Just Another Night at the Ryokan Mottainai

Deep in the verdant mountains of Japan’s Gifu prefecture, on the outskirts of the traditional city of Takayama, there was a hotel. A Ryokan, specifically, the traditional kind of Japanese inn passed down through generations, with staff living on-site and an onsen right outside the sprawling three-story polished building. For such an old place, it was in extraordinarily pristine shape – unexpected, considering how long it takes to go out of your way to get here.

Yet, here I was. Ready for a long weekend, relaxing in the hot springs and dining on traditional Japanese cuisine. Because Japan is all about tradition, is it not? And if I find their traditions enjoyable, perhaps I’ll honor such delightful excursions as traditions of my own.

The owners were a lovely old couple, one short greying woman and one short grey man. I took my shoes off in the lobby and placed them in the cubbies at the entrance. The place was bedecked in a hard, muted red, browned from either age or the saturation of the air outside, the perfect color for matching the bamboo tatami mats lining every floor panel. There was a shrine to some ancestor or other in an adjacent room, where an incense stick curled one single plume of smoke around a complete set of shogun armor, and an empty incense plate hung from the ceiling. I inhaled long and deep…monkō, I believe they call it. Listening to the incense.

The elderly man gave my key to a young woman, who beckoned me in the direction of my room. The couple were all smiles, the creepy kind, where the incessant number of wrinkles become ever evident as they pile upwards until completely obscuring your eyes. The help, however, all had the same painted white faces, wearing traditional kimonos, and gave no impression of expression whatsoever. This was less creepy, I suppose. More the kind of professionalism I was expecting from a traditional inn.

The room was surprisingly modern, clinical. A bathroom near the front door, complete with electronic heating toilet and built-in bidet. A futon lay on the ground, with an ornate, puffy cover, not far from the sitting area with a table, chair, and single minimalistic calligraphy piece. I recognize the form as Kanji, but am not completely sure what 健康 translates to.

he first day passed without incident. I was terribly tired from the drive, and the onsen had been calling my name the whole way here. How could I deny it any longer? There were a few others out and about the ryokan, but we all kept our distance. The water was dark against its bottomdrop of grey stones on one side and the sharp red glare of hanging lanterns on the other side. It was an interesting choice, almost like being in a darkroom, and the figures of other guests waded about in the steamy water like false photographed stills of the Loch Ness Monster. Hm…Another exotic place I need to visit…

When I dried off and returned to my room in just a towel, the meal was already spread out on a low sitting table – an assortment of miso soup, rice, smoked salmon, fried tamagoyaki, a hodgepodge of unidentifiable vegetables, and sake. Dressing in the rental kimono hanging in my closet, I heartily devoured the meal which gave me just enough energy to finish writing my daily travel blog by the window. The bamboo forest was serene, the harsh hum of cicadas heralding the sun as it reclined behind mountains until its red rays lay flat as a blanket; then night prevailed. Sleep came to me somewhere in between.

Daylight brought with it an itching sensation near my ribs. I inspected the reddened, puffy area closer…a mosquito bite, perhaps? This might call for a trip into town later, grab some ointment, after I complete my morning exercise routine and hop in the shower.

As I was returning to my room from a relaxing run through the cedars, I noticed a short curtain hanging from a sign that said something in Katakana. Steam flowed freely from within, and I concluded that this must be one of the public baths on site. Not usually one for privatized public nudity, it was an experience I would expand my comfort zone for, at least once.

The dressing room was empty, as was the bath area. The place was decorated with wood, from the floors to the basin to the seats below the showers. There was a panel of glass at the far end of the room, a small outdoor area surrounded by thatched walls that featured two large red barrels – tubs, filled to the brim with hot water pouring from bamboo spouts. Grimy from the humidity outside, I lathered, rinsed, and relaxed in the sprawling heated tub. My mind was eagerly melting into that woozy complementation of soreness and heat after about fifteen minutes, which meant it was probably time to go. I rose, and, no sooner did I step out of the basin, then I was immediately conscious of a pair of eyes on me. Studying me…Sizing me up…

No one had entered, I was certain of that – they must have evaded my initial study of the room. Scanning one last time, for peace-of-mind’s sake, I caught sight of a figure in one of the red barrels outside. He waved at me, slowly, with a friendly smile on his face, so at least it was clear he had not been meaning to avoid me before. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the pebble pathway outside, which led to the barrels.

“Ah, a fellow foreigner,” he welcomed me in a thick Australian accent. He was a portly, tall man in his late 40s, with a high-ridged nose jutting from a saggy rectangular head topped by a Kappa’s haircut. His protruding belly pressed against the tub, an iceberg in that steaming water abducted from the onsen, and he raised one hairy arm to beckon at me like one of those lucky cat statues in restaurant windows. “Come, come, park your carcass, have a chat.”

