Shinjuku Twilight

There is a ceiling light.

Inside, there are several flies.

Some lie dead, piled up like sediment.

Some are still alive, crawling around in endless circles.

That, in a sense, was the sum of my thoughts.

I was fired from my job a week ago.

Ever since then, two emotions have occupied my mind.

One is resentment toward the company.

As if fleeing the company I had joined right out of college, the place I transitioned to was a Japanese language school recommended by the public employment office.

At first, my heart leapt at the title of "Academic Affairs," but I was quickly disillusioned by the antiquated operations—like manually typing numbers directly into Excel spreadsheets—and the unsanitary conditions of the workplace, where cockroaches would scurry out from my desk.

The final blow was my direct supervisor.

Seeing as he appeared to be in his forties or fifties, I had already suspected his values were a bit old-fashioned.

However, when he started calling misbehaving students "mentally ill" and subjecting me to guidance that bordered on workplace bullying, I could no longer tolerate it.

I reported the matter to the General Affairs Department at headquarters.

I expected them to mediate the situation fairly from a neutral standpoint.

Instead, General Affairs played favorites, siding with my veteran supervisor.

To make matters worse, they fired me—attempting to settle the issue by eliminating the foreign element.

It had been roughly three months since I changed jobs. It was an anticlimactic end.

The other emotion is self-reproach.

Ever since my student days, I have never been able to fit in well with communities like classes or clubs.

I seem to possess an overly strong sense of justice, along with the bad habit of raising my voice in protest at the slightest hint of unfairness.

I always thought I was doing the right thing, but to those around me, I must have appeared as an insolent troublemaker who disrupted the harmony of the group by complaining about things I didn't like.

And I began to suspect that this time, too, it was the activation of this bad habit that led to the miserable fate of being ousted from my workplace.

Most people in this world endure things, no matter how much dissatisfaction or how many reservations they might have. That is simply expected of any normal, functioning adult in society.

Could it be that I, unable to do even that, possess a fundamental flaw as a human being?

Resentment and self-reproach formed an Ouroboros, spinning endlessly in my head.

Both were purely subjective emotions.

No matter how much I agonized over them, it was utterly futile.

I looked up at the ceiling once more.

The surviving fly had grown weaker than before.

Its legs were moving, but it was merely struggling in place; its coordinates were not changing.

Then, even its legs stopped moving, and it died.

At that exact moment, I felt the loop of my thoughts fray and snap.

Acting on impulse, I found myself stepping out the front door.

I think I locked the door.

Shoving only my wallet and keys into the pockets of my down jacket, I walk the road to the nearest station.

A sliver of the sun from the western sky grazes my retinas.

A thick, dry wind blows, stroking the roots of my hair.

From the direction of the station, a wave of office workers surges toward me.

They are dressed in suits, looking neat and well-groomed.

I am wearing a worn-out sweatshirt.

They have fulfilled their day's assigned tasks and carry themselves with pride.

I no longer even have tasks to be assigned.

As if weaving through searchlights, I headed toward the station, dodging their accusing gazes.

The local train bound for Ikebukuro was practically empty, while the express bound for Kawagoe was packed like sardines.

I could have sat down, but feeling somewhat out of place, I remained standing.

Those people on the opposite train and me—where did our lives diverge?

Projecting advertisements plastered on apartment buildings—ads I had no idea who would even look at—onto the train windows, the train headed for Ikebukuro.

The sun had set before I knew it, and a navy blue reminiscent of factory runoff covered the sky.

I transferred to the Saikyo Line at Ikebukuro Station and got off at Shinjuku Station.

Passing through the ticket gates, I emerged above ground from the East Exit.

Walking toward Yasukuni-dori (which meant heading north), I laid eyes on a hodgepodge of humanity.

Japanese, foreigners, office workers, nightlife workers, college students, the homeless.

A colorful array of paints mixed together in a chaotic mess, turning into a muddy gray.

That was the kind of city Shinjuku was.

Emerging onto Yasukuni-dori, I turned right and headed toward the Mister Donut across from the Ward Office.

