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Everything To Come 

I turned out the light and kept drinking. Thankfully, today I was able to get drunk in a more peaceful fashion. 

With the moonlight through the window coloring the room a deep blue, the night summer breeze blowing in, and the presence of Miyagi in the corner staring like a sentinel, it felt like a much more eerie place than before. I didn’t know my apartment had this side to it. 

I turned to Miyagi and proudly proclaimed: 

With that, I finished off the last of the beer in the can and slammed it down on the table. 

Miyagi seemed unimpressed. Raising her gaze a few centimeters at best, she said “Ah,” and her eyes dropped back to her notebook. 

In my intoxicated mind, I thought it sounded pretty cool. 

But Miyagi was apathetic. “That is what everyone says.” 

I didn’t have to try anything to know that she was right on the money. 

“I would consider it a wiser choice to seek a common, average satisfaction,” Miyagi said. “There can be no recovery. Three months is simply too short a time to change anything. What’s more, not doing anything can slightly prolong them. So don’t you agree it’s more shrewd to accumulate a number of small yet definite joys? You lose because you consider only victory. Being able to find victory in failure results in a minimum of disappointment.” 

“Okay, I get it already, you’re right. But enough logic already,” I shook my head. If I weren’t drunk, I may have tried to make an opposing argument, but I didn’t have the energy for that now. 

“I suppose. Perhaps it is best for you to know it all now. …However, just as a reminder, you need not despair at anything I say. The things I know werepossibilities - but now, they are things that will never actually happen.” 

“I hope it won’t come at all,” Miyagi said. 

They were always something I watched through a window. Not something I watched while eating food from a stand, nor something I watched holding hands with a girlfriend, looking back and forth between them and her. 

As soon as I was able to make my own judgments, I was a social outcast who avoided places with lots of people. Being somewhere like that felt like a mistake, and the thought of meeting someone I knew there gave me cold feet. 

Even in high school, I still didn’t come anywhere near prosperous places, avoiding what main streets I could when I walked through town. 

The last time I actually saw fireworks being launched was when I was very young.

Does it smell of gunpowder? How much smoke stays in the sky? What kinds of faces do people look at the fireworks with? 

Then how would I respond to that? Would I tell her I’m too timid to handle everyone’s eyes on me? Why was I still so concerned about how others saw me when I had so little time left? 

As if to sneer at me as I battled my urge, Miyagi crossed in front of me, opened the screen door, and leaning out the window began to watch the fireworks go up. 

Still watching the fireworks, Miyagi sarcastically replied, “Do you want me to watch you?” 

“Is that right? Perhaps it may make you feel rather guilty. …Incidentally, if you were to flee, and make it a set distance away from me, I would have to conclude that you were up to trouble and have your life terminated. I would suggest you take care.” 

“It’s not particularly exact, but I would say roughly a hundred meters.” 

I realized things had quieted down next door. Maybe they’d gone to see these fireworks too. 

“Indeed it isn’t. It’s a very common kind of disappointment. Of course, the agony felt will vary from person to person. You, of course, were a person who needed to be superior to everyone. Lacking someone to depend on, you had only yourself to prop up your world. When that pillar crumbled, the pain was enough to set you onto destruction.” 

“Destruction?”, I repeated. 

Perhaps it was something dreadful enough that people would just look at it, and their only thought would be “a place where there was once a face.” 

“As your appearance was the only thing you could rely upon, you began to consider going through with your last resort. But you couldn’t bring yourself to take the final plunge - you couldn’t let go of that last sliver of hope. "Even so, maybe something good will still happen.” …Indeed, that is something no one can fully deny, but it is no more than that - it is simply a kind of devil’s proof. That unreliable hope carries you to fifty, until ultimately, you die alone, in shambles and with nothing. Loved by no one, remembered by no one. Grieving that it should not have been this way.” 

It was a strange thing. 

“Right, well. First of all, I’m really glad I sold off all thirty years,” I replied. 

“Well, there is still time for that,” said Miyagi. “You’re allowed two more lifespan transactions.” 

“Yes. If you truly can’t stomach my presence, then that is certainly an option.” 

But it was still that devil’s proof, the hope that something good might happen, that gave me pause. 

The three months to come and the “lost thirty years” Miyagi told me about were entirely different. The future wasn’t set in stone. 

It wasn’t a zero-percent chance. Thinking of it that way, I couldn’t go dying yet. 

A sweet scent filled the room. I hadn’t smelled it in a long time, so it took some doing for me to realize it was woman’s shampoo. 

Even the smallest sounds like newspapers being delivered or footsteps from the floor above woke me up. It was unusual to think Miyagi could take a shower while I was asleep without waking me even once. Maybe it blended in with the rain. 

I decided to postpone working this out. I felt weird thinking about a girl I’d only just met showering in my apartment, so I stopped thinking about it entirely. 

This is just what I think, but the kind of person who listens to Please Mr. Lostman on sleepless nights can’t live a decent life. I used music like this to excuse myself from having to get used to the world. 

 


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