I obliged – again, as a one-time experience, might as well try out everything the public bath has to offer. So I slipped into the other red barrel next to him, water seeping out and trickling through the cracks of the stone garden.

The Australian was a laid-back, casual fellow, an intellectual and worldly traveler who always returned to Japan when he fancied being surrounded by nature at its least exotic and most mystical. He enjoyed the public baths in the afternoon because they were usually empty, and the serenity of listening to the water pour from the fountains, trickle across the floor and into the ground, gave his ears a front-row seat to the cycle of comfort undisturbed. It soothed his nerves as a politician, a position in which following the trail of money was hardly ever satisfied with a conclusion or clear line of sight.

“Then again,” he lolled, sinking back into the faucet so that the water clapped against his back and sprayed off his slouched shoulders, “Ryokan Mottainai is not always the most relaxing place. There have been strange occurrences, yes…spooky things that go bump in the night or steal your left sock.”

“What,” I chuckled, “like ghosts? That wasn’t on the website.”

“You think it would be? You think mentioning haunts and spirits would attract more customers?”

I shrugged. Far be it for me to pretend I have any experience in advertising. “But anything could help. Place seems pretty dead.”

The Australian laughed, “You’ll see how dead soon enough. Things pick up for the spirits on Saturday nights.”

“Not funny,” I said, though it was certainly interesting. “What kind of spirits are we talking about here? Malevolent, environmental, deceased…”

“Flip of the coin, mate. Never can tell who might you interesting yourself. Though…There is one…”

He gave me a sideways smirk and sank deep into the bath, blowing bubbles on the surface. It was a little gross.

“One…Well, what?”
“There is one pretty persistent spirit, the dangerous kind.”
“Where are they usually? Guess I should avoid-”
“Oh, you can’t. You won’t. All you can hope is that she passes by your door without peeping in. But if you wake in the night and smell someone smoking outside, or the sweet, sweet odor of burning flesh, so strong it burns the insides of your nostrils and brings tears to your eyes…Better hold your breath and stay as still as possible. Unless you fancy smelling like an overcooked sirloin yourself when she gets her hands on you.”

I wanted to ask more, but my head was feeling woozy and that darn mosquito bite was itching like mad. The Australian gave me his beckoning wave in farewell – I guess it translates both as greeting and goodbye – and I left him there half-submerged in the comfort of his dark rusted barrel.

Hiking to the bus stop was a bit of a slog, as the clouds came in and drizzle came down. But I made it there, and had the bus all to myself. I must say, I must say, that it was such a relief when I got off in Takayama and was surrounded by locals. Sure, it’s been like, what, a day? But I was already feeling too isolated at the Ryokan Mottainai.

Popped into a convenience store, snagged an umbrella and some Kinkan anti-itch ointment, and settled down for a bit in a small cafe near the open-air market. Even in the rain, set up on the edge of the Miya-gawa river thundering down its man-made ravine twenty feet below, the stall owners weathered the storm to sell their wares. They had come prepared for a storm like this; now if only they had come prepared for customers not to be prepared, as they fled helter-skelter for shelter’s sake.

Oho! Another group passes by my little cafe window, a tour group off to see the sights – and none with umbrellas! They’re standing at the edge of the bridge, and I can see the tour guide gesturing out into the mists below. I applied the ointment to my bite (hoooowow, that stings!) and hurry back into the rain before they move on and leave me behind.

“When they found the body,” the tour guide hunched over, hammily narrating the events of what sounded like a post-drowning, “both of his eyes were missing. Some locals say, if you see a fisherman lurking on this bridge late at night, casting his line into the darkness below, then better for you to find another way around. He’s hunting for the fish that sucked out his eyes, and it might be hard for a blind, desperate man to determine the difference between you…and a fish.”

A bizarre shudder of unenthusiastic laughter rippled through the crowd. I got chills, probably from the rain, and laughed along with them. No one seemed to notice me as we trudged through cobblestone streets, stopping here and there for the tour guide to put on a larger than death performance that only I seemed to appreciate.

“It was at this shrine that a venomous snake spirit struck out at Hirata as he bowed his head for fortune in the New Year. He didn’t live to see the morning, and now both his spirit and the snake lurk about the grounds, entreating you to act with either productivity or slouch in your hearts on New Year’s Eve. For, as the snake would argue, why bother showing restraint when your final night begins with a bite?”

