You enjoyed skating, traveling, and making music. From the age of seventeen, you completely rejected animal products, and later became interested in film photography. You studied as an architect and was expelled from the London Academy of Arts for fighting. After being expelled, you returned to the academy, only as a model for artists and sculptors. You were also photographed and you received money for this. You don't know your parents, you were raised by your closest relatives. You carve wood figurines. You smoke cigarettes and don't drink alcohol. You have a big tattoo with drawings and patterns from Japanese prints of the Edo period on your left hand from the wrist to elbow.
But I didn't know your main secret until the very end.
My twenty-first birthday was disgusting. For the first time I celebrated it in a large company of people whom I didn't really know. My only friend got drunk, and I didn't think I would feel so alone and abandoned. At one point I thought I was invisible.
I was childishly angry that people broke into companies, got drunk, and danced, while I was sitting alone. It was hard for me to swallow the dislike that developed inside me at that moment. Unable to stand it, I stood on the table and screamed, but no one heard me. Either the music drowned me out, or the society. My voice has always been low and hoarse. It seems like no one ever heard me. Wherever I am.
And then you came. A few hours late, but that's not the point. You showed up exactly when I needed it. Among the mass of inadequate people, you were something bright and inaccessible.
"Let's go for a walk," you said, taking my hand.
We left the bar and walked along the neon Tokyo streets. In this modern city, you looked strange, but harmonious. It's like I'm watching a cyberpunk anime about a wanderer from the past.You smell of church candles and asphalt after the rain. I smell like caramel and spray paint. At a busy intersection, they look at us. It's not annoying, I just want to get away from people.
Walking next to you is exciting.
"It's good that you came to my birthday party after all."
You smiled in response. The light from paper hanging lanterns by the bar casts a glare on your eyes, making them "luminescent".
"Did you get bored there alone?"
"Yes. But I wasn't alone."
"But you weren't with them."
"You're right. I don't really know them, they are acquaintances of my friend. He called them to make it more fun."
"Why are you talking to him?"
"Huh... We've been friends since elementary grades. It's fun with him, he's very good, he just has alcoholism. It can be cured," I replied calmly and laughed at how silly it sounds.
We reached the grounds of the Asakusa temple and sat on the edge of a bridge over an ornamental pond where koi fishes and turtles swam. You rolled a cigarette and lit it.
"I think you are a little different. You are different from the rest of other people I met," you said thoughtfully, smoking and watching the fireflies that hovered over the water.
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"How am I different?" I asked.
But you didn't say anything, and despite that, you still made me feel special.You pulled out a few coins from your pocket and whispered something to yourself and threw them into the water. The darkness of the water swallowed them with a dim reflection.
"Did you make a wish?"
In response, you just nodded, smiling your sweetest smile. I didn't know what you wished for, but later you will tell me that this wish had no chance of coming true.
