Move, Tobu Tojo Line. Run, Tobu Tojo Line. I prayed.

Takahashi Moka

"In high school, I was obsessed with breasts. Breasts were justice, no, breasts were justice. At that time, when I read Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye,' I thought, 'This is it! This is the book I've been looking for!' I did a victory pose. Holden was me. There were thousands of kids in the rye field, with a cliff nearby, and I felt like I wanted to catch those kids who were about to fall off the cliff and protect them from danger. In that era, it was a common and banal feeling that everyone felt, but it happened to me too. 'The Catcher in the Rye' was the starting point, and I read many books because of it. Perhaps because of 'The Catcher in the Rye,' most of the literature I read was American. Updike, Capote, Richard Brautigan, Milhauser, Pynchon, Rebecca Brown, Don DeLillo, and others. I also dabbled a bit in French literature. I also read Haruki Murakami. The books were interesting and exciting. It was fulfilling. A non-realistic fulfillment. A massive explosion of internal reality. Well, for me, internal fulfillment was real, but it seemed that in the usual sense, it wasn't considered real."

"Real high school life meant participating in club activities after school, hanging out aimlessly with friends outside, gathering in the downtown area, and dating girls on Sundays. That's what they call youthfulness. It couldn't be helped. I was usually alone. Nowadays, they'd probably call me a loner. But I wasn't one to eat alone in the bathroom. I was more of the type to eat confidently alone, in a corner of the classroom. Despite being a guy who was always thinking about breasts, no, precisely because of that, I never had the chance to meet lovely girls. In fact, I couldn't even meet not-so-lovely girls. During high school, I couldn't even talk to girls properly. That's just how it was. There were some nice girls in my class, you know. I was ready to love, but I was never loved by others. I couldn't express my inner emotions outwardly. I couldn't act. I was shy and reserved. 'TOO SHY SHY BOY!' Like Arisa Mizuki sings. Sorry, you might not know her. By the way, the version I read was translated by Takashi Nozaki. Maybe because I got used to Nozaki's translation style, Haruki Murakami's translation didn't quite click with me. I think the title 'Catcher in the Rye' is a test of a translator's skill in deciding how to translate the word 'catcher' into Japanese. Leaving it as it is seems lazy from a translator's perspective. Murakami might insist that 'catcher' should remain as 'catcher,' and other translations wouldn't fit, but still. 'The Great Gatsby' is the same. I want them to translate the word 'great.' Find a stylish Japanese word like Murakami does. I love Murakami's novels, but I'll say it anyway. It might be wrong."

"At that time, it was still the heyday of vinyl records. Well, actually, there were only vinyl records. Albums were called LPs, and singles were called EPs. There were no CDs. Not yet. Downloading music data was an event that lay far beyond even the future. It's unbelievable now. You can listen to music for free. I used to visit a record store in Shinjuku, searching for my favorite music and buying LPs with all my pocket money, spending it all in one go. I watched movies too. I went to the cinema alone and watched 'Pia.' You know the information magazine 'Pia,' right? I also went to art museums. It's nice to visit major exhibitions of European masterpieces, but it's also nice to visit a quiet museum with no regular visitors. I often went to Ueno. On rainy weekdays in the art museum, after looking at the paintings that were always on display, I would gaze absentmindedly at the replica bronze statues in the rain-soaked garden of the sparsely populated museum café. I forgot about time. Maybe I enrich the non-real to forget about time, I thought.

One day, the time will come. From the afterlife. It happens to everyone. For me, life is long yet short, short yet long, just killing time. That's what living is."

"After graduating from university and entering the workforce, my non-real fulfillment remained unchanged. I didn't meet any lovely girls, nor did I meet any not-so-lovely ones. To be honest, there were both lovely and not-so-lovely girls at my workplace, and due to the nature of my job, I did have conversations with them. However, for some reason, I was completely ignored. Although I had the courage to ask girls out on dates, it never worked out. Perhaps my non-real fulfillment aura acted as a barrier, rigid and unyielding. I don't really understand it myself, but that's how it felt. Eventually, I stopped asking girls out on dates. I gave up. I would only ask out girls I truly liked. I never did it on a whim. I was always sincere and genuine. Yet, I still got rejected. That's why it hurts so deeply. That's what 'battered and bruised' truly means. I understood that it would only end up like that."

"I worked diligently, achieved results, and steadily climbed the ladder of promotion. However, for me, the company came second. For me, the most important things were reading, music, movies, and art appreciation. If I had talent, I would have become a creator. At the very least, I would have started activities in that direction voluntarily. But I didn't have it. I simply didn't. I knew that.
I am eternally on the accepting side, a spectator."

"Entering the latter half of my thirties, my version of reality, what society would call non-real, remained fulfilling as ever. But I started to wonder if I would continue living alone like this forever. I was still a virgin. If the urban legends circulating on the internet were true, I might as well have been a fairy. A flawless, pristine fairy. Then, a turning point came. I met her. She was someone in the same mental position as me, older, slender, and not conventionally beautiful. Yet, I was amazed by her level of non-real fulfillment. The amount of reading, the number of record albums and CDs she owned, her knowledge of movies and art, the depth of her understanding. I couldn't believe it. It was astonishing."

It was after browsing through books at a large bookstore in Futako-Tamagawa and then sitting in a café nearby, enjoying coffee. The café had an old-fashioned atmosphere, and the coffee was delicious. The parfait was also delicious. The music playing in the background was 1950s big band jazz. As I flipped through the pages of the newly purchased book, "The Best Stories" selected by The New Yorker, I was approached. She quietly sat in front of my table and smiled. As mentioned earlier, she wasn't conventionally beautiful. She was older than me, which I could tell right away. Her Russian tea was brought to her. The book I held in my hand was the first volume of "The Best Stories" anthology recently published by The New Yorker. I don't remember exactly what we talked about now. Anyway, I found myself talking a lot, which was unusual for me. Why? Because no one had ever shown interest in my core, niche interests before. Everyone would enjoy hearing about Minions, but nobody cared to listen when I talked about indie films playing in art house cinemas. All I got was, "I don't know." Vague smiles and shaking heads from side to side. That had been my life until then.

We exchanged LINE IDs. She messaged me right away, and I replied. It was marked as read. She mentioned that she had a job, working for a small editing production company. It seemed like she wrote anonymous articles for the internet. She appeared to be extremely busy. She called me via LINE. It was usually late at night. That was the only time she could get home. I talked to her eagerly, engrossed in conversation. I heard her voice. I tried to listen to her inner voice, her true intentions. A week passed. Eventually, I realized. This was love. I had always thought that I wanted a lovely girl. I had always thought I would fall in love with a lovely girl. It was the detrimental influence of pop songs. I had been captivated by the sound of the word "Girl" in pop songs for so long. But I came to realize that it didn't matter. Looks didn't matter. I didn't fall in love with my eyes. I felt like I understood why, despite having an interest in culture, including subculture, I couldn't get into idol culture. It's strange, but that was the one thing where I prioritized reality over idols, which are illusions and fantasies.

This story continues.