Tatsuhiko Takimoto - Welcome to the NHK!

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’m going to leave town.”

Her tone was absolutely casual, so I listened to her calmly.

“Where are you going?”

“A city… someplace where there are lots of people; someplace where no one knows me; someplace where I don’t know anyone. That’s why, by the time I go, Satou… Satou, you have to become an outstanding 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 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 my stereo with you? It’s a necessity for living 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 me without saying anything 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 become an outstanding, socially adept person, Satou. Meet me at the station, Sunday at noon. And we’re definitely going, even if it rains!”

With this defiant declaration, Misaki quickly strode away.

Meanwhile, Yamazaki really was making a bomb. He had gotten hold of a bomb recipe from the Internet and was really, truly manufacturing a bomb.

First, he needed to make black gunpowder. The history of black gunpowder went way back into the distant past. For example, it was used during the Genkou period of Mongolian invasions [31] 1274-1281 A.D. ; and the weapon called the tetsuhou [32] Tetsuhou later became teppou, which means gun, rocket, etc. , 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 windows 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’m going to blow up something!”

Well, yeah, that was true. It was, indeed, obvious. There was no other use for a bomb.

“I meant, what are you going to blow up? That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“My enemies.”

“Who are your enemies?”

“Villains. I’m going to get those villains with my revolutionary bomb.”

“I see. Well, who are the villains?”

“Like politicians or something.”

“Do you even know the name of the current prime minister?”

Yamazaki grew silent and went back to his work. Before long, he’d completed the black gunpowder and the airtight 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’m done! I’m a fighter! I’m a revolutionary!” Yamazaki was in high spirits. “They’ll all be blown up! I’ll kill all the villains!”

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 know where 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 more a whimper than a bang.

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 was morning. I had nothing to do and was bored. I decided to try ingesting my entire stash of stockpiled drugs. I started having a good time. Everything became pleasurable. I laughed.

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 make you sluggish. I’d never tried them, so I didn’t know firsthand, but it seemed that taking them would feel really, really good. And psychedelics are hallucinogens. LSD and magic mushrooms represent that category.

For the most part, I really preferred legal hallucinogens. 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 my date, I took drugs again. I decided to take a rather aggressive approach.

First, I set the groundwork with thirty milligrams 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 medical use. Still, it was originally 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 combating 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 family, originated in Tibet and contains the Indole-type psychedelic components harmine and harmaline. Using it by itself doesn’t produce any real effect; in combination with other hallucinogens like magic mushrooms or DMT, though, 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 dimming, and the edges of my vision wavered wildly—but here, my true trip would begin. I would keep going and going!

Grinding five grams of dried magic mushroom with a mortar and pestle, I washed the powder down with a single gulp of orange juice. On top of that, I screwed up my courage and ingested a ten-milligram crystal of 5-MeO-DMT. DMT is a drug containing only the effective components of hallucinogenic plants like chacropanga, which natives of the Amazon use in their Ayahuasca ceremonies. Though legal, 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 become paralyzed! The drugs had taken effect!

The Satou Special—my wonderful, ultimate method, devised through research and trial-and-error—was complete.

By effectively combining four types of drugs into a single cocktail, I was promised the ultimate trip, one that even illegal drugs couldn’t touch. With a hard thrust, as if riding a rocket ship, I was shot into the far reaches of outer space. Time stopped entirely. Space began to warp thoroughly. My physical body disappeared.