To an Infinitely Titillatable Friend (August 18-August 27)

August 18

To: A silly boob

Thanks for your account of the Gozan no Okuribi.

Were you actually watching the bonfires, though? You conspicuously avoided the subject: could it be that your gaze was directed towards a sprightly bosom instead? Don’t even try to pretend otherwise.

Colour me amazed: watching the bonfires from the roof of your girlfriend’s apartment building sounds too picturesque to be true. I was so lonely by myself here that I lit up some sparklers to try to cheer myself up, though that just made me even sadder. I briefly considered setting fire to the mountains around here and creating a Daimonji of my own.

Morimi Tomihiko told me that he went out to see the bonfires with a raven-haired maiden on each arm. I can believe that he was there, since he does live in Kyoto. The raven-haired maidens, however, I suspect are pure fantasy.

Onwards to your problem.

You told me that you have trouble loosening up when you talk to Saegusa. I’ve pointed out your real problem time and time again, yet all you do is sidestep it. This is exactly why you’re stuck in the mud. I’ve already told you: if you want to know someone else, you must first know yourself. Isn’t it obvious that your eyes are fixed on her because you don’t want to look at yourself? All you’re doing is running away. Stop staring at her (boobs) and square up with yourself.

Ask yourself this: is it her that you’re in love with, or her tits? If it’s her that you adore, then you need to face your breast obsession head-on and figure out how to master it. If you only fool yourself into thinking that you’ve overcome your lust, those boobs you love so much will one day turn and smother you.

Why do boobs have such power over men? How can mere mounds of flesh make us go mad? I just don’t understand it. It’s absurd. It’s unfair. Is it a curse placed on our sex. Merely by plopping themselves down in front of us a pair of knockers can cloud our vision, castrate our minds. Boobs obscure the truth of the world. This struggle is a struggle for liberation. Only by sweeping away the domination of the boob can the conversation of our souls truly commence. Give me liberty, or give me death!

Excuse me, I got carried away. Apparently, summer in Noto only lasts until Obon, which means that while I’ve been wasting my time penning silly diatribes, another precious summer has ended. I demand compensation!

Booby this, booby that: aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You can’t seriously expect me to have a decent conversation with someone who talks about titties all day. I’m out.

Sincerely,

Ichirō Morita

August 21

To: Komatsuzaki Yūya

Ever since you asked me for advice with your little problem, I’ve had boobs on the mind to such an extent that I can’t focus on any of my experiments. I consulted Morimi Tomihiko, and all he had to say on the subject was: “Let there be boobs.”

Lately, whenever I can’t stand being cooped in the lab for another minute, I take a walk out along the shore to get a can of coffee from the vending machine at the station. As I look at the rustling rice plants in the fields by Nanao Bay, feeling the sweat prickling at my skin, my mind tends to wander towards the future, which puts me in a melancholy mood. To distract myself I think about meaningless things, which of course brings me to you, and once that happens thoughts about boobs aren’t far behind. Try as you might, there’s just no escaping boobs in this pitiless world.

I hustle back to the lab, where the AC is on full blast, and glance out the window. Across the bay I can see Noto Island. It kind of looks like a boob. I hastily shift my gaze upwards into the sky, towards puffy, boob-shaped cumulonimbus clouds. Feeling like I’m losing my marbles, I take refuge in the break room; I open my mouth to take a bite of some mochi ice cream that Taniguchi tried to hide in the fridge, when I realize to my dismay that the frozen mounds look just like little boobs.

I’ll never get any work done like this, so I leave the lab and head north towards a nearby shrine. The shrine grove is on a piece of land that juts out into the sea, and as I approach through the fields I notice that the round stand of trees resembles a you-know-what. Each morning on the train, I pass another very similar shrine grove north of Nishigishi Station just before my stop at Noto-Kashima. So it’s like I’m doing research sandwiched between a giant pair of boobs! But I have only moments to ponder my new discovery before Taniguchi barges in shouting, “I know you ate my mochi ice cream!”

What am I doing here?

I think I’m slowly turning into a marshmallow myself. You and I must break this foul curse and see the world anew through unclouded eyes. But how can that be done?

I just had the most brilliant idea.

In order to pull it off, I’m going back to Kyoto.

