To an Infinitely Titillatable Friend (August 6-August 15)

August 6

To: The Titty Professor

I bet it’s sweltering over in Kyoto. Here it’s hot as midsummer in the daytime, but at night the breeze is cool.

Please accept my belated thanks for showing my little sister around the university near the end of last month. With entrance exams looming, she’s been curious about what college is like. I hear she had a great time with Saegusa mooning over Morimi Tomihiko. And I also hear that she wouldn’t call you anything but “marshmallow man”.

So.

Komatsuzaki! My bestie!

First of all, I want to make sure that you actually read my last letter. My exact words were, “I have known you a long time, but from this moment on our correspondence is over. Goodbye.” Anyone would take that to mean that our friendship had ended.

So why are you still sending me letters?

You’d better not be crumpling up my letters without reading them and shoving them in your mouth like a goat or something.

I’m writing to you not because I’m hoping to siphon off some of that nectar of love that you’ve been slurping up so greedily these days. No, I’ve been exchanging letters with an author named Morimi Tomihiko, and one of the lines from his books goes, “If we assume that happiness is a finite resource, your misfortune necessarily creates a surplus elsewhere in the system.” Put differently, “If we assume that happiness is a finite resource, you must necessarily have stolen your happiness from someone else.” And by someone else I mean me.

Since the spring of this year I have been beset by countless calamities.

You have been quietly stealing away my happiness. Night after night, my precious happiness has been stealthily loaded onto freight trains bound for Kyoto, destination: you. You’ve been fattening your pockets at my expense all along.

A friend in need indeed, you thief of joy!

You sit on the throne of happiness which you usurped from me, comfy as can be, and yet you continue to moan about relationship problems. I wasn’t even going to dignify your self-indulgent braying with a reply, but as I read your letter it became blindingly obvious that you refuse to face reality. I was so infuriated that I couldn’t let it go without a response.

No one knows your many flaws as a human being like I do.

You’re a clumsy conversationalist; you’re the perennial last pick in sports; you look like a marshmallow (and roll like one too); and above all you’re an idiot pioneer, blazing new trails of idiocy that no sane person would ever have been able to dream up. You don’t have a reputation for nothing, you know. I’ve never thought that you and Saegusa make a smart couple, not for a second. I bet you two have plenty of awkward moments. Of course you do. But you refuse to face up to the biggest problem you’ve got. That can’t go on. If you want to know someone else, you must first know yourself. That’s a good line, I’m going to reuse that.

Be honest and take a good hard look at yourself. My keen powers of observation tells me that the only thing you ever think about is her tits. Tell me I’m wrong. If you don’t first change that, then you’ll never be able to learn advanced techniques like how to take the lead in your relationship. That’s a guarantee.

If you want to dispute any of this, I’ll be waiting for your letter.

Yours sincerely,

Morita Ichirō

Head Counselor, Morita Relationship Counseling Center

August 11

To: Komatsuzaki “Boobs” Yūya

I was astounded to read your astonishingly naked confession. I never realized you were so infinitely titillatable. I counted how many times the word “boobs” appeared in your letter: 108. That has to be some kind of world record. I believe your idiocy has reached genuinely historical proportions.

Sometimes I think I have you figured out, only for you to find another way to surprise me. Frankly, it’s one thing to be attracted to her rack, and another to pine over it 24/7. You’re much too old for this kind of thing, and if you don’t fix your boob obsession you’re never going to grow up into a respectable adult. There are plenty of other places your eyes could be wandering: the nape of her neck, for example, or her dimples.

Don’t you think you’re doing the poor girl a disservice? If all I had to go on was your letters, I wouldn’t even be able to picture her in my head. It would just be boobs, boobs, as far as the eye can see.

Your lust is tormenting you, that much is plain to see. But that’s also really pathetic.

Women’s breasts just protrude out farther than men’s do, that’s all. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, letting a couple of soft, squishy blobs take over your mind? Have some self-respect, man. Any rational man worth his salt ought to be able to take the appearance of a boob or two in his stride. Just look at me. A real man wouldn’t even glance over if a pair of boobs suddenly appeared from behind a telephone pole. He would simply continue on his way.

So the next time you find yourself in a curvaceous situation, just laugh and say, “Away from me, you squishy brutes!” and move on. Boobs, schmoobs!

Only the pitiful allow boobs to control their minds. Think about how other people perceive you. Right now, you might as well be shouting out to the world, “I love boobies!” You’re a mess, man. If only you had squared up with how pathetic you are right now, you could have avoided the shame of sending me a letter containing 108 occurrences of the word “boobs”.

