To Morimi Tomihiko: Love Letter Anti-expert (October 11-October 27)

October 11

To: Tomio

Yet another day chock full of taking down research notes and filling out job applications—oh, hello there.

While autumn descends upon Noto, I’ve been riding the Noto Railway to the end of the line with Komatsuzaki and scanning for UFOs hovering over the waves. I’m glad to hear that you enjoyed the MOMAK. Isn’t it nice to get out and experience culture? I’m reminded of the time I was at the museum with Ibuki looking at those paintings by Fujita Tsuguharu. You know, what’s great about art museums is, while she was engrossed in the paintings I got to stare at her face from the side. I completely forgot that everyone else from the lab was there.

Yesterday I was informed that I will be heading back to Kyoto at the beginning of November.

Drill instructor Taniguchi’s constant barking as well as a full course of those virility enhancement drinks seem to have paid off: I’ve accomplished what I was sent to this forsaken shore to do. It’s been a hard, lonely six months, and yet somehow it’s hard to feel as excited as I should. Ōtsuka’s edict to write a love letter to Ibuki still hangs over my head, and though I would like nothing better than to spurn that command and save my dignity, I know that the Empress of Evil would spend her last few months before graduation making my life a living hell. I’m not sure that I’d outlast her.

In one of my darkest moments, I asked my little sister (who aspires to become an astronaut), “If you got the love letter of your dreams, what would you do?” Her reply: “Rip it up and throw it away.” It’s hard to tell what goes on in the mind of someone with such single-mindedly astronomical aspirations. I fear that she will never find happiness. But then again, maybe she has found happiness and simply is keeping it on the down-low from her big brother. I’ll let her have it. I’d like nothing better than to dissolve into a puddle of tears at her wedding.

Many thanks for your letter. “If you don’t feel like you’re writing with a pure mind, you’re probably not writing with a pure mind.” What a hurtful thing to say. I have feelings, you know. It’s not like I’m completely depraved. And how exactly would banishing all impure thoughts from my mind help me write? There’s nothing duller than a completely sanitized mind. Strong feelings, strong love, can only grow in a mind fertilized by a million impure thoughts. It’s unfair to criticize me just because my mind tends to gravitate towards boobs. I just don’t get why my thoughts get jumbled up when I try to tell her how I feel.

I tried your suggestion to take a cold shower, change into a clean set of clothes, and kneel at my desk to write, but once I started to write my passion got the best of me, and the end product was horrific. It seems like the more passion I pour into my writing, the more remote my chances of a date become.

Love letters are just like job applications that you need to hand in to your crush, and I have as much aptitude for writing love letters as I do for filling out job questionnaires: none. If I keep waiting around like this, my life’s never going to get off the ground. I’ll just keeping dancing the Sophist Samba, floating through the void, to infinity and beyond—

Does anyone actually ever get the person of their dreams? It just doesn’t seem plausible to me. I don’t see how things could ever line up so conveniently. I bet people just make it up.

Later.

Morita Ichirō, a mortal man

October 17

To: Morimi Tomihiko

Thanks for your letter. You must be tired having to travel all the way to Tokyo. It sounds like you have to travel back and forth between Kyoto and Tokyo a lot, like you’re some kind of bestselling author; you sure it’s Tokyo you’re going to? You know that Tokyo’s the capital of Japan, right? Shijō Kawaramachi may have a lot of buildings, but they’re not the same thing, okay?

You write novel manuscripts, I fill out job applications (love letters included). Filling out job applications (love letters included) feels just like piercing your heart with a sword.

I’ve been thinking about love letters so much that I had a dream that the mail train that’s exhibited at Noto-Nakajima Station was chugging towards Kyoto under the silver moonlight, laden full of my love letters. A more humiliating locomotive I can hardly imagine.

You encouraged me to focus on writing compliments, so I listed out what I liked best about her and what had made me fall for her, as if I was dissecting her existence. The result certainly ranks as one of the top 3 most horrible love letters I have ever written. I wrote compliments like my life depended on it, in my desperation even commenting on how nice her earlobes were, but once I realized I was approaching the point of no return my pen abruptly came to a halt. If I’d kept on writing I would have turned into a concentrated mess of a human being.

Don’t get me wrong: I still want to write a love letter, but I don’t want to pour it on too thick. Love letters are a way to convey your feelings. That much is true. But I don’t think that it’s enough just to convey your feelings. Conveying your feelings is just the first step. What love letters are really supposed to do is bring those feelings to fruition.

Quite an astute observation of me, wouldn’t you say?