Incidentally, a jazz bar named DUG across the street is famous for appearing in a Haruki Murakami novel, but since that threatens to derail the main story, I will refrain from mentioning it further.

Beside the Mister Donut is a narrow path called the Promenade of Four Seasons (Shiki no Michi).

It pierces through the block where the Mister Donut is located, as if drawing a diagonal line from the bottom left to the top right.

Its official name, apparently, is Shinjuku Promenade Park.

Despite being called a park, it has no open squares or playground equipment.

There are only shrubberies planted along the path and a public restroom installed there.

Because they grow up in a city that calls such a thing a "park," people in Tokyo must all be lacking in compassion.

Around the middle of this path, it forms a T-junction.

The first stroke of the letter is this path; the second stroke, jutting out to the right, forks like a rake, lined with multiple two-story wooden row houses.

Yes, the place I had come to was the bar district known as Golden Gai.

Golden Gai is a place of rich international flavor.

The vast majority of the people coming and going between the wooden row houses are foreigners.

They take commemorative photos against the backdrop of neon signs or listen intently to the commentary of their tour guides.

At the T-junction, touts are still out in force, calling out things like "Hey! Brother!" and "How's it going?"

Being the gullible sort, I once responded to their calls and mindlessly followed one, only to nearly be dragged into a rip-off cabaret club in Kabukicho.

Recalling that bitter lesson, I avoided making eye contact with the touts and hurriedly pushed my way through.

Now, the true difficulty of Golden Gai lies in choosing a bar.

Weaving like a running stitch through the "rake" section of the alleys, I examined the establishments on the first and second floors one by one.

Dozens—perhaps even up to a hundred—tiny watering holes are crammed tightly together in Golden Gai.

And, being a popular destination for foreign tourists, the sheer volume of customers is equally extraordinary.

Consequently, every bar actively tries to draw people in.

The ground-floor bars feature glass fronts or intentionally leave their doors wide open, cultivating an inviting atmosphere even for first-time patrons.

The second-floor establishments thrust their neon signs out into the alleyways and plaster signs reading "Welcome! Charge free!" at the foot of their staircases.

However, because every place employs the exact same tactics to lure customers, it paradoxically becomes impossible to tell them apart.

Granted, some bars operate under a specific theme or concept, but it is safe to say that almost none manage to execute it thoroughly.

Thus, once you take it all in, an overwhelming volume of information surges instantly from your eyes to your brain.

Even for a seasoned bar-hopper, identifying a "good" bar among the chaos would be a Herculean task (which raises the entirely separate question of whether a "good" bar even exists here in the first place).

I, too, wandered around and made a show of evaluating my options, but I ultimately failed to pinpoint a single place that felt right.

Resigned, I decided to enter a jazz bar located on the second floor of a relatively quiet block.

I have no particular affinity for jazz.

I simply reasoned that rather than risking a gamble on some eccentrically themed establishment, opting for a jazz bar would keep me from stepping on a landmine.

Ascending a brutally steep staircase—one entirely divorced from the concept of accessibility—I opened the antiquated door and stepped inside.

My guess wasn't too far off the mark.

Opening the door, I found about five counter seats to the right, and an apologetic excuse for a table seating area to the left.

It was a square table, the kind you might see at McDonald's, sandwiched between two folding pipe chairs.

Well, it's highly unlikely that large groups would linger here, so I suppose that was sufficient.

On the shelves behind the counter, bottles of whiskey, brandy, and the like were lined up, crammed tightly together.

The refrigerator to the side was clouded with condensation, making the inside invisible, but it was likely chilling beer and sake.

I had harbored a faint hope for vinyl records, but the music appeared to be streaming from a laptop.

Well, these days, few jazz bars actually play records, and since I'm not enough of a music snob to discern audio quality anyway, it wasn't a major issue.

"Welcome."

Flashy blue hair and yellow eyes arrested my gaze.

A woman?

No, it's not particularly rare for a woman to run a jazz bar.

However, the woman standing before me had an appearance that would make "concept café cast member" a far more convincing title than "jazz bar mama."