To be upfront, that’s not the main reason I’m going. I just need to get away from Noto for a breather. But this Friday on the 25th, Morita Ichirō is coming back to Kyoto. Need I remind you that this is top secret. It mustn’t get out to anyone, especially not Empress Hisako. If you leak this information I’ll scatter copies of your boob letter all over the Hyakumanben crossing.

I have two objectives for this trip. Number one: break the stranglehold of boob supremacy. Number two: shatter Empress Hisako’s iron grip over the lab. I’ve already formulated plans for both of these goals. Don’t worry: if this ship sinks, at least we’ll sink together.

More to follow.

Morita Ichirō

August 25

To: Mr. Komatsuzaki

VISITED LAB THOUGHT BEST TO MAKE INTERIM REPORT TO PROFESSOR STOP REGRET WE COULD NOT MEET AND LEFT MESSAGE FOR YOU STOP WILL TELEPHONE LATER REGARDING 8008 SUPREMACY STOP MORITA ICHIRŌ 330P

August 27

To: An infinitely titillatable friend

I am currently composing this letter in the Jane coffee shop, deep within the bowels of the Kintetsu Mall.

There’s a decidedly 20th-century air lingering about the Kintetsu Mall. The sleek, ultra-modern angles of Kyoto Station which baffle tourists by the trainload are about the last place anyone would expect to find such a charming little alley: yet here it is. As I prepare to depart from Kyoto in the shadow of my defeat by boob, I find the faint melancholy of bygone times that lingers here is perfectly attuned to my own sorrow. Thank you everyone, you’re far too kind.

I suppose that you’re angry. No, if it were only anger that you felt I would be relieved. I think you’ve fallen into despair once again. I’m worried that you’ll start making noises about fleeing to India again, as you did in the aftermath of the Gion Festival. But I didn’t mean to do it. I’ve never harmed anything in my life on purpose, honest. I’m practically a saint, I am.

I didn’t go after you when you fled the lab that night. But not because I couldn’t be bothered too. It was because I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t end up running off to India alongside you.

Let me recap my thought process one more time.

In a previous letter I introduced to you the approach of methodological boob skepticism. Theoretically, by systematically questioning the boob that lies in front of you, you can reduce it to a mere abstraction and thereby break the spell. But as you wrote in your reply, this approach contains a fatal flaw. It is clear now that the more you stare at a boob, the more appealing it becomes. Its very existence becomes unshakeable.

So I started thinking.

For average schmoes like us, rejecting boobs through willpower alone is a bridge too far. We need crutches to lean on until we learn to stand on our own two feet. There must be something out there, some method that would make boobs easier to doubt. A boob is a boob, but is there a trick to make it completely unrecognizable as one? Even better, is there a method to make us sick of boobs?

And lo, my solitary ponderings in Noto led me to the answer: magnification.

If you zoom in on a boob far enough, you will no longer be able to tell what it is, and its power of boobiness will be nullified. A video projector would do the trick, and as luck would have it I had only just used a video projector to present my interim report. If you blew up a picture of a boob on the wall and concentrated on it long enough, it would slowly stop looking like a boob, and eventually you would lose your appetite for boobs entirely. At last, you and I would be free from the tyranny of boobs!

So on Friday night I slipped out of the lab under cover of darkness, avoiding old drill sergeant Taniguchi’s watchful eye, and hopped on the Thunderbird Express at Nanao Station bound for Kyoto. I stopped at the lab to chat with the professor about my career path, linked up with you to go pick up young Mamiya, and then met up with Morimi Tomihiko at Mishima-tei on Teramachi Street.

I hope you at least appreciate that you got to taste the sukiyaki at Mishima-tei. But things began to unravel when Morimi muttered that nonsense about “there are many kinds of boobs, just as there are many kinds of lives” and disappeared with young Mamiya in tow. I later interrogated Morimi and learned that they went to meet the ladies of the All-Japan Maidens’ Association, who were also at Mishima-tei. And while we two were heatedly discussing how to get out of there before the bill arrived, they skipped out into the night and had a ball around town.

Which brings us to the screening.

