Caesar never said that

First:

I broke my beloved iPhone and was unable to log into note for a while, but I was able to log in and move again, so I am reposting it. I am currently working hard on the sequel.

*I try to use expressions and writing that are as genre-neutral as possible, but please be aware that there may be scenes that some people may find cruel, and there are exceptions.

*Even now that it is April 10, 2024, I may add or revise the text to deliver the best possible writing.

*The characters, places, political organizations, ideologies, beliefs, and concepts that appear in the novel are all the author's imagination, and are metafiction to make life better and more enjoyable. Please understand.

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Warning: This is a Google translation of the original Japanese text into English :)))

Characters

B
A senior who is one year older than me. He is very organized. At first glance, he seems like an honest person, but he has no ability to make a living. There were signs of him handling some kind of cursed object in one of the apartments where he lived.

A
A language exchange student. After graduation, he wanted to get a job in his hometown, but for some reason he suddenly returned to Japan, got married, and is living happily in his native China. He loves online games.

S
A music fanatic. It's impossible to tell what he's thinking, or if he's not thinking at all. He's close with A. He says that since he got involved with illegal drugs, he's been visiting various places in Japan and living a life of debauchery.

B
The second son. He worries about his lack of redeeming qualities. Influenced by his older brother, he's addicted to listening to heavy metal. He especially loves Halloween.

About five years ago, in a new town on the outskirts of Nagoya, there was a two-story house that was quietly built in one of the many housing complexes (one of six or seven clusters, where many old people who were not short of money and wanted to spend the rest of their lives as quietly as possible) and was located in a quiet area. There was a part-time job about 10 minutes away from the house, and I had some kind of relationship with some of the people there. We had looked into it and found out that there was an abandoned inn that was apparently a famous haunted spot both in and outside the prefecture, about 30 minutes by car from the shop. After work, we would go out to the nearby place to kill time and complain for no reason, and the four of us were getting tired of that, so we decided to go there whenever we felt like it. I think it was either me or B who first suggested it, and we decided that there were surprisingly many abandoned buildings, haunted spots, and similar famous places scattered around Aichi Prefecture, with Nagoya as the center, so we decided to go around them in a random order.

Dear Lovecraft

Morning I woke up to the busy chirping of birds in the distance, and looking out the window to the garden through a gap in the curtains, which were stained brown by something that had been splattered on them, I saw fluffy clouds that had absorbed a great deal of moisture and swelled up, gently covering the blue sky. The warm grey sunlight slanted hesitantly and weakly onto the flowers that had finished their role and were starting to fade and wither and harden, the grainy surface and shriveled branches of a medium-height biwa tree that stood alone in the not-so-large garden, and onto its fruit that had fallen and rotted after being nibbled on by an unknown animal. The shadows overlapped and formed a regular swirl of spotted patterns reminiscent of sugar candy or sea anemones, and these intricate patterns swirled slightly as the sun rose, and the strange sight of The nets were swirling in a regular, spotted pattern reminiscent of sugar candy or sea anemones, and their intricate patterns rotated slightly as the sun rose.I hung my head in despair at the strange sight of nets being tied and untangled here and there in the garden, and then a painful, pinprick-like sensation tugged at the tips of my toes.While I was sleeping, the small titanium radio clock next to my soft pillow accidentally tipped over and rolled over, facing the wall-mounted TV. I sighed deeply and grabbed my smartphone, which was wrapped in my futon, and checked the time. It was just past 7:20 a.m. I wiped my head, which was sticking to the slightly yellowish ceiling, my eyelids, which had become swollen from sleeping too much, and the dried drool marks around my mouth, and tried to smoke just one cigarette to calm the pain in my feet and the hopeless gloom of the morning, but then changed my mind, and got up with unsteady steps, and sat down in my familiar black skinny jeans, which had been hanging on a hand-me-down chair in a room that was messy with muscle training equipment that had never been cleaned since it was bought, an extra futon, a cushion with an ugly shape that had become weak from being worn out, and books that had not yet been touched because they took so long to read. I quickly changed into my work jacket, put on short socks, took two steps, opened the door, and went out to the living room and kitchen. I was really hungry, so I opened the old refrigerator, but there was nothing that looked edible. I took a bite of the hard crust of a slice of bread that was moldy, sunken, and black, but still looked edible, and put it in my mouth. I then took a clear cup from the cute antique but somewhat empty cupboard behind me, drew a cup of water from the tap, swallowed about half of it along with the bread, and poured the remaining half of the water, which had quickly become lukewarm from the warmth of my raised hands, into the sink and flushed it away. I went to the bathroom, rinsed the dry, rough soap with hot water, washed my face, replaced my toothbrush with a new one, and brushed my teeth while staring at myself in the three-foot-long mirror. Then I remembered that it was raining in the dream I had just before waking up. After getting dressed, I opened the wooden door with frosted glass damaged by moisture and left the bathroom. At that moment, a cat who was just about to turn 5 years old walked quietly past me as if he didn't notice me, sat down in front of the stairs leading to the second floor, and skillfully groomed himself with his neck tucked in. With each lick, the newly grown fur swayed and wobbled in the air. I felt like there were many things I should have said, things I should have said to him now, so in the end, I kept my mouth shut and remained silent while carefully observing the series of movements.
Me: ":)"
I prepared a little more clean water and food than usual in two light plates, one for drinking water, on the wooden floor in front of the 6-tatami mat room, so that he wouldn't get hungry while no one was home. The cat glanced up, stretched boredly, and began to drink water timidly. Carefully putting on worn out sneakers and shouldering a hand-me-down blue backpack so as not to disturb my family who still hadn't woken up, I pushed open the heavy front door and stepped out. It was still quite hot outside, there was no sign of anyone around, and the birds that had been chirping strangely nearby had suddenly stopped chirping.
Despite my caution, the doorknob I was holding gave a slight tremble, and then the front door closed and locked with a rather loud clang. Today was my part-time job day. Looking at the house opposite, on top of the knee-high concrete wall next to the brightly colored luxury car parked, the beautifully and carefully trimmed hedge was wet with morning dew, rising low and rippling in an abundance of pale and dark green, as if competing with each other, and giving off a pleasant fragrance in the faint darkness.

