MUNDANE HURT: Chapter 6

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The narrow alley, just wide enough for bicycles to pass, was tucked behind a strip of bars and snack joints. There were no streetlights, just the dim, leftover light seeping through windows, adding a sense of bleakness to the scene.

Nishizaki had been sitting by the side door of the hostess club "Cupid" for about ten minutes now, perched on a pile of concrete blocks. The chill was seeping through him, creeping up his back and sending shivers down his spine. Wasn't someone going to come out? If the door wasn’t locked, he could just walk in… He glared at the cheap, stainless-steel doorknob as if he could blow it open with his gaze alone.

A black-suited bartender emerged from the back door of a shop across the alley, tossing a clear garbage bag into a large trash can. He spotted Nishizaki sitting there, gave him a suspicious look, and then disappeared back inside. Frustrated by that lingering, judgmental stare, Nishizaki spat on the ground. Ugly ape-faced loser with a receding hairline. He should get smashed over the head with a beer bottle by one of his customers.

The faint odor of rotting trash lingered, even with the lid closed. Out of nowhere, a white cat appeared, circling around the trash can, stretching to poke its nose under the lid. He picked up a small stone and threw it, but his aim was off, and it hit the overhead pipes instead with a metallic clang. Startled, the cat shivered and darted into the shadows of the alley.

Nishizaki chuckled, but the cold air stung his throat, and he coughed lightly. His breath hung white in the air. Just wearing a fleece jacket was miserably cold, but it was all he had. He was out here freezing just to see Miyu. She’d blocked his emails, texts, and calls, so now he had to stake out her workplace to catch her. It was infuriating. She wasn’t even that pretty, just a big-bottomed fool.

Finally, he heard the doorknob click open. A woman in a pale blue dress stepped out. He recognized her face—she’d been over at Miyu’s apartment once. Her name… he couldn’t remember. She lit a cigarette, her movements lethargic.

“Hey.”

She turned in surprise, looking down at him. When she recognized him, her face twisted with distaste, and she crushed her cigarette underfoot, starting to head back inside. Nishizaki grabbed the hem of her dress, determined not to let her get away.

“Let go.”

“Get Miyu.”

“She’s busy right now.”

“She can step out for a second.”

The woman, realizing Nishizaki wasn’t going to back off, clicked her heels sharply and glared at him.

“Seriously, you’re the worst. Coming all the way here to bother her at work? Miyu doesn’t want to see you.”

“This is the last time. It’ll be over after this,” he lied smoothly.

The woman stared at him in silence before muttering, “Fine, I’ll go get her,” and took a step back.

“You’d better,” he warned as he let go. Five minutes passed. Then ten. No sign of Miyu. He checked his phone every minute, muttering curses under his breath. Was she ignoring him? He began imagining going in through the front as if he were a customer. He’d push past the bouncer, yank Miyu out from the sofa where she was cozying up to some bald, fat old guy, and slap her across the face…

His violent fantasy was interrupted by the soft sound of the door opening.

“...Tat-chan?”

Peeking out from behind the door, Miyu stood in a baby-pink dress. Her makeup was heavy as ever, despite his many complaints that it didn’t suit her.

“You’re late,” he snapped.

“Sorryyy,” she said, tilting her head with a pout.

“Lend me some money.”

He tacked on, “I’ll pay you back” as an afterthought. Miyu giggled nervously and pulled out a wallet with a heart-shaped charm dangling from it. He snatched it from her hand.

One, two… almost 70,000 yen. He took the bills and tossed the now-empty wallet back to her. Miyu’s face crumpled, looking like she was about to cry.

“That’s mean…”

“I’m not your girlfriend anymore, Tat-chan. And you’ve never once paid me back,” she said.

“Right, thanks,” he replied, waving her off with his right hand.

“Drop dead, you jerk!” she shouted at his back as he walked away. Pulling out his phone, he left the entertainment district and headed to meet up with his guy at a fast-food place near Sugamo Station, taking a cab there. But when he arrived, his guy wasn’t at the counter. After about twenty minutes of waiting, flipping idly through a cheap manga he’d bought at a convenience store, his contact finally showed up.

