Oh, the optimistic-scholarly-companionable Kogure, beginning his exquisite day with dung-tasting food sincerely cooked by his grandmother. He wished to tell the geezer in front of her that she could slack some time off – considering she is dying – and let his lovingly grandson do the chores because he's better, but he doesn't want to juxtapose his repugnance over the food (the overrated pancakes and maple syrup) with his respect for her grandma. As usual, they exchanged few words and silences, primarily about his freaking hopes and dreams that actually made him think of nuclear bombs flying towards them; about everything... happy. He walks out of the house afterwards and heads for school. It may come overlooked, it may come overlooked and unnoticed but Kogure actually heaved a plagued sigh he came accustomed doing for like one freaking billion years. In this seeming natural life, he lives in the underground.
ON AUTHENTICITY
Boy was he absurd! He wanted not to expose his underground self! How pathetic is that? Well, it is not from cowardice which people resort in arguing but it was from an anomalous mind, elementally to correspond with what Kogure calls the fad of humanity – normality. Heck, he found the fad cool, and so he coerced himself to style his portrait of existence to be an average joe, the normal looking guy with normal ways of life. The idea is so perfect he can almost feel himself moronic. Well, for the most part, it was a piece of freaking cake because he was oriented in conventions, and he has enough arsenals to espouse such normal life. Call it readiness at that. Now in this wave of existence there are now two Kogure's: the primordial one that is rowdy and all that, the other a run of the mill. A sense of equilibrium now acts its role: at the start of such exquisite day his grand life comprises of school, basketball, optimism and friends, afterwards a life lived oh so dangerously.
He went to his classroom and prepared himself; frigging yeah, he had to prepare to plaster that smile and he had to prepare summoning his academic mind to purport his superficial self. He had to prepare his pencil and notebook to doodle some square roots and some algebra. It is actually preposterous to be pretending, he admits, but the trouble was – the trouble was that he wanted to be the normal guy who stays happy and all that crap. He wanted to be happy. He really did. So he prepared for his set of books, browsing them, and raised a hand for his old cow-looking teacher to notice so he could brag his normal self. It's English class by the way.
"Yes, Mr. Kogure, translate the sentence, page 23."
"People will once again be able to spend time on an unending journey."
"Very good." Now it was actually triumphant on his superficial part that he could feel his ears flapping in enjoyment; what joy is this pretension! He seems phony and all that, but still he likes the idea of being normal and all that jazz that he chooses to be succumbed in this crappy situation.And what catch.
So after some agonizing moments of academic torture – which is actually ironic because he keeps savoring the victory of reciting and writing correct answers – he sat at the corner of the school cafeteria beside school gymnasiums, with friends of course; a normal life must comprise of friends, he argues. Unsurprisingly, his company isn't from the basketball team – and the gorilla wasn't around to burn his ears from talking too much about basketball. Well, they were talking about experienced misfortunes, parties and shopping and crushes and more academics and all those chrissake craps, and swear to all integrity Kogure can imagine himself gobbled up by Samael after being consumed by hellish fires for enduring such monotonous talks. Day after day, in the same table in this antique cafeteria – perpetually their conversations are always monotonous they make Kogure reach out for a nail and hammer and stick it right through his skull. That would be a grand idea. His mouth always gets anesthetized by his expressions of enthusiasm and frigging eagerness; in all candor, day after day it makes him sad getting to hear freaking abstracts of nonsensical colloquialism, but everytime the thought of normality haunts him madly he yields to his own self-deception.
This has gone for years. As preposterous as it sounds, Kogure is never the believer of hopes and dreams and that fucking crap; moments of tragedy and pleasure are made out one's authentic self that transcends in this meaningless world. Kogure, believe it or not, has realized this since he was still a child; it was uncanny (and godly), he admits, but that was what really happened. He was taught with things he, in the frigging first place, didn't want, but here he is pretending to be someone. He is an overman, for freaking sake.
And after more lethargic hours, the most tremendous torture has begun.
He is already feeling his dratted body twitching in freaking complaints about fatigue and all that; the idea of excusing himself from the practice already is really a comforting idea indeed, but he would rather be a buffoon for not telling Akagi and instead attempts to shoot. As always, Mitsui scolds him for doing the right stance. Big deal. Does the blue-haired piece of junk know that Kogure's been playing basketball for three years? How preposterous! He must be coming on to him or something like that. Yeah; Kogure likes the idea that people salivate over him because of his normal self, because of the vulnerability people see beautiful. Something in the normal guy that's really worth the beauty. Big freaking deal. He followed Mitsui nevertheless, and it quite irked him, quite saddened him, quite made him happy. It was preposterous, he silently admits, but the concoction of these feelings was making him... normal, he guessed. So in pretension, when the practice game is about to end, those comforting words of encouragement were making him nauseous because... he was the one mouthing them! What pain is it to say something you don't want to say? Well, Kogure wants to say those loving words because he wants to be the normal guy, the normal guy that retains a repute of optimism.
The practice game ended and he made sure he was the last one to go and even scrubbed the floors and cleaned the whole lockers for freaking sake; fortunately Mitsui was there to help him, as it was his scheduled day to clean the whole gymnasium. Still, it was already making him drop dead but because his driver will come from afar he had to kill time. "Fuck really."
"Come again?" Kogure asked.
"People get to read Da Vinci Code and they consider themselves intellectual. What pigs, eh?"
"I haven't read that book yet,"
"Really? That's a shocker; I honestly think though that the book wants recognition, that's all, without attending to literary aesthetics. Take Salinger for example. You read his Catch in Rye? It was brilliant." The thing about the nuisance in Kogure right now is the fucking pretension all over Mitsui; in frigging fact, he has read Dan Brown's crap. And in all honesty, Kogure thinks Mitsui hasn't read any good literature. How could he anyway? And for crying out loud, it's Catcher in the Rye.
"Really..."
"About honestly and all... upright existence."
"You must be reading a lot to say such interpretations."
"Hell yeah; you know Julie? Our lit class? She writes these perfect characters and I honestly think they're a no-no. You write cliché and you become one. Delusion, that freaking delusion."
"Yeah, I can tell..."
"You should start learning outside school Kogure, else you might become an automaton."
Is he fucking kidding him? Mitsui packed up then. "Well, I gotta go."
"See you tomorrow Mitsui."
"Ja." Whatever made him so unfortunate to be involved in such pesky conversation? Awful... really awful; the trouble was, the trouble was that anything outside his own pretension was making him nauseous. It was funny, in a way, because he can curse at the stupidity of them all while he thrives on his own stupidity; in a way, too, he was sad: it was the saddening consequences of trying to be this fucking kindhearted and all that jazz when you're actually not. To make it worse, he's been normal for years! How pathetic is that? He still lives in the underground, he was sure of that. He packed up his things and decided that the whole gymnasium is the most uncontaminated place on earth, and went outside and heard the car growling.
"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," Kogure has said, sitting beside the driver.
"I only waited for some minutes," and Akira Sendoh kissed his forehead as he smiled. Kogure flashed a gesture of satisfaction – a smile – articulating his first genuine act for the whole day.
Argh, I didn't edit the first draft and sorry for the mistakes. Anyway, I remembered the scenes where Kogure and Akagi meets at the Basketball Gymnasium where the former reasoned out that he's joining a basketball club because he wanted to exercise -- a really splendid excuse. Anyway, hell yeah, I honestly deserve a flame for this one. Really. Anyway, my usage of underground alludes to Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground and overman to that of Nietzsche. Kogure's line about translating something is from one of SD's OSTs. Disclaimers apply.