To a Moat-Filling Friend (May 11–June 30)

May 11

To: The Titty Professor

Do you remember calling me last week? I suspect not, judging by how wasted you were. Stop challenging Ōtsuka to drinking games. That lousy woman, I can’t imagine where she got the idea that I was off chasing “dolphin tail”.

The old VCR which I asked my sister to send me has arrived, so yesterday I paid a visit to Minowa Books in the shopping arcade in search of more historically significant adult films. The Bridal Curtain is a notable production from these parts; I have been prowling around odd corners of the shopping street for the past week, yet it continues to elude my libertine gaze. I barged into the book shop, hot air blasting from my nostrils intensely enough to part any bride’s curtain. But taking me for a young intellectual, the old man struck up a conversation with me, forcing me to play the part of a goody two-shoes student. I came out of the shop with a book about castles which the old man recommended, as well as faded VHS copies of Ghostbusters, Flashdance, and Cocoon. I have never cursed my cultured bearing as I have today. My retinas crave flesh. I’ll have to pay a visit to the video stores on the edges of town.

After nosing around a candle store I stopped by the Mister Donut by the station. There I read your letter, which sent me into such a laughing fit that all the employees looked at me funny. It’s so amusing to observe others suffering in the throes of love. I know you’ve mocked others before for the same thing. Don’t you dare deny it.

It’s a shame that you failed to invite Saegusa to the horse archery ceremony, but the silver lining is that she never read your poem. Surely the gods of Shimogamo Shrine must have taken pity on you.

Each dogged repetition of “lovely, lovely” saps the reader’s energy; your comparison of her to a “fluffy pink marshmallow” in the middle only serves to show off your vile depravity to its fullest; and the ending of the poem starting with “even if I never take off these underpants” is entirely incomprehensible. Even the most kindly disposed of women would be driven into barefooted flight were she to be presented with the destructive force of this poem. You’d mentioned that you were part of the “Special Light Music Club”; is this the “Special” mentioned in the name? After five years of knowing you it all finally makes sense.

Lately all of my experiments have ended in failure which has put me in a sour mood. Nanao Bay is serene as ever, and the new spring foliage around Noto-Kashima Station almost seems to overflow into the station, yet clouds brood over my mind. I was in such a foul mood that I read your poem out loud to Taniguchi as he plucked at his mandolin. His reaction was one word: “KYS.”

Of course, it is admirable that you have given up marshmallows. I will admit that much.

But after reading what you have to say about Saegusa, the extent to which you are losing your sense of reason has become clear. You have never been particularly good at discerning the truth; in fact, not only do you usually fail to see the point, you often fail to see that you have failed to see the point, a point for which you are well known. That’s why Hisako the Great treats you like a marshmallow and kicks you around. But I fear that at last your brains really have turned into marshmallows. It may already be too late to give them up.

You may find her “mischievous accidents” in the lab adorable, but such things are the product of clumsiness and lack of preparation, and proof of indolence. I should know―my experiments fail all the time. You fawn over the way she frowns when she is “lost in thought in a corner of the lab”, but I suspect that there is nothing going through her head at all. She may be an avid reader, but the fact that she only reads books by Morimi Tomihiko is a sign of a potentially lopsided mind. You bring up all sorts of examples to prove how “modest” she is, but I would describe her not as modest but as timid. Things like “there’s always a smile on her face” and “it’s cute when her long black hair gets into her mouth” don’t strike me as attractive. What springs to mind is a woman who smiles weakly, speaks little, and is always chewing on her hair: not exactly a flattering image.

Furthermore, you were quite adamant in denying that you were attracted to her boobs, but I never mentioned her boobs in the first place, so I don’t know why you felt the need to so hastily justify yourself. You also wrote, “her boobs are big, but I didn’t notice how big they were until after I fell for her.” I also never asked about that. Now it is quite clear to me what it was about her that titillated you, you buffoon.

