Chapter 2 : The Beginning of the End

After the nineteenth instance that day of saying "I'm very sorry" and bowing deeply at the waist, I got dizzy, fell over, hit my head, and lost consciousness—or so I was told.

It was while I was working a part-time shift at a beer garden. The cause was obvious. It would happen to anyone if they worked in the sweltering heat without having anything to eat. Recklessly, I walked myself back home to my apartment after that, but my eyes felt as if they were being clawed out of their sockets, so I ended up going to the hospital anyway.

By taking a taxi to the emergency room, my already dire financial situation got even worse. On top of that, my boss told me to take some time off work. That meant I had to cut back on living expenses even more, but I didn't know what there was left to cut. I couldn't even remember the last time I had a meal with meat in it. I hadn't trimmed my hair in four months, and I hadn't bought a single piece of clothing since the coat from two winters ago. I hadn't gone to hang out with anyone since starting college.

I had reasons that I couldn't ask my parents for help; I had to take care my own income.

It hurt to sell off my CDs and books. They were all used and painstakingly chosen with the strictest judgment to ensure I had the best of the best. But without a computer or TV, that was about all I had that was worth any money.

Before I said good-bye, I decided to listen to each CD one last time in order. I put my headphones on, lay down on the tatami, and pressed play. Then I hit the switch on the room fan with blue blades that I bought at a secondhand shop, and I periodically went to the kitchen to fill my cup with water.

It was the first time I missed any college classes. But I knew nobody would care that I was absent. Perhaps they didn't even notice I was gone.

One by one, I moved the CDs from the stack on the right to the stack on the left.

It was summer, and I was twenty. But as Paul Nizan once wrote, "I won't let anyone say those are the best years of your life."

Ten years from now, something's gonna happen for us. Something great. And then we'll finally be glad to be alive, Himeno prophesied back then, and she was dead wrong. Not a single "good" thing had happened to me, at least, and it wasn't going to get better anytime soon.

I wondered what she was doing now. Her family moved away in the summer of fourth grade. I hadn't seen her since.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

But maybe it was for the best. This way, she wouldn't have to see how dull and ordinary I'd become over the course of middle school, high school, and college.

On the other hand, you could also say that if my childhood friend had come to my middle school with me, I might not have turned out this way. Whenever she was around, I was on edge—but in a good way. If I did something stupid, she would laugh at me, and if I did something laudable, she would be frustrated. That kind of motivation kept me at my best, I think.

It was a regret that I returned to quite often over the last few years.

If my younger self could see me now, what would he think?

After three days of listening to the majority of my CDs, I kept just a handful of the most precious and stuck the rest in a paper bag. My other bag was already packed with books. Then I headed out into the city, holding one in each hand. After a while of walking in the sun, my ears began to ring. Maybe it was just a phantom sound caused by the irregular buzzing of the cicadas. It sounded as if one of them was right next to my ear.

The first time I visited that used bookstore was last summer, a few months after I started college. I didn't have a clear map of the area in my head yet, and I got lost on the way. There was a period of nearly an hour when I didn't have a good grasp on where I was walking.

After passing down a side alley and climbing some stairs, I found the bookstore. I tried to go back there several times since, but I couldn't figure out where it was. When I wanted to look it up, I couldn't remember the name. It always worked out that I stumbled across it when I was lost. It was as if the store itself was appearing and disappearing with a mind of its own. Only this year had I been able to finally get there without losing my way.

When I arrived this time, morning glories were blooming in front of the shop. Out of sheer habit, I checked the clearance racks with the cheapest books they wanted to get rid of outside the front door before going inside. The interior was dimly lit and smelled like aging paper. The sound of a radio was coming from the back.

The aisles were so narrow that I could only get through by turning sideways. At last I called out to the shop owner, a timid-looking, wrinkled old man who peered out between stacks of books. The old man never flashed a smile at anyone, no matter who you were. When it came time to check out, he just stared down and murmured the price as he read it off the sheet.

But this day was different. When I told him I was here to sell books, he actually lifted his head and looked me straight in the eyes.

I could definitely sense something like shock in his expression. I suppose that made sense. All the books I was selling were the meaningful kind you wanted to keep around, even if you'd read them dozens of times already. Giving them away would be an incomprehensible act to an avid reader.

