1 Nayamashi
He stood at the very edge of the bridge from where; if the weather was nice enough; you could see the Skytree, around the neighborhood of Kami-Ikebukuro. The tip of his toes pressed against its border, and his body leaning on the fence that prevented slightly odd fellows like himself from tripping over; one by one, trains kept on passing under his feet, making the bridge’s structure shake in a virtually indistinguishable manner to the tremble frequently brought by earthquakes. How many had already passed? He had lost count. How long had it been? He cared not for time; after all, in the darkest of nights, when the sky tree’s lights had blurred and become muted amongst the shimmering stars, time acted in remarkably dishonest ways. Even so, in the obscurity that followed sunset, he still managed to find the view somewhat breath taking.
Looking at Tokyo while it remained silent was like staring into a void. Unmistakably unsettling, as if the city could complain with its very silence about the indiscretion being committed by a curious gaze; yet, it remained somewhat heartwarming, as if it had granted a moment of truce amongst the horrors of warfare. He felt as if the city was actively asking for him to look away, as if it was reclaiming its privacy; thought that might as well be because that man felt like an outsider himself.
A signboard was proudly arranged by the civil service by the bridge, besides where he was standing; the Kanji script used to depict its message was carefully chosen to ensure that even those who barely understood Japanese could read it. Its calligraphy was not messy or artistic, with brushed strokes that evoked the passion of the artists in the traditional art of Shodō; as many shops chose to have; it was rather neat, to the point it somehow gave you a feeling of artificiality. As if an emotionless creature had written the words “Safety watch”. The thought of it made him smile. How many lives had been taken on that bridge to persuade the police to put up such a sign? And was there truly someone who would even have glanced twice at those who jumped? It was so fitting it made him laugh, an artificial sign for an artificial society. A society too preoccupied with appearance to care for any individual.
He closed his eyes and felt the cold autumn air in his face. In September, the wind somehow managed to hang onto the force of the summer storms whilst picking up on the Nordic currents that announced winter on an early date. He could imagine himself jumping, and the wind accelerating alongside him as Earth reclaimed one of his sons through the force of gravity. He thought of the last moments of every single individual who had the courage to jump before him. It gave him a thrill, he ended up concluding that he could be completely sure that all of them must have felt the same. What a miserable existence must their’s have been, to need to face death in order to feel alive. He wondered if it was the thought of dying, the thought of someone mourning over their corpse that made them feel as if they had some sort of place among this mundane society, and immediately shook the thought off. He knew exactly why jumping in front of a train seemed so appealing: defiance.
For one second, even if it so happened to be their last, anyone’s life would become relevant if they decided to jump onto Tokyo’s railway. And as that thought invaded his mind, a train on the Yamanote line once again made the bridge he was standing on tremble. He knew it belong to the Yamanote, as two things gave it away. First, the train was a annoyingly bright green. Second, it passed along the same railway line every couple of minutes, and there was no other line headed to the JR Ikebukuro station that would dare pass as frequently as the Yamanote did.
It could be said that Tokyo’s time was not measured in minutes, but in trains. If a train stopped, the whole city did. The train was like the veins of the city, without them the city crumbled, the people panicked. It would be as if their oxygen was cut down, as if by stopping the train for a couple of minutes one was messing with a vital and private part of the relationship the individual had with the city. Precision, trains, time, they were all concepts to which Tokyo’s society adhered to a point of reaching obsession.
What would it feel like to jump? To know everyone would have to stop, for a couple of minutes? To know that even if they didn’t knew you, you would be the reason for a slight change in their routinely static lifestyle? Of course, no one would expect you, who jumped, to live enough to actually understand the depths of your own hindrance to society; but, you could imagine it and feel the satisfaction of it as you take one last breath, before that final impact terminates your miserable existence. After all, you have seen it numerous times. The annoyed faces of the office workers trying to make it on time in the morning, the anxiety surrounding students who where probably going to be a couple minutes late to one of those exams that seemed to define their future as much as being born once had, and the tired, almost unintelligible, very tired, voice of the train’s officer who has seen this scenario so many times he had become indifferent to it.
What would it feel like to jump? A wise old man once told him that people were not afraid of dying but of what it felt like to die. Izakaya wisdom, maybe wasn’t true wisdom at all.
Words that are said in-between drinks could not be considered proper, trustworthy, or meaningful. But wise? They might be, at least he thought they were. At the very least, he believed the pathetic old man who spoke them did so with honesty. After all, he couldn’t figure a single reason why lying would benefit an old man well over 70. He wasn’t a young girl he could fetch with his words, a friend of his, a coworker, or anything of the sorts which would suppose some sort of obligated social mockery. They were two men, two pathetic specimens of men at that, sharing a drink as no one else would voluntarily get close to such a disgusting sight. Moreover, since the wise old man seemed to be a few decades closer to death, he thought he ought to have some sort of insight about it. An insight to which his almost-40-year-old-self could not yet come by. And so, he decided to believe him, and his words were carved into his mind; so much so that they came to mind as he balanced his weight back and forth on top of Kami-ikebukuro’s bridge.
