I nodded slightly and returned to my apartment.
Part Three
The next day, Misaki and I walked through the city streets. The sky was a cloudless blue. As it was Saturday, there were a lot of people near the station, and it was all a little dizzying for me.
As promised, I’d met her at the neighborhood park at one o’clock in the afternoon, and we’d gone straight to the station. About two hours had passed, and we were still walking. We just kept walking. Although Misaki walked in front of me, ostensibly in the lead, I got the feeling that we’d been walking around and around the same roads for a while.
Still, Misaki’s footsteps remained steady.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Um, where are we walking?”
Misaki turned around. “What?”
“I mean, what’s our destination?”
“We can’t just walk like this?”
I rolled my eyes toward the sky.
Misaki stopped and folded her arms, deep in thought. “Hm. Now that you mention it, it is kind of strange. Thinking about it more carefully, I guess most people do try to go somewhere.”
I had nothing to say.
“Hey, where do you think people normally would go?”
It’s not like I have an answer. To begin with, what in the hell were we doing? It was Saturday, in the middle of the afternoon, and we had met to walk around in the city. Who in the world are we, anyway? If I could answer that question, maybe our destination would change.
At any rate, I asked, “Misaki, is there anywhere you’d like to go?”
“No.”
“Have you eaten lunch yet?”
“Not yet.”
For the time being, we decided to go to a nearby family restaurant.
As we entered the family restaurant, Misaki said, “This is the first time I’ve eaten at a place like this.”
I smoked a cigarette. The tip was shaking slightly. It was painful for me. I wanted sunglasses. If I could just have sunglasses, I wouldn’t have to worry about strangers staring at me.
Misaki ordered the lunch special. She ate with vigor while I sipped my coffee.
Dammit, I thought. The caffeine was making it even more difficult to stay calm. Soon, I would start acting suspiciously.
Misaki was rather cheery, however. She looked like she was having fun making some sort of origami from the paper napkins set up on the table.
“Look, it’s finished. Isn’t it amazing?” It was a crane.
“It is amazing. You’re very skilled.” I praised her.
My stomach was starting to hurt, so we left the family restaurant.
We walked for about another half hour before heading to a cafe. I drank some black tea, and Misaki ate cake. I was trying to remember the original reason we were meeting like this.
On that night, Misaki had said, “Let’s go into the city. If we do that, I think you’ll definitely head in a good direction.”
Oh, right. In short, this was another part of the hikikomori escape program, and it didn’t mean we were on a date or anything. And then, there was the previous night. After watching Misaki last night, I was oven more mystified by her true identity. For starters, the evening had erased my theory that all this was just a covert religious recruitment on her part. Given how little she had fit in with the surroundings at the assembly, it was unlikely that she’d zealously try to convert strangers.
In the end, who was she? Even now, she remained a huge mystery. What should I do, hanging out like this with such a mysterious girl? What should I do? Finally, with no idea what else to do, I simply kept silent.
Misaki pulled another book out of the bag that she always carried. This one was The Many Words That Guide You: A Collection of Proverbs That Will Echo in Your Heart. Another strange book… I was no longer surprised.
Moving her cake plate aside, Misaki opened the book on the table.
“Let it be.” Saying this, she intently looked at me. “It seems to be a saying by a man named John. What do you think this means?”
“L-let things be as they are.”
“Ah, that’s a great saying!”
Eventually, our meandering took us back to the manga cafe where Misaki worked occasionally. The man sitting at the register nodded at her. Acting like a regular customer, I took a receipt. Then, we sat down in the very back of the room.
The place was basically deserted.
Drinking free cola, I concentrated on reading manga. Misaki, who sat across from me, watched me and drank orange juice. I was incredibly distracted, but there was nothing I could do about it. I felt like a hole was about to open in my stomach.
Finally, I couldn’t put up with it. There was no way I could read manga like this. I tried speaking. “Misaki?”
“Hm?”
“There aren’t many people in this manga cafe, are there?”
“It’s because of the recent downturn in the economy.”
I looked over at the man behind the counter. “That man, how is he related to you?”
“He’s my uncle. I’m always causing him trouble; but because I’m leaving before long, I think he’ll forgive me.”
It sounded like they had some sort of complicated family dynamic; however, I didn’t want to hear that story, so I changed direction. “Anyway, Misaki, do you enjoy your religious activities?”
“Not really. I trouble people all the time.”
“Trouble?”
“You know—how to phrase it? I disturb the atmosphere. Well, my presence there depresses a lot of other people. Actually, it would be best if I weren’t anywhere.”
“You could just leave the group.”
“I can’t. I have to do something to repay my aunt.”
“Misaki, you don’t really believe in God, do you?”
Misaki put her cup of juice on the table. It made a small clank. “I do think it would be nice if God existed. If I could, I’d like to believe, but it’s rather difficult.”
She sounded disappointed. In a discouraged tone, she gave an abrupt hypothesis. “To start with, if God really existed, He would have to be a terrible villain. Thinking about it comprehensively, I’ve come to that conclusion.”
“Huh?”
“Well, for human beings, the ratio of painful things to enjoyable things has to be about nine to one. One time, I wrote it all down in my notebook and calculated it.” Misaki took out her secret notebook and spread it open on the table.
“See, there’s the pie chart. If you look, you can see clear as day that the happy times—the times when you think, ‘How fun! I’m glad I’m alive!’—don’t make up even one tenth of life. I worked this out properly with a calculator, so there’s no mistake.”
I rather wondered what kind of calculation methods she’d used, but Misaki didn’t show me any other pages. I had no intention of going out of my way to infringe on her privacy further.
Misaki continued, “That’s why. Any God who would purposefully create such a painful world must be a really terrible guy, don’t you think? It’s a logical conclusion, isn’t it?”
“Misaki, didn’t you just say that you wanted to believe in God?”
“Yeah. I do want to believe. I think I wish that God did exist. I mean…”
“You mean?”
“If that type of bad God did exist, then we could go on living in good health. If we could push the responsibility for our misery onto God, then we would have that much more peace of mind, wouldn’t we?”
It was a complicated discussion. I folded my arms and pretended to think deeply about it, but my mind wasn’t working properly.
To begin with, Misaki, how serious about this are you? You’ve been smiling bizarrely for a while now. From start to finish, I felt as though I’d been trapped in a deceptive fog.