"Are you moving or something?" he asked. I was surprised at how clear his voice sounded.

"No, I'm not."

"Then," he said, eyeing the pile of books before him, "why would you do such a wasteful thing?"

"Paper doesn't taste very good, and it won't give me vitamins."

The old man seemed to understand my joke. "So you're hard up for money," he said with a scowl.

When I nodded, he crossed his arms and said nothing, thinking it over. He decided to go ahead and sighed. "It'll take about thirty minutes to assess them," he said, and then took the books into the back.

I went outside and looked at the faded bulletin board along the street. There were posters for the summer festival, a firefly-viewing event, stargazing, and a public reading. From over the wall behind the board came the familiar scent of incense and tatami mats, human body odor, and wood.

Wind chimes rang from a distant house.

When the old man was done judging the worth of the books, he handed me about two-thirds of what I was expecting and said, "Hey, I've got something to say to you."

"What is it?"

"You need money, right?"

"Well, that's nothing new," I said, deflecting the question, but it seemed to satisfy the old man.

"Listen, I have no interest in finding out how poor you are or how you became so. I just have one question for you," he said. After a pause, he continued, "Do you feel like selling your life span?"

The unexpected sentence delayed my reaction.

"Life span?" I asked, trying to confirm what he meant.

"Yes. I'm not the one who will buy it, actually. But you can sell it for a lot."

I might have blamed my ear for mishearing due to the heat, but it wasn't hot enough for that.

I thought it over.

My initial conclusion was that the old man's fear of aging had caused his brain to go soft.

Upon seeing my expression, the shopkeeper said, "I don't blame you for thinking I'm pulling one over on you. I wouldn't be surprised if you think I'm senile. But I'd suggest playing along with this daft old codger and going to the place I tell you about. You'll see I'm telling the truth."

I took his story with a grain of salt—but it boiled down to this.

On the fourth floor of a building not too far from here, there was a business that bought and sold life. The price varied by person, especially with regard to how fulfilling the life you would have led in that time was going to be.

"I barely know the first thing about you, but from what I can see, you don't look like a bad guy, and your taste in books is admirable. Maybe you'll be worth something."

It brought to mind the memory of that old class on morals in my elementary school years.

According to the man, you could deal not only your own life span, but also your time and health.

"What's the difference between life span and time?" I asked. "I guess I don't really understand the distinction between life span and health, either."

"Don't know the details. I've never sold anything to them. But…you know how some people who are extraordinarily unhealthy manage to live on for decades, and sometimes perfectly healthy folks just up and die? Wouldn't that be the difference between life span and health? I couldn't tell ya about the time part."

He jotted down a little map and a phone number on a memo sheet. I thanked him and left the store.

But I'm sure anyone would come to the same conclusion as I did: that the "store where they buy your life span" was just a fantasy cooked up by the old man's desires. He was afraid of his own impending death, and so indulging in a vision of a place where you could buy more life to live was keeping him sane.

I mean, it only makes sense, right? A store like that is way too convenient to be real.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

My expectations were only half-correct.

It was not, in fact, an easy-peasy deal ripe for the taking.

But my expectations were also half-wrong.

There was a store that bought and sold life span.

After selling my books, I headed to a CD shop in town. The heat radiating off the asphalt was horrendous, and sweat was pouring from every part of my skin. I was thirsty, too, but I didn't have the money to spend on canned drinks from a vending machine. I had to deal with it until I got home to the apartment.

Unlike the bookstore, the CD shop had air-conditioning. When the automatic doors opened and the cold air engulfed my body, I felt like stretching. I gulped in the air, pulling the coldness deep within me. The store was playing a summer jam that was popular around the time I started middle school.

I headed for the counter and called out to the employee with bleached hair who was always there, then lifted my other bag and pointed at it. He looked suspicious. Then his expression changed, suggesting I was performing some act of hideous betrayal. The look that said, "I can't believe someone like you would be getting rid of so many CDs at once." In other words, the exact same reaction as the old man's at the used bookstore.

"What's the situation, man?" the employee said to me. He was a skinny guy in his late twenties with drooping eyes. He wore a T-shirt with a rock band on it and faded jeans. His fingers were always moving about restlessly.

