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“What are you going to use a bomb for?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m going to blow up something!”

Well, yeah, that was true. It was, indeed, obvious. There was no other use for a bomb.

“I meant, what are you going to blow up? That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“My enemies.”

“Who are your enemies?”

“Villains. I’m going to get those villains with my revolutionary bomb.”

“I see. Well, who are the villains?”

“Like politicians or something.”

“Do you even know the name of the current prime minister?”

Yamazaki grew silent and went back to his work. Before long, he’d completed the black gunpowder and the airtight iron pipe. His detonator, which used an analog clock, also was finished. The only thing left was to attach the detonator to the pipe, and then he could set it off at any time.

“Yay, I’m done! I’m a fighter! I’m a revolutionary!” Yamazaki was in high spirits. “They’ll all be blown up! I’ll kill all the villains!”

He was in high spirits, but he was also entirely self-aware.

“Ah, that was fun”, he concluded.

In the end, though, the bomb didn’t blow up any villains.

To start with, we didn’t know where to find any villains. Because there was nothing we could do about that, we tried to blow up the neighborhood park on Saturday night. So no one would see us, we crawled deep into the brush to set the detonator. The bomb actually did explode, but it was more a whimper than a bang.

It was a sad story.

Amid these distractions, Sunday arrived. As I had promised, I met Misaki in front of the station. We had our date, and I returned to my apartment.

I slept all night. When I awoke, it was morning. I had nothing to do and was bored. I decided to try ingesting my entire stash of stockpiled drugs. I started having a good time. Everything became pleasurable. I laughed.

Part Two

In general, drugs can be classified into one of three large categories: uppers, downers, and psychedelics. Uppers are drugs that make you energetic. Cocaine and stimulants are famous uppers. Downers are drugs like heroin, which make you sluggish. I’d never tried them, so I didn’t know firsthand, but it seemed that taking them would feel really, really good. And psychedelics are hallucinogens. LSD and magic mushrooms represent that category.

For the most part, I really preferred legal hallucinogens. They had few side effects—unlike uppers and downers—and more than that, they were easy to get because they were legal.

On the day after my date, I took drugs again. I decided to take a rather aggressive approach.

First, I set the groundwork with thirty milligrams of AMT. AMT is an antidepressant that was studied by Russian scientists. After they discovered that a large dose could cause hallucinogenic effects, it was prohibited for medical use. Still, it was originally just an antidepressant. After taking it, for the first two hours, a person would be plagued with terrible nausea; once that was over, however, it became entirely pleasurable. It also happened to be the best thing ever for combating bad trips.

Next, I boiled down the seeds of a harmal plant and drank the yellow layer of liquid that floated to the top. Harmal, a plant I think is in the goathead family, originated in Tibet and contains the Indole-type psychedelic components harmine and harmaline. Using it by itself doesn’t produce any real effect; in combination with other hallucinogens like magic mushrooms or DMT, though, the effects are amplified dozens of times over. That’s the Ayahuasca method. As harmal is an MAO inhibitor, it could be life-threatening if ingested with cheese or other dairy products; but as long as those foods are avoided, it shouldn't cause any problems.

Well, my real opportunity had arrived. My consciousness already was dimming, and the edges of my vision wavered wildly—but here, my true trip would begin. I would keep going and going!

Grinding five grams of dried magic mushroom with a mortar and pestle, I washed the powder down with a single gulp of orange juice. On top of that, I screwed up my courage and ingested a ten-milligram crystal of 5-MeO-DMT. DMT is a drug containing only the effective components of hallucinogenic plants like chacropanga, which natives of the Amazon use in their Ayahuasca ceremonies. Though legal, this drug is reputedly one of the strongest anyone can find. According to one theory, the hallucinogenic effects are more than one hundred times more powerful than those of LSD. It's truly the ultimate psychedelic.

In just one second, I had become paralyzed! The drugs had taken effect!

The Satou Special—my wonderful, ultimate method, devised through research and trial-and-error—was complete.

By effectively combining four types of drugs into a single cocktail, I was promised the ultimate trip, one that even illegal drugs couldn’t touch. With a hard thrust, as if riding a rocket ship, I was shot into the far reaches of outer space. Time stopped entirely. Space began to warp thoroughly. My physical body disappeared.

***

“This is no good, Satou. I found out something terrible! I’ve had an epiphany!” Yamazaki declared. ”This is really, really bad!”

I tried to say something, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

Yamazaki was getting agitated. “Are you listening? Listen closely: This is a really bad thing!”

As there was nothing else I could do, I listened closely.

Pulling himself to his full height and wearing the largest grin imaginable, Yamazaki said, “I was able to logically prove that I am the monotheistic God who created the cosmos!”

I died.

Then, I came back to life.

“Please watch, and I’ll clean up your room now, using my superpowers.” Yamazaki pointed his finger at the rubbish scattered about the floor and screamed, “Move!”

Naturally, the rubbish did not so much as twitch.

“Hey! I’m ordering you! Why are you resisting me?” Yamazaki fumed.

Observing this situation, I felt something rise up inside of me. It was a strange sensation, bubbling up from the very depths of my body. Folding my arms, I thought carefully about this feeling. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I realized what it was. I know, this is…

It was nausea! I was attacked by violent nausea. I tried to dash to the bathroom, but the path there was challenging. My legs wouldn’t move forward. The hall seemed to have stretched into a fifteen hundred foot tunnel. The bathroom was so far away. Would I make it? Could I get to the bathroom before spraying vomit everywhere?

I’ll be fine. Calm down.

Yamazaki had just said it. He had said, “I am God.”

But I knew. I knew that his words were completely mistaken. How did I know? Because I was God! I had confirmed that truth just a moment earlier, using a thoroughly logical thought process.

I would definitely make it in time. I am God. I will make it to the bathroom in time.

I made it.

Prostrating myself before the toilet, I threw up. Afterward, I felt much better. Then, I became energetic. I was enjoying myself. Skipping slowly back into the room, I found Yamazaki squatting there, still grinning.

“It’s no good. Elementary students are no good.” Muttering under his breath, he looked like he was thinking of something criminal.

For some reason, his situation triggered an extreme sense of déjà vu. This sort of thing has happened before, hasn’t it…? While I thought about it, ten consecutive aggressive feelings of déjà vu suddenly hit me. Everything I was looking at had happened before.

I decided to engage Yamazaki in a discussion about this sensation. After a moment, I became unsure what was really going on. “Huh, have we had this discussion before?”