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Chapter 2

Realization

The instant the ME saw me, the two of us staring at each other, his face grew suspicious.

The ME, dressed in a dark silver suit, appeared to have just returned from work. He looked somber and tired, with faint shadows under his eyes. He had short, lightly waxed hair and wore fashionable black-framed spectacles. Slightly off to the side of his left eye was a black beauty mark—a feature that this me was lacking. All in all he was quite a hunk. And yet my gut feeling remained that this was still me. Yes, it was. There wasn’t any doubt about it.

Recovering from the initial shock, the other ME now closed in, angrily roaring: “Get lost! You’re a total nuisance!”

“Who are you?” I asked. I knew it was a foolish question but I felt compelled to pose it anyway.

“I’ll ask the same of you!”

“I’m Hitoshi Nagano, of course!”

The other ME gave me a doleful look and a faint smile as he shook his head. “Do you really want a repeat of last week? This is totally absurd. What do you think you’re doing by trying to impersonate me?”

“What? Last week? I wasn’t even here last week!”

“I told you to drop this farce.”

“It’s no farce. I haven’t been here in two years!”

“Then who was here last week?”

“How the hell should I know?”

The other ME fell silent, gave me a once-over with pouted lips and tilted head, and then muttered: “Hmmm . . . Not quite the same . . . The last two weeks, someone resembling you came barging in here, claiming to be a university student and insisting that this was his home.”

In the shadow of the door Mother was looking on. She nudged ME and said, “Why are you letting him put you on like this? Get a grip! It’s the same guy, with same trick! There couldn’t be anyone else. He’s just playing dumb.”

Looking displeased, the other ME restrained her. “Let me handle this!”

She nodded but then turned to me and added: “If you don’t scram this instant, we’re really going to call the police.” With a contorted expression of loathing on his face, the other ME offered an outstretched palm and said, “Your card.”

“What?”

“You’ve got at least a card, haven’t you? If you give it to me and leave, I won’t call the police.”

“Why should I present a card in my own—” I stopped myself, as I saw the other ME give me a knowing wink, as though attempting to convey a message. I did not understand but was somehow persuaded. I vaguely grasped that he was trying to get me to play along with this charade in order to dupe Mother.

And so I acquiesced, taking out a Megaton card from my wallet. It was my last one. On it was unmistakably printed: Hitoshi Nagano. I handed it over with a bit of a flourish.

The other ME examined it carefully, then thrust it back. “Write down your cell phone number too.”

I looked at ME and glimpsed another silent appeal; he nodded slightly. Taking a pen from Mother, I did as requested.

As I raised my eyes to return the pen, I was momentarily blinded by a flash of light. Mother had snapped a photo of me with a digital camera—a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35, no less.

“Photographic evidence, just in case . . .” she said.

“All right. Go now!” The other ME shooed me away with one hand, but his left hand, hidden from Mother’s view, now mimicked a cell phone with thumb and pinkie. Again I nodded slightly, while making a show of disgust. I headed out the door without looking back.

* * *

I had not quite reached the station when, less than ten minutes later, the other ME called, saying that he was close on my heels and would meet me anywhere in the area. I suggested the nearby McDonald’s.

I had just checked the time—7:13 p.m.—when he appeared. I was sitting upstairs at a counter by the windows, sipping oolong tea I had no desire to drink, my eyes glued to the street. I had nevertheless managed to miss him, so that when he suddenly sat down next to me on my left, saying, “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” I was given quite a scare.

I struggled to meet his determined gaze, then instead lowered my eyes. On his tray as well was a cup of oolong tea.

“So explain it all to me,” I said softly, as if in a packed elevator. I had no desire to quarrel with him, but the mere fact that we were having this tête-à-tête was causing me enormous shame.

He took his eyes off of me and glanced toward the front window. “Just as I said before, there was a guy like you who came around twice, claiming that he was back for spring break. Again, like you, he had unkempt hair parted in the middle, narrow eyes, uneven eyebrows, a thin voice, boringly conventional clothes . . .” The other ME pointed to my Uniqlo flannel shirt. “But his hair was dyed brown, and he had stubble on his chin and a slightly protruding jaw. He was slightly taller and also had a dimple—here.” He motioned to his right cheek.

