I’m K, born in 2007.

Illustration: Tomoki Kurokawa

I just have slob about days since I dropped out of a melt school which was dedicated to ethnic culture. Days on a tightrope with my credit falling below 100,000 every month. Working part-time, staying in my room alone on weekends. No girlfriend of course. Very few friends from school days. In retrospect, my 20 years had been with only a bit of popular support… (it’s only 20 years). Well, this is no time to be such sentimental.

As I told you before, I like to collect “paper” books almost completely losing even its existence in this 10 years. There are also magazines, but mainly books. Book culture has been completely ran dry since beginning of that paper bashing, and the book-like form (it’s technically called binding) is taken only on school notebooks. The more it is given out, the more I want it, is the collectors’ line. I pay 50,000 to get a paperbacked book in set price of 380 JPY published from 70s to 00s, and 300,000 for an art book and those kind of stuff. It’s not the price of youth collection any more.

I’m so hungry, am I going to order cheap pizza? Am I going to call 21LO after work? Well yes, I don’t have money even if going to the market. TV has more than 1000 channels but I don’t feel like watching any of them. The seasoning bringing out the hundredfold full flavor. Drugs without side effects with the catch phrase “one million meter at a clip”. There is no enough time to submerge myself in the world of book before going to work.

Well, I’ve not left home since yesterday.
Too convenient delivering system and easy chemicals. Swirl of trashy information. Cash system which doesn’t let you know that money has gone. Being swirled by those things… feels good.

How scary.

Only what I can love in living by myself in this cubby place is a good window view. It’s not funny and interesting like SF films I saw in my childhood. Neighborhood is tasteless and odorless residential, much different from view of late 2020s I was picturing in my mind. Looking around, I can find very old-fashioned buildings from 1970s. There is also awkward group of buildings from architectural rush of 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s. Those days, there was the tax cuts for the amount of oxygen produced by plants on the roof or around buildings. Those plants now strangely stand out. Artifacts from the 10 years economic boom also. Will I be able to live in those places someday? Well it’s obviously impossible as long as working for the time company. I know it very well. Although I have been planning to move from here several times, decision has yet to be reached thinking of books I can get with the tax for transplant. I don’t have that much of savings before that.

Uh!

30 minutes before going to work. Very very gloomy time.

That condo opposite.
A housewife with no clothes on sometimes steps out onto a balcony.
I wouldn’t appreciate it.

Oh, time to go to work.
Darn it.