What a life.
One autumn, I met my friend Yocchan for the first time in a long time.
I met Yocchan when we were students, but we weren't classmates or anything; we just happened to hang out at the same supermarket and started noticing each other. One day, when I was taking Purikura photos with a friend at an arcade, Yocchan came from outside and started banging on the curtains, saying, "Hurry up!", disrupting the action. We were both hot-headed, so we got into an argument and it quickly escalated into a fistfight, but the older boys from the baseball team at another school stepped in without any trouble, saying, "Shut up, you ugly bitch!", which really hurt us, as we were hot-headed teenagers. I still look forward to the day when the older boys from the baseball team at that time will take back what they said.
At the time, I had no intention of doing so, but looking back, I guess Yocchan and I were "delinquent" in our small rural neighborhood. We barely went to school, skipped classes to go to the park or an unpopular coffee shop, or went to the mountain behind our house to play chicken on our bikes, read "Slam Dunk" at an internet cafe, or changed out of our uniform into our own clothes in the park bathroom to go see a movie. That's pretty much all we did, really. There were a certain number of other "real bad guys" out there, and I didn't particularly admire them. We'd often get together with a few others, including Yocchan, for trivial reasons like being bored in class or having a bad friend in class. Come to think of it, I couldn't drink black coffee back then, and I hated smoking because it made my hair and uniform stink. Who was I, really, back then?
I liked Yocchan in general, but I was astounded by his bad habits with men. Taking advantage of the fact that good-looking girls attracted men, Yocchan did whatever he wanted. When an older girl called her out because of this, for some reason I was called in and we got beaten up together, but Yocchan told the girl, "Your legs are as thick as a radish buried in them," and got beaten up three times harder. For some reason, watching one woman get hit with multiple heavy slaps in front of me made me laugh from the bottom of my heart (and as a result, I ended up getting hit with a heavy slap as well).
I then moved to Osaka, aspired to become a comedian, and moved to Tokyo. Yocchan got married early, and our relationship was limited to the occasional New Year's card when I visited my parents' house. Then, by chance, Yocchan contacted me to say he was going to Tokyo and wanted to meet me, so we met for the first time in a long time.
I expected her to ask for a loan, but we simply met at a coffee shop in Shinjuku, chatting about trivial matters. Yocchan, now a proud mother of three, had long since quit smoking and was still drinking orange juice because she was still breastfeeding. She showed me photos and videos of her children, laughing and saying, "They're so cute!" Her face certainly had more wrinkles, but her scratched dimples remained. "I remember something," she began, revealing that a long time ago, we were talking about the proverb "The God of Opportunity Has Only Bangs," and I asked her, "Does that mean God has a really weird hairstyle?" I didn't remember, but I told her I might have said it myself and still don't understand the proverb. Yocchan laughed and said, "You haven't changed much, have you?" I don't know why I thought she said it, rather than "she said it."
We talked about Yocchan's family, my work and life, my worst days, Yocchan's best days, Shinjuku Station's lack of consideration for local residents, and how one of my friends who I often hung out with seemed to be obsessed with a new religion, and before I knew it, it was time for my work.
After leaving the coffee shop, I asked Yocchan, "What are you going to do after this?" as I hailed a taxi, and he replied, "There's nothing there," to which I replied, "What's there in Shinjuku?", to which I replied, "Maybe I should at least go see the crows in Kabukicho before I go home." "See you later," I said, and got into the taxi, and Yocchan thanked me and waved, and it was a little while later that I heard that he had died.
Now that a certain amount of time, or rather a period of time, has passed since then, I find myself turning my attention to the things I had been ignoring, and I don't know why. But I'm not particularly interested in trying to make her life and death into a heroic tale, or writing down my feelings about it, or in doing so turning her death itself into a memento mori-like reading material; I simply want to write in bold strokes about the brief time we spent together in the life she existed as herself, and let the world know about it.
I don't want to lecture people about things like death and life, and I don't really understand it. I'm getting old enough to be tired of deliberately viewing events in a decadent way. But one thing has been decided in this life: I'll never see Yo-chan again. I was fine with not seeing him that often, and I didn't even think about him that often, but now that it's been decided, I feel a sense of regret. I know I'm being extremely selfish.