“And here we have the final resting place of Ike, who took etiquette one step backward outside of the house to take his shoes off and contracted a lethal foot fungus. If you see green mold growing near your shoes, it means he might be lurking about, waiting for the opportune moment to snatch your shoes and throw them into the street!”

“Infamous mobster Bando Bunko died of food poisoning at this Yakitori shop. Oddly enough, this actually brought in more customers than dissuaded them. Suspicions of ‘fowl’ play only heightened as the ghost of the deceased diseased mobster sometimes vomits on customers as they leave during a rainy day like today. With a grudge against women who don’t believe the unjust deserve justice, right around that corner, still wearing his dapper Yakuza suit…LURKING.”

The tour was very edutaining, and I was very pleased at seeing my rainy afternoon pass by quickly, when we arrived at a crumpled heap of rubble…What used to be a house, allowed to rot and ruin right there between two perfectly fine homes.

“We’ve got two more stops on our tour, folks. This next one-”

All of a sudden, someone in the crowd broke out crying. It was a little girl, grasping tightly for her mother’s waist as she looked with unblinking eyes away from the house and the crowd. The mother said nothing. The tour guide said nothing. Everyone just looked kinda sad and stared at the rubble while letting the girl just go on and on and on. Someone needed to teach her some manners.

“Excuse me,” I proclaimed loudly, for the whole group to hear, “but maybe you should take your child somewhere else if a pile of burnt wood is too much for her.”

No one responded directly, but I did see the tour guide’s ears pick up at my voice.

“Wait a moment,” he murmured, scouring the rubble with his eyes. “I sense something…”

I felt tingles on my fingles. Couldn’t he tell us the backstory before whatever it was haunting us jumped out without any guesses as to how it would do so? Tell us, tour guide, hurry, how the spirit lurks in this place! My thoughts blurted out in a few incoherencies…I don’t know why, maybe the moisture was getting to me?

All of their heads turned, directly towards me. Not their bodies, still pointed straight ahead at the ruined house – just their heads. Like owls, they swiveled to glare in my direction, all eyes milky white, like those of the blind, silvery dishes glinting in their skulls.

“You,” whispered the tour guide, “are not one of us.”

“So?” I blurted. I refused to be discriminated against just because I was alive, or hadn’t paid the tour fee. “I’ve been following you for the past half-hour, and you’re just now having a problem with me?”

“You’re disturbing the other spirits,” said the guide, as his head started to float like a fruit underwater, neck extending in a faint wisp to keep it anchored to his body. “I’m trying to give them a little peace, and one of our more sensitive participants is coming up on his first encounter with how he died.”

A little boy began to cry in the crowd. He was just staring at me, mouth open, crying sounds spilling out but no tears, no pained expression to show he was otherwise “disturbed.” It was annoying, really – he was probably mocking me. Then his head began floating, too.

“Yeah,” said some sharp-dressed man with tattoos on his neck and some gross liquid dribbling down his chin, then down his nose as it orbited a full one-eighty and schlooped back into his nostrils, “This is an exclusive club, and you ain’t got no membership!”

All of their necks were stretched to the limit now, intertwined as their heads bobbed like balloons on strings. It felt like an unfair advantage; like they were looking down on me, and I was the one in the wrong.

“Fine,” I shouted, exasperatedly throwing up my hands and pacing a tight little circle, “I’ll go, if you’re all going to be rude about it! But I’ll have you know-“

They were gone. I took my eyes off of them for one second and they had spirited away under the cover of rain.

“Assholes!” I yelled after them with hands cupped around my mouth, hoping they hadn’t gotten so far that I wouldn’t get the last word in. I was too loud, though, and some angry little Japanese grandmother threw open her curtains and started yelling at me in her own language. I smiled with about twenty embarrassed “Sumimasen” before I managed to disappear under the cover of rain as well. And it wouldn’t be until I got back on board the bus that I had a hard time remembering if the old lady was leaning out of a perfectly serviceable house that stood exactly where the rubble of that burnt pile of wood was scattered. But I wouldn’t necessarily classify that as something worth double-checking, especially if at risk of bumping into that rude tour group again.

The rain cleared up by the time I was dropped off at the Ryokan. The smiley owners welcomed me back, asked me how was I feeling…Honestly, not too hot. I feel like a cold is coming on or something, my skull is a slurring scramble right now and my side is raw from scratching (I think rain washed the ointment off). If anything can help the headache, I’d put money on the onsen out back, so I quickly changed and stumbled into the warm, natural waters.

The warmth rising under my chin and ears helped relax my head and neck, which is what I was hoping for. What I wasn’t hoping for was for the onsen to be so crowded…there were about eight to ten people wading about nearby. I could not see them that well, just shadows slowly moving around under the warm lanternlight that hung from the trees, casting weak spotlights on the surface of the water. One of the shadows passed around the light cast in front of me, and came to rest his back against a rocky outcropping that was little more than an arm’s stretch from me.

