CHAPTER XXII
…
As the days went by, I started to notice a strange, uneasy feeling starting to develop first in my hands. It felt kind of like there were hundreds of little pins being stuck into it at the same time. I wasn't exactly in pain, but eventually became too much to ignore, and the sensation had an unfortunate side effect: it caused occasional muscle spasms. I also found it very hard to sleep at night, but that was already chronic insomnia on my part from staying up late, stressing over business. The simple solution to that was sleeping pills, but these days you've got to go through a ton of medical processes just to get a prescription filled in. They made it so that you can't just buy pills easily anymore. With the suicide rates all over the place, they hoped restricting the availability of pills would stop people from OD'ing and killing themselves. Luckily, I knew a guy who worked inside a pharmacy so I purchased some benzodiazepines. That was the only thing I could buy without going farther into the threshold of illegal drug use - use of medication without proper prescription. But what the hell, why do I need a doctor just because I can't get a good wink?
My sister encouraged me to see a doctor, but the physician I went to couldn't find anything wrong with me. He said that I probably was overexerting myself lately, and what I needed was some rest. Maybe it had something to do with my insomnia. I keep thinking about that hit on the Ichihara-kai boss. Hanzo offered a different diagnosis: "maybe it's because you're gay," he suggested one night while we were having dinner together with Miura Yumiko in a restaurant.
"Shut up," Yumiko snapped at Hanzo. "Does it hurt?" She asked me.
"No. It's just, I don't know. Weird," I say.
"Thank you for that detailed description, Hachiman. If you're not feeling pain, then what the fuck's the problem?"
"I don't know, it makes me have to stretch and stuff," I responded.
"Hikio twitches all the time, Miura-chan," Hanzo added. I denied his statement.
"Your mouth twitches all the time," Yumiko sneered at Hanzo, who then started laughing. Then I told them that I was having problems falling asleep, which by now started to dawn on me as one of the prime reasons why I was feeling slow and exasperated most of the time. It didn't just affect my hand. The feeling of weakness spread to my joints eventually, so it pretty much kept me awake every night, unable to sleep no matter how tired I felt. I just close my eyes and drift into a shallow nap. From this point onward, they always referred to the uneasiness in my hands as "The Twitches", which sounded like some kind of eighteenth-century sexually transmitted disease British aristocrats got from prostitutes, but it was a catchy name, and it ended up sticking.
Eventually I went to another doctor, who finally offered a prescription. Again, he couldn't find anything wrong with me, but said, "listen, there's a drug called Trazodone. I don't know that it will, but it might help. You might be able to get rid of your sleeping problems entirely. I think we should give it a shot." Reading the paper pad in his hand, he launched into a description of Trazodone and its history. I heard the words "antidepressant" and "depression" several times, but didn't pay much attention to it. That was what you'd see on a typical box of pills. It worked like a charm. Those pills really took the life out of my eyes and in a minute I was out cold.
One rainy afternoon, Yumiko showed up in front of my house unexpectedly. It was surprising that she knew where my house exactly is, considering Isobe district is practically a suburban maze. She had come down from Yotsukaido even, so there must be an important reason as to why she visited. I was a bit startled, as I did not get a notification whatsoever from her and my place was a mess. Worse, I had been tallying money that I was saving, and organizing them into neat stacks of 100 thousand yen each, for the past few hours. The living room reeked of tobacco smoke, hints of bourbon and there were a million banknotes piled on the coffee table. It was a very suspicious-looking scene indeed. I hurriedly stuffed the banknotes into the two brown suitcases and kicked it under the couch, before opening the door and waving at my friend.
I furrowed my eyebrows and asked, "what're you doing here?"
"I guessed you'd be at home this Saturday, so I came over," she said.
"That still doesn't answer my question. And what if I wasn't home?"
Yumiko seemed like she's in a good mood today. She walked past me, ignoring my question, and let herself into my house. She put down the bag she'd been carrying and paused for a moment, before looking at me with a disgusted face. "Have you been smoking?"
"What? What are you talking about?" I stammered nervously.