As soon as I left the house, I peeked through the gap in the lattice door of the back door, hoping to see a different view from the garden I had seen from the window earlier, so as not to surprise anyone, but the large, eye-catching pattern was hidden behind the shadow of a tree and I couldn't see it. All I could see was the remains of a candy bar, made up of the beautiful and precarious sunlight and the blindingly long shadows that I would regret not seeing by the time I returned. I wondered if the first perm I got at the hair salon had turned out to be like that, so I quickly pedaled my bike with one foot and started pedaling.
Cars are an indispensable and precious means of transportation for the residents of the housing complex, and when I occasionally came across people walking alone or in pairs near my house, they were either anemic or looked away as if they were too embarrassed to laugh. When I first met them after moving in as a family, everyone seemed to be welcomed. I had gotten used to being told sweet lies after moving several times, but my body and experience seemed too light to take a new step. The only thing that saved me was that I managed to keep a strong presence for the time being and avoid being looked at curiously. On the occasional holiday, I would see them meeting up in one of the parks in the complex, playing gateball or softball with each other, arch enemies who only ever say bad things when they get together, or I would see some of them plowing the vast fields, but I don't think we ever exchanged a word other than a friendly greeting. I walked down a small hill and turned the corner of a dignified one-story house with a Japanese flag hanging respectfully behind its gate, and a second long slope appeared, and countless luxury cars were parked on the shoulder of the road. More than half of the cars in the complex were foreign-made, boasting a significant share, but most of them were right-hand drive. The wind, which staggered anxiously, brushed against my cheeks. I thought it was strange that there were so many houses but no place to park the extra cars. I gripped the grip again to avoid falling on the way, and I thought I heard the bird from before singing somewhere far away again. I turned around to see the bird behind me, and there was a large and intimidating general hospital built to commemorate something in the area, standing there gloomily and silently, as if one person was sick. Cars and people were constantly entering and leaving the parking lot a few hours before the hospital opened, and radio exercises started at the usual time. When I had a break in the afternoon, the nurses came to the nearby park to smoke cigarettes and chat, as if they were keeping up with their work. I was healthy enough to have not caught a cold or other illness for the past three or four years, and I was full of energy and vitality to continue my daily life without any problems, and I was so energetic that I would immediately go off on a tangent to somewhere else unless I or someone else stopped me. A sleek black, wide-legged foreign car entered the housing complex, showing off its dignity, and passed right beside me, before turning right without slowing down and entering a narrow back road. Even though it was a suburban housing complex, it was fairly spacious, so I couldn't tell where they lived, but I had long ago given up on obsessively trying to read their license plates. After descending the hill, I headed straight for the outskirts of town, passing cheerful students on their bicycles as they hurried to school along the rice paddy roads shrouded in mist and mist that rose from the low, gently sloping mountains.