No matter how a living person might put things like "what is life," they're still alive, and therefore unable to speak. Talking about such things is proof that one has enough food, clothing, and shelter, and is bored to death. I feel that life isn't the grandiose story compiled in Iwanami Bunko books, but rather something very simple. This is just my current thinking, and I don't know what I'll be like next week, but in any case, the reason camellia petals, born quickly and dying quickly, make more sense to me than cherry blossoms is that I feel that perhaps it's really just that: just one petal, falling to the ground with a slight weight, seemingly carefully attached to the twig but then scattered in an instant by a gentle breeze. And yet, this, too, is supposed to be about life using worn-out flowers, so perhaps it's not something to be praised.
But who can deny Yocchan's feelings of choosing to disappear rather than lose the chance to see his three children whom he loved so much? Who is qualified to judge? When I think about it, I want to say something like, "Why?" even though he's gone, but Yocchan was definitely there, and I want to respect all of the choices that Yocchan, who was definitely there, made. I want to praise him and say, "Well done," and laugh at him and say, "That was great, but what an idiot."
Time just moves forward automatically, like we're on a conveyor belt. That can be a little comforting, but sometimes it can be incredibly merciless. We didn't willingly come into this world; we couldn't choose whether to be born or not, and naturally, we probably can't choose the moment we end our lives either. In the end, it's Hayao Miyazaki; we are Hayao Miyazaki; it's all about how you, no, how we, live. Speaking of which, one day we were all talking about our favorite Ghibli films, and when I said "Porco Rosso" was my favorite, Yocchan replied, "That's the least interesting one." Come to think of it, she was the kind of woman who would say a lot of unnecessary things.
So what did Yocchan say he liked the most? I think it was "Kiki's Delivery Service," or maybe Totoro, but I don't remember anything at all. I think it was Okada who said, "I like Pom Poko," and ended up getting teased by us, who were young at the time, and I feel like there's no need to remember anything about Okada right now.
Yocchan's favorite Mister Donut was Angel French, and his favorite idol was Yamapi. Erika and I would often sing "Seishun Amigo." In fact, he really loved karaoke. He would often talk about how Seiko Matsuda drinks milk for her throat, and he would drink Calpis because coke makes it hard for him to sing, and he hated me for taking my socks off at karaoke. Back then, Yocchan would make fun of girls who wore their hair in buns. I did the same.
We dyed our hair, wore long extensions, and tried to act like cool gals, but looking back now, we just looked like the girls from Alfie, and we were probably the ones who were made fun of. The last time I saw Yocchan, her hair was medium-long and had blonde inner coloring. As she sipped her orange juice, she said, "There's something I remember." We talked about Chance's bangs. He waved at me in front of Piccadilly. I wonder if the crows in Kabukicho had seen it.
And so she spent the time she was given. That's all there is to it. I'm sure she was spending all the time properly, including the time I didn't know about, whether she was working hard or not. And, strange as it may sound, I want to praise her for that. Passing time is like a conveyor belt, but despite being a conveyor belt, it can actually be the most difficult, the most painful, and the most difficult thing, and I think I know that to some extent.
But I also don't want any of the people around me to arbitrarily decide that they will never see me again, and even though I loudly say that I want to respect that, I think, "Well, that's it." When this summer ends, the end of autumn will soon be upon us, and I'm sure I'll think, "Well, that's it" every time, and even I will remember some things, and perhaps even forget some, but as for me, I'm sure I'll be sent relentlessly on a conveyer belt to the end of many autumns from now on.
To Hayao Miyazaki.
I'm starting to feel like it's not true after all. How we live is secondary, we just live, we live by living, leave me alone about how to live, don't tell me that anymore, I don't know how to live anymore, this focus on how to live is getting a little tiresome and scary, isn't it enough, just being alive, can't we just be okay with that? It's not about how you guys live, we just live, can't we just be okay with that? Living, or rather, spending time, is scary, isn't it? It's scary to make a big deal out of things like living, spending time from 1 o'clock to 3 o'clock, it's enough just to repeat those little things, isn't it great, isn't it admirable, let's go with that mood, but "Porco Rosso" was really funny, I think it was well done, I like it the best, but Yocchan said it was the least funny. Don't worry. And everything I'm writing here is a lie. Bye bye.
From Hikorohi.
This month's Hikorohi
