I'm In Debt to Akiko

By MORI Hiroshi

"You’re Kimoto-kun, right?"

Akiko knew my name.
I met her for the first time in a university cafeteria.
She tempted me to skive off classes and go out with her.

Anyone could be chosen as her companion.
I might be a backup for someone else.
While thinking about the issue, I spent strange hours with Akiko.

I was confused by her occasional expressions and mysterious behaviors.
I was not sure to what extent her story was true and which parts of her story were lies.

It took me a considerable amount of time to recognize the truth hidden behind Akiko ...

This work was first published in 1999 by Kodansha and translated in 2014 for The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Oct 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312640641

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I'm In Debt to Akiko

I’m In Debt to Akiko

Originally written in Japanese by MORI, Hiroshi

Translated by Ryusui Seiryoin

Cover illustration by Polka D

Cover design by Tanya

This work was first published in Japan in 1999.

Japanese edition copyright © 1999 MORI, Hiroshi / Kodansha

English edition copyright © 2014 MORI, Hiroshi / The BBB: Breakthrough Bandwagon Books

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-312-64064-1

-1-

Now I will tell you about the most mysterious and the strangest memory ever in my life.

It is about a girl named Akiko.

At the southern dining hall of the university co-op store, I met Akiko for the first time. Which means that it was when I was still in a general education curriculum. My being a mammal would make me feel a bit worried about the fact that I had to line up like dominoes, pass through a register with my back straightened like toy soldiers, and eat with others so defenselessly close to them to the extent that we would bump each others’ shoulders. All of that just for the sake of Set Lunch A or Set Lunch B which were lunch packages like dried school-provided meals. Still, I analyzed the circumstance and concluded that I had to acclimate myself to such a threatening experience because such aggression would be repeated countlessly upon me for the rest of my life anyway. I expected to develop inside me the immunity to the humans as if it was a remedy. Those were the days of the fading memories.

To put it another way, it was the time when I felt that the shield that formed my very being might be buried within me underneath my skin.

***

I hated the chopsticks, the cross-sections of which were circular. They were provided in dining halls of the university co-op stores. I couldn’t stand their low functionality. That was the reason why I always ate lunch efficiently with a single fork. I remember that, after the beginning of the second semester, I deliberately came to lunch in the time slot in which the dining hall was sparsely populated with life forms, in exchange for being late for afternoon classes.

She wiped the table with tissue paper, and sat at the vacant seat right in front of me. If my memory is correct, I think she was carrying a bowl of ramen noodle on a tray. I realized that the noodle of co-op ramen was yellowish. I suspected that it was the same noodle as that for yakisoba (Japanese fried noodle with sauce).

Are you eating it with a fork?

It must have taken quite a long time for me to lift my face to react to what she said. It was the time that I needed to utilize to transform the sound waves emanated from others into a linguistic form.