Chapter Seventy: Ordinary

Koji Shiina was very young, only twenty-four. When he received his diploma, all he could think about was the weekend party. Now, his weekends were reduced to endless, monotonous interviews. Often, effort yields no real results; it simply makes one feel a little better, so that after tallying up one’s expenses at midnight, he could at least say, “At least I’m trying.”

He pursued a master’s degree not out of a passion for research, but because he hadn’t yet resolved to step into society. When he wasn’t accepted, he felt a strange sense of relief—if even someone like him could get in, how many people in those research groups truly had hearts devoted to science?

Even after entering university, Koji Shiina often wondered if he had chosen the wrong path in life. He had never found pharmacy or organic synthesis interesting. He selected his major only because the glossy prospectus described it as promising; by the time he stepped into the laboratory, it was too late for regret, so he simply kept walking down the path he’d chosen.

It was easy to foresee: if he continued this way for another twenty years, he was destined to become like his advisor—a forty-year-old already balding, a fifty-year-old with a shining scalp, researching obscure fields, carrying the title of university professor without any notable scientific achievements to his name—a mediocre scholar.

In his first year, he often brooded over such things. Later, the endless hours in the lab consumed most of his life, leaving him little time for idle thoughts—though perhaps the noxious fumes he inhaled during experiments had dulled his mind to anything beyond the lab.

Over his university years, countless white mice had perished by his hands, so many that, at his graduation, he almost hallucinated himself standing atop a pile of their tiny corpses. He took the gilt-edged diploma from the dean, who he’d seen only once before at matriculation, and, raising his head, realized he had nothing but a certificate in his grasp. He stood at the school gates all afternoon, dragging his suitcase behind him, until a staff member approached to ask if he was an early-arriving freshman.

Like many young people stepping into society for the first time, lost and uncertain, he sent out resumes while mulling over side jobs to make ends meet. If not for a spontaneous trip to Nara Dreamland that day, he might still have been making unnoticed Twitter videos with his friends. They barely earned enough to cover the electricity for editing, but he’d never doubted their little team’s bright hopes for the future.

But now, weighed down by the guilt of betraying his friends, resumes lost to the void, and a bank balance that, after paying for a broken camera, was only enough to recharge his transit card, everything finally drove him to tie a rope in his rented room. Koji Shiina decided to end his life.

He set up the chair—a rickety thing he’d bought about a month after moving into this cheap, supposedly haunted apartment. The backrest was useless, and sitting down required one hand to keep it balanced, yet he loved that chair. It was the first thing he bought with money earned from a day of flyering, after covering basic expenses—a chair old enough to be his grandfather.

The room was dim, even though it was two in the afternoon. Koji Shiina sighed, tugged at the rope, and, satisfied it was sturdy enough, found a thought sneaking into his mind: after being fired, did the architect who designed this poorly lit room ever think of hanging himself too?

He stepped onto the chair, looked up at the heap of blackened insect corpses inside the dusty lamp shade, and an uncontrollable sadness washed over him. He wanted to cry, but his upbringing had left him unsure how a man should shed tears.

Gently, as if putting a necklace around a lover’s neck, he slipped the rope over his own. He had no experience with love, so the knot was clumsy, pressing uncomfortably against his throat—but at this moment, such discomfort scarcely mattered.

He left himself no time for final farewells. With resolve, he kicked at the chair. The flimsy back splintered, but, miraculously, the chair wobbled and did not collapse beneath him.

He burst out laughing at the absurdity—what could be more ironic for a would-be suicide than this?

Koji Shiina stepped down from the chair. He decided to try another way. The chair felt like an old friend; he owed it the dignity of witnessing sunsets beneath an old man, not being an accomplice in his death and ending as scrap heap fuel.

A phone call interrupted his thoughts. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the caller ID. There would be plenty of time to ponder death later; he could not ignore a call from the most important person of his past.

“Grandma, it’s Koji.”

“Yes, I’m in Tokyo right now.”

“I told you last time—I found a job, making videos, online media.”

“I’m making enough, not worrying about food or clothes. No, really, I’m doing fine. No need to send money. I’ve graduated; I can earn my own way.”

“Okay. Calls cost money—I’ll come home for the New Year.”

Koji Shiina hung up, staring at the unfamiliar, smiling face in the mirror. After a moment, he slammed his fist on the table. He couldn’t die yet. He’d promised his grandmother to bring her a smartphone for video calls at New Year’s. He couldn’t die. Death might be a release, but it was never the end.

He knew that every time his grandmother called, she would send money from the town bank—a final spike in his prison. He needed, no—he had to dig a tunnel out.

To hell with interviews—let those bloated, finger-pointing pig-faced recruiters go rot. He would find his own path, his own land flowing with milk and honey.

He found his last packet of instant noodles in the kitchen and ate, silently vowing: there’s no time left to mourn the past. He would use everything he had to survive in this cold, cruel world. Farewell, Kudo Kazu, Takashima Okawa, Miki Yoshiko—he didn’t even have time to mourn for them. Wait.

He suddenly thought of something so bold and insane that he shivered. Draining the last drop of broth, he finally saw the awaited transfer message among the landlord’s barrage of rent reminders. Without hesitation, he got up and left.

Nara Dreamland. A crow with blood-red eyes stared coldly at the trembling young man at the entrance, wondering if it had mistaken him—no one ever came here twice. But it soon lost interest; more exciting was the truth it had learned a month before, one worthy of being encoded in its DNA and passed to its offspring: if a human entered, there would be food.

