Once more, I find myself staying awake till an ungodly hour and putting my pen to paper. These times are rare - I generally find myself dozing off to sleep by 22:00. However, occasionally, I just feel the urge to stay up till late and...write. I just feel like refilling the ink in my Waterman Carène, and inscribing my words onto this Seyès ruled paper of my Clairefontaine journal. I have always found Seyès paper to be a wonderful medium for writing with my fountain pens. I'm quite closely attached to this kind of paper, having used it since childhood. Back in France, I learnt penmanship at my école élémentaire and even my école maternelle. [note 1] Albeit a bit restricting, writing on the « grands carreaux » [note 2] had also been a way for me to cultivate my own consistent cursive style and thus it actually fostered my creativity…or maybe idiosyncrasy. Having thus eulogised my paper, I would like to panegyrise my pen.
The Waterman Carène is an elegant writing instrument. Its nib, with its elegantly crafted and fluid curves conjure up the sleekest lines for the letters comprising my words, like a plunging bow navigating the ruled page at the helm of which is a hand tempered with years of meticulous handwriting instruction. C'est l'élégance pure. ( It's pure elegance ) The cerulean lacquer finish of the sleek body of the pen reminds me of the eyes of a certain someone. There's no gainsaying that Yukinoshita Yukino is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire existence. That……………………………..invokes an overwhelming sense of pity in me for her. Beauty is fleeting, it fades with time and age - consequently, any fancy based purely on beauty would fade with time and age. Fancy dies in its own cradle. As in the words of Shakespeare himself,
« Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?
Reply, reply.
It is engendered in the eyes,
With gazing fed, and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.
Let us all ring fancy's knell.
I'll begin it — Ding, dong, bell. » [note 3]
But I digress...just now, I had been reflecting on what happened today - or rather yesterday, for it's already forty-three minutes past midnight. Sodding hell…
Well, a lot of things happened on the 5th of June.
Let me begin from the beginning. I was walking down the hallway. Outside, all the members of the track running club of Sōbu High School were practising. As the rays of the afternoon sun cascaded through the casement windows on the left side of the hall, I could see the runners moving briskly past me in the opposite direction. Personally, being jaded with my very life itself, I had an even more blasé attitude towards sports. I kept walking as if I were walking through an enfiladed hallway, in a direction opposite to the athletic lads and lassies running outside. They were disgustingly, revoltingly, execrably, egregiously second-rate simpletons, whilst I was, and am, an insufferable nihilist who had gradually come to agree with almost all of Cioran's ideas.
There were a myriad of athletic clubs in this school. In a team, there was no room for individuality. They are built on a spirit which insists on everyone being prosaic, run-of-the-mill and not standing out too much, or better yet not standing out at all. Anyone such as me would be utterly unwelcome, and I likewise had no interest in joining a team. I was, am, and will remain a loner. Besides, I wasn't that athletic either. I was actually quite gaunt.
By the time I reached the teachers' lounge at the end of the corridor, I had already come up with several explanations for why Hiratsuka-sensei had called me to meet her after all my classes. The most likely one was that she wanted to talk to me about the essay which I had handed in. « An essay on my purpose in life. » was the topic. I had written the entire essay in a fit of insomnia throughout the whole night. I wrote fervently with a passion, beginning at 03:00 on the 4th of June, which calmed down gradually as dawn approached. As I entered the teachers' lounge, I braced myself. I was expecting the worst, whatever the heck that might be… getting expelled? Albeit expelling someone just for an essay seemed a bit draconian…
Hiratsuka-sensei was seated on a sofa at a corner by the windows. There were two sofas facing each other, besides a glass table in between the two with an ashtray on top. She beckoned me with her right hand to come over and sit down on the other sofa. In her left hand, she had a few sheets of paper. When I stole a glance at the writing on it, I saw that it was my essay. As always, she was wearing a black waistcoat over a white shirt with a maroon tie, below her white single-breasted coat besides her black trousers. With the afternoon sunrays streaming through her waist-length raven hair, her attractive face looked even more attractive. However, an attractive woman in a formal attire about to burst into a fiery rage is one of the most petrifying things to behold. I would be lying if I were to say that I wasn't nervous at all as I faced her, for I felt that I had turned into a piece of stone. Taking the piss out of society isn't something that's looked upon favourably here. The nail that sticks out will be hammered down. I was the nail, sticking out after having written that audacious essay, and as Hiratsuka-sensei opened her mouth, I prepared to get struck down by the hammer.
« Pray tell me, Hikigaya, what made you write this drivel? »
She held up the essay manuscripts in her left hand.
« …I do believe in every single word that I wrote in the essay, so in my eyes it isn't nonsense. It is the truth, as I see it. »
I tried to overcome my nervousness by maintaining a stoic demeanour and answering sincerely.