She wore an androgynous outfit: an oversized white shirt with patterned embroidery on the collar and cuffs, long-inseam black flared pants, and an ear cuff on her right ear.

Her skin was as pale as the shirt she wore. It wasn't foundation.

Was she that pale because she worked the nightlife and was sheltered from the sun?

I scanned a corner where flyers and pamphlets were laid out, looking for a cast shift schedule, but nothing of the sort was to be found.

It seemed this woman—roughly the same age as me—was genuinely the proprietor of this bar.

Once my brain had finished processing this information, I hastily crab-walked to the innermost counter seat and clung to it.

She was running her own business, dressed impeccably.

I was living a life of idle unemployment, dressed like a slob.

I felt as though a bucket of cold water had been dumped over my lukewarm, muddy-colored sense of security.

Taking my seat, I was silently presented with a menu and an otoshi appetizer.

A 1,000-yen cover charge for kaki-pi rice crackers and potato chips—a standard offering by Golden Gai's going rates.

The drink lineup, too, was perfectly average for Golden Gai.

This was not a place for drinkers who fixated on quality.

"Excuse me, I'll have a sake—"

Just as I began to order, I realized my stomach was empty.

Not wanting to invite a puzzled look from her, I impulsively ordered the first food item that caught my eye.

"And... a pizza toast."

It ended up being a rather eccentric pairing.

The proprietor gave a brief acknowledgment and set to work preparing the food.

Until the pizza toast was ready, I nursed my sake and lent an ear to the jazz, quite out of character for me.

The trumpet's tone was too sorrowful to merely be described as gentle.

All I wanted was a place to rest this battered, scraped-up heart of mine.

How long would this last?

I looked at the album jacket displayed on the laptop screen.

It must be the trumpet player.

An old man covered in wrinkles, his eyes closed and his eyebrows slanted downward in a deep furrow as he breathed life into his trumpet.

Ah, did this old man ever manage to find a place of solace?

Or did he endlessly continue to play a tenderness underpinned by pain?

After two or three songs had played, the pizza toast was ready.

Come to think of it, how many months had it been since I last had a warm meal?

To think I could feel such warmth from something as simple as cheese toasted on a slice of bread.

It was cut into four equal pieces. I slowly savored the crisp firmness of the crusts and the stretchy softness of the cheese, making sure to store them neatly in the most easily accessible drawer of my memory.

I had her take away the empty plate, and I went back to sipping my sake.

The proprietor listened intently to the music, occasionally tapping her cigarette ash into the ashtray with the rhythm of striking a snare drum.

The silence was not oppressive.

It wasn't that the jazz was filling the void.

It was just that the entire bar possessed an atmosphere that didn't force you to tell a story.

I thought she was a beautiful person.

Not merely in the sense of having perfectly arranged facial features.

She was pretty, of course, but more than that, she possessed an elegance edged with resilience.

It is a worn-out anecdote, but Michelangelo supposedly said that he didn't carve the stone, but merely uncovered the form it was meant to take.

Even though she couldn't have lived much longer than I had, she gave the impression of already being sculpted into her destined form.

Suddenly, the bell at the entrance chimed, and a group of three or four customers came tramping in.

Seeing that they were foreign tourists, the flawless statue instantly broke into a wide smile, welcoming them in a voice that sounded as if every note of its melody had been raised by a half-step.

"How, many, people? Three? Four? Okay, okay. This, seat, took. Welcome, welcome. Thank you! This, is, menu. Do, you, want, what, drink?..."

Incredible.

Tense, word order, the very framework that makes a language a language—every bit of it was completely obliterated.

Yet, they were somehow managing to communicate, and she was successfully taking their orders. It was honestly rather impressive.

The group of foreigners ordered drinks they were accustomed to, like whiskey, and—perhaps out of sheer novelty in contrast—an order of oden.

What she pulled from the refrigerator was a pre-packaged, vacuum-sealed bag containing a set of oden ingredients soaking in broth.

One look at the yellow circular logo, and any Japanese person could easily guess its quality.