What would it feel like to die? If dying was in any way similar to falling ill, it shouldn’t be a very pleasant experience. He could remember catching influenza a couple years back; it was not uncommon for him to catch it once the virus spread through tokyo in winter like kafunshō did in spring; he remembered that simply taking a breath felt like a thousand ice-cold daggers were scrapping his throat, and shivered at the thought of progressively loosing his ability to breathe; gasping, choking, holding onto what little oxygen might be left in his own body, suffocating. He thought that drowning or dying in a fire wouldn’t be much different from influenza either, and he wouldn’t even want to imagine the sensations of more-complicatedly painful possible deaths, as he would imagine cancer or old-age, to be.
Anyhow, he shook his head hoping to clear his thoughts, in comparison, dying in Tokyo’s railroad seemed like a much more peaceful way to go. It could almost be said to be the “natural” euthanasia the city had to offer. In fact, he would argue that jumping into the railroads was a much more humane way to go. Or rather, a quicker way to do so. You wouldn’t need the paperwork, planning and traveling you need for assisted suicide. You wouldn’t need to endure the prolonged pain of waiting for your own body to bleed to death in your own bath tub as you would if you decided to cut your own veins, thought it would lack its poetry. You wouldn’t feel cold, or out of breath, as you might feel if you decided to imitate the old master of all things pathetic and throw yourself into a river.
No, throwing oneself onto the train was easy, effective. So much so, that it gave no space for repentance, forgiveness, or all of those ridiculous emotions everyone seems to talk about when they remember the dead. So much so, that you could end your life by accident. How many drunkards had lost their lives to a misstep in the Yamanote’s platforms?
He was pretty sure any train sha-in would have lost count by now. It surely couldn’t help that there was usually no face left to associate with every “accident” victim. He had probably seen what was left of a jumper 4 or 5 times since he had moved to Tokyo, but he could only remember the first time it happened; out of coincidence or the universe’s awful sense of humor; he also happened to be riding the Yamanote that day. He could recall the train stopping so suddenly, the aggressiveness of its emergency brakes almost made him fall on-top of the obāsan sitting before him as a loud squeal could be heard coming from the very insides of the wagon. He remembered it happening in Okachimachi station; on the train bound for Ueno, the station in which he was planing to switch to the Shinkansen. Fortunately, he had not purchased a ticket for the Shinkansen yet, and so, was not in a hurry.
Okachimachi station, at least in Yamanote standards, it felt like a filler, an extra. No one really needed to stop in Okachimachi. The only somewhat interesting thing in Okachimachi was the Ameyoko market, and it could be accessed through Ueno station anyways. If he had to put it into words, Okachimachi was like Ueno’s ugly sister, technically on the same area, technically equally convenient, and yet, no one really bothered to look at Okachimachi. Even the famous Toho cinemas, located right outside the station preferred to be called Toho cinemas “Ueno”. Okachimachi almost seemed tacky, leaving a je ne sais quoi feeling of discomfort when you even so much as dared pronounce it’s annoying name.
Then again, because the station itself was small, unknown, and rather vacant, the security measures taken in this station seemed lax in comparison. And so, no one; not even the conventional mechanical barrier of the bigger stations; tried to prevent this man for jumping. Clever chap, or unlucky bastard, he couldn’t possibly know. But he managed to stop the Yamanote, and die at that.
He remembered the almost robotic voice announcing to the confused; and slightly shaken by the wagon’s movements; passengers, as it said in Japanese that “there had been an injury involving a person” and hence the train had to be stoped. Everyone remained silent, every single one of them knew what “injury” meant, and nobody gave a care. They were to busy messaging others about their unexpected tardiness to care.
He, himself, couldn’t really say he cared. It was more of a morbid curiosity innate to those who had not gotten used to Tokyo’s trains and their stopping-procedures. Fortunately, he looked foreign enough. If he faked a horrible foreign accent, he could possibly pass as a confused tourist trying to catch his next train. A tourist that clearly didn’t know that he could pretty much get to Ueno with a 10-15 minute walk, at most. He could get away with meddling into the detective’s body-part picking work, as long as he kept an I-understand-nothing sort of face.
It was a horrendous sight.
If it wasn’t for the accumulated hours he had spent watching crime shows, he would have probably puked on the spot. He had never seen real intestines, at least not human intestines, and even the cow intestines he had seen were already cleaned, bleached into an almost pure white, and then boiled into Miso broth. He didn’t expect them to have such a bright pink color, it almost reminded him of the tiny earthworms that would try to scape their earthly prisons when the rainy season came. Of course, he didn’t expect the smell either. It was a strange bloody smell, but not in the bearable ferrous manner in which a butchery smelled; it had a fetid, maybe even rotten hint to it. It couldn’t have begun to decompose, the body was freshly crushed, it complexity leaving him perplexed. That is, until the detective raised a piece of what he thought was once part of the man’s large bowels and put it in what seemed like a very fancy enormous ziplock-bag. Unlike a butchery, trains didn’t carefully separate meat from waste. Trains were unforgiving, they had one simple mission, to move forward.
