatami, and those brazen enough to hunger for more will one day be met by a fearsome insurrection from some corner of the room—this I firmly believed.

My journey through the 4½-tatami galaxy was about to begin, but I would not rush off just yet. I a.n.a.lyzed the situation over and over and over, slowly coming up with the perfect strategy. Admittedly, I was the type of person to overa.n.a.lyze things until the opportunity had already pa.s.sed.

Sitting in the original room, I pondered my next course of action.

A respectable person would not lose his cool, no matter what situation he was in. After some thoughtful deliberation, I picked up an empty beer bottle that Ozu had left here a fortnight earlier. After relieving my bladder in it, I felt much better.

Panicking would not get me anywhere. Since I had nominally become a third year student, I had spent most of my time here in this room. How hypocritical it was of me to want to escape this room, when I had previously gone to such great lengths to avoid going outside. As long as I was not in danger, I had no reason to leave. Perhaps the situation would resolve itself if I simply settled down and waited.

I leisurely perused my copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and let my mind be transported to that distant undersea world. After I tired of that, I took out a volume from my personal reading materials, grasped the proper instruments, and transported myself again, this time to the world of the somatic. After a period of determined effort, I tired of this as well.

It occurred to me to turn on the television, but it had never been in good shape. The image on the screen revolved like a pinwheel in a hurricane, so unless you were a master of Magic Eye pictures it was impossible to tell what was being displayed. I stared at the screen until my vision was spinning. If I had known that this all this was going to happen, I would have gotten the TV fixed sooner.

Eventually the hands of the clock made a full revolution. As I heated up some leftover bits of fish patty, it occurred to me that all I had left was the castella. There was also a bit of daikon, but I decided to leave that alone for now. Before I went to sleep I checked the other side of the window and door just in case, but as before I only saw the same 4½-tatami rooms. I flopped onto my futon and stared at the ceiling. Why had I become trapped in this world?

There was one hypothesis I could come up with—the curse of the Kiyamachi fortune teller.

A few days ago, I had gone to Kiyamachi to to kill some time. After browsing through Gabi Used Books, I began to wander the streets. That was where I met the fortune teller.

In between the bars and brothels, a dark, squeezed sort of house stood in the shadows. Under the overhang an old woman sat at a wooden stall covered by a white cloth. She looked like a fortune teller. The sign hanging off the front of the stall was inscribed with all manner of arcane, incomprehensible runes. Above it the hag's head floated in the gloom, lit only by the hazy orange light of a small lantern. It was a ghastly sight, like seeing a ravenous ghost hungering for the souls of pa.s.sersby. I began to imagine all manner of misfortune befalling me: the shadow of the old woman seemed to follow me everywhere I went; nothing I did went right; people I was expecting never showed up; possessions vanished, never to be seen again; I failed courses that should have been a cinch; a thesis that I was about to present spontaneously combusted; I fell into the ca.n.a.ls of Lake Biwa; I was caught by a snake-oil salesman on s.h.i.+jō Street; and so forth. While these wild thoughts were going through my head, the old woman noticed me looking at her. She glared at me from the inky darkness with gleaming eyes, drawing me in with her otherworldly emanations. Her suspicious aura was strangely persuasive, and logically thinking I came to the conclusion that the divinations of someone who allowed her supernatural aura to flow so freely could not possibly be wrong.

In my twenty-odd years of life, there had been but a handful of times where I humbly took someone's advice. What if that was the reason I was stuck on this th.o.r.n.y path, unable to move forward? Though I took few risks in life, wasn't there a possibility that I could choose the thorn-lined path? If only I had chosen to stop relying on my own judgment earlier, I wouldn't have been bullied around in the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant secret society and been driven to barricade myself in my room, nor would I have met the twisted Ozu. Rather, I would have been blessed with wonderful mentors and friends, become accomplished in all the arts and sciences, of course have a beautiful raven-haired maiden at my side, face a glittering golden future ahead of me, and perhaps even have that all-important rosy student life in the palm of my hand. That was the kind of life suited for someone like myself.

That's right. It wasn't too late. The sooner I took a third-party's objective advice, the sooner I could escape this dreary life into the life that I was meant to live.

I moved my legs toward the old woman as if I was being sucked in by her supernatural aura.

"Boy, what is it that you wish to hear?"

The old woman mumbled her words like her mouth was full of cotton, giving the impression that they were all the more valuable.

"Well, I'm not entirely sure how to begin..."

Seeing me at a loss for words, she grinned.

"I can see from your face that you are very frustrated, unsatisfied. You are not able to use your full talents; your current situation is not suited for you."

"Yes, that's exactly it!"

"Show me your hands."

The old hag took my palms and peered into them, nodding approvingly.

"You have much earnest talent in you."

I quickly tipped my hat to her keen insight. A true master hides his skills, and I had hidden my talents for so long that even I didn't realize I had them any more. For this old woman to sense those talents within five minutes of meeting me must mean that she was no ordinary person.

"It is essential that you not let opportunities slip away. An opportunity is nothing more than a favorable circ.u.mstance, you understand? But it's difficult to take hold of opportunities. Sometimes they hide in places you don't expect, and sometimes it is only later that you realize something that seemed like an opportunity was really nothing at all. But in order to seize an opportunity you must act. You look like you will have a long life, so sooner or later you will be have the chance."

As befitting her aura, her words were truly profound.

"I don't want to wait forever; I want grab my opportunity now. Can you be a little more specific?"

At my probing, the wrinkles on the old woman's face contorted even further. I thought her right cheek must be itchy or something, but it turned out that she was just smiling.

"It's hard to be specific about the future. Even if I were to tell you about a precise opportunity, it might very well be twisted and warped by the machinations of fate until it was no longer a opportunity when you chanced upon it, and that would just be a disservice to you, wouldn't it? Fate is something that changes from moment to moment, you see."

"But, everything you've told me is too vague to act on."

As I stood there in confusion, she exhaled slowly through her nose.

"Very well. I will refrain from speaking of things far ahead, but I can speak of things that will soon come to pa.s.s.

I widened my ears like Dumbo.

"Colosseum," she suddenly whispered.

"Colosseum? What's that?"

"It is the sign of an opportunity. When an opportunity arrives, it will be accompanied by Colosseum," she intoned.

"So are you telling me I need to go to Rome?"

But the old woman merely grinned.

"When your opportunity comes, you mustn't let it slip away, you mustn't fumble around aimlessly as you have been doing. Seize it, boldly, daringly! If you do, you will no longer be unsatisfied, and be able to embark on a new path, though that path may hold hards.h.i.+ps of its own. Then again, I expect that you understand this quite well."

I didn't understand in the slightest, but I nodded anyway.

"Even if you don't catch this one, you don't need to worry. You are a splendid young man, so someday without a doubt you will make it. I can see it. There's no need to rush."

With that, the old woman brought her divinations to an end.

"Thank you very much."

I nodded and paid the fee.

Then, like a lost lamb, I turned and wandered back into the crowds of Kiyamachi.

I would like you to take the fortune teller's prediction to heart.

Maybe this situation was brought about by that old woman's curse. If that was the case, then perhaps the key to breaking this dreadful spell lay in this 'Colosseum'. I resolved not to sleep until I had gotten to the bottom of this mystery, but before I knew it I had drifted off into peaceful slumber.

When I woke, the hour hand was pointing to twelve.

I rose and pulled aside the curtains.

I was met with neither the blinding light of day, nor the inky darkness of night. Instead, I merely saw the pale light of the fluorescent lamp in the other room. I had hoped that something would change if I went to sleep, but the situation was exactly the same. Opening the door met with the same results as before.

For the convenience of my readers, I will label my original room Room 0. The room on the other side of the door is Room 1, and the room that lies through the window I shall designate Room -1.

I sat cross-legged in the middle of the room and listened to the soft burbling of the coffeemaker. Of course, I had gotten hungry once again. The castella was already gone, as was the last of the fish patties. I checked inside my refrigerator, hoping that something had magically appeared inside, but all that was left were some daikon, soy sauce, and spices. It was bereft of even that college staple, instant ramen. This was my reward for relying on a convenience store diet.

I boiled the daikon and ate it, liberally sprinkled with soy sauce and s.h.i.+chimi togaras.h.i.+, capping the meal off with a cup of coffee.

After only two days, I was out of food; all I had left was coffee and cigarettes. No matter how liberally I used these to stave off my pangs of hunger, my ribs would eventually start poking through my skin. I would starve to death alone, and my rotting corpse would adorn this G.o.dforsaken place for all eternity.

I sat in a corner with my head in my hands and attempted to use sheer willpower to get through the day, but no amount of willpower could mask the rumbling sounds coming from my stomach. With no other recourse, I worked out a plan to solve my food problem.

College students are filthy animals. When you think about filth, you think about mushrooms. I figured that I could eat the mushrooms that were probably growing in the back of my closet. But after I pulled out the p.o.r.n, cardboard, and smelly clothes, I discovered it to be an arid place, not suitable for growing mushrooms. Perhaps I could spread out my clothes on the floor, sprinkle them with water, and cultivate mushrooms that way. But I decided that if it came down to subsisting off mushrooms which themselves fed off my own dirty clothes, I would rather choose an honorable death by starvation.

I also thought of boiling the tatami mats and eating them; there was probably enough of my bodily fluids soaked into them that they had nutritional value. But they had too much fiber. It was clear that if I ate them, my bowel movements would become like the swiftly flowing ca.n.a.ls of Lake Biwa, and I would be hastened to an untimely end.

A moth had been sitting in a corner of the ceiling for the last few days, unmoving. Perhaps I could derive some protein by consuming it. Even an insect was still an animal. If I were ever to be stranded on a mountain, I would simply hunt for caterpillars and worms to roast and eat. However, I would rather lick up dust in the corner of the room than consume this foul thing covered with scales.

It would be a grand sort of survival if I had to chop off my excess body parts and eat them, but since my body was extremely streamlined and fuel-efficient, about the only excess meat I had on me was my earlobes. I was about as edible as a sparrow—all bones—and besides, I would rather not be talked about as "the boy who lived by eating his earlobes".

I fished around the s.p.a.ce between the TV and my desk and found a bottle of whisky. About half a year ago, Ozu and I had bought it for a bout of drunken revelry, but it was a little too harsh for me, and had lain there ever since, half-empty. In these desperate times, even the few nutrients this cheap whisky contained were valuable. I also found some expired vitamins in a medicine box in the closet.

Since I was too proud to eat cultivated mushrooms, the tatami mats, the moth, or my earlobes, all I had left to live on was whisky, vitamins, coffee, and cigarettes. I was like Robinson Crusoe, washed up on this uninhabited 4½-tatami sh.o.r.e. At least he had a gun to hunt with, but all I had was this moth. Nevertheless, I at least had running water, and furniture, and didn't have to worry about being attacked by wild animals. It was a little ambiguous as to whether this actually counted as "survival".

I spent that day rereading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, defiantly taunting whatever merciless G.o.d was watching me from afar. Since I couldn't see the sun, it was impossible to tell whether it was day or night, so I was unsure how accurate the attempts I made to demarcate each day from the next actually were.

When I closed the door and drew the curtains, it felt just like any other day, and I half-expected Ozu to come bursting through the door to stir up another ruckus.

