A Liar and a Little Prayer
When Miyagi first came to the apartment as my observer, I couldn’t help being unnerved by her gaze.
He was short, he had unsightly bald spots, his face was red like a drunk’s though lush with whiskers, and his skin was oily. He blinked unusually often, he snorted as he breathed, and he spoke like he had phlegm caught in his throat.
“Where’s the usual girl?” was my first question.
I put my hand to my chest in relief. I was grateful observers didn’t take shifts. Miyagi would be back in just two days.
“So even observers get days off,” I said.
“Huh. Well, that’s a relief. And her break’ll be over in two days, and it’ll be back to normal?”
“What the hell’s this?”, he asked.
“Tch. I was tryin’ to ask what you’d take pictures like this for.”
“So this is how you’re spendin’ your life, huh. Stupid as hell. Ain’t you got anything better to do?”
His attitude didn’t make me that unpleasant. In terms of honestly saying what I thought, he was easier to deal with. It was much preferable to being stared at from the corner like I was an object.
I learned why after lunch, when I lied in front of the fan listening to music.
“Hey, you,” the man said. I pretended not to hear him, and he cleared his throat. “You ain’t causin’ that girl any trouble, are ya?”
“By that girl, you mean Miyagi?”
Seeing that, I felt some fondness for the man. So you’re my ally, huh.
“Let me guess, you’re friendly with Miyagi?”, I asked.
“What’d you think?”
He seemed to mean it.
“My lifespan was worth the same as hers. Pitiful, huh?”
“That’s probably the right way to look at things,” I agreed.
I was getting increasingly fond of this guy.
The man’s complexion changed, and as he looked like he was about throttle me any second, I held Miyagi’s notebook out to him.
“What’s this?”, he said, taking the notebook.
“Observation log?” He licked his finger and opened the notebook.
I didn’t know what was in there. But after that, the man was a lot less aggressive.
If I hadn’t had the idea to buy a notebook of my own then, I wouldn’t be writing this now.
At first I considered doing depraved things, but considered that when I next saw Miyagi, even if it didn’t come up, I’d be visibly guilty. So I did things that I wouldn’t want Miyagi to see, but in a healthy way.
I wrote a record of everything that had happened since I climbed the stairs of that old building and sold my lifespan on its fourth floor to the present day.
The first day I thought about the value of life. My belief at the time that I’d be famous someday. The promise I made with Himeno. Being told about the lifespan dealership at the bookstore and CD shop. Meeting Miyagi there.
The words flowed without stopping. As I smoked, using an empty can as an ashtray, I continued to spin the story.
“I’m recording what happened this month.”
“Dunno. Doesn’t really matter. Writing it helps me sort things out. I can move things around to more logical places, like a defrag.”
Even late into the night, my hand wouldn’t be stilled. It was far from being beautiful prose, but I was surprised how smoothly I could write.
Walking around aimlessly outside, I heard a taiko drum from somewhere. Practice for a festival, probably.
“Since you’re an observer, you sold your time too?”, I turned and asked the man.
“Yeah, I would.”
“Bad taste. What’s so fun about it?”
“Sounds like an old man’s idea.”
I felt like there were always guests there, day or night. Big difference from my room which only had observers.
Maybe thanks to using a part of my brain I didn’t normally, I got eleven straight hours of sleep, not waking up once.
I spent the next day filling my notebook with words too. The radio was going on about baseball. By evening, I had caught up to the present.
Still, the feeling of accomplishment from finishing something wasn’t bad. Also, re-explaining my memories through words made good memories easier to savor, and bad memories easier to accept.
I laid down on the spot and stared at the ceiling. There was a big black stain which I wasn’t sure how it got there, and a bent nail jutting out. There was even a cobweb in the corner.
Miyagi’ll be back tomorrow, I thought.
I decided to go to bed early. I closed the notebook I’d left open, put it on a bookshelf, and got into bed. Then the replacement observer spoke.
“It didn’t say in the observation log?”
“I walked down the road giving it out bill by bill,” I answered. “I used a little bit for living expenses, but the original plan was to give it to someone. But they ran off, so I decided I’d just give it all to strangers.”
“Yep. Just walked along handing out 10,000 yen bills.”
The man burst into uproarious laughter.
It was a bizarre laugh. It didn’t seem like he was just laughing because it was funny.
“…Well, huh. So you ended up giving all that good money you got for your lifespan to strangers for free.”
“No hope for a moron like you.”
“Nope. That’s not even why I’m making fun of you.”
“Hey, you - don’t tell me - did you seriously believe it when they said your lifespan was worth 300,000 yen?”
The question shook me from my core.
“What else, I mean exactly what I said. Were you really told your lifespan was 300,000 yen, and you were all, ah yes, that’s exactly right, and took 300,000?”
"Well… yeah, I thought that was pretty low at first.”
“Right, right. Well, I don’t want to say anything, but…” He held his stomach, still keeping in laughter.
In my pitch black room, I kept staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep.
"Good morning, Mr. Kusunoki.”
This girl, who gave me a friendly smile from the corner of the room, was telling me a lie.
“How do you plan to spend today?”
I’ll keep pretending I don’t know anything, I decided. I didn’t want to know the truth badly enough as to trouble Miyagi.