Just as I had at the bookstore, I explained why I needed to sell my CDs, and the employee clapped his hands and said, "In that case, I actually have something you might wanna hear. I'm not supposed to tell you about this, but I gotta say, I think you have incredible taste in music, so I'll let you know, just this one time."

It might as well have been a speech straight out of a how-to-scam-a-sucker manual, word for word.

He said, "There's a business in this town that will buy your life span from you."

"Life span?" I repeated. Of course, this was how I replied the last time. But I couldn't help myself.

"Yeah, life span," he said, dead serious.

Is there some game going around where people tease the desperately poor?

I was thinking about how to respond to this when he launched into a quick explanation. It was largely the same as what the old man at the bookstore said, but this guy claimed he had actually gone through with it. I asked him how much he got for it, but then he started playing coy. "I don't think I feel comfortable saying."

The man with the bleached hair jotted down a map and phone number and gave it to me. As expected, it was a perfect match for the information from the old man.

I gave him an empty thanks and left. As soon as I was out in the sun again, the oppressive, clinging heat returned, hugging my entire body. Just this one time would be all right, I told myself. I put a coin into the vending machine just a few steps away and eventually settled on a mild apple cider.

I held the can between both hands to enjoy the chill, then popped the tab and took my time drinking it. The unique sweetness of a soft drink filled my mouth. It had been a long time since I had any carbonated beverages, so each gulp prickled at my throat. When I finished the last swallow, I threw the empty can into the trash.

I took the two maps out of my pocket and looked at them. The distance wasn't unwalkable.

If I went to that building, they would pay me money to take away my life span or time or good health, according to the story.

What a load of BS.

I clicked my tongue, wadded up the maps, and threw them away.

But I wound up standing in front of the building anyway.

It was an older structure. The walls were so darkened with age that it was impossible to tell what color it was originally painted. Even the building itself probably couldn't remember. It was narrow, as if the buildings on either side were compressing it into a smaller shape.

The elevator wasn't working, so I had to climb the stairs up to the fourth floor. I took one sweaty step at a time up the stairwell, through yellowed fluorescent light and musty air.

I didn't believe the story about them buying up life spans. But I did interpret it in a different way: Perhaps, for reasons the two men couldn't explain directly, there was some kind of job they were hiring for that involved life-shrinking risks but paid extremely well.

The first door I saw on the fourth floor had no sign on it. And yet I was certain it was the place they were talking about.

I held my breath and stared at the doorknob for about five seconds, then steeled myself and grabbed it.

The space on the other side was unthinkably clean, given the exterior appearance of the building. But that did not shock me. There were empty display cases in the center of the room and empty shelves lining the walls, but all of that seemed natural to me.

On the other hand, the room was very strange from a commonsense perspective. Like a jeweler without any jewels. An eyewear shop without any glasses. A bookstore without any books.

Until I heard the voice, I didn't even realize a person was standing right next to me.

"Welcome."

I turned toward the sound and saw a seated woman wearing a suit. She stared at me appraisingly through glasses with a delicate frame.

She saved me the trouble of asking what kind of a store this was by broaching the topic before I could speak.

"Time? Health? Life span?"

I was tired of thinking.

If you want to have fun at my expense, then go ahead.

"Life span," I said without hesitation.

I was going to go along with it. I had hardly anything else left to lose at this point.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The vague expectations I had were that my life had about sixty years left, which should buy me somewhere in the ballpark of six hundred million yen. I wasn't as confident as I was in elementary school, but I was still certain my value was greater than the average person. In other words, I figured each year should be good for ten million yen.

Even at this time in my life, I couldn't escape from the idea that I was special. There was nothing supporting that assumption. I was just dragging the glory of my past along with me. I was refusing to face the miserable lack of good fortune in my life and telling myself, One of these days, I'm gonna hit it so big that all the time I've wasted will seem like nothing.

With each year I got older, the success I dreamed about grew in size. People tend to swing for the fences the more boxed in they get, and that's just human nature. When you're down ten runs in the bottom of the ninth, playing it safe with a sacrifice bunt isn't going to get you anywhere. Instead, you swing for the big hit, even knowing that the odds of missing are much higher.