Complimenting someone isn’t easy. In fact, I think it’s actually really hard. The more you butter someone up the more insincere you seem, so pouring out how you truly feel can actually make you sound even more artificial. It’s true that when you’re in love, it feels like everything about them is wonderful. I could go on for days about what I like about her. But once you start listing everything, it begins to feel as though you’re missing the point by pulling her apart. I like her face, her short black hair, her dimples, her earlobes, her occasionally blank expression. But I didn’t fall in love with all of those things put together. I didn’t fall in love with her because her earlobes are cute, I think her earlobes are cute because they belong to the girl I fell in love with.

In any case, you’d probably be creeped out if you got a love letter saying how cute your earlobes are. I’d wonder what kind of freak I was dealing with.

I think your method needs some tweaking.

Yours,

Morita Ichirō

October 21

To: Morimi Tomihiko, love letter noob

Once again it is I, Morita.

My hands grow ever more busy as the day of my departure from the lab draws near. I am no closer to developing the art of writing a love letter, in no small part thanks to your litany of worthless advice. How am I supposed to write a love letter that will capture her heart? As I struggle to accomplish this daunting task, the Titty Incident―that most deplorable of happenings―continues to loom over my head. How could any love letter that I could write ever wash away that awful stain?

As I’ve said many times before, the issue isn’t that my heart is impure, or that I’m a pervert, or any of those things. As such I have no interest in undergoing the training that you proposed. I don’t have the time on my hands to be skipping all the way down to Cape Muroto like Kūkai did way back when to gain enlightenment.

You clearly don’t understand the situation I’m in. The problem I confront is of a much more rudimentary nature.

Over the course of many attempts and failures at writing a love letter, I’ve come to realize that I don’t know what a sentence is anymore. Writing sounds simple, but there are so many hidden pitfalls. People say you should write what you feel. But are these sequences of characters really what I’m feeling? How can anyone be sure? How can I be sure? What if I’m being deceived by my own writing? I think and I write and I think and I write, but somewhere along the way it all starts to seem so strange. Am I really committing my thoughts to words, or are the words that I write fabricating my thoughts?

I’m starting to wonder whether I’m not just engrossed in fabricating my feelings for her through words. Could this be why every letter I’ve written is so repulsive? What if it’s not my heart that’s polluted as you claim, but the very act of writing a love letter that is wrong? What if putting your thoughts to paper and throwing them at other people is what’s really creepy?

And if that’s the case, what really is a love letter? Does it have a purpose or is it useless? Should I write one or not? Nothing makes sense to me anymore. I’ve bogged down completely: it’s just too much for me to deal with.

That’ll do it for today. I’ve been suspecting for a while now that you don’t know the first thing about love letters. Have you ever actually written one?

Sinking into the swamp of love,

Morita Ichirō

October 27

To: Dr. Koibumi

I’m glad that you seem to be doing well. So you’re doing a book signing at a bookstore on Kawaramachi Street in November? That seems a little grandiose for a person of your stature. I prefer you sitting all alone, hugging your knees to your chest.

Autumn is well and truly underway in Noto, and the mountains are turning a deep shade of crimson. Whenever I start feeling worn out, I leave the lab and walk along the shore towards Titty Shrine, admiring the foliage and the sea. This is the last week I’ll be able to enjoy the view at Nanao Bay.

While I’m getting ready to leave Noto, I also have to plan for Ibuki’s pep-up party I’ll send you an invitation once things are ready. The plan’s simple: since she’s a founding member of the All-Japan Maidens’ Society she’ll be over the moon to see you there.

As for my love letter to her I’ve more or less given up. The idea that I could just scribble down a few words and make her fall head over heels for me when I can’t even figure out how to live my own life is laughable, at best. This is all too obvious at this point, but there’s no such thing as the art of writing a love letter. Yet just spilling my guts onto a piece of paper would hardly serve the purpose of writing a love letter. It’s a lose-lose situation. So I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to tell her how I feel would be a mistake. No matter how strong my feelings are, they’d come out all garbled, so it’d be better not to tell her at all.

And above all, the Titty Incident hangs over everything. What could I possibly do to overcome her having seen me staring at a giant boob projected on the wall, whispering, “Three cheers for boobs”? Nothing, that’s what. I’ll just have to grin and bear it whenever Ōtsuka starts ribbing me.

I didn’t want to admit it, but you were right. Love letters were just my way of escaping from reality. Every time I talked about “love letter this, love letter that” I was really just trying to distract myself, from the emptiness I felt having to study jellyfish (which I’ve never even cared about), and from my fears about the future.

I’ve come to realize that you’ve got to do more than grasp at straws. You can’t just obsess over a crush to distract yourself from your own anxieties, and you can’t expect them to come and save the day. Maybe my love letters are doomed to fail because I’ve been drowning all along.

The deeper into autumn it gets, the more profound my melancholy becomes.