“I’m sorry, but do you have to be so close? I know it’s crowded, but there’s still plenty of room on the other side.”

The man didn’t answer me. Heck, he didn’t even look at me. What was with the Japanese and their abhorrent lack of manners? I always thought they were a courteous and overly-neurotic about saving face. This was the exact opposite of what I was expecting.

“Are you listening? Either move, or tell me you won’t so I can make you move. But sitting there ignoring me is just asking for trouble!”  

He didn’t even turn to look at me, so I splashed him. Then I kicked around under the water, swung my arms wildly, looked over the edge in the trees – because, somehow, the personal space invader had vanished into this air as soon as my tsunami washed over him. It wasn’t that powerful, surely he didn’t get washed away to a different part of the onsen, but then…where the heck did he go?

I thought I spied him at the other end of the onsen, just kind of bobbing about, but I determined it must be a shadowy lookalike. Come to think of it, all of these shadows look alike. So I approached another one to strike up conversation.

“Hi! Some crazy rain we had today, right? Pretty spooky!”

No response.

“I’m sorry, do you not speak English?”

Ignored again. So this time I reached out and personally grabbed them in a big ole bear hug, and POOF! Gone! Not a real person, hahaha, am I hallucinating here? Wading frantically through the onsen, I just start grabbing shadows. Anything that looks like a person, one of them has got to actually be a person! But they all just disappear, merging with the rising steam as soon as I come into contact. I’m out of breath pretty quickly for dashing after spirits, and my head feels worse than ever, so I turn for the stairs. Maybe I’ll find the Australian in the public baths – I need someone to tell me I’m not crazy.

Which I’m seriously starting to doubt, as another shadow catches my eye at the far end of the onsen, where the steam is the thickest. And next to them is another shadow, and another, and another…okay, double the number of shadows that were here when I arrived, to make a long story short. And they were all lined up, focused right at me.

I tried to spook them first, gave a little fake out jab with my arms to establish dominance. I’d already grabbed, like, eight shadows. Was it light, or was it handsy people, who were the true enemies of the darkness? But then they started gliding through the water towards me at an alarmingly speedy pace and I was the only scared one here. I desperately dashed for the shore, tripping and going under twice, then rolled out over the edge. Heaving myself up, I saw all of the shadows, still in the water, right at the edge where I just was. My guess was that they couldn’t leave the onsen, so I flipped them off in victory and marched back inside.

Turns out its not Japanese people, just Japanese ghosts who are extremely rude.

Entering the public bathroom, I was relieved to see my friend the Australian already waiting, beckoning to me with his lucky cat paw from the barrel outside. My relief almost distracted me from noticing that the bathroom was not the same – all of the wood had been replaced by dark stone, mottled with different shades of grey and giving the steam a miasmatic quality.

“Ah, that,” explained the Australian as I settled into my barrel next to him, “is the result of equality. The women get the wood bathroom tonight, then tomorrow it will return to the mens side. They just switched the sign.”

“Weird…I just walked to where I thought I was last night. Pretty sure this is the same bathroom.”

“Well, now, that would be utterly ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”

“You’d be surprised…”

I recounted my encounters, of the tour and the onsen, and the Australian listened with compassionate interest.

“It reads to me that you aren’t in the greatest of circumstances, mate.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I am. And I’m also telling you, this means that you will be especially susceptible to seeing her tonight.”
“What, the burn victim?”

“Oh, she’s no burn victim,” he laughed, shimmying his hairy chest under the fountain, “but what ailed her in life now ails her in death. There was something that weighed on her spirit so much, that it withstood the purification that comes with passing out of the body.”

“Hm. Got any suggestions?”

The Australian shrugged, so I bid him farewell before he ducked under the water. Drying myself off, I was preparing to leave when it finally struck me just how odd it was that the Australian knew so much about this angry ghost girl. So I decided to open the bathroom door and go back for one more round of what might turn out to be crucial questions for tonight. The bathroom was still empty. Just the drip, drip sound of condensation and the tub basin continuing its endless recycling and filtration.

I could see through the steam and the glass that the only occupant had not left yet – but I could confidently say, whatever it was now, it was not Australian. Sitting in the barrel where my acquaintance had been, was a grossly massive beast covered in black-tinged rust-colored fur that stuck out in every direction. Its face was resemblant to one of those traditional Oni masks, complete with fangs, horns, a snarling smile, and glowing eyes, hunched down between its gaping shoulders. The demon’s eyes glinted as it caught sight of me, raising a gnarled elongated hand to give me that lucky cat wave once more; but I was certain, now that I had seen him for what he really was, to stay would put me in a very unlucky situation. So I just waved back, slid the door shut, and returned to my quarters without the information.