In time, I even started to think about eternal glory. The kind of success where everyone knows your name, a success that becomes legend and never fades. It was getting to the point where nothing less would save my life.

For someone like me to course-correct and get things right, I probably needed someone to completely and utterly call me out for my delusion. I needed to be beaten down to absolutely nothing when I had no escape and no means to defend myself.

In that sense, selling my life span was probably the right choice.

Because that was where I learned that not only had I wasted my past, but my future was also destined to be the same.

Upon closer examination, the woman in the suit was quite young. In terms of her physical appearance, she was probably somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four years of age.

She told me the examination period would last about three hours. She was already typing at the computer next to her. I figured there must be some kind of tiresome paperwork involved, but she said I didn't even need to give her my name. And in just three hours, she would know the value of the supposedly priceless life I had left to live. They would decide the number, of course, so it wasn't some fixed value. But it was a standard.

I left the building and wandered around aimlessly. The sky was getting a bit darker. My legs were exhausted. I was hungry. I wanted to find a restaurant of some kind where I could sit down and rest, but I didn't have enough money to do that.

Luckily, I found a Seven Stars cigarette and a hundred-yen lighter on a bench in the shopping district. I looked around the area but didn't see a likely owner. I sat down on the bench and discreetly slipped them into my pocket, then found a side street next to some discarded materials and lit the cigarette. It had been so long since the last time I smoked that my throat felt sore.

I stepped on the cigarette and headed for the station. I was getting thirsty again.

At the bench in the open area outside the train station, I sat and watched the pigeons. A middle-aged woman at the bench across the way was feeding them. Her outfit was a little too young for someone her age, and the way she threw the food indicated she was anxious. I found it hard to describe how this made me feel. On the other hand, I was intimately familiar with the self-hatred I felt when I realized that the sight of pigeons eating bread was whetting my appetite. If I was any hungrier, I might be down there scrabbling for crumbs with the birds.

Please let the price be nice and hefty, I thought.

Like most people do when their goods are being assessed, I tried to keep my expectations low. My initial guess was six hundred million yen for my life span, but I decided it was better to go in looking at the lowest possible number so I wouldn't be disappointed when I got the estimate, even if it was on the low side.

The number I arrived at was three hundred million.

When I was a kid, I thought my life would be worth three billion yen. Compared with that, this was a very humble estimation.

But I was still being naive about my own low value. I remembered how Himeno said the lifetime earnings of the average Japanese salaryman was two to three hundred million yen. But I had forgotten that immediately after the gloomy classmate with the depressing future started talking, I had thought, Sure, if I had a life like hers, I wouldn't put a price on it, either. I'd probably have to sell it at a loss.

I went back to the store early, sat down on the sofa, and was starting to nod off for a bit when the woman called my name and woke me up.

She had finished her assessment.

I heard her say, "Mr. Kusunoki." But I didn't remember telling her my identity at any point or showing her any form of identification. She had the means of learning such things, apparently.

There was something about this place that was indeed beyond the bounds of normal understanding.

Despite the odds, by the time I returned to the building, I had decided to believe in the incredibly dubious idea that someone could buy your life span for money. There were a number of complex interlocking factors that influenced my view, but the strongest was that woman.

Maybe it was illogical to get such an impression about someone you'd just met. But I felt…there was no lie in whatever she did. I could just feel it. There are people who simply despise dishonesty, regardless of any notion of righteousness or morality, regardless of even their own personal gain or loss. She was one of those people, I sensed.

When I looked back on this moment later, it was easy to see just how poor my instincts had been.

Returning to the topic of my appraisal…

When I heard the woman say the number three, my face momentarily betrayed the part of me that hadn't given up hope, or so I came to understand later. I reacted honestly and instinctually, confirming that my childhood guess of three billion really was correct.

The woman saw my look and awkwardly scratched at her cheek with a finger. She seemed to think it wouldn't be right to tell me the results this way—instead, she glanced at the computer window, typed something on the keyboard, and placed a printout on the counter.

"This is the result of your appraisal. What is your decision?"

When I first saw the number three hundred thousand on the sheet, I thought it was the amount for each year.

If a life was eighty years, that would be twenty-four million yen.

Twenty-four million, the voice in my head repeated. I felt all the strength draining from my body. How could it be that cheap?