That’s alright. At this point there is probably no point in trying to douse your ardor. It is better that you run as far as you can go across the wild plain of youth. But don’t you think the tactics you have adopted thus far―praying at Yoshida Shrine, deifying this woman in verse―are a bit too roundabout? Golden Week is over, the air is clear, and it is time that you shake off the fog that has collected in the folds of your brain.

You must act sensibly and fill the moat in earnest. First you must ascertain whether she is taken. As she is a fourth-year the likelihood that she is already spoken for is exceedingly high. If it becomes clear that you are woefully overmatched you may need to manfully withdraw from the fray. Bear this in mind: you cannot do anything properly without first gathering information about the situation.

The other day Taniguchi chewed me out for not knowing what I was doing.

As I now know quite well, ignorance is not always bliss.

Faithfully,

Know-nothing Morita

P.S. I am currently in my apartment watching the copy of _Ghostbusters _I rented yesterday. It features a strange Marshmallow Man, which for a moment I thought was you. During a shopping trip to ASTY I also signed up for a membership at a video rental store. My sex life may just be saved.

June 16

To: A moat-filling friend

I was worried because you took so long to reply.

Am I lonely? No. Ever since I arrived in Noto looking for a fresh start, I have been inundated with letters from lost little lambs for whom I am a spiritual anchor; I have become a letter writer extraordinaire with no shortage of correspondents. I’m so busy writing replies that my experiments have fallen by the wayside. But as I have sown, so shall I reap. Through martial devotion to the practice of letter-writing I will elevate my epistolary skill to heretofore unseen heights, and one day I will start a company ghostwriting love letters and rake in the dough. I shall spend my days swaddled in luxurious down comforters, thinking nothing of slumbering the days away. My company will go public and become the darling of the stock market; my face will grace the covers of leading finance magazines. “We’re not in the business of writing letters,” I’ll coolly tell reporters. “We’re in the business of capturing hearts.”

Taniguchi vents his ire at my incompetence like an incarnation of the wrathful deity Fudō Myōō; planting has begun in the procession of rice paddies along the seashore; and at the beach it’s starting to feel like summer. In the midst of it all I have spent my days singlemindedly penning ever-grander missives, taking occasional excursions to Wakura Onsen, searching for UFOs at Hakui, washing down bites of Tengu Ham with beer. And just when I had finally put your despondent prospects for love out of my mind, the letter arrived.

Allow me to first vent my impotent anger.

You say that on Saturday you and the rest of the lab stole out for a friendly outing without telling the professor. It’s good to get along with your labmates. There’s nothing wrong with taking a pleasant trip to Kanazawa either.

But if you came all the way up to Kanazawa why didn’t you visit me!? Nanao is practically in Kanazawa’s backyard! I would have liked to meet up with all the seniors. But while you were all drunkenly cavorting in Kanazawa like a bunch of idiots, I was all alone in Wakura Onsen having been abandoned by Taniguchi, morosely soft-boiling an onsen tamago in one of the hot springs that bubbles up on the street here. It’s some distance from here to Kanazawa, but if you’d reached out to me I would have headed down right away. Empress Ōtsuka may have fed you some cock-and-bull story that I was busy writing letters and put you under a gag order. Fie to her, I say, fie―at least, I say so in spirit.

The next time you’re here you had better let me know. Morita Ichirō is here, I tell you, here I am!

It sounds as though the whole time you were in Kanazawa you were too lovestruck and intent on turning things around to notice anything besides Saegusa and her hair-chewing ways. But Kyoto itself is chock-full of events, such as the Aoi Matsuri and Takigi Noh, yet you failed to invite her to a single one. What made you think things would go differently in Kenrokuen?