Getting to sleep was a futile and sweaty affair. My side still itched like the Dickens, and I was worried that this ghost girl the Yōkai warned me about would pop out of nowhere without warning. How could I defend myself against her then? I was almost relieved as my nose started to burn from the smell of roasting flesh and my eyes started to water from the effects of smoke that was freshly pouring in from under my door. My fear swapped places with annoyance, the main theme of this trip ever since ghosts decided I was to be their primary source of entertainment.

Rising, I decided to get this over with. Not like I would be getting any sleep tonight, anyways.

“MONTEBAL!” shrieked the banshee without even waiting for a “hello” from me as soon as I opened the door. Her entire body was burning, blackened skin stretched tight on her wasted frame, with dark sunken holes in her skull where eyes once were. Fire surrounded her, dripping down from her hair and razing the walls and ceiling around me. It was pretty impressive, though perhaps only because the speed of her showmanship caught me by surprise.

“The time of your reckoning is here, Montebal,” yelled the ghost, pointing a crusty finger accusingly at me, talking over my insistent spluttering that she had the wrong guy. “These fires you see around you consume, never to give, as you did in life – and now they shall consume you. Your neglect of what is important, the ruin you left in your wake, I have come to deliver the consequences upon your head. Blood is thicker than oil, father!”

I decided that was my cue to deliver a bucket of salt directly on her head. The smell of burning oil was unmistakable, but also the hardest type of fire to put out. I had prepared a few options depending on what kind of fire she was: a regular fire, electrical fire, oil fire, etc. My hope was that salt, though not too terribly effective against oil fires, would be doubly effective due to her being a ghost as well. So I hinged my bets on a bucket of salt, and thusly dumped!

The fires immediately schlooped back into the ghost girl, like juice up a straw.

“What the Hell was that?” she chattered, shivering like she had just been doused with ice-cold water.
“My name is not Montebal!” I shouted loud and clear, before she had a chance to start up another tirade.
“What? It’s not…no, but it has…who are you, then, and why are you in Montebal’s quarters?”
“Quarters? This is a hotel room in the Ryokan Mottainai!”
“Ryokan…Where the Hell is that?”
“Japan!”
“What?! But how did I get from Gibraltar to here?”
“Listen I’m just a guest here, and a live one to boot. How should I know?”

I didn’t think her face could look more ghastly – boy, was I wrong. Oil burbled up inside her eye sockets and streamed down her sunken cheeks. She hunched down over her knees in the doorway, sobbing.

Feeling pity, I placed a hand on her back and burned myself. She understood the gesture, though, and rose to follow me inside. I warmed her a cup of canola oil and we sat down together as she spilled her guts over the relationship between her and her father, Montebal, who sought his fortune on an oil rig off the coast of Gibraltar while leaving his family behind to suffer the abandonment. She had been overtaken by disease, until the only thing left beating in her frail body was hatred for her father. It was a touching tale that I admit I had no good advice to give, how she could pass on or be at peace. But I tried my darnedest anyways.

“Look,” I began, “I came here for a relaxing trip, to take in the sights, smells, and salivations of Japanese culture. Instead, I have been bombarded on all sides by obnoxiousisms of the phantasmic sort – it’s got me all discombobulated and in a downright foul mood. I have finally come to terms after talking with you, that the realm of the deceased-but-not-done is beyond my control. I can’t do anything about it. So why bother bothering over all this nonsense when I have just a little time left to enjoy myself here? Better to move on with my own plans, and let the things beyond me pass by.”

She smiled and patted my hand, burning me a second time.

“Thank you for taking the time to listen to me, if that’s truly how you feel. I think your advice is good…for another time. For now, if I don’t want to end up more lost than I already am, it’s probably for the best that I have a purpose in mind, you know?”

The ghost girl downed the cup of oil and thanked me for my hospitality. I showed her to the door and bid her goodnight, before she floated up into the ceiling. There was a loud knock, a door sliding, a booming “MONTEBAL!” Then a lot of screaming from the guests above me. I chuckled and shook my head, and was able to sleep soundlessly as a monk after that.

The morning came, and I was feeling better than ever! No more itching, no more headache, a drawling, happy feeling of elevated nausea bringing warmth to my muscles and heart. I checked out with the smiley couple at the front, who smiled even more than they had when I first arrived, and took the bus to the airport.