As I continued on, I came to a short bridge over a river that ran westward through the city. The river crossed the river and stretched to the horizon. The banks were covered with long, thin, pointed grasses, and I could smell the stale sand and mud that had accumulated on the bottom of the river, and the mossy, salty, itchy, rusty smell of the water plants that grew on the pebbles. The water was cheerful, but a little thin and murky, the color of sheep, and it flowed along the line with a noble tone, like a good friend, lazily and yet strictly. Children were playing ball and fishing on the riverbank until evening. I didn't know where they usually came from, but I was surprised to see an old homeless man sleeping on a discarded sofa with torn leather and cotton sticking out. He must have woken up earlier than usual and gone to gather some money. I didn't know if he came back to sleep under the bridge at night, where he was, what he was doing, if he was a local, if he had a rhythm to his life, or even if we could speak the same language. I thought finding the meaning of work for him was as easy as counting the number of stones reflected on the surface of the river and blowing into the bottom. Maybe, just maybe, he didn't do that, or maybe he became homeless because it was too much trouble, but only someone who knew him or him would know, so I thought it was a secret. I thought coldly that he might have been a great soldier who had received many medals from important people a few centuries ago, or an acquaintance of Paul Cézanne, or maybe he was Paul Cézanne himself...
Passing through the arch under the bridge, leaving the embankment road, I walked through a slimy, narrow side street with a bamboo forest on one side and came out onto a main street, where shopping shops were gathered in a square carved out of the forest. There was a fancy 100 yen shop, a large, affordable izakaya, a select shop selling vintage clothes, bags, shoes, etc., and several local supermarkets. On weekends, there was also a bookstore and DVD rental shop nearby, where I would rent three or four movie DVDs and watch them until I got bored of them. The movie I saw just last week had a new director and was well-received, but the main character, a dull Korean in the cultural club, mows down a large number of out-of-control mechanoids, but it turns out that the creator of the mechanoids is the professor of his department, and with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, he and the experts suddenly move to the university and engage in a more heated debate than usual about whether to continue to destroy them to stop them from going out of control, or to coexist with them, with the fate of humanity at stake...Then the affair between the professor and the main character's girlfriend is discovered, and the situation takes a sudden turn - this is a moral movie with a sharp theme that doesn't slow down in the middle, and it's a hit, and there were many funny scenes until the second half, so I watched it several times before returning it. There were rumors that a sequel would be made, but the truth is unclear, and no one, including me, took it seriously and looked forward to it, and I didn't believe it. We'd get in touch with acquaintances whose plans matched up, gather at a chain Italian restaurant and munch on cheap bottles of wine and salad sets until someone started talking, and when they did, we'd go on and on about strangers' acquaintances, to the limit of what we could do while sober, like trying to pick up a loose button off a shirt, or we'd talk nonsense about people we didn't like until we were choking, or we'd make eye contact so that the other waiters would know when there was a cute waiter, or we'd make a face so the waiter would notice and get grumpy, I would grin with delight at the expressions on my face, trying to cover them up, but in the end, we would always share the extremely dry troubles of human relationships and the desire for success that didn't match the predetermined gratitude, and when we had nothing to do or our plans didn't match up, I would spend my time studying languages ​​and mathematics in the room I shared with my brother at the time, listening to comedians poetically arguing about whether beef or pork is better for making curry, on a radio show hosted by a comedian. When I finally had nothing to do, I would indulge in writing something like a diary in the notes on my smartphone, turn on an old, atmospheric commercial for a local company to change my mood, continue reading a simple book I'd only started at the beginning of but hadn't finished, play social games on my phone until I was satisfied, chat with friends, go swimming at the municipal pool, work out, and dance to the Beatles or Daft Punk until I got bored. Whenever I felt like it, I would go out of the house, without deciding on a route, irritated with my family for no reason, and would go out for walks, just to avoid cars, people, and all kinds of stimuli, day or night, regardless of the circumstances. Maybe because I didn't have money, I didn't like cars for some reason. Around 3:30 p.m. was my favorite time. The whiteness of every object inevitably collapses, and there are various nutrients that can only be consumed at that time. Above all, when I went for a walk, I didn't have to be conscious of unpleasant memories, my hopeless immaturity, or my golden ugliness. I hated the idea of ​​something less than an emotion, sad or hateful, that made me laugh without knowing what it was, cooling and melting away without doing anything, and I thought I knew that I just wanted to make up for it with a sense of obligation to draw a definitive line somewhere and a shameless scolding. Even though I didn't think I was walking that much, it seems I was walking quite a bit, and it was a good exercise and a way to feel tired. I often found myself back on the original path before I knew it. I walked until night, and the bell crickets were chirping in the shade of the bushes. It's strange how I found and felt surprising differences between the outside I imagined when I was inside the room and the outside I imagined when I was outside. The way I felt varied greatly depending on the person, the time of day, my physical condition, my mood, etc., but in most cases, after the surprise and brief moment of daze passed in the blink of an eye, I felt a slight animalistic and bestial sensation in my body, sweat running warmly from my neck to my back, I noticed the nerves behind my eyelids twitching in response to the light, and I had the time to enjoy the way I began to see things as if they were literally right in front of me, without even a moment to think about whether they were good or bad. I really liked that feeling. Once I took a step outside, I couldn't avoid having to politely decline the fact that I was a rational person with animalistic senses until I met someone other than myself somewhere. The journey to get there had been incredibly long, and I had felt a strangely unbalanced, unapproachable yet all too mundane sense of loneliness, and a sticky liquid that had festered due to the residual heat, which I continued to vomit intermittently, without rest, like I was losing control, until the next day and Christmas.