The guy, known for his signature green knit cap, was a man Nishizaki nicknamed “Tsubame” because of his resemblance to the comedian Hashimoto Tsubame. Nishizaki didn’t know his real name, and Tsubame probably didn’t know his either. He’d overheard someone calling him “bro,” and had stuck with that.

Tsubame picked up the manga Nishizaki had been holding, flipping through the pages as if reading. He spotted the 60,000 yen stashed between the pages and slipped the manga into his jacket pocket. Each dealer had their own method; Tsubame always requested that sums over 30,000 yen be hidden inside a small book, and Nishizaki, knowing this, had prepped the cash accordingly. Tsubame was pleased with the extra care, as usual.

Yesterday afternoon, Tsubame had texted, “Got something you might like—interested?” Nishizaki replied immediately, “Very,” but he’d had only 4,700 yen on hand, not nearly enough. He’d asked Tsubame to hold it, and Tsubame had responded, “For you, bro, sure. But no more than two days, okay?”

The thing he loved was expensive and rarely available, so he couldn’t afford to miss the chance. But he was unemployed with no savings and unsure how long Miyu would keep lending him money. He’d often thought that being a dealer like Tsubame might not be a bad gig—he’d make cash and get to keep a stash for himself.

He texted Tsubame, “How’s business?” They communicated mostly through text, even when sitting next to each other. Tsubame’s reply came quickly.

“Same old, same old.”

“Thinking of getting into the biz,” Nishizaki replied, hinting at his interest in dealing.

But Tsubame, ever astute, replied, “You’d probably better not.”

“You’d end up using it all yourself.”

Nishizaki’s heart skipped a beat. He knew he couldn’t deny it convincingly, and Tsubame wouldn’t budge.

“Broke as hell, so if you know any high-paying gigs, let me know. I’ll do anything.”

Tsubame replied with a funny sticker but Nishizaki had a feeling he wouldn’t be getting a call.

Tsubame left the store first, dropping a rolled-up note at his feet. Nishizaki picked it up and checked the location for the key and station. Returning to Sugamo Station, he found the hidden key in an old building’s flower bed, then took a taxi to Yoyogi Station to open a coin locker.

The second he saw the paper bag inside, a triumphant fanfare sounded in his mind. He managed to resist the urge to indulge right there in the station bathroom and instead hurried back to his usual manga café in Tabata. He rented a booth close to the bathroom. His hands trembled with excitement—no, they were shaking too much, making even the simplest tasks annoying.

He laid out four neat white lines of powder and snorted them up through a straw. As expected, the nausea came quickly. Stumbling to the restroom, he dry-heaved over and over. After several cycles of inhaling and retching, the nausea began to fade, replaced by a familiar, creeping euphoria that spread through his entire body.

Lying back on the cheap, cracked faux-leather mat, a soft laugh bubbled up from deep inside him. Heh… heheh… It wouldn’t stop. That floating, in-between state where he wasn’t quite asleep but wasn’t fully awake either—it felt sublime. He didn’t want to think about anything. He didn’t want to do anything. If he could stay suspended in this lazy haze forever, it would be perfect. If he could die like this, drifting away in pleasure, that would be the ultimate. The shabby mat beneath him felt as luxurious as a feather bed.

In that foggy space where wakefulness and sleep blurred, his uncle’s face appeared in his mind. Why him? Was it his death anniversary? Or… what day was it today anyway? Ugh, who cares? I don’t want to think about this.

His uncle had always done whatever he wanted for him, like a real dad, but that man didn’t care about him at all. He preferred Nishizaki’s older brother, and he shunned the “useless little brother.” The day after his high school graduation, he overheard his uncle talking with his aunt Miyoko in the mansion garden.

“Masaya is such a well-behaved, smart kid, but Tatsuya? Even back in high school, he just kept taking advantage of your connections with the chairman to make unreasonable demands and caused nothing but problems for the school. He’ll never amount to anything.”

Hidden from view, he listened as Miyoko’s words spilled out like poison.

“But even if Tatsuya isn’t the brightest, I can’t just ignore him.”

His uncle’s voice was as cold as ice.

“A kid like Tatsuya just lashes out under strict control. If he gets reckless and does something terrible, it’ll affect Masaya’s future. All I have to do is give him some money and freedom, and he’ll be satisfied. Simple enough. But I’ll only support him until he graduates college.”