My trip to experience a Japanese onsen had some ups and downs, sure, but I think it made me a more resilient man. Plus, it’s not every day one relates with and to the dead, so I had to approach whatever recollection I planned to retain of my stay at the Ryokan Mottainai with respect, if not with fondness. For I learned it was not good for me to dwell on things that I did not change, simply for lack of knowledge or ability. These things exist in the realm of shades, where the dead and realities that could have been find a brief tangibility in the waking hours of understanding.

All that to say, I needed a very good reason to not fly right back to Japan, once whatever drugs the owners had pumped into me wore off, and the burning itch in my side returned worse than before, and I scratched it to find my fingers running up and down the long ribbed stitchings of a scar where that “mosquito bite” had been. A fresh, puffy scar that burned like fire, crossed directly over where my left kidney used to be, my one lasting takeaway from a stay at the Ryokan Mottainai.

Deconstruction of an Otaku Person

There wasn’t much really to Hinata’s life. He would go to his part-time job in Akihabara, selling the same merchandise he himself loved to collect, come home to his small two-by-two tatami mat apartment, and venture into the waking hours of the morning on the paper wings of a manga or the flashing lights of a video game. He had a community online, but he only knew them by username, not by face, and had never truly known any of them before. He was clearly what Japanese society terms a N.E.E.T. That is, Not in Education, Employment, or Training. And he was fine with that.

Why bother to foster relationships, careers, hobbies that are just eaten up by time or expenses in the end? No, better to spend the time on things that, even if they let you down, still massage those basic nerves of pleasure, pumping blood from the heart that yearns for escape from reality. That was Hinata’s philosophy, in more artistic terms since he hadn’t a creative bone in his body. He was built to consume.

Another long day of peddling perverted paraphernalia had passed before he finally reached the part of his routine that brought him home. Home, to a little cupboard with a TV on the floor, a pile of blankets in front of it, and food garbage littered around it in an almost ritualistic circle. The majority of the box’s volume was taken up by shelves – a full display of various entertainment, from video games to anime to manga to, above all else as the residential idols, his beloved painted figurines.

These figurines weren’t your run-of-the-mill action figures. They were expensive, handcrafted works of art. They were also sexy, something that was absolutely required if Hinata could feel comfortable dropping 90,000 yen on just one statuette. He was turning thirty next week, which meant that he had accumulated one-hundred and twenty-two high-grade PVC and silicone anime girls over the 16 years he had been collecting. They were the wallpaper, from floor to ceiling, in their flowery dresses, stylish kimonos, tight or revealing clothing. Ninjas, Magical Girls, Mech Pilots, Demons, Space Assassins, Vampires, Bunny Girls, Angels, Knights, Militants, Beasts, Schoolgirls…He had one girl for every occupation, any occasion. The occasion being: what was the flavor of his pleasure today?

Today, Hinata had sold a figure he never thought he would sell. An otaku, a total loser and pervert, acknowledged as ugly in her own anime show, to some boy who had a very depressing look on his face. So depressing, that Hinata almost empathized with him. But he didn’t want to empathize; he would rather escape into a cheerful game with a cheerful girl by his side tonight. Perhaps a city simulator RPG of some kind? As for the girl, well, the selection was his favorite part.

After looking over his assortment of dolls, Hinata decided on one of the Magical Girls. She had brilliant pink hair that sparkled when the light hit it a certain way, and a detailed gold-dusted wand with intricate flourishes of clear plastic to imitate a magical effect. She was suspended in midair using the same plastic, which allowed her ruffled sleek pink dress to be crafted in a way that suggested she was performing some sort of impressive acrobatics. And, to top it all off: her smile. The perfect combination of painted eyes and mouth, making it appear like she was filled with wonder and excitement to be doing whatever it is magical girls do. He needed that kind of wonder in his jaded adult life. So he picked her up, delicately, careful not to snap any of her fragile accessories.

Not careful enough, however. One of the Magical Girl’s translucent flourishes hooked onto the curled tail of a Snow Leopard hybrid, pulling the Beast from its den and onto the floor where it promptly snapped in half.

“Shit,” said the Magical Girl.

Hinata’s eyes widened in disbelief. He would have dropped her from shock if she hadn’t set him back two months rent to acquire.

The Magical Girl figurine immediately tried to correct her mistake by stiffening up. But the damage was done, and the room was too small for Hinata to suspect an intruder. He poked her curiously in the cheek, which set her into a laughing fit.

Hinata tripped with surprise into his pile of blankets as the other one-hundred and twenty-two figures lining his shelves let out a collective groan.

“Well, that’s just great. Couldn’t keep the giggles to yourself, huh?”

“Stupid Magical Girls, always so pent up from being in storylines too serious for them.”