"Oh, please. You reek of cigarettes and bullshit. Don't lie to me."
Yumiko leaned in closer to me, and I took a step away. She was too close for comfort. She made no mistake, I really did smell of tobacco. You really couldn't lie to a woman about these things because they always find out. They could even tell if you've been with other women recently, which was scary. They probably could detect residual body heat from physical contact with other women. I don't know if it's true, but I don't want to find out. Yumiko said that I looked disheveled, as she began to run her hand through my hair, tousling it as if I was her pet dog. Does she not notice how precarious our current position is? Thankfully, I wasn't backed against the wall.
"You know, there's this thing called taking a shower," she says.
"Yeah, I know. Thanks for reminding me, mom." I rolled my eyes at her, and sat down on the sofa before picking up a book. She blushed and complained a bit more before walking into the kitchen.
It wasn't that unusual anymore for her to hang around at my place - not that she usually did - and I really didn't mind it at all. If Yumiko came over in the afternoon, she'd start soaking a cup of rice and setting the rice cooker, so when dinnertime came we'd eat together. Afterwards, I'd doze off in the living room, while she watched television. However, she gets really peeved when I fall asleep while she's talking about something. I don't think she's necessarily talking to me - talking about their day and their issues is like a compulsion hardwired into women. I may have actually cracked the mystery of conversing with women. The trick is to just ask questions, and let them talk about themselves. Women love talking about themselves. And in the case with Yumiko Miura, she'll never get tired of venting her problems on me. I keep throwing more fuel into the fire by egging her on, saying things like, "eh, what're you gonna do? Girl, show that bitch you're better than her!" Instead of calming her down, I'm firing her up. It's amusing to me.
Many times she tried inviting me over to her place, but I was too embarrassed to loiter in a fancy mansion. Besides, I didn't want to disgrace myself through more unexpected situations. But Yumiko is usually all by herself in her house, so when she's not with her friends, she might come over here.
Yumiko then started to lecture and criticize me again about my smoking habit, launching into a typical summary of everything bad about cigarettes. I only smoked a stick on every other day when I needed to ease my nerves or clear my head, but they say that it's just as bad as smoking a pack a day. What are they trying to say? If smoking one is equivalent to smoking an entire pack, then you might as well smoke as much as you want. But Yumiko must've guessed what I was thinking - it was easy for her to read my thoughts. She knew it was more often than not something between the lines of cynical philosophy and disturbing notions.
"That's nasty stuff, you know that?" She sighed and frowned at me from behind the counter.
I chuckled, shifting in my position on the sofa. "Tell me something I don't know."
I took a drag from the half-consumed cigarette on my lips and blew the smoke upwards like a chimney. That only served to aggravate Yumiko even more. She turned on the fan and scolded me. "You're gonna die."
"Yeah, sure," I said, flipping a page in the book.
"Smokers die every day."
I stared at her with an incredulous look, and she stared back at me. "Hey Yumiko. Here's another fun fact for you. More non-smokers die… every day!"
I started laughing hard, while she gave an annoyed growl. After our customary back and forth banter, we started talking about other things. Then from the white cotton bag she brought, she produced a blue tupperware bowl. Yumiko told me it was spicy tofu, the same dish she had cooked the first time she invited me over to her house. I then had a flashback of that time, like a veteran remembering his war. Don't tell me she wants to use me as a guinea pig for her culinary experiments again? She looked at me. "Hey… remember that last time I cooked tofu? I knew you were lying about liking it. It's pretty shit right?" She said. I nodded before she continued, "I tasted it. It was awful alright, but this time I made sure that I got it right!"
"Really? I'll be the judge of that." She looked confident this time, but so did on her first time. I sat down at the table and she set a plate of freshly cooked rice in front of me. This is great. And it's true. She really did fix her dish this time. I almost got carried away and ate all of the spicy tofu, while Yumiko yelled at me and called me greedy. Haha… well, I told her that I loved it. I'm sure that compliment had struck her spot on because she turned bright red.
