Prologue - Just Like Anyone Else
The beginning is always difficult.
Not because I have nothing to say, but because among so many stories, choosing where to start feels overwhelming.
If I force it, well, watermelon.
Let’s start with the watermelon smashed flat under the axe.
…I know exactly what you’re thinking, but for now, let’s call it watermelon.
I’m short on words, not rude.
A story that’s long is long and a short one is short—there’s no need to be unpleasant from the very start.
Anyway, then, watermelon. The watermelon becomes a problem?
No.
What I want to say is this: watermelon isn’t a problem, so you don’t have to worry.
The stench spreading through every house isn’t that big a deal.
The front door is smashed on the other side and every window is broken, yet this house is somehow still ventilated.
How can I handle the fact that it ended up looking like this?
The guests coming over dragging their feet over there aren’t a problem either.
Everyone is scowling with rage, probably because they can’t stand the terrible smell and want to complain.
Thanks to the rural kindness where neighbors bring fruit when visiting, everyone is carrying a watermelon on their shoulder.
But to step on the front door takes them five minutes, and even if we’re strict, we have to wait at least three more.
So during those three minutes we have to solve one very important problem.
Whether it’s better to become a fool or to become a smart person.
There it is. I got the feeling.
This is where the story should begin.
***
Just like anyone else, I had a pure time in my life.
If I had known what would happen in the future, I wouldn’t have been able to live with my bare hands, and looking back, I guess I walked a razor-thin line.
It makes me sad and pathetic even now, that one-year-old first-grader.
I had frozen in front of the fill-in-the-blank question.
※ Please write freely in the next blank.
『I hope the people in this world ( ).』
My friends had quickly written things like “become rich, love overflowing, no pain, healthy” and moved on.
But I wasn’t like them.
It felt so right that I didn’t write even one letter, leaving the notebook on the shelf as if it were a broken toy to be afraid it would break.
It wasn’t that I had nothing to say, but I was too desperate.
I literally couldn’t write it down.
The teacher approached me.
She looked down at me silently, then gently placed a hand on my shoulder.
The teacher passed by quickly, but the warmth spread through my arm and into my hand.
As if I was possessed, I wrote the answer.
『I hope the people in this world (are smart enough to understand each other).』
A few days later the teacher called me to the teacher’s office.
She handed me a wrapped stick candy and asked,
“I’m curious. If people become smart enough to understand each other, what do you think will happen?”
“We won’t fight.”
“Really? Why?”
“Our mom and dad always fight saying ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying.’ So if we understand, we won’t fight, right?”
The teacher was very flustered, but I had only said our house was like that.
And I was pretty smart, so I knew that making adults uncomfortable meant getting a slap on the cheek.
Just like when asked whom I would live with and saying “I’ll live alone outside” in a blunt way.
I was fully prepared, but nothing came flying and I heard nothing.
When I glanced sideways, the teacher was smiling.
Yet it felt like she was about to cry.
“Teacher.”
I thought her voice was too low, so she cleared her throat.
“Teacher, I hope all the people in the world become fools.”
“Why?”
“If they’re fools, they’ll only think about what’s right in front of them. No complicated thinking, no worry about whether the person will deceive me or not. Eat when hungry, cry when wanting to cry, get angry when wanting to get angry. And when it all passes, forget it.”
There was a small framed picture on the teacher’s desk.
It had clearly been standing straight before, but now it was knocked over.
She touched the corner of the frame, then suddenly dropped it.
She didn’t set it straight or put it away, just left it lying there.
“That’s why I like simple, foolish people.”
The teacher gently held my hand.
“Teacher is always here, so come anytime it’s hard. Got it? I’ll give you a candy too.”
She was smiling and crying at the same time.
I was scared.
Just like in our house, if someone cries in the teacher’s office, someone else might get angry.
So after age six I did something I hadn’t done before.
It was the childhood truth that giving a candy to a crying adult would stop the crying instantly.
But why didn’t I do it after that? It would stop, but I was scolded for “bringing a little thing like a peanut to tease an adult.”
‘Ah. Maybe it’s because I didn’t unwrap the packaging and just gave it.’
It seemed right.
My parents had always taught me to be polite to adults.
So I slowly unwrapped the candy and held it out.
“Here.”
“That’s what I gave you. Eat it.”
“I’m giving it back to you.”
I unwrapped the packaging, teacher.
