COTE : Three days of happyness

Everything To Come

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

At times like these, the quickest way to get back on your feet is to not resist the flow of your emotions, but jump into a pool of your own despair and wallow in self-pity.
My familiar apartment began to feel a bit different than usual.

With the moonlight through the window coloring the room a deep blue, the night summer breeze blowing in, and the presence of Horikita 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 had a sense of being in the wing of a stage. Like as soon as I stepped away from here, it would be time for my performance.
All of a sudden, I felt like I could do anything. It was nothing more than me temporarily forgetting my lack of talent in my drunkenness, but I mistook it for something inside me changing.

I turned to Horikita and proudly proclaimed:

“In my last three months, with my 300,000 yen, I’m gonna change something!”

With that, I finished off the last of the beer in the can and slammed it down on the table.
Horikita seemed unimpressed. Raising her gaze a few centimeters at best, she said “Ah,” and her eyes dropped back to her notebook.

I paid it no mind and continued. “It’s not a helluva lot, but it’s my life. I’ll make it 300,000 yen that’s worth more than 3 billion! I’m gonna work to get back at this world!”

In my intoxicated mind, I thought it sounded pretty cool.
But Horikita was apathetic. “That is what everyone says.”

Putting her pen aside, she grabbed her knees and rested her chin between them.
"I’ve heard at least five statements to that effect in my time. Everyone speaks of extremes when death is nearing. Particularly those who can’t say they’ve had a fulfilling life thus far. Under the same logic by which losing gamblers continue to hope for an increasingly unrealistic turnaround, those who keep losing in life come to hope for unrealistic happiness. Many feel reinvigorated when the closeness of death reminds them of the sparkle of life, and they come to believe that they can do this or that - but those people are making a crucial mistake. They have only just arrived at the starting line. They have only just regained their composure after a long losing streak. Mistaking that as a chance to turn things around will do them no good.

”…So please, Mr. Ayanokouji. Think of it this way. The reason your remaining thirty years were so lacking in value was because in them, you accomplished not one single thing. You understand that, yes?”, Horikita bluntly reminded me. “What can a man who would accomplish nothing in thirty years change in a mere three months?”
“…Won’t know ‘til we try,” I argued, but even I hated how hollowly my words rang.

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,” Horikita 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’m sure I’m one of those guys who doesn’t really understand just how useless he is. …So, hey, could you tell me everything that’s gonna happen? How’d I spend those lost thirty years? Maybe if I heard that, I could stop having any unreasonable hopes.”