“So it wasn’t me.”

“I understand that.”

We both fell silent, and I fiddled with my cell phone, which was lying on the tray. The other ME was likewise opening and closing his own phone. Yasokichi had the same popular Docomo model. When a call came in, the entire body flashed red. Attached to it was blue whale-shark strap. Yasokichi’s was again the same, and so was mine. Minami-san had brought the straps back as souvenirs from a trip he and his wife had taken to the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium.

I prodded him for details: “So what was with that student?”

“At first I just turned him away. And when he tried to barge in, I wouldn’t let him. He was making quite a fuss, and that brought down Masae-san, who ranted and raved about calling the police. And so when the neighbors came out, he took off.”

“Masae-san . . .” I involuntarily grimaced. The other ME now had the exact same expression, as he realized how he had just referred to Mother. We both dropped our eyes, unwilling to look at each other.

I was in middle school when, on her fortieth birthday, she declared that she was renouncing her title as “Mother,” that she was commencing a second life—not as Mother but rather as “Masae Nagano”—and would insist on having everyone in household, including her son, call her Masae-san.

“Every time I’m addressed as ‘Mother,’ I feel like I’m becoming a grannie. I don’t feel that my life ends with being a mother. I’m still young and so wish to be addressed as Masae-san, as though I were, say, an upperclassman in a school club. And, if possible, I think Father should be called Toshio-san.”

My father thought the idea was totally absurd and adamantly refused, but eventually I gave in to her demand. For a while I put up some resistance and went on calling her Mother, but when she either ignored me or gave me a tongue-lashing (“Don’t treat me like an old lady!”), I threw in the towel. Once I became independent, I stopped calling her anything at all and so now had no form of address or reference.

“The guy who came around the other day frantically called her Maasa: Hey, Maasa, look me in the eye! That really set her off: Who are you? How dare you talk to me like that! But I couldn’t deny that I knew him. I suppose you know why . . .” The ME paused and again stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on the window. I looked in the same direction and saw ME gazing at my reflection. I nodded. It seemed we were both resisting the urge to get up and run.

“At first I thought that my older brother had come back. I wondered whether he was being diffident and putting on some weird show. But judging from his height and age, I knew that couldn’t be . . . You know what I mean? Anyway, the first time it was like grabbing a snake while weeding the garden and then flinging it away. And so that’s what I did: I drove him off. The second time I wanted to hear more from him, but Mother wouldn’t have it. She was convinced he was some sort of scam artist and carried on about calling the police. She took a photo, just as she did today, but no matter how much I pointed to how strangely similar we looked, she would respond that two people can resemble each other—say, like Keisuke Kuwata and Hiroyuki Nagato—without being related and that there is nothing creepy about it. But what does it mean if a parent can’t recognize her own two sons when they’re standing right in front of her? She was just that kind of parent, one who never understood her children . . . And then that older brother of mine . . .”

“Wait, who’s this older brother you’re talking about? Mother only had one child,” I said.

“You don’t have an older brother?”

I shook my head, as the other ME groaned and sank into thought.

“Did you think she’d recognize your brother as her own son?”

The other ME gave me a blank look. “She should. But then, he took off about ten years ago. He drifted around and never came back.”

“So she might not even recognize him after all that time.”

The other ME nodded. “That’s why when I saw you today, I thought maybe—”

“Is it possible that you’re just an only child and that you’ve simply imagined that you have an older brother?”

“No, he’s real. I still hear from him sometimes.” The other ME reached for his cell phone, pushed a few buttons, and showed me a list of messages. “Here’s a message from December 8.” The sender was indicated with the character for “large.” “His name is Hiroshi.”

“How much older is he?”

“Two years older.”

I read the text. “It’s a pretty bleak message.”