Koji Shiina held his breath. Though his right hand trembled with fear, he clutched his recording phone tightly. What could attract more clicks than an unedited, absolutely real horror video? With views, even a nobody could become an instant sensation. At worst, he could sell the footage to a shady CV shop in a back alley.

He hid in the weeds, carefully adjusting his phone’s focus to capture yesterday’s spot. He couldn’t afford to rent a camera; aside from a box of instant noodles, his only expense today was a bottle of pungent bug spray.

Time slipped by. The sunset cast its final, chilly rays, and the battery indicator on his phone crept toward empty. Just as he was about to give up and come back tomorrow, Lady Luck noticed his persistence.

Ryunosuke Kago dragged a crying woman deeper into the park. He sniffed the acrid air, his gaze darting to the overgrown ruins, but he couldn’t be bothered to check. If Foundation or GOC agents ever made such rookie mistakes, the Cult of Flesh would have returned to its golden age of 1600 BC.

He let the little mouse be—what’s a grand ballet without an audience? He could smell the little mouse’s fear: what a delightful surprise. He relished this sense of control.

But the stinging scent unsettled him. He indulged his desire, draining a vial of fresh arterial blood. Had he brought more than one screaming woman, the scene might have resembled a vampire count elegantly sipping tea.

Only when Ryunosuke Kago’s figure disappeared did Koji Shiina, vomiting and stumbling, flee the weeds. Now he was certain he was the only survivor from yesterday.

“So fake. Couldn’t they spend more on effects?”

“No plot at all?”

“Are all horror videos so pointless now?”

Koji Shiina slurped his noodles, reading the handful of comments. Out of the last vestiges of humanity, he’d blurred the woman’s face and refused to add any sensational storyline. That the video sank without a trace was no surprise.

He gave up on chasing clicks through morbid horror. Seeing real-world horror on film, he could not go on. He was not a cold-blooded sociopath; his education would not let him lose empathy, humanity’s last bottom line. Tomorrow, he would find a job—whether stacking shelves or sweating in a cartoon suit on the street, it didn’t matter. Being alive was enough.

He did not call the police—he couldn’t explain what he’d filmed and didn’t want to end up in a mental hospital or spend days in jail for disturbing public order. He was ready to blend in, and indifference is both the disease and passport of the masses.

Koji Shiina longed to confide the absurdity of recent days, but quickly dismissed the thought. In this city, he remained an outsider—with no family, no friends, and no past.

People would rather follow the trivialities of a bad actor’s life than care about the stormy inner world of an ordinary person. Such is the adult world.

By day, he played a background role in others’ lives. By night, he treated himself to a meal at a fast-food joint, which, for him, was a feast.

He was only twenty-four. He wanted to live well; nothing wrong with that. But he couldn’t see a future. His major was too niche; the few positions had long been taken by elite graduates from Kyoto or Osaka. That competition wasn’t unfair—but to watch his classmates embark on bright new journeys while he scraped by on odd jobs, the gap between reality and expectation forced him to numb himself with cheap alcohol, convincing himself these past days were only a dream. That, too, was not wrong.

But if no one is at fault, why is the world never like a fairy tale?

Koji Shiina staggered toward his cramped, shabby apartment. The world swayed with him, and only in the eyes of a drunk did he appear to walk straight.

Under each streetlamp, Koji Shiina would stop and gaze at his shadow. As a child, on firefly-lit nights, he’d talk to it, believing it was a living thing—something he could never shake off, deserving kindness.

Yet his childhood shadow never replied. Eventually, he stopped caring. The silent follower offered no comfort in joy, exhaustion, or silent tears—its sole act was to cling to his back. Now, Koji Shiina seemed to understand why the gods gave each person a shadow.

That ever-present shadow was a constant reminder: you exist.

He didn’t know how long had passed when he finally looked up. Even his drunken eyes did not deceive him: beneath the streetlight, a masked figure in black held a knife that flashed coldly. Judging by the voice, the assailant was perhaps twenty, or maybe only seventeen—a boy, likely desperate after losing all his money at pachinko, now hoping to recoup his losses from some drunken stranger.

The boy’s voice was tense and excited. “I just want your money. Put it on the ground and back away. I won’t hurt you.”

Koji Shiina laughed. Perhaps this was a good opportunity. Better to die now than waste away and die in a nursing home. At least at his funeral, people might say, “Gone too soon,” and distant relatives might even add, “Talent snatched away by fate.” And those who loved him wouldn’t bear the shadow of a suicide. If there really was a god, perhaps He had heard the faint prayer in his heart.

“I won’t give you my money. Come on, show me what you’ve got!” Koji Shiina, bleary-eyed, lunged at the masked figure, but missed. He turned, disappointed.

A youth, almost luminous in the night, had pinned the would-be thief to the ground, a playful, irreverent grin on his face. “Hey, man, you having a good haul tonight? Want a sponsorship?”

Only then did Koji Shiina remember: this was his new neighbor, who’d moved in just yesterday—what was it, “Ji Ning”? He remembered the name because the boy had introduced himself with the same pretentiousness Koji himself once had.

Koji Shiina didn’t want to get involved. He took out his keys and opened his door, but a voice behind him made him freeze.

“Have you been experiencing anything… strange lately?”

Koji Shiina turned and met Ji Ning’s eyes—eyes as deep as the night just before dawn.

“Don’t worry. As I said before, I have unique skills for handling supernatural events.”