We both spent the next few hours reclining in the living room in silence. She was watching the television, while I tried to get some sleep, letting my mind wander off to somewhere else. I'm actually starting to like Yumiko with all her flaws and chaotic tendencies, but there's still a few things that remind me not to fall for this girl. One thing that I don't like is that she's really into watching reality TV. She watches all those dumb shows. I couldn't get the logic in the plots. Put ten whores in a house, and a man tries to find a wife. I don't know, it's stupid. Then there's those documentary series. She's watching fat people crying over ice-cream. Just bawling their eyes out, "I have an eating addiction. I can't stop eating popsicles. Sometimes, I don't even bother to take off the wrapper - I just start eating, and then I get down to the stick, and I know I gotta stop 'cause it's made out of wood."
And Yumiko actually sits there and starts crying right along with them. I couldn't believe it at first. Does she really sympathize with these people? "Ah, throw yourself into the river, you fat fuck!" I'd yell at the television. Then she gets so mad at me. Look, I don't put on TV to cry. I like to be entertained! I love it when they fall over on the treadmill and go flying backwards. It's like a modern medieval weapon, just catapult fat bodies right into the drywall. All those horrific shows. I love it. Yumiko gets really emotional when one of her favorite shows turns up; those second-rate drama novellas. Maybe we're both cynical in a way. From all the time I was forced to watch along with her, I came to the conclusion that it's thrilling to watch a family fall apart. What's really entertaining is when they show the classic before picture of a person; the pre-drugs picture, if you will. "She was so beautiful. She was a straight-A student. Everybody loved her." Then they cut to the same girl, who's now a prostitute junkie, laying in a gutter. what in the hell happened? That's the kind of stuff that should only happen in twisted doujinshi.
Anyway, when she asked me if I had gotten my insomnia checked up, I told her that I was given a clean bill of health. "Oh, and the doc also prescribed some stuff for the problem," I added.
"What kind of stuff?" She asked, her eyebrows furrowing quickly.
"Well, the doc was talking about how he wasn't sure what was causing my insomnia so, you know- "
"No, I do not know. Enlighten me."
I told her I'd filled a prescription for a drug called Trazodone.
"Bring me those fucking pills right now!" Yumiko shouted, holding out her hand as if I were going to make them magically appear.
"What? Why? What is your problem?" I retorted.
"You have no idea what that shit is for. It's an antidepressant," she said, glaring at me seriously. "Hachi, are you depressed?"
"Of course not," I quickly said. I told her I didn't think I was, but that I was tired of not being able to sleep. I didn't tell her that my business at the nightclub was mostly the one that was keeping me up. But I knew what she was probably thinking. "Look, I'm not stupid. It's not like I'm going to kill myself. Relax," I said.
She had a worried look on her face. She frowned and sighed. "Yeah, but you're the kind of guy who might go on a killing spree or some shit. Okay, calm down for a moment," she sank back down into the sofa. "Listen. Imagine you own a farm. On that farm, you got a bunch of sheep. And every night, wolves come and kill your sheep. It's a problem, you wanna fix it. Now, you could go and put a bunch of landmines around your farm, and every time one of those wolves comes near your farm, it steps on them landmines and blows it to fucking pieces. You think, problem solved, right?"
Yumiko stared at me for a few moments, until I realized she wanted me to answer that question.
I was puzzled. "What in the hell are you trying to say?"
"Oh, for Pete's sake! Are you fucking obtuse? What I'm saying is: you might've taken care of your wolf problem, but everyone around town is going to think of you as the crazy son-of-a-bitch who bought landmines to get rid of wolves. That's how they'll treat you - in fact, that'll be the first thing they associate you with. And not only that, now the only way you know how to get rid of wolves is blowing them the fuck up. Capiche? You get what I'm trying to say?"
A few moments of silence passed as we stared at each other.
"Yumiko, I'm taking those pills."
"Goddamn it! The hell you are!"