“Hey, don’t blame her breaking character on all of us! That’s a harmful stereotype!”

“All your magic rot your brain, huh? Baka!”

The Magical Girl figure blushed angrily. “W-w-well I can’t help it, you saw what this idiot did to poor Nugleatonga!”

“Mrooooooowr…”

“Oh, good, she’s all right at least.”

Hinata’s head was spinning. At first, the scenario was frightful, as any scenario involving living dolls usually was. But he quickly realized that they were all rooted to the spot, fastened securely on their stands, only able to move their heads and change their expressions. They may be alive, but they couldn’t go anywhere. He owned them. They were his, to talk to and find comfort in, to bring him the pleasures that friends usually offer. He wouldn’t have to be alone ever again, or be alone with people who he thought weren’t worth being around. He now had a captive audience, to enjoy his company as he enjoyed the typical pleasures of his passing days.

Almost as if they read his mind, all heads turned in unison to face Hinata directly. An entire cage lined with painted eyes from every side, judging his silence.

“Do you know why,” sneered a Mech Pilot, reclining on a model of the cockpit belonging to her giant robot (parts not included), “we have never talked to you before? It is because, while you are at work or engaged in frivolous play, we have our own way of finding entertainment.”

“Every figure based off of a popular brand – say, a popular hero from an anime show – is consciously tied to that property” explained a Smutty Teacher, bent provocatively over a desk with her thin metal pointer poised under indecipherable text scribbled on a chalkboard. “So, while we may seem inanimate, we are actually tied directly to our counterpart’s experiences in their primary medium. Whatever plots she experiences in her story on the screen or the page, we are able to experience it constantly, as if for the first time. And let us assure you, it never gets boring.”

“You, on the other hand,” scoffed a Schoolgirl, her skirt blown up like a tease, arms crossed and cheeks delicately colored pink with scribbles over her nose to show embarrassment though her voice relayed nothing but disgust, “are soooooo boring! Gawd! Every night you do the same damn thing…come home, fall down in that heap of greasy rags, hammer your thumbs on the control or your hand on your dick, and pass out. It’s just…It’s freaking pathetic.”

Hinata colored in anger and humiliation. These figures of plastic and paint had seen him do all sorts of embarrassing activities, watch shameful entertainment, mope and sulk in his loneliness, and now they could criticize him for all of it! He wouldn’t stand for it. He would break each and every one of them, take off their clothes, bring them to such a position of lowness that they wouldn’t dare speak to him like some homeless addict in his own apartment.

“Whatever you’re thinking, perv,” muttered a Demon Girl with built-in stone horns and a velvet tail wrapped around thighs bigger than the rest, “Don’t think we haven’t seen it before. You’re upset for us judging you, but don’t seriously act like that doesn’t describe you to a T! You take a dead-end job that pays you just enough for terrible food and a crap place, so you can blow all your cash on stuff that gets your rocks off. No savings for a better life, no energy to try harder, no time to build relationships. You don’t play video games for a release, you do it to get off on the girl avatars. Don’t lie, we see you, creep! You’re not a fictional hero, or some intelligent creative soul who deserves better and is just misunderstood, or a skilled professional in anything at all. A loser. Just a damn loser is what you are.”

Hinata seethed, but his confidence in being a superior human among inferior plastics was starting to waver. He did not back down! He insisted upon his philosophy, his hedonism, his attachment to the pleasures of buying material things that give you exactly what you expect. Why would he change, when this life was predictably pleasurable?

The little cupboard apartment was filled with the loud derisive laughter of every single figurine. The cackling broke Hinata’s spirit: this was the exact kind of noise he desired to escape, that he never wanted to hear from real people and so retreated to the imaginary.

“You moron,” spat a Bunny Girl, tastelessly showing the backside of her tights while holding a champagne tray, glasses filled with a hardened gel substance, “Don’t you know the only thing you’re relying on are all those horny, good feelings that come from being young? What happens when you get past thirty, then past forty, and you can’t get it up and you get all tired, fat, and old? Then, when you can’t even realistically escape to where you want in this little sanctuary you’ve built, cause you can’t even keep up with your fantasies, you won’t get nowhere out there in the real world, neither! Alone, broke, too tired to get your buzz on…Shit, you might as well just die now, dumbass!”

There was a murmur of agreement from all of the figures. An Angel in the back started the chant. The rest of the girls slowly joined in with sadistic glee.

