2:53 AM. A time when most boys would be asleep, ought to be asleep.
But not he. Not this boy.
Ever vigilant, ever working, the ligaments threaded through his wrist to the tips of his fingers straining away into the break of dawn. Skin crying, salt blinding his dark, blank eyes as it trickles into his gasping mouth. Brainwaves fade in and out, trying to puncture sheer tiredness with a clear picture of the work that is almost beating him down. Yet he will not waver.
He is too inspired.
His lips sticky, his mouth dry; clamping down, getting stuck, peeling apart, repeatedly. It is almost complete. The boy has been holding back, but now all of his energy is on the front lines for that final stretch. It requires his body to work as one whole, all muscles pumping as a single mechanism as opposed to separate gears. Bleary eyes focus on the light, and the fallen angel waiting there with open arms, encouraging.
“Come on, come on.”
Almost there, almost there, there, there, there! Throwing his all into it, the strenuous task is complete. The boy, exhausted of all will, drained of another night’s effort, lays his head down to rest. Alone in the puddle of victory.
The ringing begins as a faint tinkle; suddenly it swells to a tinny siren that nearly deafens the boy before his ears determine which wall it is behind. Then the noise is before him. A hand reflexively extends and slams down on a nearby phone, silencing the programmed alarm. Just as he is on the brink of slipping back into disturbed slumber, the next alarm rings, startling him upright from a pool of saliva glazed across the keyboard serving as his pillow. The humongous monitor in front is black, still hot from last night’s labors. Familiarly bland walls surround him, covered in posters of seductively drawn women of all poses and body types, yet these were all unfamiliar to him. Who are these faces? There were even a few that looked of flesh and blood, but they were as flat as the rest. Shelves filled the spaces that were not covered in paper, and these housed miniature women, three-dimensional this time, with cute smiles, fierce bosoms and glittering eyes glaring down emptily at the boy. Various DVDs in colorful boxes serve as their wall dividers, which the boy has watched once apiece and forgotten altogether, having served their purpose. But still these numbers, the posters and the DVDs and the girlish figurines, will multiply. And the boy will forget.
That is why he goes to Akihabara. That is why he labours every night.
His consciousness finally recognizing the surroundings as his own handiwork, the boy sorely heaves himself out of the squeaky swivel chair and he slinks across the crowded apartment’s tatami mat to the shower. Only the floors were clean; he felt dirty. The water did better to wake him from his sleep, and he was almost reluctant to step out from under the heavy steam pounding down upon his bony back, but it all did little to wash away the weight that fastened itself tightly to his chest. He still had to deal with the Impersonal World before he could return to the Personal; He must first go to Gakuen to get to Akihabara.
Dressed in bland tar uniform, the boy snatches up his bag and heads for High School. A place he used to look forward to attending. Used to. But, then…
What exactly happened after that?
♋ ♋ ♋
He is already at the station waiting for the train to Akihabara. As if school was a thin minute passed on the boy’s clock, transparent, void of substance. He saw it coming, but hardly felt it leave. What happened to him? School just didn’t seem to have the impact it once held: The thrill of learning, applying skills in a natural occupation…who was it for, really? Not for the boy.
But he has Akihabara. He’ll be all right.
“Hello, Benjamin!”
The boy turns. A cute girl he recognized from his class. Her name was…No…Nobuko. So it is. Her name was Serizawa Nobuko, and Benjamin fell into a crush with her on his first day at Gakuen, transferred from America. She was that bashful, sweet trope one always saw in cartoons and the like, and contrarily as vulnerable as a dandelion around him. He even asked her to call him by his first name, and she embarrassingly consented. But, as with all of the boy’s interests, that crush just sort of faded away, along with any interest in Nobuko’s friendship whatsoever.
He knew she liked him and valued him as someone to bounce her English off of; he couldn’t help if he didn’t feel the same way with Japanese.
“Hey, Serizawa.”