The single bright side amidst all this misfortune was the fact that I had gotten my wisdom teeth pulled two weeks earlier. If I hadn't, I would probably be crying out for a dentist, and might even have collapsed and died.

The teeth I had gotten pulled at Kubozuka Dental Clinic still adorned the top of my desk.

Near the end of April my jaw had started to hurt so much that I couldn't even sleep at night.

I self-diagnosed the pain as a temporomandibular disorder, brought on by stress. Considering the fact that I was as delicate as a dandelion, and the toll that my ascetic pursuit of enlightenment had taken on my body, I would have expected this to happen sooner rather than later. All was as it should be. In that moment, I was euphoric, knowing that this was a trial that only the chosen few would have the privilege to undergo, and fell down on the floor of my room in an ecstatic delirium.

"Don't be silly, what could you possibly be stressed about," Ozu said, looking at me distastefully. "You just sit on your a.s.s all day, now that you've quit the society."

Certainly, to everyone else it seemed like I did nothing, but I insisted that I experienced unbearable stress each day from pondering these thankless questions on my journey of self-discovery. The pain in my jaw was proof enough of that.

"That's definitely just a cavity," Ozu bluntly told me.

"No it's not, that's ridiculous! It's not my tooth that hurts, it's my jaw."

Seeing me continue to writhe in agony, Ozu referred me to Kubozuka Dental Clinic, mentioning that a beautiful hygienist called Hanuki worked there. But I refused. My life thus far had not been the most eventful, but I had overcome enough adversity to consider myself versed in the ways of the world. Even so, I retained a healthy fear of dentists.

"You'll never get me in that chair."

"Even if you'll get to have a beautiful woman stick her fingers in your mouth? You should be thanking me. I'll bet you've never had the chance to lick a woman's fingers before in your life, and you never will again. You should take advantage of your cavity while you can; this opportunity comes once in a lifetime."

"Don't lump me in with the likes of yourself. I wouldn't want to lick someone's fingers anyways."

"You fluting liar!"

"That makes me sound like an orchestra, idiot. Say it right: f.u.c.king."

"Whatever, just make sure to go!"

He seemed to be rather pa.s.sionate about this.

One night, the pain suddenly spread to my teeth, which started throbbing, as if a troupe of fairies had gathered in my mouth for some kind of Cossack dance-off. I had no choice but to take Ozu's advice.

It turned out that the pain wasn't due to my body's fragility, or to my intense meditative practices: it was because of a cavity in my wisdom tooth. As much as it pained me, I had to admit that Ozu's deduction had been correct. After leaving the secret society, I hardly had any human contact at all, and as a result, my dental habits suffered as well.

The prospect of tasting a woman's fingers was not enough to entice me, I a.s.sure you, but it was true that Hanuki herself was a beauty. I would guess she was in her late twenties. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, making her already dignified figure look even more imposing, like the wife of a Sengoku-era military commander. Her dark eyebrows were knit in concentration as she skillfully wielded a terrifying, whirring instrument to adroitly sc.r.a.ping the tartar from my teeth. I was in awe of her calm, imperturbable demeanor.

After the procedure was done, I told her that Ozu had referred me here. She seemed quite familiar with him, chuckling "He's so funny, right?" Then, she carefully handed me my tooth, swaddled up in cotton as though it were a newborn baby.

I folded the tooth up in a tissue and enshrined it on my desk, staring at it every day. For some reason, I could never bring myself to throw it away.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was still skeptical, convinced that this was all just a dream.

But after three days, there was still a 4½-tatami room sitting beyond the door, and another one through the window. Even I couldn't just sit there reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea any longer. I was sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel as far as food was concerned, and I was running out of cigarettes as well. I had been hoping to avoid any reactionary activity to preserve my pride, but my honor wouldn't mean much if I was dead.

After the last dregs of my coffee drained into my empty belly, I slowly lapped at a dish of soy sauce, hoping to distract myself from my hunger.

Touching upon a more intimate topic (not that there was much for me to be embarra.s.sed about at this point), I couldn't ignore the call of nature, even on a subsistence diet. I had devised an ingenious system where liquid waste went into a beer bottle, and when the bottle got full I would simply dump it down the sink. The brown stuff, however, was another matter.

I pushed open the door to Room 1, my bowels straining. There was a window in this room as well, and with my fingers crossed, I opened it to find that it continued on to Room 2. Going back to the original room, I crossed through window to Room -1 and opened the door in that room, finding that it continued to Room -2 as well.

Exactly how far did this go on?

But I had more pressing issues to attend to. After considering how best to proceed, I laid out some newspapers on the tatami mats, took care of business, then gingerly placed the lot in a plastic bag and tied it up.

Now that the danger had pa.s.sed, I began to think once again about my shortage of food and tobacco. As things stood, I would have to come up with a solution on my own. Whatever sort of world this was, I could only rely on myself.

The way I solved both of those problems was as follows.

I entered Room 1.

The room on the other side of the door was unquestionably my own: therefore, I wouldn't hesitate to use it as such.

Setting foot into the room, I spotted a box of cigarettes. Next, I spotted a fish patty and castella, things I had thought I would never see again. I also found the daikon. I immediately grilled the fish patty, liberally sprinkled it with pepper, and proceeded to savor the wonderful flavor of animal protein for the first time in three days. I had never eaten such a delicious fish patty before. For dessert, I carved off a slice of castella. As energy flowed through my body, it felt as if I had been brought back to life.

I looked through the window into Room 2. It struck me that the door in Room 2 probably continued on to Room 3, which continued on to Room 4, and on and on into infinity. What an awfully miserly infinite world this was. I now lived in a boarding house larger than the entire world.

Initially I fell into despair, but the more I thought about it, the more fortunate it seemed. Even if I ate all the food in a room, I could simply move to the next one to find another fish patty and castella waiting for me. Unbalanced a diet though it was, for the time being I wouldn't have to worry about starving.

I couldn't ignore the fact that I was sustaining myself off the castella I had received from Ozu. For two years, I had unsuccessfully attempted to sever the ties that had bound me to him ever since our unfortunate meeting that spring day, but this was the first time that he had actually been of some use.

A year and a half after I entered university, my tenure with the Library Police came to an end.

As I have previously discussed, the purpose of the organization known as the Library Police is to track down those insolent urchins who fail to return their borrowed library materials, and forcibly retrieve said materials. If necessary, we would resort to brutality to achieve our ends, though invariably, brutality was the choice of first and only resort. Why the Library Police shouldered such a burden, and how they were related to the school administration—these are questions that you should not pursue, lest you befall some unfortunate accident.

Besides the retrieval of library property, the Library Police is charged with one additional task: to gather an exhaustive dossier on marked individuals, and use that information to various ends. Originally, this information gathering was used to retrieve books. To track down where a target is at any given moment, his behavioral patterns must be observed; to coerce an unwilling target into surrendering his materials once he is cornered, knowledge of his vulnerabilities is essential. But as the archives continued to grow, the organization was seduced by the power of all this knowledge. The Library Police had abandoned its original rationale for information gathering and begun to expand decades before I joined. Along with the campus itself, The Library Police intelligence network stretched its tendrils over everything in Kyoto, from Ōharazenin in the north to Byōdōin Hō-ōdō in Uji city in the south.

For ill.u.s.trative purposes, let us say that the Library Police chief learned that one of his subordinates, Mr. A (twenty-one years old), was going out with Ms. B (twenty years old), and for his own amus.e.m.e.nt decided to break up their relations.h.i.+p. At a snap of his fingers, he could obtain whatever intel he wanted about them, such as—"Mr. A is going out with Ms. B, but he's actually having a fling with Ms. C from the tennis circle, whose grades are jeopardizing her chances of graduation". Using that information, he would easily able to remotely control Ms. C and deal a fatal blow to the relations.h.i.+p between Mr. A and Ms. B.

The Library Police was the only organization that could stand up to the colossal power of the print shop, which was derived by selling ma.s.ses of forged reports. Since the print shop chief's true ident.i.ty was shrouded in mystery, the Library Police chief was often considered to be the de facto leader of the entire Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant secret society, which was a perfectly reasonable a.s.sumption.

At the time, I was merely an underling with no acquaintance whatsoever with the chief.

As an underling, my task was simply to retrieve library materials. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at this job; I would often end up being bamboozled by the silver tongues of my targets, or even hitting it off and going out to drink with them. I took to the job like a duck to lava, and the only reason I was able to achieve results was because of Ozu.

Ozu was a master of dirty tricks, and he made use of every one of them in the course of his work: stakeouts, crocodile tears, deception, extortion, ambushes, and even theft. Of course, his standing in the organization began to rise, and because I was his partner, so did mine. I found this all a great nuisance, especially because I was beginning to have my doubts about the Library Police.

Ozu was already interested in collecting information, and so he used his mysterious connections to secure his place as Aijima's right-hand man.

As we entered our second year, Aijima a.s.sumed the mantle of Library Police chief, and promoted Ozu and me to executive positions. Surprisingly, Ozu turned the offer down, and instead moved to the print shop. Reluctantly, I accepted the position, though with zero motivation I spent my days slacking off, and soon became a manager only in name.

Aijima was disgusted with me, and soon began to ignore me like I was a pebble on the side of the road.

During my tenure in the Library Police, I became acquainted with a rather odd fellow.

The winter of my first year, I was a.s.signed to retrieve a biography which was over half a year overdue. The target's name was Higuchi s.h.i.+ntaro, codename Kannazuki, and he lived on the second floor of my very own s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō. He was a strange individual, in that he didn't seem like a student at all, and yet I didn't think he was a fully-fledged adult either. I could never tell if he was in his room or not, because if he was, he rarely showed his face. Once, I barged in, absolutely certain that he was inside, but all I found was a duck aimlessly wandering about the room and nary a trace of my target. He always wore a threadbare dark blue yukata, with a sprinkling of unshaven stubble on his eggplant-shaped face. His eccentric appearance always made it easy to find out where he had been, but trying to contact him directly was like trying to catch smoke. Many times I just lost sight of him in s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine or the Demachi arcade.

One night, I finally caught him at Neko Ramen.

"You've been stalking me for a while, haven't you?" he smiled. "I've been thinking about returning it, but I'm a slow reader, you see."

"Well, the due date was a long time ago…"

"Yes, I know. It's time for me to give it up."

We slurped our ramen in silence.

I didn't let him out of my sight all the way back to s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō. "I need to use the bathroom," he said once we arrived, stepping into the communal lavatory. I waited for some time, but he didn't come out. Growing impatient, I looked inside, but the room was deserted. I ran up to the second floor, and just like magic, there was light s.h.i.+ning through the window above his door.

I pounded on his door, shouting his name, but there was no response. He was making a complete fool out of me. While I raged outside in the hallway, my then-partner Ozu arrived.

"Begging your pardon, this is my Master's room," he said. "How about you let it slide this time?"

"Like h.e.l.l I will!"

"It's no use. Once he's borrowed something, it's lost forever."

If even Ozu said it was impossible, then I had no choice but to throw in the towel. I had no clue what kind of Master this was, but if someone like Ozu was his disciple, there was no way he was any sort of decent one.

"Master, good evening. I have an offering for you."