« …huh? You actually believe what you wrote here? »
Her tone betrayed her vexation.
« Why wouldn't I? »
« This is way worse than I had thought… »
« I am just answering candidly, with what I think. I am not to blame if my thoughts don't line up with yours, am I? »
« You're still young, and have your whole life ahead of you. It's still too early to set your opinions in stone, lad. This is the time to be open-minded, not obdurate. »
She threw the manuscripts onto the table and lit a cigar before continuing.
« Plenty of philosophers have reached different conclusions from Emil Mihai Cioran with regards… »
She puffed out some smoke before continuing again.
« …with regards to the human condition. Without descending into nihilism, let alone antinatalism. »
As she uttered the last word she quite visibly frowned in frustration.
« Your writing skills are good – your essay has brilliant usage of rhetoric, fairly eloquent style, and is replete with quotations and excerpts from some fairly big names. It's a real shame, however, that due to your warped and twisted ideology, your writing skills went down the drain. Your ideas aren't even coherent, something which you realised a lot later whilst writing the essay yourself – so you decided to use your shallow knowledge of Freudian psychoanalysis to churn out an excuse in order to address this inconsistency. »
She exhaled her smoke deeply and for a long time, as if she were almost sighing. Every word of hers had pierced me profoundly, and rendered me utterly bereft of any words to redeem myself.
She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.
« Why are you silent now? »
At that moment, the last few lines of Cioran's De l'inconvénient d'être né echoed within my head, resonated with my feelings – more than ever.
« Je n'ai rien, je n'ai rien, j'ai fait seulement un bond hors de mon sort, et je ne sais plus maintenant vers quoi me tourner, vers quoi courir… »
( Nothing, nothing's the matter, I've merely taken a leap outside my fate, and now I don't know where to turn, what to run for… )
« … »
Hiratsuka-sensei furrowed her eyebrows in frustration. Oh my! I forgot that she was my Japanese teacher, not French teacher. Oh well, too bad for her. She would never know what I meant, and I didn't give a damn either.
« You truly are a living, breathing inducer of crippling depression. »
Wait, so she understood what I just said? She sneered at me, causing me to squirm. Suddenly, Sensei's face lit up.
« Have you joined any afterschool club yet, Hikigaya? »
« …hein? Eh, ehm…I was thinking about joining the Literature Club. »
Although I wasn't originally planning to, I knew that I had to answer in the affirmative if I wanted to get over with dealing with this scary woman.
« Hmm, I see. Shiromeguri has been pretty busy with her Student Council duties, so it won't be a bad idea…well then, follow me! »
Saying so, she sprung up to her feet and gripped me by my right hand. It seemed as if to her, being dragged was the same as following someone…
I was dragged all the way through the myriad of corridors and staircases, but I didn't even attempt to resist because she hadn't gripped me too tightly either. Besides, a certain part of her attracted my impulses…admittedly, she did have some quite good assets. Well, I naturally found it to be nothing more than a bit curious. I shifted my thoughts to less trivial matters; more specifically, I was wondering as to who the devil this Shiromeguri was. « Most likely a girl, a member of the Literature Club without a doubt, and possibly the only member. Busy with Student Council duties…most probably the Secretary, the Vice-President, or the President… » , and so I got lost in my thoughts as Sensei dragged me towards the end of a hallway. Eventually, the sound from our footsteps on the linoleum floor was the only thing that could be heard. The resonating clang felt almost rhythmic, and then it suddenly stopped.
« We're here. »
Saying so, Sensei opened the door to a classroom which had nothing distinct about it from the outside apart from the bold capitals on the doorplate which said:
LITERATURE CLUB
« Hiratsuka-sensei? »
The voice of a sincere-looking girl with twin plaits greeted her.
« I found you a new member. »
« Oh! Is that so? Why, welcome! I am Shiromeguri Meguri of class 2-J, the President of the Literature Club, and also the President of the Student Council. It's a great pleasure to meet you. »
Her cheerful voice caught me off guard for a split-second and even made her formal greetings sound really sincere – which they probably were.
« M-merci beaucoup. Je suis Hikigaya Hachiman de la classe 1-J, enchantée de vous rencontrer. » ( T-thank you very much. I am Hikigaya Hachiman of class 1-J, it's nice to meet you. )
« Eh? Vous parlez français? » ( Eh? You speak French? )
« Ou-ouais… » ( Y-yeah… )
Fortunately, she could speak French. Unfortunately, I went from formal to casual due to my nervousness. In my nervousness, I also forgot to add that I could speak languages other than French as well. Suffice to say, I made yet another faux pas.
« C'est bien! Voici le formulaire de candidature pour le club de littérature... » ( That's good! Here's the application form for the literature club... )
Saying thus, she took a form from a cardboard box filled with documents nearby and handed it to me. The application form was in French.
