A Promise For Ten Years Time
When I was first told about how I could sell my lifespan, what immediately came to mind was a morality lesson from elementary school.
“You’ve all been told that a human life is something that can’t be replaced, and it’s more valuable than anything. Now, if it were given a monetary value, how much money do you think it would be worth?”
She then took a thoughtful pose. I thought her way of asking the question was inadequate, personally. She was silent for a good twenty seconds, still holding a piece of chalk and staring down the blackboard with her back to the students.
“I read in a book once that the total life expenses for a salaryman are about 200 million to 300 million yen. So I think the average person would be somewhere around there.”
But this was exactly her intent.
“This "Something of Unknown Nature” has more money than it could ever need. But the Something longs to live a human sort of life. So it’s trying to buy someone else’s life. One day, you suddenly walk by the Something. And when you do, it asks you: “Hey, you wanna sell me that life you’re going to lead?”… says the Something.“
She stopped the story there for a moment.
“You’d die, surely,” the teacher flatly replied. “So you’d refuse the Something, for the time being. But it hangs onto you. "Well, just half is fine. Wanna just sell me thirty years off the sixty you have left? I really need it, y'know.”“
I remember thinking as I’d listened to her with my chin in my hands, "I get it.” Indeed, if it went down like that, I really might have felt like selling. I have limits, and it seemed apparent that a fat short life would be preferable to a long thin life.
Because like that smart-aleck who came up with the answer about lifetime expenses, I was one of the class stinkers.
I thought. If they were 300 million, then…
It wasn’t really a simple enough theme for elementary school kids to tackle. And if you got a bunch of high schoolers together, they’d probably bring sex into it somehow.
At any rate, I clearly remember one girl with gloomy prospects fiercely insisting “You can’t assign a value to a person’s life.”
I could agree with his thinking, but it annoyed me somewhat how he was aware he would be worth much more than the overly-serious bunch around him, yet had a self-deprecating laugh about it.
Incidentally, the teacher said back then that there was no right answer. But a right answer of sorts did exist.
I thought, when I was a kid, I’d grow up to be someone famous. I thought that I was ahead of the pack and excelled compared to others in my generation.
I looked down upon the children around me. I had no skills worth bragging about nor humility, so naturally, my classmates were unsympathetic.
Yes, so could Himeno, the aforementioned “smart-aleck.”
But on the other hand, it was evident we were the only ones who understood each other. She was the only one who always knew what I was talking about without misunderstanding, and maybe the opposite was true as well.
Our parents were friends with each other, so until we entered elementary, I would be taken care of at her house when my parents were busy, and Himeno would be taken care of at my house when her parents were busy.
Though we only saw each other as competitors, there was a tacit agreement to behave in a friendly manner in front of our parents.
But you know, maybe that really was true.
My house and Himeno’s were built in a neighborhood on top of a hill, a long way away from any of the other students’ houses.
Only when we were hopelessly bored would we visit each other, reluctant and grimacing to imply “I’m not here because I want to be.”
On days like the summer festival or Christmas, to keep our parents from worrying, we’d go out and waste time together; on days with parent-child activities and class visits, we’d pretend to get along.
The woman who taught us from fourth to sixth grade had an understanding of this kind of problem, and as long as it wasn’t too awful, kept us from having to call our parents about it.
But at any rate, Himeno and I were always fed up. So was everyone else with us, vaguely, since “fed up” was the only relationship we had with them.
The biggest problem for us was that we didn’t have good smiles. I couldn’t nail down the “timing” for when everyone smiles all at once.
Even in a situation that should bring about an approving smile, we didn’t move an eyebrow. Couldn’t move an eyebrow, I should say.
We were thus mocked for being cocky and on our high horse. Indeed, we were cocky, and we were on our respective high horses.
It was the summer when I was ten. Himeno carrying her bag thrown into the garbage dozens of times, and I wearing shoes with many a cut made by scissors, we sat on the stone steps of a shrine reddened by the sunset, waiting for something.
Everyone passing through looked cheery, and that was why we couldn’t go down there.
We were both silent because we knew that if we opened our mouths, the voice would ooze out. We kept our mouths firmly shut and sat there, enduring.
Since we were at a shrine surrounded by the incessant buzzing of cicadas, it’s entirely possible we were praying.
When the sun was half-set, Himeno suddenly stood up, wiped away dirt from her skirt, and stared straight ahead.
“…About how soon a future are we talking?”, I asked.
“In ten years,” I repeated. “We’ll be twenty then.”
"Yeah, it really was full of dunces. It really was foul,” I said.
“So they’ll bite their lips from jealousy,” I agreed.
I didn’t consider that a consolation. The moment it came out of Himeno’s mouth, I almost felt like it was our guaranteed future. It echoed like a premonition.
“We can drink. And smoke. And get married - wait, that’s earlier,” I said.
“And boys at eighteen… But I feel like I’ll never be able to marry.”
“There’s too much stuff I don’t like. I hate a lot of stuff that happens in the world. So I don’t think I could keep a marriage going.”
Dyed by the sunset, her face looked different than usual. It seemed more mature, but also more vulnerable.
“…Hey, so,” Himeno said, looking me in the eyes briefly, but quickly looking away. “When we turn twenty and get famous… If, shameful as it is, we haven’t found anyone we want to marry…”
“If that happens, since we’d both be left on the shelf, would you want us to be together?”
“What was that?”, I politely replied.
That’s good, I laughed.
But - and I know this is going to sound extremely stupid - even after Himeno and I went our separate ways, I always remembered that promise.
So when I someday met her again, I could show her I was still “on the shelf.”
Looking back on it now, I think maybe it was a glorious time, in its own way.