“Yeah, he’s a pretty bleak sort of guy. He was a bad student and could never get his act together. He had, like me, the personality to become a civil servant, but our parents constantly told him from when he was small to do his own thing. He decided to become a hairdresser and got as far as vocational school, but then he couldn’t get through his apprenticeship, and the salon owner finally told him that he wasn’t cut out for the job and ought to quit. And that’s when he disappeared.”

“So you’re a civil servant?” I asked.

“I work for the Saitama Municipal Office. What about you?”

“I’m a clerk at an electronics store.”

“How long have you been living alone?”

“Seven or eight years, I guess.”

“You said before that you haven’t been back home in two years. How come?”

I hesitated for a moment and then said gruffly: “I didn’t get along with my father.”

“Hmmm, a bit like my big brother,” he muttered. “What’s your father like?”

“You should know!” I said, irritated by the question.

“He’s not malicious, just a lowlife coward who makes excuses to justify peddling his son to the world.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

“It’s the same with you, isn’t it?” the other ME asked. “Is she really your mother?”

“You don’t mix up your own parent . . .”

“But Mother doesn’t recognize her own children. She only sees what she wants to see. Once she thinks, This isn’t my son, she’ll lose the real one.”

“So if putting up with her is too much, why don’t you live by yourself? You make enough money to do that, don’t you?”

The other ME looked at me sharply, then nodded and said, “That’s the question: I wonder why I keep living with my parents. After all, I really wanted to be independent. So, again, why?”

“How should I know?”

“You stayed away for two years, didn’t you? What made you come back?”

I hesitated before replying. Would he believe my ridiculous story? Wouldn’t this give him further reason to think that I was a fraud from someone else’s household?

But then I let it all out, like so much pent-up steam with nowhere else to go. And I didn’t limit myself to the Daiki Hiyama business either. I told him about my father, about my mother, about failing to become a photographer, about feeling like some aging pensioner living out long but meaningless years. It wasn’t simply because the other ME had opened himself up to me, but rather that I actually wanted to trust him. After all, he was me, and it seemed that if one cannot trust oneself, then there is nothing more that can be done or said. I might not be able to count on anyone else, but at least I could put my faith in the other ME—and of that judgment I was confident. And it seemed that the feeling was reciprocal, for it was clear that the other ME had deliberately sought me out. We couldn’t help believing in ourselves, even though in our heart of hearts each of us was distrustful of himself.

“Is Daiki’s mother like the old lady?”

“Actually, she’s not at all like her: she doesn’t care about appearances and isn’t the least bit vain. In attitude and behavior there are some similarities, but Mother’s a neat freak, isn’t she? I can’t imagine her house to be anywhere near as messy as the one I’ve just seen. And Mother would never let herself get hooked on Korean soap operas, would she?”

“You’re right about that,” the other ME agreed. “What do you think of that auntie?”

“Daiki’s mother seems rather lonely. I feel sorry for her. But then I’ve got no real ties to her.”

The other ME glanced at his cell phone before gazing back at me. “So there’s really nothing for you to do but become Daiki, her kid. You’ve got no alternative, have you?”

For a moment I sat in stunned silence, but soon was fuming with the rage of the betrayed. “That must be so easy to say when you’re sitting comfortably in my house!”

“I’m just trying to be realistic. The old lady doesn’t recognize you, so there’s no way you can come back. On the other hand, Daiki’s mother is treating you like her own. So you have no choice but to look after her as your real mother. Right?”

“You’re just scheming to drive me out!”

“Not at all! The fact is that you ran off when you could no longer stand it at home. You’ve been gone for two years, and by now you’ve pretty much burned all your bridges. And how is this any different? You’ve got another sympathetic soul you can tend to. It all seems quite reasonable.”

“Man, are you crazy? Do you think you can just change parents like that?”

“There have always been stepmothers and stepfathers. People have to take care of each other—and now we’ve got a surplus of elderly folk. It wasn’t my idea to get stuck taking care of parents I can’t stand, but there you have it . . . So now you’ve got to tend to Daiki’s mother.”