Ozu entered the room and turned back to look at me. "Sorry," he said with a grin, before closing the door in my face.

I had been puttering around between Room -3 and Room 3 for about two days, and still there had been no improvement in the situation.

For the time being, I tried to keep myself busy. To keep fit, I strained through pushups and what I imagined were Hindu squats. I downed basins of coffee, and stuffed myself with castellas, while devising new ways to prepare fish burgers and daikon. I reread the description of the magnificent food in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea over and over until I began to drool.

I had always enjoyed the seclusion of this 4½-tatami room, but that had been because I knew that I could leave whenever I wanted. Once I opened the door, I would be greeted with the filthy hallway, and past that was the filthy bathroom, the filthy shoe rack, and finally, the exit from this filthy boarding house. It was precisely because I could leave whenever I wanted to that I never did.

Eventually the realization that I was confined to this 4½-tatami s.p.a.ce started to weigh heavily on me, and compounded with the lack of calcium from my diet, my mood began to take a turn for the worse. No matter how long I waited, nothing would change. I had no other choice: the only thing left for me to do was set off on a journey to the ends of this 4½-tatami world, solve this mystery, and if possible, find a way to escape.

At six o'clock about a week after my imprisonment in this wasteland had begun, still not knowing whether it was morning or night, I set off on my expedition.

From Room 0, I had to choose whether to go through the door or through the window.

I decided to go through the door. In other words, I would be moving through Room 1, Room 2, and so on, for as far as this path would take me.

Despite the fact that I was literally embarking on a journey to the ends of the earth, I didn't have to muster up as much courage as such an odyssey would normally warrant, since I would just be traversing my own room over and over. I wouldn't have to worry about wild animals, or blizzards, or running out of food; hence, I didn't have to prepare anything. No matter where I was on my journey, I would be in my own room. If I got tired, I could just crawl under the covers of my own bed.

Though I didn't meet any wild beasts, I did have a number of frightening encounters.

On the first day, I crossed through twenty rooms, and yet the rooms still continued on. It felt like this was a fool's errand, and decided to stop there for the night.

On the third day, I discovered the secret to unlimited wealth.

I have previously mentioned the s.p.a.ce between my desk and the bookshelves in the description of my room. That day, I decided to dig in there for anything that might be of use, and in the course of my survey of that Siberian wasteland discovered a ragged wallet that had been banished there. Inside it was a single thousand-yen bill. I sat in the middle of the room, smoothed out the worn bill, and laughed hollowly. What use was this bill to me? Now that my world had devolved from a capitalist society into this utterly isolated 4½-tatami maze, it might as well have been a sc.r.a.p of toilet paper.

But when I moved into the next room, I found another wallet and another thousand-yen bill. I was thunderstruck. If it was the same in all the other rooms, then I would make a profit of a thousand yen in every room. Ten rooms would mean ten thousand yen. One hundred rooms was one hundred thousand yen. A thousand rooms was… What a racket. Whenever I escaped this world, I would be able to pay off the rest of my tuition, and live comfortably on this money. Carousing around in Gion would no longer be just a dream.

After that, I started to carry my backpack with me on my journey, and threw another thousand-yen bill into it with each room that I pa.s.sed.

At first, I got bored after moving through only a few rooms, and spent the rest of my time reading and indulging myself in daydreams, trying to keep my spirits up. I even took the opportunity to sit at my desk and admirably do some studying, but was soundly defeated by the Schrödinger equation.

I kept recalling the old fortune teller's words.

What was this "Colosseum"?

I was firmly convinced that she had placed a curse on me, and it was clear that the key to breaking the curse lay in "Colosseum". But there wasn't a Colosseum anywhere in my room. While I traversed through this ma.s.sive dimension, I looked for things that might be related to the Colosseum, but found absolutely nothing.

As I continued this grueling journey, I thought back upon the Mochiguma that had been my solace for a year. Though my heart had slowly shriveled up over the years, the memory of that soft teddy bear was still dear to my heart.

I found the Mochiguma at the s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine used book fair last summer, and it soon became very dear to my heart. It was a grey, spongy bear, almost as soft as a baby and as tall as a can of soda. Squeezing it affectionately was sure to bring a smile to my face, and so I always kept it by my side. After I left the secret society and retreated to my room, my only human contact was with the half-demon Ozu, but even in that solitary existence I needed a companion.

However, a few days before this journey began, the Mochiguma mysteriously disappeared at the coin laundromat. I was was.h.i.+ng off a few stains that the poor bear had acquired in the course of living with me, but when I lifted the lid at the end of the cycle, I found that someone had absconded with my Mochiguma, leaving a pile of unlovable boxers in its place. Upon further inspection, it turned out that those sad, indelibly stained boxers were in fact my very own underpants.

"Perhaps you merely imagined that you were was.h.i.+ng the bear, and actually came here to do your regular laundry. You just got sick of doing ordinary laundry, and fancied yourself was.h.i.+ng a teddy bear instead of your boring clothes," I thought to myself. "You're starting to lose it."

But when I returned to my room, my underpants were still in their usual spot. I was confused, now in possession of two identical sets of boxers. Even now, that mystery had never been explained, and I just had to live without my Mochiguma.

I wandered around the room aimlessly, hoping my Mochiguma was doing well, wherever it was.

Initially I counted every room that I occupied, but somewhere along the way I gave it up.

Open the door, go in, cross through Room n, open the window, climb in, cross through Room n+1, open the door, go in, cross through Room n+2, open the window…I slogged on endlessly. Though I continued to profit a thousand yen at a time, I still couldn't see any means of escape, and depending on how hopeful or despairing I was feeling, the value of each bill I picked up fluctuated wildly. If I couldn't get out of this world, then all the bills I had been painstakingly collecting were just worthless sc.r.a.ps of paper. I continued to collect them even when I was on a mental downturn, the action of someone who was either a boundless spring of optimism, or well and truly dest.i.tute.

I ate heaps of castellas, grilled fish patty after fish patty, and soldiered on this lonely march.

Sometimes I wondered whether I had actually fallen into a h.e.l.l of 4½-tatami rooms and was condemned to suffer like this for all of eternity. Thoughts of my previous iniquities floated through my head, and once or twice I even collapsed, overwhelmed by my embarra.s.sment. "I knew I was going to h.e.l.l!" I shouted.

At last, having reached my breaking point, I collapsed onto the tatami mat like a log and refused to march further.

I began to read The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hans.h.i.+chi, getting drunk off cheap whiskey and chain-smoking. "Why is this happening to me?" I shouted at the ceiling. Becoming frightened at the silent walls pressing me in, I sang what few songs I knew at the top of my lungs; in any case, no one was going to complain about the noise. I almost stripped naked, painted my body pink, and yelled out the complaints and obscenities I had been suppressing for so long, but even though I was completely alone, my powers of reason hadn't yet completely gone out the window. Then again, under the circ.u.mstances, the wheels could come off at any moment. Few others I know would have been able to withstand the pressure

However, I did manage to make a discovery.

Though each room looked practically identical, around the tenth day of my journey I began to notice a few differences here and there. The contents on each of the bookshelves differed so slightly as to be almost unnoticeable. I looked for a copy of The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hans.h.i.+chi, but in that particular room the book did not exist.

What did this mean? I did not yet know the answer.

Let me turn to the issue of hygiene on this journey through the 4½-tatami world.

I loathed doing laundry, and thankfully, here I didn't need to. There was a set of clothes in every room, so whenever the clothes I was wearing got dirty I could simply change into a new outfit. I fastidiously changed my underwear every day, so oddly enough, I was actually cleaner in this world without laundromats.

At first I tried to keep shaving, but before long it got tiresome and I gave up completely. For one, I couldn't even go outside even to a convenience store, so there was absolutely no point. My hair got quite long as well, and after a while my face resembled that of Robinson Crusoe, washed up on a 4½-tatami sh.o.r.e.

My beard and hair were of secondary concern, but the rest of my body was another matter. There were coin-operated showers in the corridor in s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō, but in this world where corridors did not exist, I couldn't just walk down the hall and get to those showers. I was reduced to boiling water, pouring it into a washbasin, and wetting a towel to wipe myself off. Humming under my breath, I tried my best to pretend that it was just as good as a shower, but to little avail.

As I had nothing else to think about, I spent a lot of time reflecting upon the wasted past two years of my life. It was too late to change anything now, but I still regretted frittering away so much time on such tomfoolery.

After I broke up my partners.h.i.+p with Ozu, I gained a reputation for being incredibly useless, and soon became known as the laziest manager in the history of the Library Police. Though all I did was slack off, I was never hunted down or threatened. Ozu, who had been the golden boy of the Library Police and was now part of the print shop, often visited me, and it was probably because of him that the powers that be decided to let my transgressions slide.

I told Ozu that I was thinking about quitting, but he merely laughed and brushed off my concerns.

"Come on, I'm sure you'll find something that floats your boat if you stick with it."

How unhelpful.

My second year was a frustrating, uncertain time, and my resolve to stick it out quickly waned. On paper I was part of the top bra.s.s, so I still attended the secret meetings and surrounded myself with conspiracies to keep up appearances, but it all felt completely meaningless. All the other society members thought I was an idiot, and the reigning Library Police chief Aijima wouldn't give me the time of day. I came to resent him deeply.

Every night, I dreamed about deserting the society. It wasn't enough to just leave outright; I wanted my escape to be an audacious show of defiance that would go down in the annals of the Library Police.

In the fall of that year, I let my plans slip as I was having a drink with Ozu. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said. "Yeah, it all seems like a bunch of dumb college students having fun, but the Library Police's information network is the real deal. You don't want to make an enemy out of them."

"You think I'm frightened?"

Ozu flattened the the Mochiguma lying on the floor, which gave a sad wheeze as the air went out of it.

"You're going to become like this bear. My b.u.t.t puckers up just thinking about it."

"Like you give a d.a.m.n."

"See, that right there. That's why. Your reputation is in the gutter right now, and I'm pulling off a miracle keeping anything from happening to you. A little appreciation would be nice."

"I don't have anything to thank you for."

"Hey, it's not like it costs you anything, friendo..."

The warm bubbling of the hotpot was a comforting sound when the loneliness of the autumn nights threatened to pierce my bones. On the other hand, the fact that Ozu was the only one willing to huddle around a hotpot with me was a serious problem. As a human being, it was inexcusable. This was no time to be sulking just because I had had the misfortune of falling into this weird society. Beyond the confines of the secret society, a respectable campus life was waiting.

"You're thinking about how your student life should have been so much better, aren't you?" Ozu said, cutting to the heart of the matter. "You keep fidgeting. You haven't fallen for someone, have you? I know people get really embarra.s.sed and self-conscious whenever they're thinking about that sort of thing."

"Don't be stupid."

"Didn't you work part-time at the s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine used book fair? I see you must have had an 'encounter' there."

I ignored his insinuation and muttered, "…I should have chosen a different path."

"Not that I'm trying to make you feel better or anything, but I think that no matter how you led your life you would have run into me. Call it intuition. At any rate I'm doing everything I can to corrupt you. You can't fight fate." He lifted his pinky dramatically. "You and I are bound by the black thread of fate."

