“My first hint of a reprieve came a month later. By accident, on my way to school, I found myself face-to-face with Aoki on the train. As usual, it was so packed you couldn’t move. And there was Aoki, two or three people away, over someone’s shoulder, facing me. I must have looked terrible, short on sleep, a neurotic wreck. At first, he gave me this smirk. Like, so how’s it going now, eh? Aoki had to know that I knew that he was behind everything. Our eyes locked. We glared at each other. But as I was staring the guy in the eye, a strange emotion came over me. Sure, I was furious at Aoki. I hated the guy; I wanted to kill him. But suddenly, at the same time, there in the train, I felt something like pity. I mean, was this really the best this joker could do? Was this all it took to give him such airs of superiority? Could he actually be so satisfied, so happy with himself, for this? It was pathetic. I was practically moved to grief. To think that this fool would be eternally incapable of knowing true happiness, true pride. That there existed creatures so lacking in human depth. Not that I’m such a deep guy, but at least I know a real human being when I see one. But his kind, no. His life was as flat as a piece of slate. It was all surface, no matter what he did. He was nothing.

“I kept looking him in the face as these emotions went through me, and I didn’t feel like punching him out anymore. I couldn’t have cared less about him. Honest, I was surprised how little I cared. And then I knew I could put up with another five months of the silence. I still had my pride. I wasn’t going to let some slime like Aoki drag me down with him.

“That was the look I gave Aoki. He must have thought it was a stare-down, which he wasn’t about to lose, and when the train reached the station we didn’t break our gaze. But in the end, it was Aoki who wavered. Just the slightest tremble of his pupils, but I picked up on it. Right away. The look of a boxer whose legs are giving out on him. He’s working them, only they’re not moving. And the stiff doesn’t get it; he thinks they’re still pacing. But his legs are dead. They’ve died in their tracks and now his shoulders won’t dance. Which means the power’s gone out of his punch. It was that look. Something’s wrong, but he can’t tell what.