At all times my mind is as tranquil as the surface of Lake Biwa: stuff like boobs doesn’t faze me in the least. For example, I have zero interest in Ōtsuka Hisako’s boobs. In fact, I hate them; I can hardly imagine anything more horrible than those awful things.

Anyways, that’s enough about that. There’s something else we need to talk about.

Don’t you think that writing to me about Saegusa’s boobs is disrespectful to her? Obviously to you her boobs are objects of great personal interest and arousal. But get a grip: they belong to her, not to you. While I was reading your letter I thought about how disrespectful you were being, but I also couldn’t help but imagine them for myself. I simply couldn’t help it. And now I have this feeling of guilt hanging over me. It’s all your fault.

To be fair I should never have told you to ask me for advice, but have some tact when it comes to her. I’ll wrap this letter up by giving you fair warning: after you’ve gotten over your boob problem, tact is next on the list.

Tactfully,

Morita “Tactician” Ichirō

August 15

To: The Titty Professor

HoW dArE yOu PiCtUrE hEr BoObs

Okay, mon ami. What do you want from me? I didn’t want to do it. I’m well aware that daydreaming about the boobs of a woman you have never met is highly inappropriate. I only imagined them because you wouldn’t shut up about them in your letters. It was a totally, utterly involuntary act.

Besides, I can read your letter however I like. Freedom of thought is enshrined in our constitution. Whatever goes on in my head is my own business. You have no right to stop me from picturing her boobs. Are you so infatuated with her boobs that you would infringe on the right of a sovereign citizen of Japan to fantasize about a pair of titties?

Okay, enough about that. It’s clear that your current conundrum is no laughing matter.

You say I’m the infatuated one? I have trained my mind for situations such as this; I am the man who can’t be moved. Of course if someone were to tell me to move I would move. But when it really counts, I wouldn’t budge an inch. This is what it means to master oneself.

I once lived among monks, waking up each morning at four and ascending to the peak of a nearby mountain to undergo their regimented training. Most of this training consisted of gazing at the surrounding mountains that swelled forth from the earth and trying not to think about boobs. But I can assure you now that the most perfectly formed set of knockers wouldn’t move me in the slightest. I think that you would benefit from climbing Mt. Daimonji and engaging in the same training as I once did.

I have to feel sorry for any girl who is unfortunate enough to date someone who is so fixated on boobs that he can’t hold a decent conversation. I will give this problem some serious thought: partly because you are a close friend, but more so for Saegusa’s sake.

The way I see it, you’re just too simple.

You place far too much trust in boobs. You’d gamble all of your hopes and dreams on a pair of titties. Just stop and think about it for a moment. Are boobs really so superior?

The French philosopher René Descartes once sought out absolute truth by doubting everything. You’ve heard the phrase “I think, therefore I am”? If you see a pair of breasts before you, you would do well to approach them with an attitude of fundamental skepticism. What is the nature of those breasts? And what is the nature of you, who greedily stares at those breasts? If you continue to ask yourself these questions, those breasts will eventually become an abstraction, merely a pure being in the world in opposition to your own, and cease to so wantonly entice you. Probably. This is called methodological boob skepticism, and I’ve heard of people using this method to free their souls from boobs. Totally not making this up.

You could also think about it from an evolutionary perspective. According to my personal hypothesis of evolution, humans once walked on all fours. In those days, that four-legged posture hid breasts from view, which made them a non-entity from the male perspective. Long did the Ass Age reign, but once humans evolved to walk on two legs the allure of the buttocks gradually diminished, supplanted by the eye-popping potency of ginormous bazongas. No doubt their resemblance to the derriere spurred their popularity, as did their perfect position just below eye level.

So when you think about it, boobs are really just a product of happenstance. We were not always doomed to be entranced by boobs. If we had evolved to walk on our hands instead of our feet, there might be a lot more guys out there getting their rocks off to a leathery pair of knees. That’s all it is. Evolution led to us standing on two legs, and boobs just happened to be there for it.

Doesn’t that make you mad? Doesn’t that shake the foundation upon which boob supremacy rests?

Ultimately, it all comes down to this: you must conquer boobs with reason. You must not allow yourself to be subjugated under the yoke of boob supremacy. You went to the Shimogamo Shrine used book fair with Saegusa; you should seek out books that will build your ability to reason, which I can safely say is not your strong suit.

I’ll be praying for you.

Morita Ichirō

Spokesman, Anti-Boob Supremacy League