He knew he wasn’t particularly bright, but no one else had ever told him so to his face. He didn’t care what Miyoko thought, but hearing his beloved uncle label him as “hopeless” and treat him like a burden—it was a shock that made his knees go weak.

“He’s dumb and costs us a fortune—what a worthless investment,” Miyoko had spat, and his uncle hadn’t contradicted her.

The sting of those words lingered, corroding him from the inside out. Fine, he thought, I’m worthless, just like you said. Then I’ll act like it. He started skipping college classes, maxing out his credit cards every month, and going even wilder than he had in high school. It was the best time of his life, except for the way his uncle’s voice kept flashing through his mind: Hopeless…—it got under his skin. Just go away already. Die, he’d thought—and then, as if the curse had worked, his uncle had an accident and died during his first year of college. He’d been driving his sick mother to the hospital… They hadn’t exchanged meaningful words since that conversation in the garden.

Thinking back on those feelings, his chest tightened with the same pain. So what? I’m just not as sharp as my brother, okay? I can’t try hard, and I can’t stand anything tedious. And even if I’m not smart, even if I screw around sometimes—I still graduated high school, got into college, and with money, I can make things work out no matter what, right?

But… still… If I’d at least tried at something, if I’d held on, maybe something would be different now. Is this stuff weak or something? Must be a defective batch.

Again, he made a row of lines and inhaled. The sadness, the anxiety—they receded softly into the background, replaced by that familiar, floating relaxation. Eyes fixed on the patterns in the ceiling, he felt a slow, indulgent smile spread across his face, his mind bathing in the happiness this stuff brought him.

◇:-:◆:-:◇

Three weeks after buying "that stuff," a message from Tsubame finally came through: Can we meet? The last bout of using it too often had left him sleepless, fatigued, and with withdrawal symptoms that had just barely settled down. He knew well enough how the stuff worked—if he paced himself, withdrawal wouldn't hit as hard. But it was impossible to resist the “feast” right in front of him. When the symptoms became unbearable, he messaged Tsubame more than once saying, I’d like to read another “book.” Every time, Tsubame shot him down with a curt Nothing in stock.

Even though he’d just recovered, the first thought that popped into his mind when he saw Tsubame’s message was, How can I get the cash? This had to mean new stock was in. He wanted it. Wanted it badly. Maybe I’ll hit up Miyu again for some cash? But last time she resisted so hard… Who else could I borrow from…? He turned ideas for money over and over in his head. As if reading his mind, Tsubame’s follow-up message came in: This isn’t about “that.” Annoyed, he clicked his tongue.

Tsubame: “A friend’s looking for help with some side work. Interested?”

With a scowl, he let the message sit on read for a few hours. Just then, a clerk at the manga café walked up, saying, “You’re a week overdue, so it’s about time you paid for the room.” Right, he thought. He shot Tsubame a message back: What kind of job?

Tsubame complained back with a Slow response, dude, then added that he was nearby and suggested they meet at a park about five minutes away from the café. The park was small, with only three pieces of playground equipment. It wasn’t hard to spot Tsubame in his trademark green knit cap.

“You’ve gotten even thinner, haven’t you?” was the first thing out of his mouth. He’d noticed his cheeks were looking a little hollow in the mirror lately, but it wasn’t anything unusual. While on that stuff, he never had much of an appetite, and even after it wore off, the symptoms left him too drained to feel hungry.

“Nah, not really.”

“Everything in moderation, you know? You’re responsible for yourself,” Tsubame replied in that condescending way, like he hadn’t been the one selling it in the first place. Mind your own business, he thought irritably, jerking his chin in dismissal.

Usually, their business was handled entirely through messaging—no calls, no in-person meetings. For Tsubame to ask him to meet…There must be something more dangerous going on than usual. Tsubame sighed, looking irritated, and straddled one of the park’s worn-down playground animals.

“So, here’s the thing—the job pays 100,000 yen a day.” He spread his hands wide, emphasizing the amount.

“Seriously? Is this something the cops could come after us for?”

Tsubame shook his head emphatically.

“No, no, that part’s fine. It’s just that the job is for some, uh, foreign clients, and it comes with a little… extracurricular fun.”