Yumiko shot out of the sofa and flew up the stairs. She stormed into my room, and I heard her rooting around furiously, opening and closing drawers, unzipping and rummaging through my bags. Meanwhile, I just sighed. The only thing I should worry about is her finding a stash of some long-forgotten porn magazines, and even that I didn't care for. It wasn't that big of a deal. But when she returned, she was holding my bottle of Trazodone. She marched over to the sink, poured the 3000 yen worth of tablets down the drain, and let the water run for good measure.
"You'll thank me later," she said as she hopped back into the sofa and resumed watching the television.
"What the fuck am I going to tell my doctor now?" I loudly asked.
"I don't give a shit. Go back to your doctor and tell him to kiss my ass."
I get it. She's just concerned that I might be falling into a state of depression and going suicidal, but I'm not. And she's not exactly the best in the compassion department. Yumiko told me that pills are a bad, bad idea. She said that she knew what antidepressants are, because she went through that situation once… she made me promise not to take that kind of medication again. I can't say that I won't break my promise, but one thing for sure, I'm not going to take any pills anytime soon.
A few days later, Yumiko came over again and told me she was going to take me to another doctor who might have the answers. "Come on now. We're going down to the hospital," she said.
I gave her a look of suspicion. "Why? Please don't harass my doctor."
"Give me a fucking break. I'm not a maniac," she glared at me and pouted.
We took a cab and rode to Inage Medical Center. We walked into the waiting area, where Yumiko approached the reception desk and checked me in. Apparently, this was also the place where her father, Miura Saito worked in. She asked to see her father immediately, and Saito-san wasn't too amused to find her daughter here in the hospital. "What are you doing here, Yumi-chan? What do you want?" He said disgruntledly.
"Why so grouchy, Pops?" She said in a mocking tone, making Saito-san even more annoyed. "Anyway, my friend Hachiman needs a diagnosis for 'The Twitches'."
Saito-san glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. "Ah, I remember you. You're the Hikigaya kid." Then he turned to his daughter with a sharper tone. "Now listen here, you. There's a guy in the ER with a bullet in his lung. With all due respect, but even if Hikigaya-san has tuberculosis, he certainly isn't going to die in the next thirty minutes. Excuse me."
He disappeared back into the room with a red label on the window. I'm guessing he's the utilitarian-type doctor, which in any case was perfectly logical but I wouldn't want him to be the one operating on me. Saito-san is the kind of doctor who's going to kill you to save five other patients. Yumiko just laughed sheepishly, and we both sat in the waiting room for a while. I watched the news on the television. There was a shooting in Dojokita district, and the victim was the one Saito-san was operating on right now. Somehow, I felt like this had something to with the mob. What's going on?
Almost an hour later, Saito-san reappeared and led me into an examination room. We went through with the typical process, the same routine the other previous physicians I went to did: breath in, breath out, turn your head and cough, slam the mini-hammer on my knees, etc. Nothing. He too couldn't find anything wrong. "It seems like you're fine," he said. But then he continued that it might not be a disorder that could be easily spotted from a mere physical exam. He suggested that we take a blood test to find out the real problem. After drawing out my blood into a syringe, Saito-san told me that the testing is going to take at least twenty-four hours, and at which point we left the hospital. I honestly didn't know what to expect.
I came back two days later to finally find out what was wrong with me.
"What's the result, Miura-san?" I asked him. I could tell from the look in his eyes that it was not good. "Let's start with the bad news," I sighed.
"Hikigaya-san, I am going to be very straightforward with you. Everything else is completely fine, but the test results showed that there's an abnormally high level of creatine kinase enzymes in your blood. Normally, these enzymes are released by damaged muscles during stress and exercise as part of the regenerating process. But seeing that you don't look like you've been doing anything that's physically taxing, it might be a sign of neuromuscular myopathy."
It took me a moment to process everything he'd just said. Finally, I just bluntly asked, half-jokingly:
"So, am I going to die, or something?"
But he didn't even laugh, he just shook his head and continued. "Currently, there's no cure for myopathies. This isn't something you catch from other people, it's usually genetic. Kind of like cancer."
"I get it."