The outside world didn't give me any room to insert even a little bit of doubt or memory about when and why I had developed a compulsive perversion that made me feel the need to go outside. Was it because of my friends when I still thought it was okay to spend meaningless time? Or was it because of my own existence? Long, long before I and my ancestors were born, before we even knew whether the Earth existed or not, there must have been a wind outside, a wind that was gentle like a human voice, low and sensual like a glorious muscle, sometimes childish like immersing one's heart, and roaring and undulating like dancing... I bought a Pepsi from a vending machine on the way and opened it, thinking about it as safely as kneading rice cakes. There is no need for causality for the wind to blow. I was not very good at English, but my grades in English were good.
After going down the hill of the housing complex, I went back at a right angle to the way I came and found a large sandbox-like area that I liked and walked around in circles many times. There was also an old dried-up well there. I spent my time lying on the road, staring blankly at the stars, not sleeping. Even though I regretted getting run over by a bike that was riding down a pitch black road without a headlight, I persisted in stargazing for a while. Sometimes, without warning, a shooting star would draw a line in the sky, and every time I spotted one, I was moved and excited without any sense of scrutiny.

What was even more strange was that after a while, even though I was in my room, where I should have been, I couldn't find a single reason to go outside, no matter how hard I looked, no matter how far I looked. Was it just that my way of thinking had become quieter in order to better adapt to society? My feelings and impressions were stuck in my throat, and as I grew older, my "reason to go outside" became as joyful as a doll, jumping off the hero of the adventure in silence, disappearing uncertainly somewhere other than my room. All that was left was an aftertaste and a strange sense of incongruity, and the smell of dark blood and musk in the hallways connecting the empty rooms.