“Well, why don’t you go do it?”

“Even if I went to her, she wouldn’t recognize me, and I’d simply get the boot. She thinks you’re Daiki, so the role naturally falls to you.”

“But I can’t play the real Daiki!”

“My guess is that Daiki is no longer his mother’s son.”

“What?”

“I can’t imagine any other explanation. You no longer belong to your family, and Daiki Hiyama no longer belongs to his. For all we know, he’s gone back home, found that his mother doesn’t recognize him, and has been thrown out.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” By this time I was shouting. The other ME winked to remind me that we were not alone. I lowered my voice and threatened: “Don’t think you can get away with passing yourself off as the real thing!”

“You really don’t get it, do you? I’m not claiming to be Hitoshi Nagano or arguing that you should become Daiki because you’re a fake. Ever since that damn kid showed up, I’ve been constantly thinking that one of these days I’ll come home from work and Mother will tell me that she doesn’t know me, point to that same kid coming out my room, and say that he’s her son. And there’ll be nothing weird about it. Age and appearances aside, there’s no real difference between him and me. We could be switched, and to the parents it would all be the same. They might not even notice. Besides, I don’t have any evidence that I’m the real one in the first place. I ask myself if I’ve really lived in this house all these years, brood about it, and only find things getting fuzzier. I’m not at all sure of myself anymore . . .”

“Okay, great. Then let me change places with you.”

“I wouldn’t mind, but remember that Mother would insist she doesn’t know you and call the cops. That’s what it all boils down to. The only reason I live there is because the old lady and Dad take me for Hitoshi. Even with the switch, life goes on because people think that’s who I am. There’s nothing more to it than that. It’s like company work—there can be personnel changes, and my title might change too, but as long as operations run smoothly, life goes on. For all I know, I could be merely one in a long line of Hitoshis. I’ve somehow managed to convince myself that I’ve been in that house forever, when in fact I only moved in rather recently. It’s like what seems to be a road that goes on and on, the real thing being just a few yards long and the rest stage setting or computer graphics.”

The other ME stared at me blankly, and I began to wonder whether I might simply be imagining him. This thought was completely enervating.

“So, all things considered, I’ve got to be Hitoshi both at home and on the job. And now that you’ve started being Daiki Hiyama, you’ve got to go on with it too.”

His cell phone rang. “Hello,” he answered somewhat grumpily, then paused and said, “I’m heading right home.”

I could hear my old lady’s voice muttering a litany of complaints.

He grimaced, ended the conversation, then said, “Let’s exchange e-mail addresses.”

He handed me his cell phone, and I complied by passing over my own. He seemed like he wanted to say something to me but his mouth remained closed. My own frame of mind was the same.

“Sorry,” he finally said, “but that’s the name I’ve entered for you.”

I saw the words Daiki Hiyama and typed my information below them. I felt numb.

He nodded and said, “I’ll be in touch with you soon.”

* * *

It was past ten by the time I boarded the Keihin-Tōhoku Line. I found it hard to believe that we had been talking for three hours. I wondered whether I had merely spent that time caught in a delusion, staring absentmindedly at my own reflection in the windowpane. But there were the words Hitoshi Nagano recorded in my phone directory. For a while I kept composing e-mails to him that I would delete before sending. I wanted to tell him something but didn’t know what that something was.

At Akabane I transferred to the Saikyō Line and then at Shibuya for a Tōyoko local train. I was sitting there, waiting for departure, when my cell phone began to vibrate. I expected the call to be from “Hitoshi,” but when I looked at the screen, I saw an 048 number that had grown familiar over the last couple of days; it was Daiki’s mother. I flipped open the phone.

“Ah, Dai-chan, how are you? How are you feeling?”

“What is it? You woke me up!”

“I’m sorry! Are you feeling any better?”

“Well, perhaps if I get enough sleep . . .”

“Can I come over tomorrow and cook dinner for you?”

“No need. Hey, I’m not a kid, you know.” My gruffness was catching the attention of other passengers. “I’ll call you tomorrow night. But until then, please give me some space.”