It was at this point that I decided I was suspicious of the place again. This might be some TV show prank or some psychological test. It could even be just a simple and especially cruel hoax…

But none of my excuses made a difference. The only thing that provided me any proper measure of disbelief was my common sense. Every other sense I had was telling me that whatever this woman said was correct. And one of my rules in life was that if you were faced with an illogical situation, you ought to trust your gut instinct, not the rationality of "common sense."

I simply had to accept the twenty-four million yen total. Even doing that took considerable bravery.

But then the woman delivered the harsh truth.

"That means the yearly price is the lowest possible price of ten thousand yen. Your remaining life is listed at thirty years and three months, so you can walk out this door with about three hundred thousand yen."

When I laughed then, it was not because I took her words to be a joke, but because, objectively speaking, it was my life that was the joke.

The true value of my life was literally orders of magnitude less than what I thought it was.

"Of course, this does not indicate some kind of universal value. That is simply the total we arrived at after measuring you against our standard," the woman explained.

"I'd like to know more about this standard," I said. She sighed with disgust. Maybe it was something she'd heard thousands of times before.

"The detailed appraisal is performed by a different consultative body, so even I do not know exactly how it works. But from what I know, the result is largely influenced by the ability to satisfy certain values, such as good fortune, fulfillment, and contribution… In essence, how happy you will be throughout the rest of your life, how happy you will make others, making dreams come true, and contributing to society all play a big part in the appraised value of that life."

It was the impartiality of it that broke me down.

If I only wasn't happy myself, or only failed to make others happy, or only failed to achieve my dreams, or only did nothing for society—if I had no value in just one of these things, I could take it. But to be miserable, to make no one else happy, to fail to reach my dreams, and to do nothing for society, all at once? What possible hope could there be for me in such a life?

And for a twenty-year-old, the remainder of thirty years seemed much too brief. Would I fall terribly ill? Would I meet with some untimely accident?

I decided to go for broke and asked, "Why is the rest of my life so short?"

"I'm very sorry," she said, tilting her head, "but any further information can only be revealed to customers who choose to sell either their time, health, or life span."

I stared at her forehead and considered this. "Give me a minute to think it over."

"Please take your time," she said, but from the tone of her voice, it was clear she wanted me to hurry the hell up.

In the end, I chose to sell all remaining thirty years, leaving only three months. After a life of working dead-end jobs and selling my last prized books and CDs, I had lost all resistance to the idea of liquidating everything I had for cheap.

While the woman read off every last part of the contract for me, I simply murmured to indicate I was there, but my mind was empty. When she asked if I had any questions, I said, "Not really."

I just wanted to wrap it up and get out.

Out of the store. Out of my life.

"You can perform up to three transactions in total," the woman explained. "That means you have two more opportunities to buy or sell life span, health, or time."

I took the envelope with my three hundred thousand yen inside and left the building.

I couldn't begin to guess how they did it, but I did indeed feel as though I'd lost my future. It was as if something that had filled me to the core had been 90 percent removed from my being. Apparently, chickens can run around for a while after their heads are chopped off, and this felt close to that. You could have called me a corpse.

Now that my body was all but certain to die before I turned twenty-one, it was much more impatient than a body that intended to live to eighty. The weight of each empty second passing was much greater. When I expected to live to eighty, I always had that unconscious arrogance of knowing I had sixty more years in me. Now that sixty years had become just three months, I was plagued by an insistence that I always had to do something.

But for now, I just wanted to go home and sleep. I'd been walking all day, and I was exhausted. I could think about what to do once I'd slept all I could and woke up refreshed.

On the way home, I passed a strange man. He looked to be in his early twenties, and he was walking alone with a huge smile on his face, as if he couldn't contain his joy.

It made me furious.

I stopped by a liquor store in the shopping area and bought four cans of beer, then found a street cart nearby, where I ordered five skewers of yakitori chicken. I ate and drank my fill on the way home.

I had three months left. There wasn't a need to watch my money anymore.

It had been a long time since I last had alcohol. Maybe it was a bad idea when I was feeling down. In any case, I got drunk very quickly, and not even thirty minutes after I stumbled home, I was vomiting.

That was how my last three months started.

It was about as bad of a start as you could get.