« Me-merci… » ( Th-thanks... )
« De rien! » ( You're welcome! )
She smiled and tilted her head as she said so. Her vivaciousness was almost infectious.
Hiratsuka-sensei interjected: « He can speak in Japanese too by the way. »
« Is that so? »
« Y-yeah, I can speak in Japanese as well… »
Of course I could. It's just in my journal entries that I translate all the Japanese dialogues into English.
« Oh, you sound exactly like a native Japanese speaker from Chiba! »
« Well, yeah. My parents are originally from Chiba, but I was born in France. I was raised trilingual from birth, so I am fluent in French, Japanese, as well as English… »
Thanks to my polyglot parents. My father, who worked as an interpreter, always had been obsessed with European languages and cultures. My mother was also a Francophile, who had attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris even though there was one at Daikanyama in Tokyo.
« Amazing…oh and by the way, please take your seats! »
The room was more spacious than a normal classroom. There were bookshelves against the wall on the left-side, huge shuttered windows on the wall facing towards the door with black curtains that had white geometric patterns on them, and a huge rectangular Cherrywood table as well as a number of wooden chairs with metallic frames around the table, with another stack of the same chairs lying in a secluded corner to the right. Hiratsuka-sensei's voice brought me out of my daze.
« Ah…I have got some work right now. I will see you both again tomorrow, I need to go now. »
« Alright. See you tomorrow, Sensei. »
« See you tomorrow, Sensei. »
As Hiratsuka-sensei left the room, shutting the door behind her, Shiromeguri-senpai and I sat down at the table. I was carrying my bag all this time, but I didn't notice it. It was so light I could barely feel its weight on my shoulder. I took out my Waterman Carène and began filling the form. In the space left for the signature of the club advisor was Hiratsuka-sensei's signature.
« I can't tell you just how glad I am that you joined this club! »
« Why's that? »
I already had a vague idea as to why, still I asked in order to verify.
« You see, as the President of the Student Council I am usually busy with a lot of other stuff which takes up a lot of my time after the classes. As a result, most of the time I am unable to even show up for my club activities…besides, I was the only member – before you came. »
Upon uttering the last phrase, she smiled mirthfully. I couldn't help but smile back – her mirthfulness was quite infectious. As I filled my application form, my mind wandered off elsewhere. Shiromeguri-senpai took out a book and began to read it – it was an Œuvre Complète ( Complete Works ) of Guy de Maupassant. Good taste.
She knew French, and probably even other languages. She was probably an assiduous and sincere person, and I could see why she got elected as the Student Council President. She also seemed to be a lover of literature. All these garnered within me respect towards her. She even went through the trouble of printing out separate admission forms in different languages, thinking about possible expatriate or foreign students. Although I didn't need an admission form in French, it was still quite considerate of her – or rather, hopelessly optimistic. Indeed, she was also a nice person – and that made me crestfallen within. Nice people are nice to everyone; and as in the words of Aristotle, a friend to all is a friend to none.
After getting over with the paperwork, much to my surprise I decided to stay back at the club for a little longer before going home. There was no denying the fact that this room was an ideal place for reading activities. Being at the far end of a corridor, it had quite a tranquil atmosphere. Thanks to the gargantuan windows, the room was also well-illuminated by sunlight. Actually, it almost felt as if the entire room was drenched in the crimson sunset. One window had its shutter half-opened, and a light breeze blew into the room causing the curtain near the window to flutter like the sails on the mast of a ship.
I took out Die Leiden des jungen Werthers by Goethe and started reading it. I was fairly proficient in German, especially when it came to reading. However, I couldn't speak German that well as I had learnt most of my German through books. Goethe's epistolary novel was the only book I was carrying in my bag that day besides a couple of notebooks and my stationery box. For IB, one didn't need to cram that much – most of the studying was based on research rather than rote memorisation. One of the reasons I chose IB over the standard Japanese curriculum, but I digress.
The foreword induced a feeling of foreboding. I already had an inkling of what was to transpire over the course of this Briefroman. ( Epistolary novel ) [note 4] It would be a story of unrequited love, and I personally could relate to the feeling of one's love being unrequited more than anyone. I was around halfway through the first entry which was dated 4th May 1771, when my thoughts regarding unrequited love resurfaced. I had a sudden flashback. It was a sour memory from my junior high school years in Chiba.
It was after all the classes had ended. There was no one in the classroom, except for me and a certain girl on whom I, for some reason – or none, had a crush. The room was drenched in the light of the dying rays of the setting sun. Something else would die that day – something quite abstract, yet at the same time quite palpable. As the wind blew in through the windows from outside, it made the curtains flutter and momentarily hid the girl from my sight. When the wind subsided, I gathered all my strength and did my best to shrug off any feelings of embarrassment or nervousness – and confessed my feelings to her. Then came those callous words of hers.