We stowed the lab projector in a locker in the professor’s office. If it ever got out that I used it to project a gigantic boob on the wall, I’d be condemned to the Noto Peninsula once more, this time for a life sentence. So we thought of everything. We came in on a Friday after the professor would be gone. We scoured the lab to ensure there was no one lurking in the corners. And Empress HIsako had already left, humming, “On the road again…” It was airtight. While I set up the projector, you retrieved the screening materials from the locker.

You remember what happened after that.

In hindsight, we made a few blunders along the way. Our optimism was misplaced. We completely underestimated the power of our foe. No matter how big you blow it up, a boob is still a boob. There was no doubting it. “This can’t be right,” I thought as I gaped at the giant image. Long after it was evident that things weren’t going to plan, I kept telling myself that it was just an object, just a soft, shapely, sublimely magnificent object, and I’d be damned if I let such a thing wrap itself around my mind? A war broke out within me, both mentally and physically.

In the end, the boob won out. “Three cheers for boobs,” I softly groaned in defeat. But in the heat of battle, I hadn’t noticed that the door to the lab had opened, revealing the last people I would ever have expected to see there. Morimi Tomihiko stood right outside, and beside him was a petrified Mamiya. Saegusa quickly shielded Mamiya’s eyes with her hands, and close behind her were my sister and Ibuki Natsuko: the All-Japan Maidens’ Association.

Here I need to pause the narrative and vent for a moment: why didn’t you lock the door!? What were you doing while I was setting up the projector? Were you just drooling all over yourself waiting for the boob to be blown up? Sure, it was Friday night, but did it not cross your mind for even a second that someone might still pop into the lab? You’re supposed to be Saegusa’s boyfriend; how did you not know that she would be at the Mishima-tei for a gathering of the All-Japan Maidens’ Association? And why didn’t you tell me that the association was just a Morimi fanclub made up of Saegusa, Ibuki, and my sister?

Whatever. Blaming you won’t erase what happened.

You got off light, just standing there looking at a giant boob with your stupid face. But me? Ibuki and my sister just witnessed me whispering “Three cheers for boobs,” with their own eyes. Why did I have to say that? Am I some sort of tit-crazed lunatic? In the quarter century that I’ve been on this earth, that’s got to be one of the top 3 most embarrassing things that has come out of my mouth. You’d be hard pressed to get me to admit that even in front of my closest bosom buddies, and here I just said it in front of Ibuki and a member of my own family. I shared a lot of beautiful memories with Ibuki in the lab; why, six months after graduating and going out into the world, did she have to come back to the lab on a random Friday night!? Why, after eighteen years of looking up to her big brother, did my sister have to pick this exact night for a campus visit to see my lab? There are no words to express how horrible this tragedy was.

What I did, I did for your sake. And now all my hopes have been blown to smithereens.

I still remember the dead silence after our uninvited guests awkwardly closed the door. We stood there like statues, gazing up at that giant boob. When you finally mustered the courage to pull open the door, the girls were already gone. Only Morimi Tomihiko was still standing there muttering, “Three cheers for boobs.”

“Things will get better,” he said, handing over the money for Mishima-tei. He gazed at me for a moment, eyes full of sympathy, before walking off.

After you fled wailing into the night, I returned to the lab alone, put away the projector, and cleaned up the room. That lab had never felt that quiet at night. I set up a trap for Empress Hisako, and then left.

When I got home my sister was waiting for me. The only thing she said was, “You’re dead to me.”

“What’s this?” my dad said excitedly. “What’s going on? Do we need to have a family intervention?”

All I wish, all I long for now, is to sink beneath the waves off the Noto peninsula.

This has turned into a very long letter.

I leave Kyoto now with nothing to show for myself, except perhaps another deep wound etched into my heart. I don’t know when I will be back again. At the Noto-Kashima Marine Biological Laboratory, drill sergeant Taniguchi is rubbing his hands in anticipation, awaiting my return. I can already see all of my experiments crashing and burning.

I keep replaying that moment in my mind: all those people just staring at me dumbfoundedly through the crack in the doorway. I feel so pathetic that I just muttered “Three cheers for boobs” out loud. That’s a tear stain below, not drool.

What a summer it’s been.

I never meant for any of this to happen. All I wanted was to be free from boobs.

My faith remains unshaken. Freedom from boobs—that is where it all begins.

An infinitely titillatable man