I shuddered, imagining myself sinking to the pitch-black depths of the sea, tied up with Ozu like a Christmas ham.

Ozu smiled contentedly at my discomfort and popped a bit of pork into his mouth. "Aijima's getting slammed too. Even though I've moved to the print shop, he still comes to me for advice."

"What does he see in a little b.a.s.t.a.r.d like you?"

"My spotless character, my silver tongue, my discerning intellect, my winning smile, and of course my boundless love for my fellow man. There are the keys to winning friends and influencing people. If you need any more pointers, feel free to ask!"

"Shut up," I growled, but Ozu just grinned broadly.

I left those memories behind me, and continued on my journey.

The history of the Earth is broadly divided into various spans of time: the Precambrian, the Paleozoic era, the Mesozoic era, and finally the Cenozoic era. At the beginning of the Paleozoic era was the Cambrian period, during which the Cambrian explosion occurred, bringing many new species into being. During the Jura.s.sic and Cretaceous periods of the Mesozoic era, dinosaurs flourished on the earth. I did rather enjoy looking at pictures of dinosaurs when I was young.

At the end of the Paleozoic era was the Permian period.

If you look at the kanji that make up Permian, you might imagine the surface of the earth, inhabited by all manner of squirming creatures, to be covered with tatami mats. In that period, the world was composed of an uncountable number of two-tatami rooms. As the world entered the Tria.s.sic period at the advent of the Mesozoic era, the number of tatami increased by one. But as the dawn of the dinosaurs arrived, the beautifully laid out tatami mats were stomped into nothingness and the world moved into the Jura.s.sic period.

I couldn't help but think that the world had turned into a large 4½-tatami room. The Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era had ended, replaced by the Quadra.s.sic period. A ma.s.s extinction had wiped out life on Earth, leaving only me and the moth that clung to the ceiling. So much for biodiversity.

As the last remaining human, I would wander this 4½-tatami world endlessly. I bemoaned the fact that no matter where I looked, I would never find an Eve to my Adam.

But no sooner had this thought crossed my mind than I did, in fact, meet a most unexpected Eve.

It was about twenty days into my journey.

I had lost track of what room I was in, so I shall call it Room k. Having spent half the day marching through room after room, I was becoming irritable. I took a rest and snacked on some castella, which I had come to loathe entirely.

The fluorescent light in the next room appeared to be broken and flickered on and off intermittently. I had already seen a number of these dark rooms (which I called "cloudy rooms"), always pa.s.sing through them quickly, since they had an eerie aura about them.

After finis.h.i.+ng my break, I opened the window and peered into the next room.

In one of the corners was a person sitting and reading a book.

Clichéd as it may sound, my heart nearly jumped into my throat.

Over the past twenty days, I spoken to nary a soul, and at last, on my solitary journey through this solitary world, I had finally met another person. But fear overwhelmed my delight.

The girl reading the book was looking downwards, staring intently at the copy of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea on her lap. Her sleek black hair glimmered each time the light flickered. She hadn't even looked up when I opened the window, which showed a surprising amount of confidence. I considered whether she might actually be a witch who controlled this corner of the 4½-tatami world. If I made one false move, I might be turned into a steaming meat bun and devoured.

"Ah, I beg your pardon," I stammered hoa.r.s.ely.

She didn't move.

I nervously stepped into the room and approached her.

She was quite lovely, and her skin looked and felt as if it was real. Her hair was carefully groomed, and not an article of clothing was out of place. She looked just like a well-to-do young lady, except that she didn't move so much as a muscle. It was as if she had been frozen in time, forever looking wistfully into the distance.

"Kaori?" I gasped, almost too shocked to speak.

It was near the end of fall last year.

Aijima, who had inexplicably become the head of the Library Police, had turned into a schizophrenic, a paranoiac, making outrageous accusations with no evidence, trusting no one. He had mobilized the Library Police solely for the petty goal of overthrowing the head of the Misogi movie circle, a person called Jōgasaki.

There was rumors of beef between Aijima and this Jōgasaki, but some also whispered that his real objective was to take control of this circle for himself and impress a girl who was one of the circle members. Whatever the reason, Aijima had set Jōgasaki in his crosshairs.

The first step, of course, was intelligence gathering.

Through the intelligence network that was woven throughout the campus, we ama.s.sed all sorts of information pertaining to Jōgasaki. Among the data we gathered was a photo of a woman. During the war council convened to devise the plan of attack, this photo was circulated among the staff, and an emotionless voice spoke up.

"This is the target: Kaori."

That was Aijima's filthy, despicable plan. To Jōgasaki, Kaori was worth more than gold or jewels, and if we kidnapped her, then Jōgasaki would have no choice but to bow to our demands.

The operation took place on the night before the school cultural festival, while the sounds of revelry could be heard all over campus. Jōgasaki was away at a gathering held by the circle, leaving his apartment vacant. With regretful glances back at the carousing, as if to question why they were being forced to partic.i.p.ate in this act, several senior members of the Library Police slipped through the night and gathered at Yos.h.i.+da Shrine, myself included. We linked up with a society member known only as the Lockman and headed towards Jōgasaki's apartment.

The plan was for the Lockman to gain entry to the apartment, allowing the staff members to enter and steal away Kaori, the love doll. However, we encountered a setback before we even got to the building. Among us was a faithless wretch who, upon realizing that this entire enterprise was a criminal offense, completely lost his nerve and dedication to the plot. That wretch was me.

I threw a tantrum and clung desperately to a concrete wall. The other members had also been harboring doubts about the plan, and hesitated after seeing my outburst. My appeals for justice began to win them over, and in a few moments more, Aijima's plan would be ruined.

Of course, who else would decide to make an appearance at that moment but Aijima.

"You nimrods, what are you dithering about?" he screeched. Immediately, we were divided into two factions: one that wanted to proceed immediately with the plan, and another that wanted to flee blindly into the night. Of course, I was the entirety of the faction that wanted to run away, or as I would prefer to call it, make a tactical retreat.

As I scampered off into the night, I left the elegant parting remark, "Screw your stupid plan!" Aijima's eyes flashed like a serpent's, and I began to genuinely fear for my life.

I careened through town and hid myself in the festivities, cursing myself for saying those words.

In the end my resistance was futile, and Aijima kidnapped Kaori anyways.

Late that night, in some underground nook of campus, Jōgasaki was forced to bow to Aijima's demands, and within a few days had ceded control of the circle he had founded and ruled with an iron fist for so long. I heard that he showered Aijima with praise, even going so far as to embrace him in public.

I was filled with outrage.

I would never forgive the Library Police chief.

I don't mean to brag, but I had some tricks up my sleeve as well. I quickly sprang into action, fleeing to a hiding place that Ozu had prepared for me, and there I stayed, hardly daring to breathe, quivering with rage like a newborn fawn.

I decided to stay the night in Room k.

When I woke up, I still didn't feel like moving on yet. Scratching my sideburns, which by now had grown so long that they had merged with my beard, I pondered my situation. As I took a sip of coffee, my gaze fell upon the dirty wall behind the TV.

Then I had a revelation.

For over twenty days, I had been monotonously going through the door and exiting through the window. Perhaps I had simply been banging my head against the wall all this time. If I really wanted to escape, why hadn't I literally broken through the wall? Maybe that was all it would take to solve this entire problem. There was an exchange student living next to me, but even if I were to suddenly come cras.h.i.+ng through the part.i.tion, I'm sure he would just laugh it off with his continental largesse.

I was re-energized at the thought of finally being able to escape.

I examined the wall. I hadn't installed an air conditioner, but I didn't spend my days drenched in sweat just to put myself through some kind of n.o.ble suffering. The walls of this boarding house were like the stage backdrops in the cultural festival: so thin and full of holes that I could hear my neighbor and his girlfriend whispering sweet nothings to each other as if I was right next to them. The moment I installed an AC unit, the residents of room 109 next door would feel a wonderfully cool breeze coming through the wall Then the air would flow to room 108, then 107, then 106. The entire first floor would be free to carry on their lives in comfort while I footed the enormous electricity bill.

Now, all my sweat was about to pay off.

I did some pushups and squats to warm up, and then took a wrench to the wall. The part.i.tion dented easily, and a small crack opened up. Feeling like Hercules, I gleefully pounded away, ignoring the cloud of dust that billowed around me, but after a short period of determined hammering I tired. I gave one sharp kick to the crack, opening up a small hole about fifteen centimeters in diameter. Through the hole I could see the light of a fluorescent lamp.

"All right!" I crowed, widening the hole some more before crawling through.

I looked around, only to find myself in yet another identical 4½-tatami room.

After that, I continued to break walls, tried and failed to break through the ceiling, saw my hopes wax and wane, opened doors, lapped up soy sauce, opened windows, slept for two full days, got wasted and threw up, and whenever I remembered, broke more walls on my endless wandering through this 4½-tatami world.

The following are extracts from the scattered diaries I occasionally kept over the next twenty days. Parenthetically, the dates are based solely on my sleep schedule in that world. They are by no means an accurate representation of the actual time that pa.s.sed, as I could only demarcate days and nights by when I went to sleep and woke up.

Day 24

Woke up at two. Breakfast was salted coffee and vitamins. I don't know how many walls I broke today. The walls that separate the rooms are fragile, but no matter how many I smash through I don't seem to get anywhere. Still, breaking walls makes me feel better. It feels like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel on the other side of the wall. I guess I'm just daydreaming. But maybe this endless 4½-tatami world is a dream. Am I dreaming? A dream. A dream. My dream. A s.h.i.+ning, rosy, worthwhile student life.

Thinking about that makes me feel depressed, so I had some whiskey and fish patties and went to sleep. Even in my dreams I was eating a fish patty. Get it together. Awake or asleep it's all fish patties. At this point my body is probably completely made of fish patties and castellas.

Day 25

Woke up at four. Didn't feel like doing anything today, so I only went through a few rooms. Drank some whisky. Terrible whisky, but sadly I've gotten used to it.

Day 27

I feel stronger. Don't know how I did it since I haven't set foot outside of these rooms. It must be because all the wall-breaking and squats I did to kick the doldrums. I wonder how you do real Hindu squats though. Maybe the ones I invented are actually more effective than the real thing. Perhaps I will begin to spread these new Hindu squats throughout the world, when I leave this place.

Day 30

Found something interesting in one of the rooms I pa.s.sed today. It was only a small paulownia box, but I found a kamenoko scrubbing brush inside. I tested it on the sink, and all the filth came right off without any detergent. This thing is super effective. I'm only pa.s.sing through, but just on a whim I polished the sink to a s.h.i.+ne. What an idiot I am.

I wonder why each room has these small differences, like Kaori. What causes them? At first glance they all look like my room at first glance, so how do these little changes arise? Don't have the interest or the money to buy a love doll, and I didn't even know a brush like this could exist.

How strange.

Day 31.

Woke at three.

I don't know if it's afternoon or morning. Someone please tell me. Offering a reward of 3,000 yen. Today I went running for the gold. But I probably shouldn't go too far without orienting myself first. From now on, I think I will stop breaking walls and return to moving through doors and windows. Though I'm sure I will start thinking about the other side of the wall and start smas.h.i.+ng things again before too long.

I had a dream while I was napping.