"Look here," he sighed heavily. "I get no pleasure from revealing news like these to my patients, but this isn't looking very good for you. In the worst and most common case scenario, the disease you have is Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. Though there's currently no cure for any type of myopathy, there are treatments that could prolong the time a person with the disease can function normally."
"You mean prolong the life of a person with the disease," I said.
Saito-san frowned, before nodding finally.
"How bad is it? How much longer do I have?" The tone of my voice began to rise spontaneously.
"Calm down," he put a hand on my shoulder, but that did not help an ounce.
"Just tell me. How much time do I have left."
"I cannot say. We'll have to run more tests to get a clearer result. But you should know that you're not going terminal anytime soon."
Terminal, I thought incredulously. Just another euphemism for the word 'die'. I mumbled, "of course. That's comforting."
I breathed deeply and leaned against a wall, staring blankly in front of me. After a moment, I realized that Saito-san was still there, and he spoke again. "I suppose you'd prefer to keep this matter privy to yourself." I nodded. It wasn't necessary for anyone to find out. It may be for the better if even my family doesn't find out.
"My daughter speaks highly of you," Saito-san says. "I see you are good friends with Yumiko-chan."
"Yes sir," I say. "She's a good person at heart."
"Forgive her for being unruly at times. She's always been the free-spirited type."
"That's part of her charm, I think."
"She doesn't have a whole lot of friends these days. At least, that I know of. That's why she's always down in the city. Sometimes, I wonder if she still goes to school at all."
I assured Saito-san that Yumiko wasn't cutting classes, and I often helped her with homework. But I always thought she's with her friends during other times. I didn't know until now that she's usually by herself even when she goes around the city, which worried me a bit. I always find her working in the hair salon on Chiba-kaido avenue in Shinmachi district when I go to see her. One time, Yumiko even gave me a haircut - but not without messing around with me… it was from her that I learned to use gel and sweep my hair back so I looked slick when I went to work. Those were good times.
"You don't want to tell her about this?" Saito-san asked me.
"No. I'd hate to burden my friend with this matter."
"Yumiko-chan is your friend," he says, "so don't think you're burdening her with your personal problems. That's why they're there for you. They'll help you out during hard times."
"It's because she's my friend, and I don't want to lose that," I say. "I don't want her to pity me. I don't want her to change when she finds out about me. I like her the way she is, with all her flaws and attitude. Because that's what I first liked about her. That's the real Yumiko I know. But maybe you wouldn't get it." I realized that I carried myself a bit too far, and felt embarrassed.
"Oh kid, spare me. You're twenty. I think I understand what a goddamn twenty year old is on about."
"Twenty-one, actually."
We both laughed, and for a brief moment, I forgot all the bad things I just found out about.
I met Yumiko the next afternoon when I went to her salon and, as usual when I'm not on my shift at the bar yet, and there weren't any loans and betting slips to collect in Fujimi, I'd sit on the couch in the corner and watch her do her job as a hairdresser, listening to her endless gossiping about the latest celebrity scandals and fashion trends and her music taste of playing pop songs on the stereo - but if I have to listen Despacito for the fifty-seventh time, I might kill myself. But honestly, I like all of it. The time I'm spending with her, the dynamics of our relationship, and our peculiar, mutual love-hate tendencies. One moment, we get into a fight over something stupid, and we're yelling and cursing each other, then the next, we're like the best of friends. We both agreed that we made a good team. Most of all, it's the little things that I like about her. Past her tough, sassy exterior, she shows how much she really cares.
That afternoon, she asked me, "how did it go?"
"Well, your father says the culprit is sleep disorder, and I haven't been taking enough time to relax recently. Now, I'm feeling the effects of stress," I say. I wasn't lying when I said I needed to relax.
"Mou, aren't you stupid… who told you to overexert yourself like that?" She sighed, giving me her 'I told you so' look. "So Pop's saying that you just needed to rest, huh?"
"Well, more or less, yes."
When she finished with her last customer, she took off her apron, brushed herself off and plopped down beside me on the couch. She stretched her arms, then gave a laugh and said to me, "shit. I've been telling you the same thing all along. Freaking doctors, huh?"
We both burst out laughing.