Even more worrisome is how you are misinterpreting my advice. It is true that I emphasized the importance of gathering information. But what I meant was for you to ask around about her tastes and glean useful data from conversations in the lab, not to follow her around and observe her every move. Romance has rules of its own. Obtaining tidbits like how she tutors every Wednesday and Saturday night and comes home at 10, or that she occasionally drops off letters in the post, is completely against those rules. Those who enter the battlefield of love without regard for rules set themselves against all the world; whether they come out crowned in victory or clowned in defeat, they always lose. I speak from personal experience. Don’t ask me about that personal experience.

At any rate, you need to stop doing those things. Full stop, cold turkey. And no matter how many fan letters she writes you must not become jealous of Morimi Tomihiko. Really, you’re not a little kid anymore.

I will say that the fact that she’s single and that she’s not sure what to do after graduation are two very important pieces of information. You should casually ask about her worries and use this to get close to her. Don’t overdo it and try to sound too insightful, lest you come off as lecturing her. Worse still is trying to probe too deeply. When you prod at someone’s sensitive spot, they’re more likely to lash out than say thank you. Men in love are fools, and if you try to be helpful more often than not you’ll end up shooting yourself in the foot. Just keep nodding sympathetically, and listen closely to what she has to say.

Tomorrow I will go see the dolphins at the aquarium on Noto Island. I am full of misgivings about the path my life is on, but if I were to foolishly consult Taniguchi for advice I would only end up on the receiving end of another interminable lecture, along with a heaping dose of virility enhancement for which I have no use whatsoever. On the other hand, dolphins just float there on the other side of the glass and listen to whatever you have to say. She is the only emotional support I have around here. Dolphin communication has much to teach us. Remember: silence is golden.

I’ll say it once more: stop stalking her. The best-case outcome of being a stalker: losing the girl. The life you could end up frittering away: priceless.

Morita Ichirō, who is on his game today

June 30

To: Komatsuzaki

I have been driven up the wall by a string of failed experiments. The stress has caused the peach fuzz which covers my body to fall out, and my feces have taken on an idiosyncratic rainbow hue. O, star-crossed Morita Ichirō, whither shalt thee be blown? O tempestuous Taniguchi, wherefore dost thee vent thy anger so?

I ask you, why is the sky over Noto so grey, and why must it hang so oppressively low overhead? Life at this seaside research station; Nanao Bay; Taniguchi; the view from the train on the Noto Railway; the streets in front of the Nanao Station; the life that awaits me―all of these things are dull and grey.

As I grill a piece of the Tengu Ham I bought at the butcher, I take a sip of beer and look up into the gloomy overcast sky. Tengu Ham is the only thing of value in my life right now. Your romantic troubles are meaningless in comparison to Tengu Ham.

But I am an upstanding human being, and so I offer this letter to you.

That’s a very cold thing for her to say. It’s only natural for you to be worried. I’ve never heard of this “All-Japan Maidens’ Association” either, and I can’t imagine what Saegusa would be doing in such a suspicious organization. But you’re all grown up now, so don’t just take everything Ōtsuka tells you at face value. “A maiden-driven plot to overthrow the state”―what exactly do maidens and the state have to do with one another?

In any case, there’s not much you can do about Saegusa feeling down. Eventually you’ll need to do some investigation. For the moment it’s best that you avoid prying too deep.

It may turn out that you mistook her to be in a bad mood, and that she didn’t really mean anything serious by it. Since time immemorial, lovestruck men have read too much into every little thing women say and do. Don’t overthink it.

Here is one realistic plan of action: stockpile sweets. Whenever women are upset, offering them a piece of candy will turn their frown upside down. Back home in Kyoto, my little sister used to get in a foul mood from time to time. She’d stomp home from school and throw herself down on the living room floor without even changing out of her uniform, glaring at the ceiling and muttering horrible things such as, “I wanna be a gentlewoman of leisure.” Whenever this happened, I observed that going to buy a sweet for her would produce the most astonishing effect.

It is a tried-and-true method. I urge you to see for yourself.

As I have much else to deal with, I shall leave things here for today.

Yours,

A Scoundrel-of-Leisure-in-Training