“Touring vending machines, then,” Miyagi happily said.
We drove everywhere - under blue skies, along paddy fields, down twisty rural roads.
Night came in the blink of an eye.
We got off the Cub at a small dam and went down the stairs to a walking path.
I didn’t turn around. “What would you do if I deceived you and went somewhere outrageous?”
“You misunderstand,” I said, but it was as she said.
Once we crossed a small bridge that led to a thicket along the river, she seemed to understand my objective.
“Um, this impression may sound like it’s missing the point, but… Fireflies really do glow, don’t they.”
You know that such a thing exists. But as much as you know about what it’s like, the beauty a few steps higher is something that you might as well know nothing about until you see it for yourself.
We walked along the little path slowly while the lights of the countless green fireflies floating around flickered.
“There’s been a lot less of them lately. They’re hard to find if you don’t go to the right place at the right time. I probably won’t see them again here for days.”
“Nah. I only came here once, around this time last year. Just remembered that yesterday.”
The luminescence of the fireflies hit its peak, and we went back the way we came.
“I just went to see it 'cause I wanted to. But you’re free to interpret it however you want.”
“Don’t need to tell me every little thing.”
I went back to the apartment, sorted out the pictures for the day, got ready for bed, responded to Miyagi’s “good night” with the same, and just as I went to turn off the light, I called her name.
“Yes? What is it?”
“I’m not entirely sure what you mean.”
“Of course it is,” she answered. “I’m sorry to say, but your worth simply isn’t very much. I would have thought you’d accepted this some time ago.”
“Did my substitute tell you something?”, she asked mixed with a sigh.
“Yes, well, 300,000 yen is 300,000 yen.” She continued to feign ignorance.
“…When I heard you’d lied to me, at first I simply thought you were taking a cut of the money I was supposed to get for yourself.”
I want you to get away from that line of thinking.
“Why did I believe that 10,000 yen for a year was the lowest possible price? Why did I believe that normal lifespans should sell for tens and hundreds of millions? Maybe I was basing too much on my prior opinions. Maybe everyone deeply wants to believe the nonsense about life being more valuable than anything. At any rate, I applied too much of my own common sense to the situation. I should have been more flexible in my thinking.”
I took a breath, and said:
"What made you want to give a whole 300,000 yen to someone you’d never even seen before?”
Miyagi said “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re saying” and turned away.
Miyagi shook her head. “It’s all right. If I kept this job up, I’d surely die before I paid the debt, just like my mother. Even if I were to pay it and was free, I’m not promised a good life afterward. So I decided it would be better to use the money this way.”
"So how much am I worth, really?”, I asked.
“…Thirty yen,” Miyagi whispered.
“A three-minute phone call,” I laughed. “Sorry for using your 300,000 yen like that.”
Miyagi’s wording felt angry, but her voice was gentle.
“…But I certainly understand how you feel, Mr. Kusunoki. Perhaps the reason I gave you that 300,000 yen and the reason you distributed it out to strangers are the same, at their core. I felt lonely, sad, hollow, and desperate. So I went and did something unreasonably altruistic. …Though, thinking about it, if I hadn’t lied about it being worth 300,000 yen and told the truth, perhaps you wouldn’t have sold it. Then at least you would have been able to life a longer life. I’m sorry for what I did.”
Miyagi spoke bending down and burying her chin among her knees, looking at her fingernails.
“Stop it, that’s such a weird consolation,” I smiled.
“If you’re too kind to me, I’ll just get miserable. I know that you’re a nice girl already, so you don’t need to go any further.”
“…Never been told that before.”
"Indeed, at first, I thought you were someone who deserved only thirty yen. When I gave you the 300,000, it was purely for my own satisfaction, so it didn’t matter that it happened to be you, Mr. Kusunoki. …But gradually, my opinion changed. After the incident at the train station, you took my story to heart, didn’t you? You sympathized with my situation of having to sell my time. Starting then, Mr. Kusunoki, you were no longer just my subject for observation. This alone is a significant problem, but afterward, there were many more.
”…I know it must be trifling to you, but I was glad that you were willing to talk to me. Because I’ve always been invisible. Being ignored was part of my job. Even little things like eating and talking with me at restaurants, going out shopping, just walking around town, holding hands and strolling down the river - they felt like a dream. You were the first person to always treat me like I was “there,” no matter the time or the situation.”
I wasn’t sure what to respond with.
“…I can keep doing that if you like,” I joked, and Miyagi nodded.
She smiled sadly.
My chest tightened, and my mouth didn’t work for a while.
“If you are offended, you may do anything you wish to me.”
“Yes, as terrible as you may desire.”
I tried to remember them. Her soft hair. Her well-shaped ears. Her thin neck. Her unreliable shoulders and back. Her modest chest. Her smoothly-curved hips.
So I’d remember no matter what. So I’d never forget again.
“That was quite terrible,” Miyagi said, sniffling. “After doing that, now I know that I’ll never forget you.”
“…If you’re all right with it, then I’ll do so until I die.”
Miyagi’s words brought about an incredible change within me.
With not even two remaining months, I decided, no matter what it took, I would pay Miyagi’s debt in full.
Me, whose whole life couldn’t even buy a juice box.
I guess I could only say it because I just didn’t know my place.