One of the rooms was divided in half by the Great Wall of China. I scaled it easily, because it was a dream. I crossed it in a single step, which is ridiculous since it can be seen from s.p.a.ce. Then again it was a dream. On the other side, Ozu was sitting there eating some delicious-looking yakiniku. I could just about taste salted beef tongue with leeks, but before I could put it in my mouth Ozu s.n.a.t.c.hed the meat right from under my nose. He ate it all, even if it was still raw and b.l.o.o.d.y, keeping me from getting a single bite. I suddenly woke up with a lingering sense of frustration. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ozu. Even in my dreams he's an a.s.shole. But even subconsciously I still sort of miss him.

G.o.d of the 4½-tatami, I humbly beseech thee, grant thy humble servant a blessed morsel of meat. Nay, I forget my place. Just a bit of roasted eggplant, or undercooked leeks, or even just the drippings off the meat.

Day 34

I ended my travels a little early today, and did some cooking. I crumbled up the castella and boiled it along with a fish patty. Tasted a little strange, but at least it was a change from the usual. Coffee is the one thing that I'll never get tired of, but I don't know how much nutrition is in it. This is a very important question. Thinking about it made me self-conscious about the lack of vegetables in my diet so I started chugging vitamins. I want to eat something nutritious. I want some seaweed.

I washed my hair in the sink, and went to sleep. Why is it that was.h.i.+ng my hair in cold water makes me want to break down and cry? I guess cooling my head makes me depressed.

Day 38

You're supposed to stay still and wait for rescue when you are stranded, but how many people would be willing to do that in a situation like mine? If I don't move, then I will run out of food rather quickly. I am a nomad, wandering this 4½-tatami world in search of fish patties and castellas. This grand adventure of mine feels neither grand nor adventurous.

Anyways, who would look for me in this situation? I don't even know how to describe the predicament I find myself in. Is it the world that has disappeared, or is it only me?

If it was me, then about a month has already gone by in the real world. June has already ended. I'm like the 4½-tatami version of Uras.h.i.+ma Tarō. But even he didn't have it too rough, since he just spent all his time in the palace of the Dragon King.

My family is probably searching for me. Dad, Mom, I'm sorry for doing this to you.

But Ozu would never think about looking for me. He's probably just laughing it off with a bunch of cute undercla.s.smen, wondering where I've wandered off to, I'm certain of it. My grudge against Dream Ozu for denying me the salted beef tongue is still fresh.

Day 39

What will I do if I really can't escape this place?

I'll just have to bravely make my own way here as a colonist, alone. I will invent other culinary creations with castellas and fish patties; I'll begin farming mushrooms; I'll break down all the walls and construct a bowling alley, movie theater, arcade, and all sorts of recreational centers for myself; I'll create my own utopia.

I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

It's all so exciting, so why am I crying?

Throughout this miserable journey, I had been plagued by the problem of food.

I desperately wanted to eat some rice. Even a convenience store rice ball would do, no matter how cold and stale it was. I would trade a hundred fish patties just to have one. If a freshly cooked bowl of rice were to be placed before me, I would probably dissolve into a puddle of tears.

Thin miso soup from the co-op store. Hard-boiled eggs. Omelets. Sautéed spinach. Grilled mackerel. Sautéed burdock and carrot slices. Fermented soybeans. Grilled eel on rice. Chicken and egg rice. Beef bowls. Pork and egg rice. Fried rice. Seaweed. Teriyaki amberjack. Grilled salmon. Egg foo young. Chashu ramen. Egg drop ramen. Hot soba with duck breast. Gyoza soup. Fried chicken. Yakiniku, of course. Curry. Steamed rice with azuki. Fresh salad. Miso cuc.u.mber slices. Cold tomatoes. Melons. Peaches. Watermelons. Pears. Apples. Grapes. Satsuma.

Maybe I would never taste any of them ever again. But even that thought just made my mouth water even more. Almost every day, I stumbled through this 4½-tatami maze, deliriously chasing after tantalizing hallucinations of the most delicious food you could imagine until I collapsed.

What I yearned for most was Neko Ramen.

Neko Ramen is a fabled ramen stand which is rumored to make its broth out of cats. Whether that is true or not, the taste is unparalleled. Thick noodles swimming in that rich, incomparable broth. Before I was imprisoned here I used to go to Neko Ramen in the middle of the night whenever the craving struck.

A world where I could go to Neko Ramen in the middle of the night.

To me, that was Paradise.

The other thing I really missed was a bath.

I longed to jump into one of the s.p.a.cious baths in the public bathhouse and settle in for a good soak. I often thought about the ancient bathhouse that was in downtown, just west down s.h.i.+mogamo Boulevard. Whenever I felt like a bath, all I had to do was pick up a towel and head down the street. There was nothing like walking past all the shops, getting there before the evening crowds arrived, and jumping into an empty bath with a splash and a s.h.i.+t-eating grin on my face.

How I longed to do that again.

One day, I tried to construct a bathtub after a long march.

I dragged out a few cardboard boxes from the closet, dumped out their contents, and disa.s.sembled them. It took me about two hours to construct a makes.h.i.+ft bathtub from those materials. Calculating how much water I could boil in the pot, I made the bathtub as flat as I could so I could stretch out inside it, lining it with plastic garbage bags in an attempt to waterproof it.

Then I boiled water in my pot, and dumped it into the tub, repeating until it was almost full.

As much as I was looking forward to soaking myself, the water quickly became tepid, and there wasn't enough room to submerge my entire body, so I had to awkwardly wedge my thin frame into that little cardboard bathtub. I couldn't help but wonder just what I was doing. The bathtub eventually collapsed, and all the water came pouring right out into the room.

The most painful thing was that no one was there to make fun of my pathetic efforts. If Ozu were here, he would undoubtedly roast me alive.

"What are you doing? Maggots eating your brain or something?" he would say.

One morning, I woke up with the sensation that someone was stroking my face with a feather duster.

I sat up in my disheveled bed. To my great consternation, my room was dancing with moths. Usually there was just the one moth sitting alone in the corner of the ceiling, but today it was joined by a number of comrades. They kept trickling in one by one through the hole I had knocked in the wall yesterday. I looked through that hole to find the room on the other side swarming with moths as well, the air thick with black scales.

I hastily grabbed my backpack, moved to the next 4½-tatami room, and shut the window tightly behind me.

Each room only contained a single moth, but when they all gathered together they made a giant swarm. I guess even moths got lonely. Now that they had discovered kindred spirits in which to confide, they were all on a roadtrip to recruit more members for their support group. It made me a little jealous.

I heaved a large sigh.

The moths could tell bawdy stories, fall in love, and even sneer at those of their number that did. On the other hand, the only one who would laugh at me for talking to myself and indulging in daydreams was...myself. Even the most self-contained lifestyle needed a little more than this.

As I watched my new lepidopteran roommates enjoying themselves, I began to feel even sorrier for myself.

Let us briefly return to the events of the previous autumn.

After fleeing from the scene of Kaori's abduction, I barricaded myself in a hideout, trembling with fear.

Since I had openly declared rebellion, Aijima would likely move the Library Police to crush me. Jōgasaki's fate would become my own. My deepest and darkest secrets would be posted on bulletin boards; I would become a laughing stock everywhere I went; and eventually a bunch of thugs would catch me, dye my entire body pink, and throw me into the Suirokaku Aqueduct on the grounds of Nanzenji temple.

According to Ozu, Aijima was searching high and low for me.

"Aijima's in hot water too, considering how reckless his actions were," Ozu informed me. "Things were getting so bad that even the print shop was thinking about stepping in."

I dared not step foot outside of my hiding spot.

My place of refuge belonged to none other than Higuchi s.h.i.+ntarō, the man from whom I had previously attempted to retrieve an overdue library book. When Ozu first suggested that I hide on the second floor of s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō, I scoffed. My plan was to skip out on Kyoto entirely and pursue enlightenment out at Cape Muroto.

"Forget running around like a headless chicken, it's much safer to hide right here. They'd never think to look right under their own noses, see?"

Ozu's persistence convinced me, and I began to freeload in Higuchi's room.

I spent my days playing a homemade naval battle board game with Higuchi. For a while, Ozu didn't show up. It didn't feel right being so obsessed with some silly game while my campus life was cras.h.i.+ng down around my ears. As I morosely sent a submarine to the bottom, Higuchi produced a cigar and attempted to cheer me up.

"Chin up, Ozu's sure to straighten things out."

"Won't he just betray me instead?"

"Hmm, I suppose that's a possibility as well," he smiled. "You never can tell which way the wind blows with him."

"This isn't funny!"

"But, I did hear him say that he was risking his life to keep you out of harm's way."

I had been wandering this maze for nearly fifty days.

It was hard to believe that in the real world, it was already midsummer.

For 1,200 hours, all I had eaten were castellas and fish patties and vitamins and coffee and daikon. No sunlight pierced the window panes; no breeze disturbed the stagnant air within these walls. It had been so long since I had held a conversation with anyone other than myself. Even the vast amount of money I had acc.u.mulated now seemed odious to me, and I didn't want to keep picking up these thousand yen bills anymore. I even considered just tossing aside the banknote-filled backpack, and continuing on without it.

What a world this was. What a world.

The ground was covered by an unbroken layer of tatami mats There was no dawn or dusk here, no wind or rain. The only light here came from the dingy fluorescent lamp. With naught but solitude by my side, I walked heedlessly from one room to the next, looking for the end of the world. I broke down countless walls, climbed through countless windows, opened countless doors.

Occasionally I would inhabit the same room for several days in a row, reading books, singing songs, smoking cigarettes, telling myself that after all I wasn't going anywhere, so there was no point in tiring myself out. But after spending an entire day staring listlessly at the worn ceiling, sitting there in that awful silence like I was the last man on Earth, I began to feel a terrifying loneliness pressing in on me. Making bizarre food creations with the limited ingredients that I had, folding endless hordes of origami cranes and samurai helmets, wrestling in my underwear with Johnny, writing essays, doing pushups, going back for round two with Johnny, playing with a rubber band gun—nothing I did could help me forget the reality of my situation.

Nothing comes to him who waits.

Having barricaded myself in my 4½-tatami fortress ever since I washed my hands of the secret society half a year ago, I had thought myself someone who could exist in solitude quite comfortably. What poppyc.o.c.k. I hadn't really been alone. Compared to my present existence, I had practically been a social b.u.t.terfly. I had boasted of my solitude, when in reality I was no more than a presumptuous child, dipping my toes into the tide on the sh.o.r.e of the sea of loneliness.

I couldn't stand to be alone.

No matter what, I need to escape this place.

I unsteadily rose to my feet, and began journeying through this 4½-tatami world once more.

There was no one here.

Not a soul to talk to.

I wondered when the last time I had spoken to Ozu was.

Keeping my spirits up while wandering through this place became harder every day, as did clambering through the countless windows. I no longer rambled on to myself, or sang songs, or even wiped myself off. I certainly didn't feel like eating any more fish patties.

Always the same 4½-tatami room.

Always the same.

Always the same.

No matter how far I went, this scenery would continue on forever.

All I did was mumble the same lines over and over in my head.

While I leisurely played my board game in Higuchi's room, things were moving rapidly on the outside.

That scheming devil Ozu had made his move.