Maybe he needed to move forward too.
Once again, he balanced his own weight on the guardrail on Kami-Ikebukuro’s bridge, immerse in his own fantasy. If only there was a word to describe what death meant to him! Or to human kind, for that matter. One word, that’s all he needed to describe how fascinating, enchanting, seductive, terrifying and chaotic the thought of dying was. There might be, he wasn’t sure, his vocabulary was as poor as his choices; but he had a feeling, if there was such a word in Japanese it most certainly should begin with the radical for “heart”.
As he gathered his morbid thoughts for the night, he came to one single conclusion; as he played a series of images in his mind, from the old man, to the Yamanote, to the obāsan, to the Yamanote, to the detective, to the Yamanote, and back to the dazzling lights of the sky tree. And that conclusion was, that every single person on this planet must have fantasized about dying at least once. After all, death was the one thing everyone could be certain of. Fantasizing about death, in a certain way, must have made everyone feel alive. As if by doing so they had gained some sort of power, of control of their own existence. Choosing how to die, for some reason (probably fear) felt a lot more meaningful than choosing how to live. Maybe that would explain why in these lands, suicide had the status it had. Who could deny the majesty of a Daimyō choosing death over loosing his honor? Who could so much as dare to judge committing shinjū as anything but the purest of love? No one could question the bravery it took to die, even if they had questioned them while they lived. In a way, dying had some sort of an expiatory nature. Artists only became famous when they died. Family members, friends. How many of them had suddenly become important and missed when they did? Surely everyone must have someone who after death, somehow found a way to gain a more important role in one’s life than that who was originally given to them. Even you, you must have someone like that too.
But people becoming important didn’t necessarily mean he would become important if he died too. After all, he was not necessarily a bright man. He had not done one single thing that could be considered decent, let alone great, in his meaningless 30 something years. There was no difference between an ant getting crushed in the railroad and himself if he decided to jump. Knowing that was what kept him from jumping. He was so selfish, that defiance, and the temporary noticing of the passengers of his own existence, was not enough for him to jump.
“Onii-san?”
Was someone calling him? The voice of whoever said that seemed sweet, alluring, yet somewhat aloof. He smirked, had he caught the attention of one o the so called “safety guards”? Those who had put up the unnecessarily artificial-looking sign?
“Are you alright?”
For some reason, the thought of one of those guards interrupting him annoyed him to incredible extents. He turned around, his severe eyebrows frowning more than what they usually did. The sharp corner of his dark eyes somewhat seemed to be judging the woman before him. He seemed extremely serious, and equally handsome.
“Yes, I am.”
He was surprised by the considerably charming appearance of the woman. She was not at all like the guard he pictured in his mind. She had a round face, like a melon pan, and her cheeks were tinted with the reds of shyness. She was wearing a skirt that covered her legs up to where her ankles began, and a fluffy coat that almost resembled a teddy bear. Paired with tennis shoes that seemed somewhat unfitting for someone her age, and a beret that she must have purposely chose to present herself as fashionable. Even though her clothes were a tad oversized, anyone could still figure out that she had a plump figure which he found very alluring. He smiled at her, in an apologetic manner.
“Is that so”.
The girl looked at her tennis shoes as he replied with such a cold phrase, even though it was the standard wording for “I’m glad” in her native language. For some reason, he suddenly felt like it would be a shame to leave only knowing her as melon-pan-face, and so he decided to ask her.
“What’s your name?”
The girl smiled, she seemed to be somewhat grateful for the meaningless chitchat, as if it had taken away some of her embarrassment.
“You can call me Yukiko ”
A very common name for a very common girl.
“Is it written with the kanji for snow?”
“Yes”
“Were you born in winter?”
“No”
He smiled, this time sincerely, maybe she was an impostor too. Once again, one of the Yamanote’s trains made the bridge shiver. He took the chance, and unapologetically took a step forward towards the Snow-named girl, who was not born amongst real snow.
Time passed as it always does. The next morning he would find himself in an unexpectedly clean apartment, and the first thing that might come into his mind be, how the hell did he end up there?
Glossary:
Shodō: Japanese calligraphy.
Izakaya: A traditional Japanese bar.
Kafunshō: Pollen allergies.
Sha-in: Officer, employee.
Obāsan: Old lady.
Shinkansen: High-velocity trains in Japan.
Daimyō: Japanese Feudal Lord.
Shinjū: The practice of committing suicide with your lover.
Onii-san: "Brother" a way to call out young looking men, you don't necessarily know.
Melon Pan: a type of Japanese bread.
