Vol 1 Chapter 9 (1/2)
Chapter 09
Days of the End
Part One
To a hikiko feels cold, frozen
over, and lonely To a hikiko is also painful because
everyone is in a good mood and therefore enviable
Summer, of course, is especially painful
It was a su to
night, they kept whining and whining The suly
hot Even if the air conditioner ran constantly, it remained hot I didn't
know ifout or if this summer was just
especially hot Either way, I was thoroughly boiled
Sometimes, I wanted to yell, ”Whoever is responsible, show
yourself!” I didn't even have the energy to do it, though The summer
heat had worn me down completely My appetite was depressed, and my
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173
nerves were exhausted No ed,
my weariness was impossible to dispel
Only etic He unabashedly made
noise Fros
rang out at loud volumes He said that recently, he needed only four
hours of sleep a day He orking hard on his creative projects, with
the help of aniorously applied
hiless activities
One day, Ya part of my
game”
”Oh, really?”
”To a bomb”
”What?”
Without answering Yanawed on some white bread
It was a pretty half-assed breakfast As I wasn't as lazy as he was, I
properly toasted
”Like I told you before, don't take food out of other people's fridges
without permission”
I pretended not to knohat he was talking about
Misaki earing long sleeves even though it was summer She was in
a good h
”This is so fun, so fun, so fun,” she said She really did seem to be
having fun She inging happily on the swing set
Of course, tonight felt tropical It was so hot that I sweated even
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174
without so
Misaki, however, see behind her as
she energetically swung back and forth, she said, ”By the way, Satou, do
you want to eat the leftover cat food?”
At so It had been
quite a while since he had shown himself Either he had been hit by a car
and gone to heaven, or he'd taken off on a journey somewhere
At any rate, I turned her down ”I don't need it”
”I stocked up on that cat food Ah, what a waste”
Ju, Misaki stepped into the cozy sandbox
next to the jungle gyreen shovel that one of the
neighborhood kids had left behind, she startedin the
sandbox
I asked, ”What is that?”
”A mountain”
She was right It certainly was a mountain Set in the middle of the
sandbox, it was a sharply peaked led steeply, like
Mount Fuji drawn by Hokusai,28 thus looking as though the slightest
vibration would make it crumble But the sand mountain soon was
perfectly co sand ith the
evening dew
Clapping her hands to brush off the sand, Misaki circled the
mountain once She looked expectantly at me I said, ”It's a nice
mountain”
A little smile on her face, Misaki shouted, ”Yaaah!” and aimed a
forward kick at the s with shape will one day fall
apart”
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”That's right” I nodded
There was actually a huge variety to the books Misaki pulled out of her
backpack, night after night She apparently borrowed them en masse
once a week from the library There were novels, poetry collections,
practical guides, and reference books Misaki read books of all different
shapes and sizes, and then she would read them to me
”Well then, the text for tonight is The Last Words of Famous People
Its title refers to the words that exemplary people leave behind at the
moment of their deaths”
Refers to?
”Let's think about what life is!” she cried
It was a dramatic line, and I was done in by Misaki's ability to make
such grand, unusual declarations with an utterly normal expression
Then again, seen from another perspective—well, compared to
yesterday's topic of ”Let's think about what it means to live,” it wasn't
that big a deal
Regaining ed her to continue, and Misaki
i the text aloud
The book collected the last words of famous people from all around
the world, from ancient times to modern days I listened quietly and
respectfully As she read from the book, however, Misaki seemed to
grow bored with it, and her the the way
”'More light' Well then, whose words could these be?”
What, a quiz?!
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176
”ThreeTwoOneTime's up! The answer is Goethe Well,
that line is too cool, isn't it? I think that Mr Goethe ht
it up far, far ahead of time”
”M-maybe he did”
”Okay then, next question 'Mikka Tororo29 was delicious'”
I knew this one ”It's the marathon runner Kokichi Tsuburaya's
death note”
”Ping pong, ping pong!30 That's right! It's a you knew that”
I couldn't really brag about knowing famous people's last words, but
Misaki praised me anyway She sounded oddly taken with the contents
of that death note, ”Mikka Tororothis is like some kind of joke, isn't
it?”
”Conversely, that ht be why people are struck by it”
”I see That really clears things up for
repeatedly ”Tsuburaya, the runner, apparently went home to the
countryside right before he died Then, he ate grated yam with his
mother and father, it says”
”Hm”
”I guess everyone wants to return to their hometowns before they
die, after all”
”Now that you mention it, Misaki, are you from this city?”
