Tatsuhiko Takimoto - Welcome to the NHK!

We had just had our first little fight.

For good measure, I gave Yamazaki one more punch to the face. As I did, he caught my arm, and I tripped and fell. Following up, Yamazaki went on to lock my joints and twist my arm.

“Ow, ow, it’s gonna break, it’s gonna break!” I tried to tap out on the ground.

“I’ll break it, I’ll break it, I’ll break it with a snap!”

I bit down on Yamazaki’s calf as hard as I could. He screamed, “That’s against the rules!”

“Shut up, what do I care? Death to Yoyogi Animation!”

“Like I said, when I hear talk like that, I get really pissed off!”

It appeared that our fight was about to become increasingly, emptily escalated.

Then, we heard, “Officer!”

Eh?

“They’re over here, Officer!” It was a young woman’s high-pitched shout. Yamazaki jumped up immediately and ran for dear life back to the apartment.

Leaving me behind, he had run away alone.

Several minutes later, I found myself being hit by Misaki. They were only so-called “girl punches”; because of my fight with Yamazaki, though, I was already a bit beat up, and her blows jangled my bones. Bellowing at the top of her lungs, with what no longer even resembled a human voice, Misaki continued hitting me.

I ducked my head.

Misaki got in several dozen more punches before finally calming down.

In other words, the voice calling, “Officer!” had been Misaki pretending to call for the police. After eating dinner, Misaki had come to the park as usual, where she saw two men arguing loudly and beating up each other. When she realized I was one of them, she’d naturally been upset.

Gathering a great deal of courage, she seemed to have felt that she had to help. Because no one was around and she didn’t have a cell phone, though, she didn’t know what to do. Finally, she decided to pretend that a policeman was right there in order to save me.

“I can’t believe you! I was so worried! I thought you might be killed!”

Actually, I felt bad for upsetting Misaki, who now had tears in her eyes. I decided to make her laugh with an interesting story. ”Well, in the shade of that bush over there, a girl was being attacked by a pervert. I approached them and intervened, trying to save the girl, but the rapist suddenly flipped out. He pulled a knife from his pocket and jumped me! No, no, it was really dangerous! If I hadn’t been there, someone could have gotten killed.”

“That’s another big lie, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“What were you really doing?”

I told her everything.

After another good outburst, Misaki wore a pained expression for some reason. Sitting on the bench, she muttered, “That’s not good. Don’t fight with your friends. Even as a joke, violence isn’t good—not at all.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t be so serious. It was pretty fun; I’ve never punched anyone or been punched before. I actually feel surprisingly refreshed—“

“I said, it’s bad!”

“Why? Karate is good for you.” I made a show of shadowboxing in front of her. As I mimicked a right hook, Misaki trembled and covered her head with both arms.

“Huh?” I said.

She peered through the openings in her arms at me.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She didn’t reply but tentatively put both arms down. Once more, I feigned a right hook. Again, Misaki guarded her head with both arms. As her reaction was amusing, I repeated my punching motions several times. In the end, Misaki shrank up, frozen in that position, arms covering her head.

Her strange position caused her sleeve to rise to her elbow, and I took the opportunity to glance at her skin.

By the blue-white light of the streetlamps, I could see that her arm was spotted with what looked like numerous burn marks. They were circular scars, with a diameter of about five millimeters a piece. They bore a strong resemblance to the brands that countryside punks burned into each other to prove their bravery.

As if noticing my gaze, Misaki yanked down her sleeve. In a shaky voice, she asked, “Did you see?”

“See what?” I pretended not to know what she was talking about.

Now that I thought about it, Misaki always wore long sleeves. Even in the recent heat, she’d continued wearing them—but so what?

I spoke to her in a cheerful voice. “What about today’s counseling?”

Misaki didn’t answer. Her body still curled defensively on top of the bench, she shook violently. Even her teeth were chattering.

A rather long stretch of time passed.

Finally, Misaki announced, “I’m leaving”, tottering uncertainly toward the park exit.

From behind, I dazedly watched her leave, debating whether I should call out to her. Misaki stopped in front of the swing set and turned around to ask, “Do you hate me now, after all?”

“What?”

“You probably won’t come anymore now.” She was the kind of girl who would make these strangely decisive declarations. We faced each other, about sixteen feet apart.

Misaki looked me in the eye, soon dropping her gaze. Then, once more, she stole a glance at me. “Will you come tomorrow?”

“If I break our promise, I’ll have to pay a one-million-yen penalty, won’t I?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s right!” Finally, Misaki smiled a little.

I went home to my apartment. After swathing my body in compresses, I slept.

It actually might have had something to do with a hormonal imbalance in my brain. Like crashing and receding waves, my mania and depression alternated, and that was how every day went. Just when I thought I felt better, I wanted to die so bad the very next day that I wasn’t good for anything.

Despite using drugs to force myself to be more energetic, I couldn’t carry on once again after they wore off. Shame about my past and anxieties for the future, as well as many other fears, assaulted me simultaneously. This ensuing depression was a rebound from my ultra-high-energy periods and, as such, was completely, horribly severe.

Even Misaki’s nightly counseling, which I should have grown accustomed to by then, remained frightening. Anxiety of an unknown origin had enfolded me, and the very uncertainty of that origin fanned my fear even more.

The initial, readily noticeable symptom was that my gaze stared to wander and I would become unable to look others in the eye while speaking to them. Oh, I was just like some overly self-conscious middle school kid. I felt embarrassed from the bottom of my heart. And because I was aware of that embarrassment, my behavior would become even stranger and more suspicious. It was a vicious cycle.

Anyway, for that night, I tried smoking to calm myself down in front of Misaki. My hands, now prone to shaking, took out a cigarette and lit it, using a cheap lighter. Damn—it was running out of fuel! How can this be? This sucks! I didn’t know what to do with the tobacco and lighter I was holding, but I’d do anything possible to avoid the humiliation of having to put them back in my pocket. I kept trying as hard as I could to light it. Click, click, click, click… I kept struggling and, finally, I succeeded—thank heavens!

I immediately turned away from Misaki and, instead, focused too much on smoking my cigarette. I just kept smoking away, wasting five yen with every puff. My lungs hurt and my guts hurt, too. The end of my cigarette was shaking rapidly. On the back of my neck, a cold, sticky sweat—

“What’s wrong?” asked Misaki. As was usual for our counseling sessions, we faced each other at night on one of the park benches.

“The problems caused by my chronic illness!” I replied.