He turned back to face the tracks. Nobuko waited a while, suddenly looked hurt, but only for a moment, and strolled up to his side. She playfully nudged him with her shoulder while staring at her feet and thought about what to say. She wasn’t great at conversation, but she knew she wanted to be friends with Benjamin again. Maybe even more than that this time. So she would have to talk, something she wasn’t good at, but hoped it would be worth something. She might not have even tried if she saw through to just how futile her feelings were. How they fell on a heart of stone.
“So, where are you headed?”
“Same place I always go.”
“Akihabara? Oh, that’s, um…cool.”
The train will soon be approaching. Please step away from the tracks.
“Um, listen…Did you want to work on Mr. Kasamatsu’s homework later?”
“Sorry. I’ll be working hard tonight.”
“Oh, okay. On what?”
“The usual stuff.”
“Oh, you mean your concept art? Which characters are you working on now?”
However the boy replied, the train drowned it out with a roar. Nobuko was now even more hurt then before, but never one to forfeit easily. She remembered the boy her heart went pitter-patter for, and that’s what she wanted to feel again. She wanted to see that boy again. She needed to try harder for him.
On the train, the passengers were lined together like the DVDs on the boy’s shelves. Nobuko struggled to stand next to the boy, but it wasn’t because she liked it. She glanced up with genuine care, but was discarded for a new, unexpected concern. A concern for the boy that she couldn’t quite place, as if she worried about him. As if he was going somewhere she could not follow, and would not dare to.
“Hey, Benjamin, I really liked those drawings you showed me last week. Actually, you know, I’ve been working on some lines and voices I think might fit them, if you-“
“That sounds great, Serizawa.”
“Really? Well…um…do you think you could come up with some more concept drawings for me? I mean, I don’t want to interrupt what-”
“I don’t know. I’ve been kind of busy.”
“With what? I thought that you wanted-“
“I said I’m busy.”
We have arrived at Akihabara Station. Please back away from the doors.
So that was it. A shadow darkened Nobuko’s face as the word AKIHABARA glared down at her. Now she recognized that foreboding concern. It was the same that she had seen in her brother, a denial of the Impersonal World in favor of the Personal. Vanishing time, disconnection from what others tell you really matters…That was the power of Akihabara: to suck you in until it would be impossible to escape. Nobuko was helpless, as was the boy.
The boy felt something small inside him say that he had been too cold to Nobuko. He didn’t really want to listen to it, considering there were yet more pressing matters at hand. Still, under impulse, he turned around and gave her a slight smile and a wave. Was that enough? It should be. Time to get to work.
The train will soon be departing. Please step away from the tracks.
The doors closed. Nobuko did not smile back.
♋ ♋ ♋
The boy’s eyes were creased in a cast look of contemplation, whether from the bright screens flashing within the streetside stores or an overload of popular graven images flocking the merchants’ shelves. Witness the otherworldly bleeps of the UFO Catchers heralding poor suckers whose wallets they entrap in greedy, plastic claws. Follow escalators to rows and rows of arcade games and Sega machines, each user pitted in a furious battle against the unknown opponent performing at the opposite console. Manga stores, crowded with light novels, graphic novels, and other popular serials, strategically labyrinthine to prevent curious, unaccustomed eyes from stumbling their way to the top floor, a treasure trove of nude women whose only limitation is the restriction of their mere mortal artist’s imagination. Whole buildings stuffed with various eye-catching knick-knacks, a technology bazaar, from cheap quality cameras to adorable Kigurumis to Evangelion razors to Gundam model kits to Doraemon bedding to Keurig machines to things you can’t imagine anyone would ever buy. Countless cafés, some new and some worn down, some featuring owls and others cats, or even maids. The maids are the only feature of a café to advertise their own exhibition, which they do so loudly in the street and impart either a flyer or a pout, casting a pox of guilt upon you either way.
The boy avoided them, taking a route in front of the Owl café, where a Barn owl observed him from a window through unblinking eyes. Though not yet a Saturday, the cosplayer’s day of choice, there were still a few Haruhis and Elrics perusing the overstuffed skyscrapers. Even if these were scarce, there would always be Victorian clad Loli decked in frills and lace stockings, parasols hovering over the heads of the hundreds of people in the hundreds of shops with their thousands of products, useful, useless, or both.