I wouldn't call it a shady business practice.

At the risk of repeating myself, this is simply the standard around here.

Dumping the contents of the pack into a saucepan and setting it on the stove, the proprietor briskly served their drinks while chatting with the group.

The contents of their conversation were mundane—Where are you from? Where have you visited on your trip?

There is a part of me that wishes to maintain my aloofness, dismissing conversations that merely shuttle information back and forth without provoking any creative thought as being just as vulgar and meaningless as idle gossip among housewives.

Yet, there is another part of me, looking on like an envious child, thinking how wonderful it would be if I could just discard my pointless pride, muster the courage to speak up, and genuinely join their conversation.

Both are my true self.

However, if I were to say in a job interview, "I am someone who wishes to be alone, yet simultaneously wants to be part of a group," I would be rejected on the spot for lacking a consistent personality.

Come to think of it, it's a strange concept.

According to a book I read a while ago, the specific functions of over ninety percent of our DNA remain unknown.

In other words, human beings are machines whose blueprints are largely indecipherable—our mechanisms are black boxes.

Despite this, society and organizations demand that humans be consistent in their words and actions, entirely rational and predictable.

Or rather, they operate on the very premise that we are.

But because there is a fundamental disconnect between this idealized image of humanity and actual human beings, contradictions and conflicts inevitably erupt everywhere.

I briefly lamented the boundless nature of human arrogance, but doing so changed absolutely nothing.

Perhaps out of consideration for my silence, the foreign tourists tried talking to me a few times.

I responded just enough to avoid being rude, but upon sensing my reluctance to engage, they graciously left me be.

In less than an hour, the group left the bar.

It seemed a bit hurried, but considering their limited days in Japan and the hundred-odd bars crammed into this district, it was only natural that they would want to hit as many places as possible.

The proprietor cleared away the spot where the group had sat, and a silence cloaked in music descended upon the bar once again.

"Are you waiting for something?"

She asked me out of nowhere.

The relaxed smile from just moments ago had completely vanished from her face.

"No, I'm not waiting for anyone."

"Are you waiting for something?"

It seemed I had given the wrong answer.

The true essence of this question could only be uniquely defined by these exact words.

There was no room for paraphrasing or annotation.

Her gaze, fixed straight upon me, told me as much.

I reconsidered.

But I had absolutely nothing to go on.

Like a skipping record, my thoughts refused to advance.

Eventually, time seemed to run out, and she abruptly stepped away.

And what exactly are you expecting?

Would it be presumptuous of me to ask such a thing?

She turned on her heel and immediately came back to me.

She was holding a small keyboard under her arm.

The kind a choir uses to find their starting pitch.

Before I could even wonder what she was intending, she began to sing.

It went something like this, I believe:

Everything happens for a reason.

He said cool and unconcerned.

If that's the gospel truth,then tell me the reason for this hollow rattle of ice.

Ground my Aria into the ashtray.

Blurred eyes stasin' out at the street.

Shinjuku city without you.

Just a kaleidoscope of neon beckoning me into the midnight-blue.

"I waited."

"You waited, and then what?"

"I waited, and waited, and yearned. And finally, I couldn't wait any longer."

"So, you started walking alone."

"Holding up the righteousness I believed in."

"Were you able to prove it?"

"The truth is always iridescent."

"But you yourself are pitch black."

"Right. You hurt the world, you hurt yourself, and by the time you realize it, you're covered in blackened scabs."

"Did you make it out?"

"I'm still lost even now."

"Why do you sing?"

"To remind myself that I am still lost."

"To make me realize my own hesitation, too?"

"I have no hobby of prying into other people's lives. Songs are up to interpretation."

The conversation broke off there.

Up to interpretation.

Yes.

In this world, there are tens of thousands of people who can never understand one another.

Projecting their own selfish interpretations,

each and every one of them deluded by a kaleidoscope of shifting colors and shapes.

In such a world, the only thing you can believe in is your own pain—the pain of fighting the world and getting hurt.

I didn't know what her true thoughts were, but for now, I decided to interpret it that way.