While the a.s.sistant director of the print shop was away in Hokkaido for a conference, Ozu took advantage of his absence and exercised his powers as interim deputy director, ordering a halt to the operations of the print shop. This had never happened before in the history of the secret society, and Aijima completely forgot about me, rus.h.i.+ng immediately to the print shop.

Ozu appeared before Aijima, smiling unctuously like a dishonest merchant.

"The board of directors is concerned; apparently, someone is planning a mutiny against them. We are having a meeting to address those concerns."

Never in his wildest dreams would Ajima have imagined that Ozu was planning to seize power for himself. While Ozu pretended to discuss things with Aijima, he had already laid the groundwork for his scheme with the other organizations. With the help of an old a.s.sociate of his in the Honwaka softball cult, who had connections throughout the society, negotiations were quite simple. In addition, the head of the cultural festival planning committee was his friend, and his name was well known even among the more obscure research societies. To sweeten the deal, Ozu promised to shave off a large chunk of the cut from the print shop that was supposed to go to the Library Police, and distribute the funds amongst the other groups. Using his connections from his Library Police days, he made sure only to recruit people he knew would rally to his cause. Those he couldn't convince to join him were placed under house arrest on the day of the meeting by the Cheery Bicycle Corps.

Seeing his many tentacles encircling his prey was nothing short of terrifying, and Aijima was walking right into his trap.

The meeting was an open-and-shut affair. Once the truth came out that Aijima had used the Library Police to settle his personal grudge against Jōgasaki, the vote was unanimous to expel him from the secret society. He was unceremoniously dragged out of the hall by members of the Cheery Bicycle Corps before he had even processed what had just occurred, while the other members quietly moved to the next item on the agenda.

"I think Ozu would make a fine replacement," proposed the Honwaka softball circle representative.

"Well, gosh, I've got a lot of things on my plate," Ozu said coyly, pretending to demur.

In the end, it was decided that Ozu would become the head of both the print shop and the Library Police.

The night that Ozu was inaugurated as the new Library Police chief, I timidly ventured onto campus for the first time in a week. During my self-imposed imprisonment, the weather had grown fairly chilly, and the once colorful autumn foliage now lay dying on the cold ground. I entered the law school building and descended into the underground lecture room where the meeting was being held, witnessing the success of Ozu's coup d'état and the pitiful conclusion of Aijima's reign.

After the meeting was adjourned and the other members left, Ozu sat alone on the lecture platform. I observed his face from my seat in the corner of the room. The room, empty but for us two, grew steadily colder, and my breath condensed in white puffs each time I exhaled. The newly minted Vice-Director-of-the-Print-Shop-c.u.m-Library-Police-Chief, did not have the sort of presence that such a grand t.i.tle would usually warrant, and was instead grinning in his usual imp-like fas.h.i.+on.

"You're a scary person, you know that?" I said seriously.

"This is just child's play," he yawned. "In any case, you're off the hook now."

We left the underground auditorium behind and headed off to Neko Ramen.

Of course, it was my treat.

And so I washed my hands of the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant and set sail for sunnier climes. Or such was my intention, but unable to ignore the fact that wasting two years of my life had set me back tremendously, I secluded myself in my room again.

I had hoped to quickly rid myself of the dreadful Ozu as well, but that did not come to pa.s.s either.

That was because he was the only person who ever visited me in my room.

Ozu is a student the same year as I. Though he is a member of the electrical engineering department, he hates electricity, electronics and engineering. His first-year grades were so borderline that I wondered if there was any point to him being in university at all. He, however, wasn't concerned in the slightest.

Because he despises vegetables and adheres strictly to a diet of fast food, he has the extremely eerie look and complexion of someone from the far side of the moon. If you were to meet him the street late at night eight out of ten people would mistake him for a youkai. The remaining two people were certainly youkai themselves.

Cruelly beating the weak, groveling to the strong, selfish, self-a.s.sured, lazy, a complete demon, neglecting studies, lacking a shred of pride, feeding off the unhappiness of others he was able to eat three square meals a day. There is not a single part of him that is praiseworthy. If I had never met him my soul surely would have been cleaner for it.

And yet, he was the only real friend I had.

My pitiful march went on.

One day, the bookshelves of the room that I stayed in were littered with materials pertaining to movies. The s.p.a.ce between my desk and the bookshelves was scattered with videotapes I had never seen before. In between sips of coffee and drags on cigarettes, I browsed through those tapes, and happened on one upon which someone had crudely scribbled the t.i.tle "Duel on the Great Kamo Bridge". Also written on the label were the words "PROPERTY OF MISOGI". My interest piqued, I inserted it into the VCR.

It was an exceedingly strange movie.

The only actors were Ozu and myself. The film told the tale of two men who inherited the opposing reins of a legendary prank war predating the Pacific War, and proceeded to push past their mental and physical limits to crush each other's pride. Ozu wore an unchanging Noh mask-like expression, while my own performance was ridiculously overacted, and we dueled each other with a string of merciless but surprisingly creative pranks. The final scene, where Ozu, whose entire body was painted pink, and I, who had shaved half of my head, clashed on the Great Kamo Bridge, was unexpectedly gripping. As the credits rolled, I was still on the edge of my seat, almost ashamed of my own reaction to it.

For some reason, seeing Ozu's face for the first time in seventy-plus days made me get oddly emotional.

I guess I was just feeling homesick.

After the credits, there was a making-of feature, though the scenes were obviously staged. Ozu and I sat in front of the camera having script meetings and creating tasteless set backdrops. There was even a tawdry section about audience reactions, but the only person who deigned to leave feedback was a woman who said, "I see you've made another idiotic movie."

I recognized that woman from somewhere.

"It's Akas.h.i.+," I murmured.

The used book fair. Akas.h.i.+. Mochiguma. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

In the summer of my second year, I arbitrarily decided to pick up a nice, quiet part-time job. A place in Kawaramachi called Gabi Used Books was looking for part-timers to work at the used book fair, so I thought I'd try there. "I don't pay much," growled the owner, a man with a face like a boiled octopus.

I worked there with another part-timer, Akas.h.i.+. The bookstore owner was always rude to me, but whenever he talked to Akas.h.i.+, he looked like the bamboo cutter finding Princess Kaguya. As for me, I was stuck dealing with the boiled octopus all day.

The horse-riding grounds run parallel to the shrine road, stretching north to south. During the book fair they were crammed with tents, filled with people trawling through for books. There were so many boxes filled with musty tomes it made my head spin. A number of folding stools were set up in the field, occupied by people who were woozy from all the books stacked around them. Though it was sweltering, there was something charming about the buzz of cicadas that filled the air. On my breaks, I would wander over to a nearby bridge, sit on the handrail, and pop a ramune, pondering how silly it was for me to be slinking around in a stupid organization like the Library Police.

I met Akas.h.i.+ every day at the fair. She had a refres.h.i.+ngly short haircut, and very keen eyebrows; her unflinching gaze pierced you right through, and she gave off the impression that she didn't pull any punches. She was primarily tasked with watching for shoplifters, though under that hawkish gaze no would-be thief would even dare try.

Despite her intimidating demeanor, a number of adorable plush teddy bears dangled from her bag. After we finished tidying up one evening, I saw her stroking one of the bears, staring at it very hard as if she was wrestling with some difficult philosophical question.

"What are those?" I inquired.

Her face relaxed into a smile. "This is a Mochiguma," she replied.

She had five bears in all, differently colored but otherwise identical. Collectively they were called "Fluffy Squadron Mochiguman", and she treasured them dearly. The name Mochiguma was adorable and unforgettable in itself, but the smile on her face as she told me what they were called was even more unforgettable.

In other words, to put it frankly, as many of you have likely guessed, I fell head over heels for her.

The evening before the last day of the book fair, I was crossing that small bridge when I happened upon a Mochiguma lying on the ground; Akas.h.i.+ must have dropped it on her way home. I figured that I'd return it to her the next day, but on that final day she didn't show up. The shop owner brusquely told me that she had some urgent business to attend to. I purchased Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as a memento of the fair, and left s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine behind.

For the next year, I cherished the Mochiguma as my own, thinking that I would return it to Akas.h.i.+ one day. Losing it at the coin laundromat hit me hard.

"Oh, how nostalgic…" I whispered, staring at the frozen image of Akas.h.i.+ projected onto the screen.

Seeing Akas.h.i.+'s face breathed new life into me.

The next day, I began to smash through walls again, but as I mutely hammered away with the wrench, my thoughts were constantly on that videotape. I had no recollection of ever having made a movie with Ozu before, and yet there that tape was. After thinking for a moment, I had to admit that I could definitely imagine myself doing that sort of thing. On the videotape label was written the word "Misogi". I dredged up memories of standing in front of that fateful clock tower back when I was a freshman. The name of the movie circle which I had decided not to enter that day was Misogi, wasn't it?

Infinite rooms, each differing ever so slightly from the last.

A tape of a movie that I had never made.

Bookshelves filled with books that I had missed the chance to buy.

A kamenoko brush that I had never bought.

Kaori, who was the last person I would have expected to be living with me in my room.

One day, I halted in the midst of my travels. Standing in the middle of the room, I tilted my head up to stare at the ceiling.

I finally understood the structure of this 4½-tatami world.

I was embarra.s.sed that it had taken me this long to understand. Each room in this endless maze was my room, without a doubt. But they belonged to different versions of me, who had made different choices in their journeys through life. For the past few weeks, I had been traveling through fragments of parallel existences, rooms that only existed in parallel universes.

All my strength left me.

I still didn't know how these rooms were organized, or why this world had come into existence, or how I had stumbled into it.

But now I did realize one thing.

Even the smallest choices I made had an impact on my future. Through the countless decisions I made each and every day, an infinite number of different fates were born. An infinite number of mes were born. An infinite number of 4½-tatami rooms were born.

Therefore, in theory, the truth of this world was that it had no end.

I lay down on my rumpled bed, and listened.

From the vast uninhabited expanses of the 4½-tatami world came the sound of absolutely nothing.

There was no one to talk to, no one to tell anything to. I had no one to convey this information to, neither past nor future. There was no one to look upon me, no one to mock me, or admire me, or slight me, or fall in love with me. There was no chance that such a person would ever appear in this world.

I was just like the dusty, stagnant air in this 4½-tatami room.

Whether it was the world that had disappeared, or whether it was I who had disappeared from the world, to me the only thing that existed in this world was myself. I had traveled through hundreds of rooms, but in the end I had not met a single soul.

I was the last man on Earth.

Was there really anything for me to go on living for?

If I were to ever get out of this place, I would do so many things.

I would eat delicious meals and slurp up Neko Ramen. I would hang around s.h.i.+jo Kawaramachi. I would go see movies. I would quarrel with the octopus-faced owner of Gabi Used Books. I might actually go to cla.s.s and actually pay attention. I would partic.i.p.ate in a ritual dance at s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine. I would swap raunchy stories with Higuchi on the second floor. I would make an appointment at Kubozuka Dental Clinic and get a taste of Hanuki's slim fingers. I would go console Aijima, so unceremoniously kicked out of the secret society. I wondered how everyone was doing, and whether they were enjoying their lives in that humming, bustling world. Were they doing well? Was Jōgasaki living happily with Kaori? Was Ozu up to his usual tricks spreading discord for his own amus.e.m.e.nt? Was Akas.h.i.+ staring at Fluffy Squadron Mochiguman, still wondering where one of its members had gone? Or had she found it in some unfathomable place? I wanted to find out.