He glanced down involuntarily. The stuff left him pretty much useless for anything physical, but he was clean now, so everything was back in working order. Getting paid to sleep with foreign women? The thought seemed too good to be true, but he knew better than to assume he’d luck out with some bombshell. For all he knew, he’d be rolling the dice with some woman old enough to be his grandmother. But for 100,000 yen? He could manage. It’d just be like using a live “toy,” after all.

“I’m in.”

“You answered pretty fast,” Tsubame smirked.

“Damn right, 100,000 is sweet. How come you’re not doing it?”

“That’s the thing.” Tsubame scratched at his scruffy beard with one finger, looking for all the world like a seasoned sage. “The boss told me to round up some lookers for the job. And you’re, well… you’re a good-looking guy, you know?”

It had been a while since he’d gotten a compliment on his looks, and it lifted his spirits. The job was scheduled for the next night at the lobby of an old, high-end hotel. Yakuza might be involved, he thought, with the job’s… suggestive nature, but it should be fine as long as it was women they were dealing with.

“I’ve thought this for a while…” Tsubame said, creaking back and forth on the worn playground elephant. “You’re pretty relaxed about things, but you seem like you come from a good background.”

The comment left him speechless for a second, a weird silence stretching between them. “I guess,” he replied ambiguously, and they parted ways. When he returned to the manga café, the familiar clerk trailed him, so he preempted him with, “I’ll get paid from this job tomorrow. Just hold off till then,” to keep him off his back.

In the small manga café room that had become his home, he sat thinking vaguely about the next day. Judging by the hotel’s level, the client must be someone with money. Still, the idea of entering a high-end hotel in his shabby clothes was depressing. He couldn't do much about the cheap look, but at least he could be clean. So he tossed his shirt in the coin-operated laundry next to the café's shower room.

Good background. The phrase felt like nothing but a cruel irony now. Ten years ago, he maxed out his credit card limits each month. Now, he was struggling to cover a few thousand yen a day for a room at the manga café.

After his uncle's death, Miyoko took over his uncle's hospital management. Then one day, she informed him and his brother that the hospital was heavily in debt and falling behind on repayments. She took away their apartments and froze their credit cards. They were given about a month’s grace to leave the apartment, but he barely had any cash on hand.

He’d known, on some level, what it meant to not have money, but understanding and experiencing it were two different things. For the first time, he had to be mindful of the cash in his wallet, felt the anxiety of seeing it dwindle, and learned to pick what he could afford over what he wanted. It was like losing the feathers that once let him fly, one by one. When he found himself stretching one convenience store rice ball to last an entire day, he thought there could be no greater despair. Driven by hunger, he went to his mother to ask for pocket money. She’d survived the accident with his uncle, though severely injured, and was still in his uncle’s hospital.

When he visited, her face lit up, her eyes filling with tears. She’d always been petite, but now she was thinner and even smaller. Despite being in her forties, her babyish face made her look young, especially with the long hair she tied back with a ribbon, an affectation he’d told her was girlish but she refused to change.

It felt wrong to immediately ask her for pocket money. Bringing up their uncle’s forty-ninth-day memorial would make her cry, and telling her about the hospital’s debts and the cut-off in support for living expenses would only make her more anxious.

Instead, she confided that she wanted to leave the hospital. “I can’t sleep here,” she murmured. “I keep having terrible dreams from the medication. If I can’t be discharged, could I just stay out overnight? Wouldn’t that be okay?”

He couldn’t just say “no” flat out, so he dodged with, “I’ll ask the doctor.” As he fumbled for words, the door to the private room swung open without a knock. At first, he thought it was his brother, but then he saw a man in a white coat—a doctor, maybe? The man looked just as surprised to see a visitor in the room.

“Oh, my apologies, I didn’t realize you had a visitor,” he said with a polite smile, leaving with a parting, “I’ll come back later.” The doctor looked to be in his late thirties, tall, well-kept, but his hairstyle was a bit outdated.

“Who was that?”

Her primary doctor was an old friend of his uncle’s, a gray-haired man in his fifties who had explained her condition to him several times.

“That was Dr. Aisaka, the general practitioner here. He’s the one treating me for sleep issues and prescribing my medication.”

Her voice trembled. He noticed her hands shaking.

“What’s wrong? Are you cold?”