On the opposite side of the street from where the square was, there were roadside trees planted on piled up soil and several signs advertising new residents. There were rows of newly built houses with thick milky white plaster walls and roofs made of layers of chic tiles. Most of them had similar parking lots. Some of them had triangular windows, and some had brick chimneys on tile roofs, which were very playful. There were wide spaces between the houses and between the walls, and they blended in a smoky pink color exposed to the morning sun, but perhaps because they were so new, they were somehow different colors and had an atmosphere of blocking people in.
If you go further in (west) beyond the reservoir surrounded by a rusty iron fence in the middle of the new residential area, you will find a small workshop for servicing cars and a tin studio where you can bring in your own musical instruments and play them. As we got closer to the old-looking station, which looked somewhat sturdy compared to the other buildings and was pushed to the edge of town, and the tracks of the circular line, the number of residential houses that people seemed to live in gradually decreased. Many apartments, either wide or long, similar in shape, inhabited by university students from the countryside, and rental apartments with relatively cheap rents aimed at families were built, and there were also many old shrines and temples, and churches with high crosses, always spaced about 200 meters apart. The drawers were down in every house, so it was impossible to see inside. The steel beams were exposed near the entrance of a certain white, square apartment building and at the stairs leading up to the upper floors, and in places the paint had deteriorated and peeled off and was stained with soot. In an attempt to hide this, a huge blue tarp was stretched out from the roof and hanging down, but it was also torn in places. It was a rural area, without a doubt. It was the same kind of rural area that was created by eliminating all recreational spaces. It was something that improved the speed and intensity of producing the past itself. Is it that when people are alone, they don't accept things that are not that difficult as they are, but instead think about them in a more complicated way? It was obviously not left to be corrected or spoken to. Mornings were a great time to look down on people and deceive them. However, unlike the center of a city like Tokyo, the scenic accumulation of such unconscionable temporary actions seemed to have shrunk infinitely and somehow lost its vitality, and I was not called out by a slimy, shiny person in the street right below a high-rise building, nor was I showered with purple angry shouts and heckling from somewhere, nor did I feel my heart beat faster as the air became thinner as I was looked down on by a shiny tower apartment building, nor was I plagued by the lingering noise that is unique to the city. (In short, they may want to spread germs.) To put it nicely, it's an ordinary town with lots of greenery, but to put it badly, it looks like a crab with an extra leg.
I slowed down on my bike and approached a staggered intersection, glancing at a funeral home and a footbridge that seems to be spread across the country, and passed several other people. Some walked with their backs arched and their eyes on the ground, while others walked with a wobbling gait, as if trying to soothe a crying baby with tired eyes, and I thought I would try to imitate them. Mornings are a less suitable time to observe people than nighttime. In the first place, people are usually wary of being stared at when there is nothing there (of course, there are exceptions), and perhaps because it had only been a short time since I woke up, my face and gait were extremely expressionless, like the wrapper I had saved to spit out a piece of gum after chewing, and the outline and boundaries of my body were unnaturally emphasized and unclear. There was always an extraordinary amount of strength somewhere in my body, spreading love for my neighbor and the stench of decay to fill the dull void. Information was not blocked by anything, but was complex and metaphysically expanding its scope of activity. On the other side of the crosswalk, there was the site of a convenience store that had closed about six months after I started working there. It made me realize that if you don't take into consideration others other than yourself, the construction or destruction of a building can easily destroy ideal lives and self-sufficient, artificial realities that are conveniently cut out by biological homing instincts that will never be confirmed in society. Right in front of me, I was faced with a large group of people standing motionless, with their shoulders in a straight line, waiting to jump over their own lives and the abstract remains of the morning. It looked like a group of whales drifting motionless in the sea, but I had no idea how large but gentle-looking whales, ferocious sharks, and other marine creatures usually moved. (Whales are mammals.) There were packed buses taking people to the station without accidents, and cars driving people to and from places of transportation, and the traffic was so squirming with traffic, and even if I listened carefully, there was no sound other than the rattling of motors, and it was eerily quiet. It was as if only the ancient sensory organs that sense the ridiculous had developed and grown independently. Thanks to my usual silly imagination, the left side of my head started to hurt a little again, as if I had been hit by a brass crown or a bucket full of oil all at once, and for a moment I looked at myself and the people gathered around the intersection with a look of shock that seemed to cool off, as if I was trying to protect them. I felt like someone was looking at me, so I looked back at the people watching me from the other side of the crosswalk to find out who was looking at me, and mechanically focused on one person who stood out in particular. Our eyes met, and it was a perfect match. The man didn't seem embarrassed or try to hide the fact that he was looking at me, he just continued to stare back at me, which made me a little startled. He looked like an office worker, wearing a black suit and with his hair slicked back and short in the bangs. He was tall, strong with high cheekbones, so I thought that if I had him wear sunglasses it might actually suit him. After the man noticed me looking at him, and I think he noticed as well somehow, our eyes met for an awkward moment without anyone noticing, and then he gave in and looked away first, and I also looked halfway up into the sky like a paper airplane flying. The clouds were blown by a gentle breeze and cast their large shadows conveniently over the extremely warm and gloomy town, and the large grey clouds looked as if they were just warming up one after another with silly looks on their faces, and during the time that felt so long that it would make a 100-year-old turtle wink unconsciously, the townspeople seemed to be going around in a festivities with pure hatred, having let it all out on the fringes of their emotions. They probably didn't want to be identified with a complete stranger who was unaware of their opportunism and lack of progress in their private lives, which were animalistic and moderately organized, and were the result of them carrying their own shame and wounds.

Hollow and unnecessary information that was temporarily judged to be of no use, customary laws that could only capture substance by becoming hollow, and evil traditions that survived through occupation and occasional exchange (even now I don't know if exchange was even possible back then. I wish the meaning of what was exchanged would be removed), pure excess fat that only grew endlessly, ready to be sucked up and burned up, seemed to be waiting to slip through our existence and return to geometry at the end of history that everyone is waiting for, which will occur at the same time as the yet unseen process of life, and to support the empty city that we only referred to through our nuisance, excessive interference, and labor. If every single human being disappeared from the city, what would be the first to fill the city? Faith? If so, Jesus Christ would be too egotistical and too moralistic. If there is one, what exactly would it be for? If there is an object, what form would it have? Is this an era that has passed and is now looked upon as something that can be conveniently picked up and played out in vain only in memory? Is this empty space something that should only be given to those who do philosophy? I was thinking with my usual carefree attitude that if I were to be caught up in such an unprecedented situation, I would surely have more opportunities to philosophize than I do now, but after I had quickly realized that I had missed the moment that penetrated and stained me faster than a mouse caught in a trap, I was forced to regret two things: the urge to revive, the stagnation of the rather poisonous atmosphere, and the result and symptom of my own careless actions. This is the extent of the horizon of power that a fool can think of. Because the punchline is that most of the time, poor intellectuals are starting to run around trying to add to a gamble that is known to be lost.
I imagined that this city itself might have been created by disguising the desert. There is only one chance to seize it in a 24-hour day. I believed that no matter where you are or what you do, no matter how advanced your technology is or how hard you look, you are mysteriously given only one brief moment. The timing is violently random, random, and whether you are satisfied with what you get or not, whether you are disappointed or not, whether you risk your life or not, it is all left to chance, but even at this early hour, it comes. The city proudly pretends to be larger than a human being, and even if you stand in the middle of the city, always in the third person, thinking that today is the day, the subtle shift in your sense that may have been your concept of yourself is disguised as a "question", and is pushed out between a reality that is rigid with balance and imbalance, equality and inequality, and it crawls out, clumsily, harder to notice than the beginning, painted black by itself, trying to overtake you someday, trying to expand and replicate everywhere the greatest failure of your birth and the settlement of history in a more cruel way than before. After feeling relieved that we had arrived at the modern era by following the explosive driving force of capitalism, the single capitalist and absolute authority other than myself, who was the guarantor of the freedom of the only person, had been wiped out, and in fact, or rather, all along, the simple fact and argument that there was just a big hole in the side of the aquarium where the fish lived, before I knew it, had become nothing more than collective paranoia, and I could not see anything in the empty city that played that role.