This is the boy’s world. This is Akihabara.
But the boy is not here to dally in and out of the plush nooks and crannies of diverse culture beyond his tatami mat room; he is here on a mission, a mission to discover a new occupation. His screen-dried eyes peer through the businessmen, past the maids, over and under the iDOLM@STER advertisements, until his vision firmly grasped that fatal store. He was an honorable customer here, well known and frequent in patronage.
“Irasshaimase!”
A young man, a native around the boy’s age with eyes shielded by a large toboggan, beamed a smile that disjointedly followed the boy as he entered the store and walked through the transparent glass displays. He had come at a particularly slow time; only two or three other persons were also in the store, both in their pre-teens, perusing the stack of Naruto manga and laughing at the battle. The boy took no interest in any of these figures; he cared only for those of resin and plastic. There they were, calling to him from the back of the store in a charming conglomerate of attractively ethereal hair and eyes, molded and cast and brushed to perfection. But the boy was not a little bit disappointed, for these were all familiar faces, and familiar faces are not helpful to one of his occupation. A red-haired demon with a seductress’ lure; a pouting Loli stuffed with creamy cake; a pop idol wrapped in her six-foot long aquamarine twintails; a fanged tomboy sporting cat ears and a long, playful tail; an embarrassed well-endowed maid forced into a playboy bunny outfit; several intimidating marines decked out in what appear to be ship cannons and jet wings; the occasional Mecha pilot in her uncomfortably tight clothes stretched out across a heap of rubble. To the unaccustomed eye: a plethora of expertly crafted works of art. To the boy: a garbage pile of yesterday’s passion.
Yet, among the bright smirks and extravagant costumes, one stands out to the boy as one he has not seen before. Sacked in an unflattering school uniform, with a sickly look to her grin and dark circles under her droopy eyes, stands someone new among this recurring party. The boy snatches her up, and, along the way to the register, a packful of merchandise related to this curious newcomer. The young man at the front seems confused by the boy’s behavior, but it is not his place to question the boy’s peculiar tastes, for he knows his own are generally frowned upon. When the boy exits the shop, the numbers of consumers shoving each other on the sidewalk has doubled, signaling the fast approach of night. The lights flash even brighter, the maids shout even louder, the customers pay even more, and the boy’s time is even fleeter. He cares not for these ostentatious pavilions of the year’s newest spoils, but elbows his way back to into the subway under the sparkling archway. Even underneath he cares nothing for the transitions between advertisements for the next big thing; he will hear about it later himself, and in that moment will decide whether to offer up his precious time. For now, though, the short, strange girl and her show await, and the boy is thrilled at the prospect of another night’s hard effort.
For that is the influence of Akihabara, despite the boy’s ignorance of the splendor surrounding his miniscule universe. The broader paintbrush is of devastating use in the minute details of one’s meticulously sentient canvas. Even so, was the puny detail paintbrush ever successful in efficiently completing a masterpiece on its own?
The train will soon be approaching. Please step away from the tracks.
♋ ♋ ♋
4:22 AM. A time when most boys would be asleep, ought to be asleep.
Not he. Not this boy.
Yet, this time, the boy was not working; he had tried to at first, but became unable to continue past the icy tears welling by the gallon in his worn eyes. After five hours of studying his new goddess’ animated show and browsing through a stack of her graphic novels, the boy became aware of an emptiness. The girl was, in a way, very much like himself; unhealthily buried in Otaku culture to the point where it loses its form, loses its value, and is morphed into nothing more than a mindless pleasure. School and social life are buried with future prospects, and the boy’s heart is now weighed down by these revelations. It started off the size of a mustard seed, and blossomed into a mighty fir of discontent. Only recently had he been to Akihabara, but it felt so long ago in the shade of this mighty tree, his newfound depression. Emptiness had eaten away at his soul like a burrowed grub, screaming and crying for nourishment but receiving only the leftover promises of a passed dream and the recycled pleasure of present infatuation as the joy of watching his shows, of playing his games, of pleasing himself in accordance, had been sapped of their value.