”No, I'm not The north star is in that directionso I'm probably
from over there” Misaki pointed in a north-by-northwest direction
She said the name of a town I didn't know and explained that it was
a small town on the Sea of japan, with a population of five thousand
According to her, it supposedly had a beautiful cape, but that cape had
become a somewhat notorious spot for suicides
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”Ever since so the Meiji
era, it's like it's become a Mecca for suicides They say that so many
people either jumped deliberately or slipped and fell accidentally that
they had to construct safety barriers to prevent further incidents When
I was little, I didn't know anything about that and was always, playing
on those bluffs One day, I saw a strange woman there”
Misaki continued, ”She was by the cliff's edge, on the high cape It
was a beautiful early evening and the sky was a bright red The woman,
too, was beautiful”
”And?”
”I took my eyes off her for just a moment, and she vanished Even
now, I soht have just been a dream
to begin with, though I mean, she had a really cheerful smile on her
healthy-looking face Alone, she stared at the ocean and late-afternoon
sun And then, in that one short instant, as I glanced away, she
disappeared A strange story, isn't it?”
It was a strange story
”What could have happened? I think she should have at least left a
suicide note— to
lighten the mood
”I want to eat sorated yam”
”It makes you itchy”
”Yeah” She nodded
”It's delicious, though, isn't it?”
The conversation had begun to stray I, too, was exhausted, after all
But Misaki was laughing ”Ah, how fun, how happy You think so, don't
you, Satou?”
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178
”Sure”
”We're co to the end The last day of the project is
approaching” Misaki returned the book to her bag ”I've given all these
helpful lectures, Satou, so you should be just about ready to become a
ht?”
Standing up from the bench, she said, ”You understand now, don't
you? Why you've become a worthless person? Why you've become a
hikikomori? You should understand by this point”
I didn't answer
”If you think about it properly, you should definitely understand”
Still seated on the bench, I looked up at her The park was so dark
that only her silhouette was illuminated I couldn't see the expression on
her face
”I'm nearly out of time I can't cause any more trouble for my aunt
and uncle, so I' to leave town”
Her tone was absolutely casual, so I listened to her calmly
”Where are you going?”
”A citysomeplace where there are lots of people; someplace where
no one knows me; someplace where I don't know anyone That's why, by
the ti
person”
I couldn't tell where the discussion was going; then again, she was a
girl who said terribly unreasonable things
Dazed, I shook my head from side to side
”That won't change anything,” said Misaki
”Okay, I understand I'm fine now” All I could do, at that point, was
try to convince her of her success ”No, because of you, I really have been
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reborn You should rest assured of that and start a life of your own in a
new city”
She still seemed somehow dissatisfied
In an optimistic tone, I said, ”Thank you! I owe you my life Oh,
that's true Want to take
alone If you want it, I'll give it to you as a present”
”That isn't what I mean”
”It isn't what you mean?”
I waited patiently for her to continue, but Misaki turned her back on
else
I stood up, too ”Well then, goodbye”
I started walking toward my apartment; as I did, Misaki called out
”No! Wait a second!”
”What?”
”Let's go on a date It'll be your graduation exam to test whether you
really have beco, socially adept person, Satou Meet
oing even if it
rains!”
With this defiant declaration, Misaki quickly strode away
Meanwhile, Yaotten hold of
a bomb recipe fro a
bomb
First, he needed to unpowder The history of black
gunpoay back into the distant past For example, it was
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180
used during the Genkou period of Mongolian invasions31; and the
weapon called the tetsuhou,
32 which surprised the samurai, also used
black gunpowder Despite being an extremely primitive compound of
potassium nitrate, sulfur, and coal, its force is tremendous They say
that when used in an enclosed space, black gunpowder generates enough
power to break all the s on an average car and instantly kill the
people inside
”What are you going to use a bomb for?”
”It's obvious, isn't it? I'!”
Well, yeah, that was true It was, indeed, obvious There was no
other use for a bomb
”Ito blow up? That's what I wanted to
ask you”
”My enemies”
”Who are your enemies?”
”Villains I'et those villains with my revolutionary
bomb”
”I see Well, who are the villains?”
”Like, politicians or so”
”Do you even know the name of the current prime minister?”
Ya, he'd
coht iron pipe His
detonator, which used an analog clock, also was finished The only thing
left was to attach the detonator to the pipe, and then he could set it off at
any time
”Yay, I'hter! I'm a revolutionary!” Yamazaki was in
high spirits ”They'll all be blown up! I'll kill all the villains!”