It prompted me, who has never been punctual to begin with, to reflect and restrain myself, something that I will likely never be able to do. Even though I know that such things, such meanings, no longer exist, I regress even more in my desire for a dead end, and the moment I see that I can jump into one thing after another, I jump into anywhere, anything, without any time lag. The easy road to anywhere was made up of Buddhist, Buddhistic hasty conclusions and subconscious misunderstandings that seemed carefully constructed, and the way back was full of Christian, pleasant-sounding catharsis and formulaic poems, pieces of humanity that were broken from the beginning, strange things that seemed to be personality traits that were invented in the short time since I started living my life, cheap mysteries that reproduce and rediscover the fragility of human existence, similar suspicious behavior, and bittersweet hopes that always come over thin lies. The city seemed to be motionless and only needed cleanliness that could withstand the after-effects of the vows that must have been repeated countless times and the precision of a chisel.

To begin with, it's easy to confuse being angry at yourself for being lazy with self-reflection, but there's a big gap between them that makes it difficult to measure in a serious way and makes it bothersome. Both of these actions, the latter of which tends to attract less attention, begin with choosing a time and place to recognize the impact and scope of the ordinary potential that you originally had. Some people forget themselves and get angry, while others get angry at others out of necessity, but these are not good choices. Angry people are deceptive, and sometimes you can't tell at first glance. Getting angry can be the simplest, and therefore the most difficult, innovative opportunity that a human being has to move to the depths of self-identification, but the various meanings that getting angry shows us are not so different from the valves opening and closing and pulsating to pump blood through the heart. There was no reason for the most angry person to avoid even more anger, for those with talent or without, for those whose emotions were assimilated to things on an average level, for those who had connections or not, to be attacked by the seductively transformed landscape, left without a trace, and trampled dizzyingly until they could not stand up again. The same goes for war, where the center of thought that evaporates at the same time as the expression of emotions is only diverted from one's attention as hard to understand as possible, but in reality, it is inviting such things and is perfectly, unsalvageably, and banal evil binary oppositions that are aligned above the implicit veil of fascism that is perfectly and unconditionally shaped, and before being covered and buried helplessly by the raging storm of ... In the end, even when I was hungry, when I was freezing, when I was angry, when I finally failed the biggest chance of my life, when I succeeded, when I was longing for someone and my heart was bursting with pain, when I was living a tense double life, I was relying on God. Teeth that had once been broken and chipped do not wax and wane conveniently like the moon. I was wrapped in a transparent thread of lethargy that had been released from that long-ago idea of ​​trying to see something in the city. In order not to waste even a little of my time, the important thing is not to learn a lesson and engrave it in my mind, nor to be more determined than necessary, nor to use my insufficient brain, nor to empathize, but to look forward without looking back or pushing aside what is in front of me, hoping that a person in power or an activist with a heart will find the work of people passing by and the enormous amount of time that is passing by, or to make a bold sacrifice and tie my arms with a thick rope so that they are not noticeable on the roadside, keep my feet on the ground, and bow my head deeply and properly. "Seek only life with infinite death." These were the words of a theologian or philosopher from Germany or somewhere in the West. In the short time it took to get from my house to the intersection, something I couldn't tell if it was sweat or water gushing out from somewhere in my body entered my ears, and I heard a gritty sound like sand rubbing near my eardrums, which was very unpleasant. Whenever I saw someone else who seemed to be busier than me, the headache that seemed to sink into my chest and mix with a dull, sweet feeling subsided a little. This was true not only in work but also in my studies. I was ashamed of my stupidity. I still didn't know whether to call it jealousy of people smarter than me, or a strange arrogance that comes from poverty that I was forced to live with, or loneliness, or sadness, or whether I just didn't think about anything, or just wanted to make excuses and list my insignificant misfortunes. I tried to convince myself that my exaggerated and rough gestures and behavior were the privilege of being born a man and being young, but all attempts failed. I hoped that once I got to the store, I would be less bothered by the extremely emptiness of the temperature I felt when hastily picking up the shards of glass that had broken into pieces after hitting a rock, and by the feeling that there was something tangible that I couldn't touch.I decided to try to stay calm and think as much as possible about what would happen after I got to the store, reminding myself that it wasn't as simple as just clumsily tracing the nylon strings of a folk guitar from bottom to top.