« Can't we just be friends? »
Friends. Friends...did she say? We didn't even speak anymore after that, let alone be friends – and here my highly optimistic and naïve past self had believed that he could fall in love with someone and it would be reciprocated. Far from brooding over this harsh rejection, I merely accepted the futility of my existence. After all, can those who accept and embrace failure ever really fail or be struck by it? As in the words of Cioran, « La seule manière de supporter revers après revers est d'aimer l'idée même de revers. Si on y parvient, plus de surprises : on est supérieur à tout ce qui arrive, on est une victime invincible. » ( The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims. )
I was brought out of my state of reverie when the door of the clubroom opened abruptly. I didn't bother to look at who it was.
« Hiratsuka-sensei, you came back? »
Shiromeguri-senpai was naturally confused because Sensei had clearly stated earlier that she would be seeing us again the next day.
« Ah, sorry, I forgot to introduce you to another member whom I found for your club. I'm a bit busy though so I'll see you all tomorrow. »
Saying thus Hiratsuka-sensei left as abruptly as she had entered. Shiromeguri-senpai merely nodded in return, a bit surprised naturally.
« I am extremely rueful for the sudden intrusion. »
« Not at all! »
I hadn't even looked up at the girl yet I instantly recognised her voice. Frankly there wasn't anything contrite about her tone. If I were to write verbatim in Japanese what she said instead of translating it into English, I would end up using some extremely keigo speech. There were many things which were unnatural about her speech, and made her stand out. She sounded like she didn't know how to talk with people, basically, which further verified my conjecture that she was a loner.
« I am Yukinoshita Yukino, the class representative of 1-J, and I would like to join the Literature Club. »
« I am Shiromeguri Meguri of class 2-J, the President of the Literature Club, and also the President of the Student Council. It fills me with great pleasure that you want to join our club! Here is the admission form for our club. »
Saying so, Shiromeguri-senpai handed an admission form to Yukinoshita, who then took her seat at the far end of the table by the windows and began filling it out. Without closing the book, I shifted my vision towards her. At that moment a breeze blew in through the windows from outside. Her long, flowing tresses swayed in the wind with the light of the setting sun engulfing her face in a graceful embrace – as if she wasn't attractive enough already.
« Shiromeguri-senpai, it would be advisable to not let down your guard before this pervert who's lecherously staring at me right now. »
« ...uhhh… »
Yet again, I had let myself get captivated by her beauty. I really need to read some stoic philosophy, I thought at that moment. Shiromeguri-senpai was naturally unsure as to how to defuse the situation. At that moment, I found the exact words which I needed to rebuke this virago – right in front of me on the very page of the book I was reading.
« ...Mißverständnisse und Trägheit vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt machen als List und Bosheit. Wenigstens sind die beiden letzteren gewiß seltener. »
( ...misunderstandings and neglect occasion more mischief in the world than even malice and wickedness. At all events, the two latter are of less frequent occurrence. )
« What are those strange guttural sounds which you are making? »
I couldn't help but sigh at that.
« I was quoting Goethe. I can't possibly be bothered with explaining to you what the aforementioned quote meant, learn some German I guess. »
« I find it quite surprising that a delinquent like you reads Goethe... »
« Well, don't judge a book by its cover. Besides, I am not a pervert. I don't just blindly follow my impulses. Impulsive desires are, in general, shallow. As such any satisfaction derived from them is shallow as well. »
« Your actions say otherwise. I believe that you should follow what you preach, Hypocrite-kun. »
She grinned sardonically as she uttered her words. I didn't want to waste time in a dialectic with this bitch, and I decided to keep reading about the sorrows of young Werther instead. For all the while that we had been exchanging barbs, Shiromeguri-senpai had probably been staring on haplessly. Shortly afterwards, we ended our club activities, cleaned up and went back to our respective abodes.
Bonne nuit. ( Good night. )
N.B.:
Note 1 — In France an école maternelle is a kindergarten whilst an école élémentaire is an elementary school.
Note 2 — In France, « Grands carreaux » ( literally « big tiles » ) or Seyès paper is the standard ruled paper used in schools. Created by Jean-Alexandre Seyès, it is used to foster handwriting skills in schoolchildren. These types of ruled paper have fine horizontal lines every 2 mm, horizontal and vertical lines every 8 mm, and a margin on the left.
Note 3 — Lines 65-73, Act III Scene II of The Merchant of Venice. In the original journal entry, the author wrote these lines in an extremely beautiful Ronde cursive style – probably done deliberately to create a contrast between the orthography and the semantics.
Note 4 — Brief ( letter, note or epistle ) and Roman ( novel )
