It was my hometown, the one that drew forth nostalgic, bittersweet tears. Autumn plains that continued forever. Memories from long ago. The eternally fleeting glances from giggling little girls. The peace of the black cat, hit by a car. There was no longer anything painful or difficult anywhere. I was fine now.

“That’s right. You are now”, said a little girl.

The life-sized anime doll, which Yamazaki had left behind as a present, stared at me. She was an angel. She started to move, and she guided me forward.

We traveled to a faraway planet. It was beautiful: a blue sky with white clouds, the cool wind blowing across a spring field that stretched into the distance. We stood in the middle of the field, and the girl picked one pure white flower and held it up in front of me. With her slender fingers, she grasped a petal and pulled it out. “Life.”

Then, she pulled out another petal. “Death.”

She was telling a flower fortune.

“Life… Death… Life… Death… Life… Death… Life… Death.”

The last petal fluttered to the ground.

The girl smiled gently.

Chapter 10.
Dive

Part One

Summer ended. I’d depleted my living expenses. I had no money left for food, so I decided to try sleeping to conserve energy. I would be awake for five hours, and then I’d sleep for fifteen. I tried living on that schedule.

For the first three days, I didn’t really have any problem fasting. At worst, my stomach hurt a little bit. By the time the fourth day rolled around, though, I couldn’t think of anything but food. I want to eat ramen. I want to eat curry and rice. Regardless of my will, my body seriously wanted calories. This craving was impossible to fight.

Finally, on the fifth day of fasting, I left the apartment. Spending my last few hundred yen to buy a pastry and another part-time job magazine, I decided to start doing physical work that very day.

Physical day labor… I mastered the work surprisingly easily, bringing supplies into event halls, helping with moving and the like. Once in a while, I made a mistake and got punched by one of the higher-ups; even so, the work was refreshing. The rougher I treated my body, the more and more empty my head became. For the first time in several years, I could go to sleep and wake up feeling refreshed.

Given all my credit card debt, I worked night and day for the first month. After registering with a temporary agency, I was able to get daily work. Once I’d accumulated a degree of wiggle room in my savings, I immediately reduced the amount of work I was doing. I decided to work for about half a month at a time, then staying holed up for the second half. As long as I could make about one hundred thousand yen a month, I could actually maintain a rather pleasant life.