But that wish would probably never be granted.

I felt something hard poking into my back. Fumbling around behind me to see what it was, my fingers closed around the wisdom tooth I had gotten extracted at Kubozuka Dental Clinic. A maniacal smile rose to my lips, and I rolled around cackling, clenching my fist around that tooth.

Why was this thing here?

This was Room 0. I was back where I had started.

I wasn't sure where I had gone wrong, but over the past weeks, I had returned back to the very room from which I had begun my journey. It was probable that, deep in thought in some corner of this 4½-tatami world, I had unknowingly turned myself around, putting myself back here.

None of the rooms in this world were exactly the same, but the s.p.a.ce between every door and every window was like a reversed image in a mirror. Thus, it was possible that I had gotten mixed up and thought that I was moving forward, when in reality I was traversing towards the direction that I had just come from. Though I had tried to maintain my bearing, it seemed that I had failed.

I had just completed a pointless loop.

Even so, I had already given up hope, and so I just quietly accepted this new revelation, lying in my bed and absentmindedly playing with my scraggly beard. There was nothing for it but to prepare myself for a solitary life in this world, forgetting the cherished memories of my past life in the world outside. I would cease this barbaric behavior of breaking walls and live the quiet life of a gentleman, reading literature, weaving in more t.i.tillating material at appropriate intervals, and concentrating on the elevation of the mind. At any rate, I no longer entertained fantasies of escaping this endless tatami prison, so I would comport myself as befitting a gentleman and await my death with dignity.

As I pondered my future here, I fell asleep.

That was on the seventy-ninth day.

I opened my eyes.

The hour hand on my clock pointed to six, but it impossible to tell whether it was morning or evening. I pondered the matter while lying in my futon, but I had no clue how long I had slept.

I wriggled around for a bit before sluggishly rising from the bed.

All was quiet.

After my usual morning ritual of cigarettes and coffee, I rolled back onto my futon and ruminated, not quite ready to begin my day. I picked up the decayed wisdom tooth that lay near my pillow and held the grisly trophy up to the light, my thoughts returning back to the old fortune teller in Kiyamachi.

I was still convinced that the old woman was to blame for this entire affair. She had cajoled me with flattery about my "earnest talent" and laid this curse upon me, when I had only approached her because of my longing for a better tomorrow.

"Colosseum."

What nonsense.

I no longer desired a meaningful rosy student life, that precious treasure I had once so coveted.

The more I looked at the tooth, the more grotesque it seemed, and I was amazed at how long I had waited to get it checked out. The top of the tooth was hollowed out, and I could see the inside, as if it was a cross-section model. The more I looked at it, the less it looked like a wisdom tooth, and the more it resembled an ancient Roman edifice…

"Colosseum," I breathed.

I suddenly heard a rustling sound coming from the half-open window.

Before I even had time to turn my head, a squirming black cloud came pouring into the room.

The swarm of moths had made it to Room 0 on its great migration through the tatami world. They kept pouring in, filling the room all the way up to the ceiling, and yet the stream showed no signs of slackening.

I started to panic and attempted to escape to Room 1.

Opening the door, I gasped for breath, only to find the cool air of the corridor flowing into my lungs.

The dusty wooden planks of the floor stretched before me into the darkness. On the ceiling, the lighting intermittently flickered, and the distant entrance hall gleamed eerily under the white fluorescent lights.

I walked towards the entrance hall, ignoring the moths that streamed out from the open door behind me.

I heard a faint hissing sound coming from a rice cooker that someone had plugged into an outlet in a corner of the hall. The thought of a steaming hot bowl of rice almost stopped me in my tracks, but I resolutely kept walking. In the entrance hall, my shoes were still sitting in the shoe cabinet.

I exited s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō and wandered south through s.h.i.+mogamo Izumigawa.

The twilight indigo sky hung low over the buildings as the breeze that whistled through the alleys softly caressed my face, carrying with it an marvelous, indescribable scent. It wasn't the smell of any one thing in particular; it was the smell of the outside, the scent of the world. It wasn't just the smell, it was the noise as well: the rustling of the Tadasu Forest, the murmuring of the streams, the sound of a bike pa.s.sing through the night.

I made my way through Izumigawa with unsteady footsteps. Before me, the hard asphalt street stretched out endlessly. I took in the warm light from the street lights, the lamps on the houses, the windows of the buildings. I pa.s.sed the illuminated facade of s.h.i.+mogamo Saryō and the silent houses lining the s.h.i.+mogamo shrine road. Cars rumbled in the distance as the students carousing amongst the black pine trees on the Kamo Delta came into view.

I crossed the road and entered the Kamo Delta, walking through the trees on the embankment. A sudden flood of emotion welled up inside me, and I broke into a half-run, brus.h.i.+ng the rough tree trunks with my hands. The other students looked at me with annoyance as I roughly pushed past them, but one glance at my s.h.a.ggy locks and beard and they turned back to their drinks.

As I came out from under the boughs of the forest, the vast canvas of the twilit sky unfurled itself above me.

I ran to the tip of the delta, almost tripping down the embankment, and stood there dauntless as the waters rushed by, as if I was on the prow of a s.h.i.+p. Before me, the waters of the Kamo River from the east joined with the waters of the Takano from the west, and the combined rivers rolled their way inexorably south.

The surface of the river glimmered with silver from the reflections of the streetlights that were flickering on one by one. In front of me, the Great Kamo Bridge stretched across the river. On its guardrails, precisely s.p.a.ced lamps threw orange light across the line of cars streaming endlessly across. There were people walking across the bridge, people writhing on the Kamo Delta, people everywhere I looked. The lamps on the bridge, the incandescent lights of the Keihan Demachiyanagi rail station, the rows of streetlamps, the lights of distant s.h.i.+jō, the lights of the cars pa.s.sing along the bridge, everything glimmered like precious jewels, blurring before my eyes.

What was this feeling?

The night was alive.

It was like being in the midst of the Gion Festival.

I breathed the sweet air deep into my lungs, stared up at the sky as the last rays of the sun faded over the horizon, scrunched up my face, and unleashed a raw, primitive yell.

Bathed in loathing and fearful glares from everyone on the Kamo Delta, I exulted in the fact that I was here, alive.

I'm not sure how long I stood there, but I gradually became aware of a growing clamor on the Great Kamo Bridge. From the tip of the delta, I could see a great crowd of students streaming onto the bridge from both sides of the river, yelling and shouting. I wondered what the fuss was about.

As I looked on, a man climbed up onto the guardrail of the bridge. He seemed to be arguing with the crowd that stood before him. With the light of the lamps dotting the guardrail I could just barely make out his face. It was Ozu. He looked as if he was about to jump off the bridge, grinning and gyrating his hips grotesquely. Though I hadn't seen him in eighty days, his impertinent, impish face hadn't changed. Even in my absence, he had forge ahead on his own accursed path.

Overcome with emotion, I yelled his name, but he didn't hear me.

What lunacy was he up to standing up there? Perhaps it was part of a festival. As I contemplated what was going on, a shrill scream rose up behind me.

I turned around to see a dark cloud shrouding the top of the embankment. The people inside the cloud ran around frantically flapping their arms and batting at their heads.

The fluttering black cloud continued to spew forth from the pine trees, heading relentlessly down from the pine forest directly towards me. It was an incredible sight. Flutterflutterflutterflutterflutter went the squirming cloud as it rolled down the embankment like a thick carpet and engulfed me where I stood.

It was a giant swarm of moths.

The next day the moth plague made the front page, though n.o.body knew where the moths had come from. By tracing their route, it appeared that the swarm had originated in the Tadasu Forest, that is to say, s.h.i.+mogamo Shrine, but many questions were left unanswered. For instance, there was no explanation for why all the moths in the forest would simultaneously decide to migrate. There was an alternative rumor going around that the moths had actually come from the neighboring Izumigawa town, but that explanation was even more confusing. It appeared that the neighborhood around my boarding house had been inundated with moths for a brief while as well.

When I returned later that night, the corridor was littered with moth corpses. I had forgotten to lock my door, so my room was carpeted with them as well, but I reverently gathered the corpses and buried them.

I suspect what happened is clear to my readers.

This is what I think.

During my eighty-day sojourn in the 4½-tatami world, the moths inside each of those rooms had gathered together into a large flock. That large flock came into my room, and from there streamed out into the world.

I gallantly stood my ground on the tip of the delta as moths thrummed around me, filling the air with glittering scales and occasionally attempting to force their way into my mouth.

Even so, the sheer number of moths that night was utterly overwhelming. The drone of beating wings cut us off from the outside world, as if it were not moths but a swarm of winged imps pa.s.sing by. What little I could see through my squinted eyes was limited to the s.h.i.+mmering waters of the Kamo River, the guardrail of the Great Kamo Bridge, and the silhouette of someone falling off that guardrail into the river.

After a while the swarm moved on, leaving behind the crowd of shocked revelers who babbled loudly about what had just happened. I mutely scanned the river. There was an object entangled in the supports of the Great Kamo Bridge like a dark, slimy strand of kelp. It looked like Ozu.

The students that remained on the bridge crowded at the guardrail, shouting over each other.

"He really fell off!"

"Oh s.h.i.+t!"

"Someone help him!"

"Nah, just let him die."

"He'd just come back to haunt us!"

I jumped into the swollen Kamo river and sploshed my way towards Ozu. I was almost swept off my feet a few times, but kept plodding towards Ozu. I was completely drenched, but considering how filthy I already was it was more like taking a bath.

I eventually made it to the pillar, shouting, "Are you alright?"

Ozu stared at me for a while, then asked, "Uh, who are you?"

"It's me, it's me!"

He squinted at me for a few more seconds, until it finally clicked.

"But what's with the Robinson Crusoe look?"

"It's a long story…"

"Yeah, well as you can see, I've got my own share of problems."

"Can you move?"

"…owowowowowowowow. It's no use. Something's definitely broken."

"Well, let's at least get you to the riverbank."

"Ouch, ouch, that's where it hurts!"

Some of the students from the bridge ran down to help, yelling to coordinate the efforts.

"Get him up!"

"Get that side!"

"I'll get this side!"

"Ow, ow, be more careful!" yelped Ozu as we carried him to the sh.o.r.e.

A large crowd had gathered on the west bank of the river. At one point I nearly froze when I thought I saw Aijima, but at this point there was no reason to fear him anymore. Everyone gathered around Ozu as we put him down on the beach like a log.

Higuchi arrived, looking unperturbed, and asked no one in particular, "Where's the ambulance?"

"Akas.h.i.+'s got it covered," said Jōgasaki. "It'll be here soon."

Beside Higuchi, Hanuki stared down at Ozu. "You reap what you sow, isn't that right?" she teased.

Lying on that dark beach, Ozu moaned. "It hurts, it hurts. Help me!"

Higuchi knelt down beside him.

"I failed," Ozu said in a small voice.

"Ozu, you show a lot of promise," the Master said.