She looked pale, like she was going to faint, so he helped her lie down on the bed. She stopped him from pressing the nurse call button, saying, “I’ll be fine after resting a bit.” She stared blankly at the ceiling, then suddenly pressed her palms to her eyes, sobbing.

“I want to go home. Right now. I can’t stand it here anymore.”

“Come on, mom, hang in there. It won’t be much longer.”

“Please, just take me home.”

She was being difficult and unreasonable, suddenly bursting into tears. It was frustrating. But he couldn’t abandon her, so he stayed beside her for a while, holding her hand. They used to hold hands a lot when he was young, but this might have been the first time they’d done so since he was older. Her hand, which he hadn’t touched in years, felt disturbingly small and cold.

A nurse entered, probably for the routine temperature check. He stood to leave the room, saying, “I’ll wait outside,” but his mother called after him softly.

"Could you buy me some lip balm?"

"Lip balm?" Nishizaki repeated.

“My card isn’t working, and I’ve run out of money, so I can’t buy anything.”

"...Got it."

The moment he left her room, the world around him seemed to dim into shades of gray. Mom’s card doesn’t work either? Of course, it wasn’t surprising—his cards were frozen too, so hers would be as well. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

He headed to the shop on the hospital’s first floor, finding the cheapest lip balm for 230 yen with tax. His wallet held only 402 yen. If he bought this, he wouldn’t have enough for the train back or even for dinner.

Hunching his shoulders, he left the hospital as if trying to escape. He hurried around the corner, not wanting his mother to catch a glimpse of him from her window. At least in the hospital, she gets three meals a day. This really was a survival issue for him.

On the way to the station, his feet halted. He couldn’t move forward. After a moment, he turned and walked back to the hospital. He bought the 230-yen lip balm and returned to her room. The nurse was gone; perhaps she’d finished taking his mother’s temperature.

“Here.” He placed the lip balm on the side table. His mother pressed a finger to her bottom lip and said, “Thank you.”

“The air conditioning here makes my lips so dry.”

“I should get going. My friends just called me over.”

Instantly, his mother looked heartbreakingly sad.

“I’ll come again, all right? Just listen to what the doctor says.” He patted her back gently before leaving. As he waited for the elevator, he let out a bitter laugh at his own expense. Now he’d be stuck with just a single rice ball for dinner because he’d bought that lip balm.

It was just past 3 p.m., yet it already looked like evening outside, the sky dim and overcast, and the air biting cold. He should’ve worn a scarf. It was a day of regrets. After walking about half an hour, his feet began to ache, and then it started raining. No umbrella, and only 172 yen left—not enough to buy one. Quickening his pace, he ignored the pain in his feet, but when he stumbled on an uneven curb, he fell. He was soaked. He hurt. Hungry. Hungry. Hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything since the night before. Someone, anyone, just give me something to eat. Tears started to roll down his face. He felt pitiful, wretched, and the tears wouldn’t stop… He felt as though even God was kicking him down.

He can laugh about it now. If only I could’ve told myself back then—rock bottom? This was just the starting point. Things were far better back then.

The rumbling of the washing machine stopped, pulling him back from his thoughts. He pulled out his shirt, giving it a shake to smooth the wrinkles. The cool scent of detergent wafted up to him. If only… He wondered. If only I’d agreed to let mom come home or stay overnight back then, would the future have turned out differently? Would it have been even a little better?

He shut the thoughts down. Thinking about it would only make him feel worse. No matter how many times he imagined different ways things could have gone, the past wouldn’t change. Regret was a whirlpool that only wore him down.

He thought about that hazy bliss, the numbness that came after doing that stuff. He wanted it. Forget about the room fees, about everything… just ease my mind, even for a little while.

Two days ago, a building in Shinbashi had an exterior accident where steel plates fell, killing three people. He’d been jealous. Those people did nothing wrong. People only felt pity and sympathy for them. Their names, poor souls, were splashed all over the news. Their suffering was probably over in an instant. “If only I could take their place…” He muttered it aloud, realizing he had spoken without meaning to.

But he couldn’t trade places, and he didn’t really want pain. So here he was, washing his shirt to avoid looking too shabby in front of women who’d pay for him. A gaping black hole stretched beneath him, an endless despair. Just as he’d been unable to see an end when he’d once felt hopeless over a lack of food, he couldn’t see past this either. Where this would end, he had no idea

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