“I understand. But I’m worried about you. You’ve got such weak intestines.”

“Okay, I’m hanging up now,” I said, and closed the device.

I hadn’t taken my bike to the station so I had to walk home.

The day had been endless, beginning with Daiki’s mother. It felt like an entire month had passed.

On the way home I grabbed dinner at a convenience store. There wasn’t a single thing I hadn’t grown weary of, but in the end I picked out mincemeat over rice and a container of potato salad; I then splurged with a can of Kinmugi Suntory.

After dinner, I felt myself slipping into a funk as I contemplated my miserable state of existence. The other ME would be eating my old lady’s croquettes, chop suey, or mushroom rice. Yes, I thought to myself, I have indeed been most adroitly kicked out. It occurred to me that I hadn’t received an e-mail from her in a while. Up until two years ago, she had constantly called me, pestering me to look for some fine girl to marry now that I had a regular job.

“The reason you have such a confrontational relationship with Toshio-san is that you’re still in a childlike state of flux. I’m sure that if you got married and had children of your own, with a modicum of understanding for how he feels, you’d come to some sort of equilibrium and have a healthy adult relationship. Now that you have a stable job, this is a good time to get married. If you don’t have any opportunities to meet someone, I’ll do what I can to arrange something. Hitoshi, you want to achieve something by the time you’re thirty, don’t you? Even though I’m not yet sixty, and not all that happy about the prospect of becoming a grandmother, I want to be able to help care for a grandchild while I still have the energy.”

Regularly faced with that kind of sermon, I stopped answering her calls and then quit responding to her e-mails as well.

I didn’t know whether or not I wanted to get married. And since the opportunity never presented itself in any case, I had no reason or desire to give it serious thought. The girl I’d wind up with would inevitably be a suitably conventional young miss. In other words, the best I could hope for would be the sort of marriage my parents had—and I had no desire whatsoever to form a household anything like theirs. On the contrary, I wanted to break the cycle of such mass-produced couples. And that would mean that no more children like me would be born.

In fact, I didn’t care about having children one way or the other, the real issue being that I didn’t want to live with anyone. I was, to be sure, stuck in a wretched routine of prepared meals from the convenience store or McDonald’s. And yet this was all I needed. As long as I was alone, in off mode, I only needed enough fuel—not a feast—to get by. Once I hit the on button, my troubles would begin in earnest. I would have to deal with parents enslaved to a program, incapable of knowing me as a flesh-and-blood human being, have chummy conversations with coworkers, and otherwise explain myself to other people. I would constantly have to be me, and that would drive me crazy. I cherished the time I had to myself, since it was only then that I could chill out and stop being me—it’s impossible to truly switch off when other people are around.

In this context, I felt sympathy for the other ME, now obliged to dine with those same parents of mine. He had to go on being a son to vain and empty parents while I could enjoy the freedom of not being bound to be anyone in particular, despite my humble lot in life. The other ME was no doubt being hounded at least once a week to contemplate his marriage plans.

Perhaps he already had a girlfriend. Indeed, that was only to be expected. Being vastly more sophisticated than I, knowing all the angles, and blessed with all the advantages, he would naturally have a relationship with some fine young lady.

It wasn’t that I’d never had a girlfriend. In fact, for a brief moment at the end of my stint as a photography student, I had a passionate, lovey-dovey, soul-merging romance. She was extraordinarily gifted, had won prizes even before graduation, and had begun to work as an assistant to a professional photographer. As the boyfriend of a girl that talented, I thought I might somehow be in the same league as her. And it was in that frame of mind that I went looking for a job. It was only when I failed at every turn that I realized that I had been mistaken, that she and I were not, after all, the same person. The moment of our oneness thus came to an end.

