Showa's Last Train

Life has derailed me in recent weeks. Unread texts from people I care about multiplied like dishes in the sink. Maybe I will go back to them before they start wondering if I was purposefully sabotaging our relationships. 

This month, I have been transfusing music from 1981. Yah Yah Yah from Chage and Aska is flowing out from a device I left illuminated—because a girl in a distant dream pulled the worn cassette out from her bag. 

"do you feel it now?", she exhaled with a scent of peach. 

When I awoke, my finger was already tightened on the rewind button. 

Tonight, when I close my eyes, the pale walls of my rental dissolved. The sea breeze comes first, and then the colours kick in—slightly off-green, like a pack of Fujifilm 400. The wood floor creaks gently under my bare feet. The sizzling of korokke and the smell of glazed onions, mixed with her faint peach fragrance. The shoji glows behind me with a dim light. A fan on the chabutai shakes its head in disapproval at her questionable demeanour, blowing away the summer heat as the last train pierces across my balcony into the night, like a whistling arrow. She was there, whispering all the unknown titles close to my ears, as she shared a Midori-menthol with me that was slightly too punchy. I remembered her lipstick marks on the filter.

Perhaps they failed to fully factory-reset me. I was left with the weight of a time I didn't exist. As I opened my eyes, the fluorescent light and the marble floor stung my retina as much as the rejection to leave my trace in this dwelling. "you will move soon". Fuck that. I immediately lit up a cigarette in the cold wind, not midori, a cheap malboro ice blast from the konbini downstairs. I snatched for my phone, memes, braindead rants, sexually frustrated 2025 kids... But then I saw it. An apartment that filmed tokyo love story was recently up for sale. In that same condition I remembered from television, in a price where Japan's inflation forgot to jack up. That is a place I am willing to bleed, I thought to myself. I am not staying here. I will go find her. 

Caffeine Level: Insufficient. Mood Dial: Unpredictable. Blog Output: ???

I was about to drown in Debussy, but then I remembered I owed my roommate a happy blog, so here we are.

It was a night on the balcony, drunk. When I realised that happiness exists for me, even in adversity. Happy things. remember... Happy things only. 

So tonight I was torn apart by insufficient nicotine, completely sober, and sexually deprived, yet overdue in my French homework. After 6-8 months (couldn't remember) without RTX 4090, I found myself playing Civilisation V. I have come to realise why people call that game addictive. Having sucked in any online games, I took my time in reading the tutorial. Afternoon flew past, I didn't even bother to stand up and smoke. It was about conquering the hexagons roleplaying Oda Nobunaga. Why haven't I discovered this earlier when it has been sleeping in my library for more than 4 years? 

As I took a 12 am shower, how very un-American of me, I found myself struck with post-nut-like mental clarity. Perhaps the 28-degree weather has finally breathed some sense into the daily ordeal of hair-drying and tartiner expensive shiseido moisturiser onto my face, that I've recently tried to maintain with certain futility. 

So as I conjure this post in the darkness, the decision has become simple, to achieve celestial revelation through nuking Kuala Lumpur, or to actually show up in class tomorrow, maintaining that same clarity in front of a very sexy french professor. 

I think I will indulge myself with 50 more turns and then sleep, completely abandoning my lost cause to read Baudelaire instead of this godforsaken game which I should be ashamed of playing, and hopefully not resulting in the "one more win and I will sleep" mentality. Although, should I rather be worrying about something else, such as, how to suffer more poetically in another language, where I don't look like a complete fool for the great soul that I have but unable to confide? ... ... Putain, C'est la Merde, I'm too simp for that, I need to destroy Queen Elisabeth I. 

Oh wretched faith...