The traffic light for both pedestrians and bicycles turned green, and I weaved between the cars, crossed the crosswalk, turned left, and found myself in the parking lot of the place where I work part-time. I parked my bike in a space separated by red traffic cones and a worn-out concrete curb, and went inside the store.
The automatic doors slid open. The inside of the store was stuffy and numb, with the strong aroma of refrigerant pushed out of the freezer cases for sale, rubbing alcohol, and the strong scent of packaged coffee beans, mixed with the inorganic smell of paper. The light streaming in through the windows illuminated the white floor, pure white walls, and the thin sheets that had been hung around them to protect the packed products, but it was still dim with only a little light seeping in from the back area at the back. As I was striding down one of the four narrow corridors lined with loading platforms all the way to the entrance, my backpack got caught on an iron bar that was used to close the loading platforms to prevent items from falling out, and I was pulled to a halt. I bent my knees, crouched down, took off my backpack, picked it up, and continued calmly to the back area at the back, where S, who usually arrives later than me, was unusually sitting on a metal pipe chair between two tables at the back that looked a little too businesslike for a dining area, and was peering at an old desktop computer as he checked a list of the enormous amount of products that were about to be brought in. The store itself was quite spacious, but the back yard also boasted a lot of space for work. More than 10 people could easily fit inside, and there was another large freezer at the back. On the door of the freezer, a computer desk, and one part of the wall, a lot of small papers with hastily scribbled pre-orders were piled up, and on a rack on another desk, new uniforms were wrapped in plastic and waiting for someone to wear them. The back door was open, and the loud voices of the children attending the elementary school right next to it, squealing and running around, and the teacher who greeted the children, who was probably louder than anyone in the school, chasing after the children, encouraging them to say hello, overlapped like avant-garde music, and for a moment I thought it sounded like a melody I'd heard somewhere before, but I couldn't recall the name from the depths of my memory. Maybe someone thought it would be better if there was no name. The husky Nagoya dialect of someone transporting supplies to a neighboring store sounded like what aliens would make if they had such sounds (it's a misleading expression, but similarities are similar, so there's nothing to be done about it), the roar of a truck's powerful engine as it scurried around the area like it was scavenging for scraps, and, a little later, the smell of burnt diesel drifted slowly over to me from time to time. It was a smell that was more nostalgic than necessary, and strongly attracted my heart. I straightened my back and crumpled up my backpack, whose shoulder straps had stretched so far from the accident earlier that they were almost reaching the floor, and put it in a heavy but reassuring-looking stainless steel locker. The empty, unused lockers were crammed with two kinds of colorful stickers, one made of magnets and the other made of adhesives, with bold letters of encouragement and support for the juniors who are no longer with us, and one of them had peeled off in places over the years, causing the door itself to be dented. I wondered how many times I had done this today, and no matter how many times I had done it, I had a sense of déjà vu in the back of my mind, but in the same way I had before. When I finally managed to catch my breath and greeted her without being dragged down by the noise outside, S looked away from the wristwatch, turned around to face me, and said,

Me: "Good morning..."

S: "Good morning. Huh? Is something wrong?"

Me: "Huh? Nothing really."

S: "Really?"

Me: "Yes... I'm out of breath... I just came here in a hurry..."

S: "No, that's not it... If there's nothing, it's fine."

Me: "You're curious, aren't you?"

S: "You're asking weird questions. Of course. No, I'm fine after all. It's not like that. Really. Were you talking to anyone?"

Me: "I wasn't talking. Is that so? That's fine."