"Master, thank you very much!"

"But you weren't supposed to literally break a leg. What an incorrigible fool you are."

Ozu lay there sobbing.

A number of important-looking people stepped out from the crowd and started to talk amongst themselves.

"Calm yourselves, Ozu won't run away," Higuchi thundered, almost sounding angry. "I will bear the responsibility for him."

After about five minutes the ambulance arrived at the Great Kamo Bridge. Jōgasaki went galloping up the embankment to fetch the EMTs, who promptly wrapped Ozu in a blanket and set him on a stretcher. I would have been overjoyed if at that point they threw him into the river, but they of course being professionals did not distinguish between their patients. Without sparing a thought on Ozu's evil doings, they punctiliously carried the stretcher back to the ambulance.

"I shall accompany Ozu," Higuchi said, climbing into the ambulance with Hanuki.

So much had happened while I was away.

The story of why Ozu was chased down and cornered at the bridge is so complicated that it would take an entire book to tell it in full; therefore, I shall relay it in brief.

Messrs. Higuchi and Jōgasaki had been embroiled in a mysterious feud called the m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic Proxy-Proxy War for a long time. In mid-May, Higuchi ordered Ozu, his underling, to take revenge on Jōgasaki for dyeing his yukata pink. Ozu decided to exact that revenge by stealing Kaori, in imitation of what Aijima had done last fall. He had originally planned to put her up at my place, but, since I was missing, entrusted her to one of the Library Police supervisors, Mr. A. Unfortunately, Mr. A fell head-over-heels into a forbidden love with Kaori, and surrept.i.tiously absconded from Kyoto with her in tow. Ozu mobilized the Library Police on his own imperative, obtained a rental car, and hunted down Mr. A, recovering Kaori. However, once it came out that Ozu had used the organization for his own gain, certain circles and societies that were dissatisfied under the thumb of the new Vice-Director-of-the-Print-Shop-c.u.m-Library-Police-Chief decided it was now or never, and paid off the Cheery Bicycle Corps to occupy the headquarters of the Library Police and print shop. Discovering that Ozu had been siphoning off part of the revenue from the print shop to buy food and drink for Higuchi, they began to make plans to recover the lost money from Ozu. Aijima, who had been waiting for a chance to avenge himself, sensed opportunity and struck a deal to regain his place at the top of the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant in exchange for Ozu. He bullied some junior members of the Misogi movie circle into locating Ozu. But that night, Ozu sensed something was afoot as he made his way home, and instead of returning to his apartment, hid in a yard in Jōdoji and called Hanuki, who relayed his plea for help to Higuchi. Thence, Higuchi instructed Akas.h.i.+ to expeditiously infiltrate Jōdoji and extract Ozu. There was a tight dragnet encircling Ozu's apartment, stretching from Jōdoji to Ginkakuji, but Akas.h.i.+ devised a plan to pa.s.s through the ca.n.a.ls of Lake Biwa, and Ozu slipped through that net undetected. Pressed into women's clothing at Akas.h.i.+'s insistence, Ozu evaded the infrared sensor-like eyes that swarmed the area to the east of the Kamo River and north of Marutamachi Street, and crossed the Tadekura bridge, finally reaching the safety of s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō. Back in Higuchi's room, Ozu had only fleeting moments to catch his breath before his luck ran out and Jōgasaki barged in, having discovered the theft of Kaori. Thrown back out onto the street, Ozu had nowhere to hide from the roving eyes of the society. He nimbly dodged his pursuers one by one, but was at last cornered on the Great Kamo Bridge, and with nowhere left to run climbed onto the guardrail.

He stood there undaunted, looking haughtily down at the crowd.

"If you try to do anything to me, then I'll to jump!" he cried. "I'm not going to come down until you guarantee my safety!"

In the end, he fell off the bridge into the Kamo River and broke his leg.

After Ozu was carried away, the crowd on the riverbank began to disperse, like an ebbing tide. Suddenly being thrown into all this commotion after eighty days of solitude bewildered me, and I stood there for a while, absentmindedly stroking my beard.

Looking around the riverbank, I spotted a woman sitting on a bench. Her pale, unsmiling face was buried in her hands. I walked up to her.

"Hey, are you alright?", I asked.

"I really can't stand moths," she replied, the ghost of a smile flitting around her lips.

I had suspected as much.

"What was with all the hubbub on the bridge?"

"Ozu…well, it's all too complicated for me to explain."

"You're an acquaintance of Ozu?"

"Yes. I take it you are as well?"

"Yeah, that's right. I've known him for a long time."

I introduced myself: I lived on the first floor of s.h.i.+mogamo Yūsuisō, and had known Ozu since freshman year.

"Were you by any chance ever in the Library Police?" she asked. "You're the one from the seahorse incident, aren't you?"

"Seahorse incident?"

"Master Higuchi ordered us to get him a seahorse, so Ozu provided him with a fish tank. But as soon as we tried to fill it with water, it shattered."

"Ah, I know what you're talking about. That was a pretty bad experience."

"But in the end, Master Higuchi never got his seahorse."

"Why's that?"

"After some more flip-flopping, he decided that he'd rather have a giant squid instead."

"I don't think you could raise one of those in a normal fish tank."

"Even Ozu couldn't supply one of those. I heard that he placated the Master by buying a giant Ferrari flag instead."

She started to rub her pallid cheeks vigorously.

"Would you like a drink to help you calm down?" I inquired.

I was certainly not making a craven attempt to take advantage of her fear of moths; I was simply concerned by the lack of color in her face.

I bought canned coffee from a nearby vending machine and we drank it together.

"By the way, how are the Mochiguma doing?" I asked.

"Well. But one of them has gone missing…" There she trailed off, and looked very closely into my eyes, until my ident.i.ty dawned on her. "You worked at Gabi Used Books, at the used book fair, didn't you? I beg your pardon, I didn't notice it was you."

"You remember?"

"Yes, I remember you, but I must say that's an impressive beard you have now," she said, staring at me.

Attempting to describe my feelings in that moment would be pointless. Struggling to express those feelings with actions, I blurted out the only thing I could think of.

"Akas.h.i.+, would you like to go have some ramen?"

As I ate, a flood of tears cascaded down my face, taking the shopkeeper aback. It was my first Neko Ramen in eighty days.

"Is it really that good?" Akas.h.i.+ asked.

"Mm, mmph!" I sobbed into my bowl.

"That's wonderful," she nodded, quietly slurping up her own noodles.

Those are the facts of my eighty-day 4½-tatami sojourn.

I couldn't bear to stay another night in a 4½-tatami room, so for a few days I slept out in the hall. I found a new boarding house in Mototanaka and moved there with all due haste. This time, I picked a 6-tatami room, making sure that it included a bathroom. Even so, I would sometimes catch myself reaching for a bottle to urinate in, and for a brief moment relive those horrible eighty days.

The strangest thing was that even though I had spent so much time in there, back here in the real world hardly any time had pa.s.sed at all. It was less like Uras.h.i.+ma Taro and more like the dream of Kantan. But it hadn't been a dream. The swarm of moths, my disheveled beard, and the backpack filled with thousand yen bills were proof enough of that. I paid for all my moving costs with the money that I had collected in that bag.

To describe how the relations.h.i.+p between Akas.h.i.+ and I developed after that would deviate from the purpose of this ma.n.u.script; consequently, I will refrain from recounting it here. I am sure my readers would rather not waste their time reading such contemptible stuff. There is nothing more boring than telling a story of requited love.

It is true that after Master Higuchi absconded, a great many changes entered my life; however, I would be vexed if that were to be interpreted as a vindication of my actions. I am not so naive as to so easily overlook the mistakes of the past. On occasion, I would consider magnanimously embracing my past self. Perhaps things would be different if I were a young lady, but who would want to embrace a disgusting twenty-something man like myself? Driven by this indignation, I refuse to absolve my past self of these sins.

I couldn't shake off the feeling that choosing the Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant secret society in front of that fateful clock tower that day had been a mistake. If I had chosen a different path, I most certainly would have led a very different student life.

But after walking those infinite 4½-tatami rooms over those eighty days, I had come to suspect that no matter what I had chosen, my life would not have changed much for the better. What frightened me the most was the thought that no matter where I went, I would have run into Ozu. It was just as he said: he and I were connected by the black thread of fate.

Therefore, I would neither embrace my past self, nor affirm my past mistakes, but for the time being I would consider both water under the bridge.

For a time, Ozu was admitted to a hospital near the campus.

It was quite delightful to see him strapped down to the white hospital bed. Owing to his already ghoulish complexion, it appeared as if he had contracted some incurable disease, though in reality it was merely a broken bone. In fact, he was probably lucky to get off with just a fracture. I sat there gloating as he grumbled about his inability to partake in any of his usual wicked habits, but whenever I got tired of his bleating I stuffed a slice of castella in his mouth to shut him up.

There was a constant stream of people coming to visit him at the hospital: in addition to Higuchi, Jōgasaki, Hanuki, and Akas.h.i.+, I also saw members of the movie circle, friends from the softball circle, the head of the cultural festival planning committee, the owner of one of the pubs, the owner of Neko Ramen, and even a number of people from Lucky Cat Chinese Restaurant. To my utter shock, I even saw Aijima there. The front of the hospital was guarded by a cordon of secret society members day and night, ensuring that Ozu wouldn't try to make an escape.

One day, as Akas.h.i.+ and I chatted at his bedside, a beautiful girl came in carrying a handmade bento lunch. Ozu uncharacteristically became fl.u.s.tered and told us to get out. Outside his room, Akas.h.i.+ t.i.ttered impishly.

"Who was that girl?" I asked.

"That's Kohinata. She used to be in the movie circle with Ozu and me, but it seems that she has been going out with him since freshman year."

"I don't believe this. He had a girlfriend?"

"I don't know how he finds the time to go out with her when he spends every waking moment scheming," Akas.h.i.+ said, sounding amused. "Ozu hates it when other people see them together. I suppose he must pretend to be a good boy whenever she's around."

I glanced down the corridor. At the end of the hall, I saw a man meaninglessly pretending to feed ten-yen coins into a pay phone. His face seemed familiar, and realized that he had been part of the group that set out to kidnap Kaori back in my Library Police days. Noticing me glaring at him, he hurriedly slammed the phone down on the receiver and dashed for cover.

I heaved a sigh.

"Hey, Akas.h.i.+. Ozu has so many enemies, it'd be better for him to go into hiding for a while, wouldn't you say?"

"I think you're right," she grinned. "I'll get it all sorted out."

Seeing that Ozu, my only friend for the past two years, found himself in a bind, I generously offered to help him out.

"Lots of people just waiting for you outside the hospital, don't you think?"

"No kidding."

"What do you say you take a little trip until things have cooled down a bit? All expenses paid, of course, by yours truly."

Ozu eyed me suspiciously.

"What are you scheming? You can't fool me!"

"You should put a little more trust in your fellow man. There are good-hearted people like me everywhere you look. And honestly, your pockets are probably a little light these days, no?"

"That's rich, coming from you!"

"Don't worry, just leave it to me."

"Why do you want to pay for me so badly, anyways?"

A broad grin floated to my face.

"It's how I show my love!"

"I don't need that nasty stuff," he replied.