One previously pointed out to me that as I’m living in a fifteen-square-meters flat, I might be working for peanuts –actually, my pay may sometimes be so but that’s not the point here- I’ll avoid any misunderstanding by telling you not a bias but the simple truth: in Tokyo, we’re living literally cramped together. Unless you’re an enthusiastic member of the orgy circle –and I am not- this fact is known to drive Japanese people… anxious, to say.
Let’s take an example: next to my luxurious less-than-one-room flat is living my quite charming neighbor. He breaks off all ties with his desk-and-computer at home only to find again the same osmosis in his employer’s building. My “physical and moral decaying state” –end of quote- seems to move him greatly, and he does not understand why I’m indeed allowing myself to decay in joblessness.
True, he thinks I’m on the dole: considering the specimen’s pedigree, I didn’t feel brave enough to explain him that I happen to be a kind of facilitator for yôkai and ghosts summer camp. I think the good fellow would have been quite disturbed by this revelation.
So, there’s no ordinary day without him asking for my story life: did I find a job, did I stop eating junk food –he caught me in the act with a chocolate spread jar and put me on file since - and shall I give a try to the latest trendy health pills to solve my chronic fatigue issue –when you can’t sleep during two days because you’re hiding away a kitsune, sucker, you may appreciate to do so without being bothered by random fella offering little pills.
Lately, he started a new how to wake him up on mornings: playing the very best of –or worst- Japanese and American pop music, and up to my own flat thanks to walls thin as paper –maybe with a tiny bit of plaster on top-. Believe me or not, but Avril Lavigne or Ayumi Hamasaki as morning alarm clock may drive anyone to a state of rage. I’d like to think that may surely be tagged “extenuating circumstances” in a nasty crime case –and I have a lot of ideas about that.
The first time it happened, I went to his door, knocked and asked him if he’d like to lower the volume, mite below the giga high-decibel level. It seems that the rare fact he recalls from my visit is: my hair was a mess, my eyes shadowed of cerulean blue and I was in my underpants.
The second time, I hammered his door, and the third, I purely and solely promised him that when the next note of “Complicated” would come buggering my doziness, he will be driven to his office in a white taxi with a screaming siren. He answered dryly that everybody has not the joy of being a burden to the society and a dropout like me, and that I was the only one buggered by his music. O, the delight.
Everything seems quiet now, kind of a day off because nobody seems to need my services today. So I’m ready to relax in the garden, a chocolate jar and a manga on my lap –in mangas, sending a ghost back where it belongs is always quick, efficient and without ever a single drop of blood split… makes me jealous.
“Everything is all right, Hirose-san?” I ask loudly, starting the second third of the jar with a big spoon.
Raising my eyes from my book, I can see my neighbor beyond the garden door, trying for the third time this week to unlock his car. Repairman may start thinking he’d like to propose…
He rubs his hand and looks at me, disappointed.
“I’ll be late again… that’s a bad day.”
You bet. From what I understood, he mistakenly deleted files he was currently working on, his tire went flat twice this week, and considering the stink floating next to his door, his flat has a nasty leak issue.
I give him a chastened smile and shrug, as if resigned.
“Try to go to the temple, maybe that’s a sign.”
“I tried. Three times!”
“Shit happens…” I conclude with a smile, back to my book, spoon in mouth.
It happens even more when an akashita is following you everywhere: often shaped as a black puffy cloud, this nice little yôkai really loves human company. Like a Japanese variation of Lassie, it has only one little flaw: although it’s neither harmful nor violent in any case, it tends to carry bad luck with him. Totally involuntarily of course, and besides, it’s still a sweet little demon (and very fond of you).
One of them seems very fond of my neighbor, and he’s following him everywhere since two weeks. Speaking of it, while Hirose prepares to hurt his hand by forcing open his car door, the black shape on his shoulder moves a little, pops out a hairy head, yawns, and casts a yellow-eyed glance to me. I wave him a “hi” and watches him going back to sleep.
Satoru Kondo, Japan’s first onmyôji, warrant of the balance between deads, livings, yôkai and humans. Sober, pure, devoted to his government and neighbor’s cause, he is the symbol of the archipelago spiritual greatness.
But that does not mean he doesn’t hold any grudges.
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Source de l'image : http://www.flickr.com/photos/andilicious/4279831984/
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