As I said this, I touched her face with the palm of my hand, and confirmed that nothing had changed except for her low nose, which curved slightly to the left from the base of her eyes. Two narrow, slitted eyes, a thin mouth, and two ears twisted as if they had fallen into a groove. A pimple is starting to form right next to my chin that wasn't there before, and although it's not a teardrop mole, I also have a mole on my cheekbone. My eyebrows have thickened from being neglected for quite some time. They'll probably join in about another month. It's a face I've seen so many times I've gotten bored of it and spat it out. It's much larger and paler than most people, and my neck looks stretched and looks like cheese or a root vegetable. Someone once laughed at me and said my face looked like a watermelon, but I thought cheese and watermelon were an odd combination.I've always been insensitive.

S: "Oh, that's right. I suddenly haven't been able to contact A since yesterday. Do you know anything?"

Me: "Really? Well, I think this is the first time I've heard that. Is there some kind of trouble?"

S: "Yeah. What? No, it's not that. I just suddenly couldn't contact A around last night. I wouldn't be surprised if A was in some kind of trouble."

Me: "Can I try contacting him?"

S: "I think so."

I take out my smartphone and make a call. I wait a bit, but it seems the call has been stopped at the exchange, and an automated voice comes on.

S: "Did it come out?"

Me: "Hmm. No. I can't get through... I wonder if something happened."

S: "Maybe he changed his phone model, or maybe he dropped it somewhere. It's more likely that he hasn't paid for it and can't use it, or that he can't connect to the internet for some reason."

Me: "Maybe he got caught up in some kind of incident... If we can't get in touch with A like this, T might stop coming... He'll get sulky. I think it's just a problem with the carrier, or a bad signal, or something. Maybe the charger is broken and he can't charge it. If you leave it on, it will wear out faster."

S: "I know it's worrying. But there's something I'm wondering about... I don't think it's related to this incident..."

Me: "?"

S, with her usual serious expression on, picks up the iPhone that was lying face down on the desk and hands it to me.

S: "This is it."

Me: "Can I see the screen?"

S: "Yeah, sure."

I slowly scrolled the screen,

Me: "...."

S: "..."

Me: "...You couldn't send messages halfway through."

S: "Yeah. That really panicked me."

Me: "What was the cause?"

S: "I don't know. We were just exchanging information about where we were going, and then suddenly. But it's possible for an error to pop up so suddenly."

Me: "You're right. It's weird."

S: "It's weird, isn't it? No matter how many times I press the screen, nothing happens."

Me: "It's really weird. It might be a problem with the app..."

S: "This is the screen, but maybe there's a reason why it's better to leave it like this..."

Me: "I don't think that's the case. If you still don't know the cause, I think it might be best to ask the staff at the store."

S: “That’s the only thing you’re awfully calm about.”

I: "Can I contact you?"

S: "Looks like the messaging feature isn't dead yet."

Me: "That's great. By the way, I was sent a bunch of photos. What are they?"

S: "Yes. There are quite a few famous haunted spots other than the one we're going to today, and these are the photos."

Me: "Oh, can I take a look?"

△△"What are you doing?"

I was surprised when a voice suddenly called out from behind me and I turned around to see a part-timer glaring at us suspiciously. She had been a part-timer at the store since it was first established, had long straight brown hair that reached her collar, and was thin enough that you wouldn't say she was too thin. There was almost nothing S and the part-timer couldn't do in the store, and they had very responsible, professional personalities, but they were also friendly and caring, so they were well-liked by the other part-timers and their superiors.

Me: "Oh, what's this? It's △△-san."

△△: "Who did you think it was?"

S: "Don't scare me..."

△△: "I wasn't trying to scare you."

S: "No, you were definitely trying to scare us."

△△: "No. I don't mind talking, but I came here to complain."

S: "Yeah. Let's do it later."

△△: "Are you going out with the usual group again?"

S: "Well, yeah, I guess so."

△△: "Sure, but if it looks like there aren't enough people, help out!"

S: "No problem."

Me: "I'll help."

△△: "They say there's a lot of packages coming today... I'm going crazy..."

The orange display of a white phone that was apparently made in 2004, which someone said was set up in the back yard, quietly flashed, then a sharp ringtone sounded, and S picked up the receiver. I guessed it was a call from a regular customer of the store ordering a product. I took note of the product that was mentioned. The conversation stopped there for a moment, and the store was in the middle of a sale to celebrate its anniversary. It seems that the store has been making unusually large sales over the past few months compared to other stores in the area, and part-time worker △△ left the back room in high spirits. I turned on all the lights in the store that were built into the wall next to where S was answering the phone, moved the garbage bucket that was full of stuff next to the locker, and put on my work apron. Even if they were good friends, going to a haunted place by themselves was too childish, so I guess the three of them were trying to liven things up behind the scenes. Why? I shook my head dramatically, took a deep breath, looked at S's profile with my back to back, and hurried out of the back room and went out to the sales floor where the products were lined up.