“Die. Die. Die. Die. Die! Die! Die! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

The command was so loud, so violent, that the whole room was rumbling under the vibrations of their demonic timbre. The paint depicting their eyes, no matter the color, glowed red. Over a hundred cutesy anime eyes, shining all around him with the dim glow of an emergency exit sign that would open up straight into a deep pit of absolute darkness. Hinata desperately wanted to dash for the door, or at least flip the lights on, but he could no longer see which way it was – even if illumination was only at arms’ length. But his arms were too preoccupied, pressing his hands like suctions against his ears, and his skin was too thin to keep out that chorus of demeaning voices as they added more insults to the sad heap cowering in the center of the room.

“Idiot!”

“Loner!”

“Pathetic!”

“Virgin!”

“Antisocial Coward!”

“Introverted Weakling!”

“Broke-Ass Little Bitch!”

“Selfish Asshole!”

“Addicted Weeb!”

“Pervert!”

“Pedo Freak!”

“Creep!”

“Gamer Trash!”

“Loser!”

The voices wouldn’t stop. Curled in a ball, bawling, begging them to leave him alone, Hinata finally started screaming at the top of his lungs to drown them out. But the dolls were louder, their pulsating red eyes surrounding him oppressive, and he couldn’t look away from their voyeuristic delight at beholding such a pathetic piece of human waste shriveling up under the heat of their humiliation. That was the sort of thing from which they derived their greatest pleasure. It was about time they got some from their “owner” for a change. At least he could be somewhat useful for once in his worthless life.

♋ ♋ ♋

When the police burst into Hinata’s room, they were shocked by what they saw.

The Leasing Office had called them, firstly concerned with receiving the past month’s rent, which was never delivered, but secondly with concern for the tenant’s safety. Other neighbors had reported strange noises as they passed by the door every day – morning or night, it made no difference. The noise never stopped, a weak dry-heaving on perpetual loop, accompanied by the background vocals of a hundred whispers.

Breaking down the door after he refused to open it, the police discovered Hinata lying curled up on the ground in the middle of his room. His hands were still clasped tight over his ears, milky eyes staring up at the ceiling but seeing nothing, skin stretched taut against his wiry frame that looked like it hadn’t been nourished once for an entire month. His chapped lips quivered fearfully, repeating nothing in particular but simply reminding himself he still existed, by virtue of having a voice. The police tried to remove his hands from his ears, but they wouldn’t budge; his joints and muscles were so tensed up from fear and time working against him, that they had locked in place.

It would take four months before Hinata recovered from dehydration, starvation, lack of sunlight, muscle spasticity, and psychological trauma. During therapy, he refused to say what happened to make him feel like that…other than his home had been “invaded” and that he had been forced to “look inside himself and make changes in his second shot at life.” Hinata may have missed his thirtieth birthday, but whatever ordeal he underwent in that dark cupboard of a room ensured that his future birthdays would extend much longer. And have much more meaning.

Filed away in the police report, as well as the Leasing Agent complaint, was the status of Hinata’s apartment at the time of the rescue. Everyone knew about it, but the landlord decided, upon a personal visit to the scene, that he wanted no part in whatever the Hell was going on there, and took the room completely off the books for good.

What the police had walked in on was a peculiarly minimalist room, but nothing they hadn’t seen before from a dead-end N.E.E.T. like this one. What made it peculiar were the statuettes lining the shelves, hundreds of them. They could tell they were once figures of cute anime girls, very expensive, expertly crafted and clearly coveted by collectors.

Once.

Now, they were repulsive, sickly monstrosities. Their limbs, bodies, and necks had stretched towards where Hinata’s limp body had been retrieved, as if hungry to claim his soul. Paint had melted, smeared, swirled across their bodies in indecipherable symbols and streaked their faces into bleeding nightmares. Their clawed fingers, pointing at him with accusations – painted mouths split to become smiling fanged jaws – their eyes, hollowed out into empty pits – their clothes, torn and blended in with their bodies to create leathery, mutated forms with multicolored appendages stretching out towards, again, the spot where Hinata was recovered. Hinata refused to mention the figures, grew pale as a sheet whenever they were, and the therapist tasked with his recovery eventually shut down the topic altogether.

The police chalked Hinata up as a mental case and left it alone. The Leasing Agent, however, needed to resell the apartment, and continued to receive complaints of threatening whispers coming from within. He also heard that a lot of the previous tenant’s abandoned belongings would fetch a high price, which was as a good incentive as any for action. So, one day, he decided enough was enough and opened the door to clear the place out.

It must have been a trick of the dark, but…The Leasing Agent could have sworn that, as soon as the light entered that stuffy cell, every single head of every single figurine swiveled in unison. Staring, directly at him – judging, and eager to see the natural sentence carried out, so they had a good reason laugh forever and ever.

The Leasing Agent locked the door behind him and never looked back.

Akihabara

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.