That time I got into a car crash while speeding can’t really be called just an accident. And it wasn’t entirely the fault of the alcohol. Somewhere in my mind I was seeking self-destruction. If I had been gutsy enough to do such a thing, I might have been able to hang on to Mamiko even if our professional paths diverged. But I wasn’t. I had pressed the accelerator without exactly flooring it and, right before crashing head-on into the guardrail, I turned the steering wheel at the last second, so that we had a side impact. Sitting in the passenger seat, Mamiko fractured her left arm and was unable to work for a while. There was nothing to do but break up.

I was feeling quite disgusted. I imagined that “Mother” would once again grumble on about how I should have stayed with Mamiko and lecture me about my marriage prospects.

First and foremost, for all their talk about marriage, mothers simply don’t understand the plight of men who can’t find girlfriends. After all, it’s not just a matter of sheer effort, as if a guy can land one simply by turning a few spectacular cartwheels. I mean, if I could win over some chick, I wouldn’t be leading this miserable existence! (Hey, Hiyoshi, you jerk! You’re in a fine position to tell me that I should take care of Mother! Put yourself in my shoes!)

I sensed that all my anger was somehow misdirected, that I was barking up the wrong tree or jumping at shadows. And yet the more I pondered where and how everything had gone off the rails, the more befuddled I became. I wasn’t even sure just what it was that displeased me. All I knew was that I was utterly exhausted. The day had simply been too much. And there had been too much of me: me as the son of “Mother”; me as the son of Mother; me as not ME; ME as not me; me as ME—the two of us, me and ME. This surplus of me had made for total confusion and bewilderment. The only thing to do was turn off the switch: off, off, off. Otherwise, there would be a major wreck.

* * *

I awoke the next morning with a feeling of unease. The air, usually cool and stagnant, was filled with an appetite-stimulating aroma, warm and damp. I could hear sounds in the kitchen on the other side of the sliding door. I jumped from my futon to investigate.

“Good morning! How are you feeling?”

It was “Mother,” beating eggs. I had the feeling of having returned to the morning of the day before, as though everything that had occurred had been merely a dream and I had awakened to find her here where she had spent the night, as though the cocoon containing my body had just broken open, with everything that had built up inside me as I slept spilling out. Thus, I weakly posed the meaningless question: “What are you doing here?”

“Making breakfast. I couldn’t help worrying, so I came. The way you were acting . . . the way you were responding on the phone . . . I could tell there was something wrong. I had to see if you were all right.”

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

“That’s why I called before leaving the house, but you didn’t answer. I rang the bell when I arrived, but you didn’t open the door. I guessed you were sound asleep, so I took it upon myself to barge in. You’ll have some egg porridge, won’t you? Can you still make it to work on time? I left you alone because I didn’t want to get scolded again for waking you up.”

I glanced at the clock and saw that it was already eight thirty. I would be cutting it very close. “Really, you shouldn’t come over when I haven’t asked you to.”

“But if I hadn’t come, you would have overslept.”

“I would have woken up of my own accord. That’s normal with me.”

“Fine, fine, whatever you say. But now hurry up and eat.”

I washed my face, then scarfed down the egg porridge and the bean-curd miso soup. Somewhat to my annoyance, I found it all quite tasty.

“How are you feeling?”

“I could be better.”

“Should you even be going to work if you’re not well?”

“I can’t take time off just because I’m feeling under the weather.”

“Don’t overdo it. Your father always insisted he was just fine, so by the time he realized that his health was actually failing, it was already too late. Remember the old saying: Even dust, if it accumulates, will eventually form a mountain.”

“Don’t you think these circumstances are a bit different?”

“Remember that when the body weakens, so does the spirit. When it’s only the body, rest will provide recuperation. But when the spirit falters, one tends to give up on life, even if that is not one’s intention. Human beings are feeble creatures. Daiki, I just don’t want you to wind up on the same path that your father took. That’s why I pester you. But you have to take charge of your own health. It’s a matter of filial duty.” As she spoke, she began to sniffle. Then she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“Okay, I understand,” I conceded. I felt my heart constricting: it was indeed quite as though my father had committed suicide.

“Oh!” Mother suddenly exclaimed. “Here, you forgot this,” she said, handing me the postcard concerning the class reunion.