This is an updated version of an old story that was posted on my previous account. I felt it was good enough to keep.
*Eternal Luminescence—Tokyo Nights*
Nights of Tokyo—never with the serene peace of mind, the restful night that carries in blissful slumber, followed by a world of fresh dawn and melodious breezes. Subdued, yes, but here there is always a mechanical aura. This city never sleeps - not entirely. There's always some production taking place. Some clerk still at work in a lonely fourteenth story office. Always a train bearing weary passengers to and from the mundane settings of work and home. Always the dim fluorescent glow of street lamps that never rest, never waver. They stand at attention night after night, always observing in silent indifference.
That's the way of the city as a whole. It's a body. A mechanical body, composed of numberless individuals - each consumed by their own train of thought, their own existence with no concern to spare for the other beings they pass by, stand next to, and even work side by side with day in and day out. This city and all it contains can be summarized by one simple word: indifference. Yes. Indifference is the great sum of it all. An entire city of nameless faces, blank expressions, and disregard in the first degree. No one would be missed. Any individual among us could simply be plucked as a fruit from the tree of existence, and none would ever know. None would ever wonder at the absence of that face on the crowded streets. None would mourn the loss of the signature tone of their voice subtracted from the background din all around. Another would fill their place, just as faceless, just as nameless as the one before, and the surrounding world would take no heed at the change.
This is the path I tread, six days of the week, every week of the year - dismissing those rare and precious holidays. Upon leaving the office to which a third of my lifespan is wholly committed, the building is filled with a deserted stillness. I rarely pass a coworker in my wearily rhythmed flight from the twenty-three story work camp. This is, of course, discounting the pot-bellied security guard with a coffee stain on the front of his faded grey-blue uniform and a shadow on his jaw in these late hours; and occasionally the gangly college youth who serves as custodian in his rumpled midnight blue jumper, his yellow cart with bucket, mop, and broom ever in-tow. Sometimes I surprise myself. It's remarkable that I have room to spare in my mind for such details at all, let alone the mental function to withdraw them from the abysmal pool of both trivial and pertinent information that makes up my memory base. I pass these familiar strangers by with barely a glance and only the occasional reflexive nod of the head, and receive equal consideration for my efforts.
Only a few blocks away I find the station at which I meet the JR train to carry me home. Depending on my mood and the weather, I vary between employing a taxicab or adding a few creases to my own black leather loafers on my way to this point. Either side of my concrete pathway is lined by office buildings identical in the night to the one from which I have just made my escape. Monotony is indeed a way of life here.
I, along with the other twelve million-odd citizens who compose Tokyo's population, detest the train with an all-consuming fiery vengeance worthy of only such necessary evils. I envy sardines their elbow-room—or fin-room as the case may be. Though I doubt a sardine truly cares about whether or not it can move its appendages once it's dead. However, were there a still living sardine somewhere out there, neatly packed in its airtight tin can, it would surely have more breathing room than I do now.
Sardine cans and trains alike are not in the least friendly to those among us who suffer claustrophobia in any degree. It's becomes easier as time passes and experience is acquired - thankfully. The walls are still so closely confining, strangers still too cramped within my personal space - a precious thing, but not one regarded for anyone here - but the air is not so impossible to breathe as it once was. Of course I won't inhale too deeply at once; I prefer to disperse my daily dose of minerals throughout a series of separate breaths. At any rate, my palms no longer perspire at what has now become more of an annoyance than an actual antagonizer.
I can handle this annoyance now and plenty of others - annoyances like the small boy sitting in his mother's lap wailing for some unfathomable reason. His mother seems as frazzled as I feel inside - stray wisps of onyx hair hanging in disarray, and a weary sigh escaping her lips as she attempts to hush the fitful child. Though I can't exactly bring myself to blame either of them; after all, I do have a younger brother of my own. He's much older now, but I still recall the time that doesn't actually seem so long ago—and simultaneously an eternity away—when we were the ones receiving annoyed glares from fellow passengers, customers standing in line, and especially movie-goers who had the misfortune of happening upon the same theatre as our ill-tempered Souta.
By far the greatest benefit of the train is its time efficiency. It's easily the quickest way to reach any destination with no competition, as congestion comes naturally within such a large conglomerate. It seems that no time has passed at all before the train comes to a stop around me. My grip tightens around the plastic handle overhead—my only support against the laws of inertia, which demands that my body continue to move forward in a constant state of motion into a teen's takeout boxes whilst the metal frame of the train ceases to move forward in that same state of motion. And then the automatic doors slide open with a mechanical hum and passengers begin filing out, pushed and prodded forward as a herd driven by the invisible cattle driver known so well to one and all: time. Time seems to be the one thing all people as one crave - never knowing precisely how much is allotted to them, but always knowing that it is never enough to suffice.
"Sumimasen." I apologize to the middle aged man whose foot has just been crushed (not quite literally, I'll add for my own vanity's sake) beneath my loafer.
"Domo. Domo." He replies and ushers me out the doors before his place in line.
Praise to all that is still right with this world. The age of chivalry is not yet entirely dead. I smile to myself lightly and weave my way to the exit through which others destined in my general direction are filtering out onto the streets.
The last leg of the journey—the point at which I feel most drained, most deprived of the will to continue—the short walk from the train station to my own bed. This is the time to sigh with defeat and calculate the day's toll taken on my mental, physical, and emotional stability. The street lamps, tall and silent overhead, cast an surreal aura on the paved path before my feet.
Lolling my head back, I gaze up at the stunted vision of the heavens allotted to me. Past the yellow street lamps, beyond the buildings that seem to touch the sky itself, beyond all within this world, the stars lay hidden. Obscured by this artificial luminescence that never sleeps, the stars are no more a myth to me. Not even the moon will beam down tonight. The constant waxing and waning of the moon remains unnoticed by many, I know. With so much to compensate for it in this, our mechanical kingdom, who would take note at the moon's natural silver beam, or its lack thereof?
Finally, my own apartment building. The entryway to the piece of this world that I call my own. Gazing heavenward, my focus is drawn to the yellow incandescence emitted from a second story window. The window to my piece - the place where I can rest and take off the feel of the world outside my precious walls, sheltered for a time from its beat. Silhouetted against the drawn curtain of that window is the figure of the one the moon loves. I stand still for a moment and watch in appreciation has his shadow pulls off the dark form of a tee shirt. As his head pulls out, his thick hair (ebony tonight) cascades back down to settle over his back, the shadow of his bangs now quirking at odd angles.
I glance once more at the starless firmament, once more at the great works of the world. Buildings rise up in majestic pride from their paved foundations, lights twinkle in the distance, ranging in every size and color, and impossible to number. A siren echoes far off in another neighborhood barely over the hum of traffic and machines still in their never-ending state of production. A bulb flickers in the streetlamp above and to the left of my doorway, desperately sputtering out what fragments of pallid light it still harbors.
And then I glance back to my silhouetted Godsend, my safeguard against the tempest around and within me. So much has come and gone in our time together. So much turmoil around us, and so many battles fought within us—between us. Together we've endured and shall endure till we meet our story's end. Till all the battles are won, when hardship and monotony and all the rest cease to be.
None of it matters. Let the world around us be content with itself, or not. We have our own.