“It’s too hard for my arm.”
“…Don’t you want to eat it?”
“No. You look sad.”
“Me?”
Why do adults make people feel helpless when they clearly know but pretend they don’t? That had always been my complaint.
The teacher looked up at the ceiling and blinked while giving the candy.
Then she hugged me tightly.
She said something but it was mumbled so I couldn’t hear well.
‘If the teacher had been my mom, I could have hugged her every day.’
It was like a dream, so it was good that it wasn’t real.
In the teacher’s arms there was no smell of alcohol, cigarettes, or sweat.
Only the scent of shampoo.
“You’ll become a wonderful adult. I believe in you.”
After a while the teacher finally let go of my hand.
Unfortunately, she gave me a handful of candy.
If my parents found out, they would ask where she stole it from, so I carried it in my bag and ate it all on the way.
‘If all people in the world become fools, will I really be happy?’
Even after eating all the many candies I couldn’t find the answer.
And time passed as if it had sped up.
The household situation improved dramatically.
My parents no longer fought, and somehow even laughter and harmony started to linger.
I laughed along, but somewhere it felt strange and awkward.
Unfortunately I wasn’t a genius.
I was just a precocious child who paid a lot of attention.
I hadn’t not studied.
When I received the test paper my mind went blank.
When I snapped out of my surprise, the things I had memorized and practiced had already fled, and all that remained was doubt.
All the things I studied,
All the things I knew,
Were they real?
Could I be sure everything was right?
It wasn’t about saying “the inner child shaken by an unstable home” or “an unhealed past.”
Saying that would sound too simplistic and cowardly, and it seemed like I was walking with wounds wide open in a hurry, didn’t it?
Simply put, I wanted to say that I grew up like oil floating on water, like water mixed with oil, not well mixed anywhere, and cynical.
It wasn’t my parents’ fault.
In the end the two of them reconciled.
It wasn’t poverty’s fault either.
We weren’t so poor that we poured money on the floor, but we weren’t lacking either.
The problem was me.
Not keeping up with my parents, or not pressing money into the wounds to stop the bleeding, was ultimately my doing.
Life after that, well, wasn’t ordinary.
The thresholds of what people call “ordinary” were so high that I couldn’t reach it without imagination.
Instead, I could act as an “ordinary” human.
As best I could I went to a decent university, commuting between a rental room and the dorm, working part-time, doing internships, preparing for conscription… getting a job.
I did well what others did.
But somewhere in my heart there was a certain foreign feeling, a crack like a fracture.
I memorized the script perfectly for a good role, but suddenly the part changed, that feeling.
I was forcing the act, but the world’s version of me felt like it wasn’t really me.
Still, up until now I had lived decently.
Not a great performance, but not so bad as to fail.
I believed that.
…When I opened my eyes, in the game world I had enjoyed for a long time, it was still inside the zombie apocalypse world setting, until it suddenly fell in.
Maybe death could be an escape route.
Like when waking from a bad dream.
But it might just end right here.
Like one of the many endings I saw, I might become a wandering zombie trapped in my flesh.
I thought about me sitting emptily, and the short Q&A with the teacher.
Those neighbors are the fools the teacher mentioned, aren’t they?
Those people drooling over the “watermelon juice” smell, limping or hunched over, only thinking about eating what’s right in front of them, gathering like that, are they not the fools wearing the shape of a real person?
But me?
I’m smarter than them.
I know that my fate’s ending will be the same as theirs.
I know how hard and painful it is to live in this harsh world.
I know I have to choose what to eat and drink, decide where to sleep and stretch my legs, and prepare for the life that was natural yesterday possibly not being natural today.
The tedious hardship is clear to me.
They don’t know.
I know they are miserable.
They don’t know themselves.
I understand them.
They don’t understand themselves or me.
I can’t expect such things from them in the future either.
So the remaining question is one.
Should I become a fool like them, live without knowing happiness or misery, and live according to instinct?
Or should I live as a wise person who knows pain, joy, sadness, lust, happiness, and pain like now?
If I want to live as a fool, I can just stay still.
I can stay without moving a single finger.
But if I walk the path of wisdom while knowing all that pain,
I have to stand up.
I have to face it.
Even if I know the taste, I have to eat the hardship and thrust the pain.
The decision, probably just touching one finger, will be enough.
Therefore I want to ask you one small favor.
Please grant me the courage to move at least one finger.