Today is Friday. I’m writing this letter in the break room at the lab. The sun is setting over Nanao Bay. I’m only going to see this view a few more times, and that thought makes me regret how little I have to show for the past six months. The old drill sergeant invited me to spend one more night in Wakura Onsen, at the Kaigetsu Inn. “Let’s get your manhood polished real good before you head back to Kyoto, cherry boy,” he said.

I don’t know where there’s any point at polishing myself anymore, but I’m going to go anyway.

Till next time.

Sincerely,

A loser

October 27

To: Morimi Tomihiko, love letter anti-expert

I can’t wait for a reply to my last so I’m just going to write again. After I finished up my previous letter, Taniguchi picked me up in his beloved old beater and drove me across the pitch black bay to Wakura Onsen. The Kaigetsu Inn is diagonally across from my usual haunt, Sōyu. The name means “sea moon”, or jellyfish: fitting considering it’s Taniguchi’s favourite inn.

We had a soak in the inn’s hot spring, had a sumptuous feast, went for another soak inside Sōyu, then returned to our room and broke out the libations. From our window we could see Kagaya looming up in the night. I’d been on the top floor there back at the end of July, carousing with a bunch of drunken old men and listening to Taniguchi sing a paean to boobs, but it’d been too raucous for us to talk much then. So tonight was the first time we’d sat down and had a proper conversation, face to face.

We talked about a lot of things―about the Four Mandolin Gods; about how he met Ōtsuka Hisako; about how the taste of the broth the first time they’d gone to Neko Ramen together; about Ōtsuka’s secret family recipe for virility enhancement drinks; about the struggles he’d faced when he was sent off by his lonesome to the Noto-Kashima Marine Biological Laboratory, just like I was. I heard a lot of interesting things. I’d never heard him talk that much before.

He chugged beer like it was water, chasing it down with whisky. I learned later that something was going on between him and Ōtsuka, so maybe he’d been brooding about it. I did my best to keep up with him, and before long we were both plastered.

“Once you’re outta here I don’t ever wanna see you here again. Got it, you phony?” he berated me. I vaguely remember mumbling something back. Whatever I said made him even angrier, and he shouted, “You can’t stay here!”

To make a long conversation short, we talked about life and women and a lot of other things. Sometimes we disagreed, and the alcohol that warmed us led us into pointless squabbling. In the end he shouted his usual, “Over my dead body!” and tried to turn me into one. We made so much noise that the staff came and yelled at us.

After that we went to bed, but then I heard Taniguchi whisper from his futon, “Three cheers for boobs!” How could he possibly know about the Titty Incident!?

“Don’t be naïve. You really think anything that happens in the lab gets past Hisako?” he snickered. “She hears everything, and I mean everything.”

“Goddammit!”

“No need to throw in the towel just yet. Ibuki’s not that square.”

“And how would you know?”

“‘Cause Hisako said so. And if she says it, I believe it.”

“I don’t know about that…”

“Just keep the faith. Tomorrow I’ll take you to Koiji Beach.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s near the eastern tip of the Noto Peninsula. The Beach of Love: lovely name, ain’t it? There’s a bell that grants good fortune in romance, so I’d recommend you give it a whack or two.”

“I’m not embarrassing myself like that!”

“I think you’re way past that, you titty addict.”

“I’m not a titty addict!”

“Ring the bell, young Morita. Only then can you surpass my dead body.”

“You’re not dead yet.”

“I might as well be. Hisako and I are splitting up.”

“Huh?”

“Haven’t you heard? She got a job a long way away, and long distance is hard to pull off.”

“I thought you two were going to get married.”

“Life is complicated, baby…”

I tried to find out more, but at that point Taniguchi nodded off. Drunk he may have been, but as I watched this thirty-year-old man mumbling, “Three cheers…three cheers…” in his sleep, I realized that he was an idiot too.

It was then that I had a revelation: boobs and romantic feelings flower only when they are hidden.

Yes: only now did I realize that by laying out my feelings straight out on the page, I had only exposed them to be strangled by my impassioned words; it was the stink of their rotting corpses that I had smelled from all of my previous love letters. In other words, the truly effective love letter, the one I seek to write, is the love letter that does not appear to be a love letter at all.

I was so elated by my discovery that I patted Taniguchi on the cheek, but he was so conked out that the retaliation I was expecting didn’t materialize. Alone I took another round at the hot springs inside the Kaigetsu Inn, then came back to our room and sat at the desk where I am now penning this letter. Taniguchi’s snoring uproariously. He’s a good guy.

I’d said that I’ve given up, but I hereby declare that I am going to attempt to write a love letter once more. You might say I’m being stubborn, but I think stubbornness is a good thing.

You know what they say: it’s not about how many times you fall, but how many times you get back up.

Morita Ichirō

Kaigetsu Inn, Wakura Onsen