He no longer found pleasure in, and thereby reason to continue, his work. Where did it all go to ruin? He wanted so badly to be the creator behind the things he venerated, but knew he was not ready. All that time he prepared by studying the material, reading the manga, watching the anime, did it go on for too long? Did it become his escape from such overwhelming ambitions and the possibility of a bleak future? But now his bleak future is here, and he unable to escape its stone-cold grip clenched around his throat.
No! He could still escape that void of purposelessness, he could still pour his life into art! Where did he bury those sketches, those depictions of characters whose future once looked as hopeful as his own, those products of his own soul and not of someone else’s? Where could they be?
The boy searched and searched, but nowhere could he find those fragments of memory needing to be reborn, rekindled, reimagined. The boy was alone with his present misfortune, suffocating under the pressure of losing what once drove him so hard to succeed. Serizawa, too, had believed in him. In fact, he really liked her a lot, but she lost precedence to each new imaginary idol that the boy bestowed his infatuation upon. Bit by bit, what he held close died away, though his collection grew; now he possessed plenty, and yet nothing at all.
The world finally clicked, and the boy became aware.
Aware of lifeless eyes peering down, jeering down, on faces forever fixed never to love him in return. He felt completely exposed and ashamed and alone, with no one he could call on, and no easy way back to his former life. He imagined his figures were jealous, despite the fact that they were not, and dropped into the fetal position, crying out for protection. Shadows began to rise from their hollow forms, but these were just as emotionless as the husks they evacuated. The boy cried harder for help. He knew not to whom, or from what, but he desperately needed to feel safe and hopeful again. Serizawa could not hear him, and he could not help himself.
And so the boy staggered to his feet, crashed into the shelf housing his prized collectibles, and bumbled his way out the door. The pressures of life were too monstrous; he needed to get somewhere, somewhere with people as hopeless as he was, to know he was not alone.
There was only one place where he ever sought help. He needed to return to Akihabara.
♋ ♋ ♋
The boy neared the train tracks. Dawn was almost otherworldly, casting its bloody-blue hue down upon the misty morning as it reached down to shake the world awake. Usually, the boy would not notice it, but this becoming light terrified him, pushed him to hurry with greater haste. He bolted into the subway, shielded by the manmade grave for salary workers, but the shadows of discarded dreams and fancies awaited him there, melded as one. They made no movements, but cackled and giggled at the lost and lonely boy; he was surrounded on all sides.
The train will soon be approaching. Please step away from the tracks.
“Somebody help me! Don’t you see them?”
The boy murmured manically, and the few people in the station, not many, not nearly enough, glanced at him perplexedly with a slight hint of disgust.
“Don’t you see them?”
The curious lose their curiosity, for they have real work to do, and so the busy people walk on by, ignoring the boy. He continues to plead.
“Didn’t you see them as they came for you? Didn’t you realize what was happening?”
The train will soon be approaching. Please step away from the tracks.
The shadows plunge down in a heap of despair to snatch up the boy, and he turns to flee for his life. But the only place left to flee is the train tracks. In his delusions, in his anguish, the reality of the tracks mean very little to him, and neither does the train, or Nobuko’s faint pleas for him to stop.
The illusion of inconsequential surreality is shattered under the bellow of the train’s horn and the flare of its headlights. The boy is in midair, leaping in fearful retreat, when he takes notice. The heart that had rotted away for so long plummets to the recesses of his ill stomach, and he nearly vomits from fright. There is nothing the boy can do to prevent the inevitable, but there was much he could have done to prevent this capitulation of events. He knows it, and is very much sorry for it.
He is sorry for Akihabara.
With the truth clarified, the boy actually feels a brief moment of peace, contradictory peace in a state of helplessness. Peace birthed from the fact that the shadows of that past, present, and future are no longer his problem. After all, by his own decision, life had abandoned him long before time called it, and time roared along as always, faithfully on schedule.
The train will soon be approaching. Please step away from the tracks.
Morning's Early Dark 