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181
He was in high spirits, but he was also entirely self-aware
”Ah, that was fun,” he concluded
In the end, though, the bomb didn't blow up any villains
To start with, we didn't knohere to find any villains Because
there was nothing we could do about that, we tried to blow up the
neighborhood park on Saturday night So no one would see us, we
crawled deep into the brush to set the detonator The bomb actually did
explode, but it was
It was a sad story
Amid these distractions, Sunday arrived As I had promised, I met
Misaki in front of the station We had our date, and I returned to my
apartment
I slept all night When I awoke, it wasto do
and was bored I decided to try ingesting my entire stash of stockpiled
drugs I started having a good ti became pleasurable I
laughed
Part Two
In general, drugs can be classified into one of three large categories:
uppers, downers, and psychedelics Uppers are drugs that make you
energetic Cocaine and stimulants are famous uppers Downers are
drugs like heroin, which ish I'd never tried them, so I
didn't know firsthand, but it see them would feel really,
really good And psychedelics are hallucinogens LSD and ic
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ory
For the ens They had
few side effects—unlike uppers and downers—and more than that, they
were easy to get because they were legal
On the day after ain I decided to take a
rather aggressive approach
First, I set the groundith thirty rams of AMT AMT is
an antidepressant that was studied by Russian scientists After they
discovered that a large dose could cause hallucinogenic effects, it was
prohibited for inally just an antidepressant
After taking it, for the first two hours, a person would be plagued with
terrible nausea; once that was over, however, it became entirely
pleasurable It also happened to be the best thing ever for co bad
trips
Next, I boiled down the seeds of a harmal plant and drank the
yellow layer of liquid that floated to the top Harmal, a plant I think is in
the goathead fainated in Tibet and contains the Indole-type
psychedelic co it by itself
doesn't produce any real effect; in coens
like h, the effects are amplified
dozens of times over That's the Ayahuasca method As harmal is an
MAO inhibitor, it could be life-threatening if ingested with cheese or
other dairy products; but as long as those foods are avoided, it shouldn't
cause any problems
Well, my real opportunity had arrived My consciousness already
was dies of my vision wavered wildly—but here, my
true trip would begin I would keep going and going!
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Grinding five graic mushroom with a mortar and
pestle, I washed the powder doith a single gulp of orange juice On
top of that, I screwed up ram crystal
of 5-MeO-DMT DMT is a drug containing only the effective
coa, which natives of
the Aal, this drug
is reputedly one of the strongest anyone can find According to one
theory, the hallucinogenic effects are more than one hundred times more
powerful than those of LSD It's truly the ultimate psychedelic
In just one second, I had becos had taken
effect!
The Satou Special—my wonderful, ultimate method, devised
through research and trial-and-error—was complete
By effectively cole cocktail, I
was pros couldn't
touch With a hard thrust, as if riding a rocket shi+p, I was shot into the
far reaches of outer space Tian to warp
thoroughly My physical body disappeared
”This is no good, Satou I found out so terrible! I've had an
epiphany!” Yamazaki declared ”This is really, really bad!”
I tried to say so but my mouth wouldn't work
Ya? Listen closely:
This is a really bad thing!”
As there was nothing else I could do, I listened closely
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184
Pulling hirin
iically prove that I am the
monotheistic God who created the cosmos!”
I died
Then, I came back to life
”Please watch, and I'll clean up your roo my
superpowers” Yaer at the rubbish scattered
about the floor and screamed, ”Move!”
Naturally, the rubbish did not so much as twitch
”Hey! I' me?” Yamazaki
fumed
Observing this situation, I felt so rise up inside of me It was
a strange sensation, bubbling up from the very depths of my body
FoldingFinally, after
what seemed like an eternity, I realized what it was I know, this is
It was nausea! I was attacked by violent nausea I tried to dash to the
bathroos wouldn't move
forward The hall seemed to have stretched into a fifteen hundred foot
tunnel The bathrooet to
the bathroo-vomit everywhere?
I'll be fine Calm down
Yamazaki had just said it He had said, ”I am God”
But I knew I knew that his words were completely mistaken How
did I know? Because I was God! I had confirmed that truth just a
ht process
I would definitely make it in time I am God I will make it to the
bathroom in time
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I made it
Prostrating myself before the toilet, I threw up Afterward, I felt
slowly back into the roo there, still
grinning