Afterword—Before Stepping Out Beneath the Sun
In the works of Takahashi Yousuke-sensei[1], there’s a short story called “When Milk Turns a Screw.” Its scant pages are further separated into episodes, making them more like flash fiction. And in one of these episodes, the protagonist, a girl called Milk, asks her father about her pregnant mother. “Is having a child really that hard?” she asks him, and he replies, “In your mother’s belly, there’s a baby that’s tracing the evolution of all living beings on earth up to this moment. It takes time to become a human.”
His answer was quite philosophical, but after hearing this, Milk prays to God in heaven that it must be hard for her mother, so she wants her little brother to be born already, even if he’s only part matured. Her wish is granted and… Well, that’s the gist of the story.
There are a lot of gags that rocket into the surreal in the works of the master mangaka of the strange, and this is one of them. Or rather, it’s a story representative of his earlier works. Anyway, as for what ends up being born, that’s a twist I’m not going to spoil for you. All I’ll say is that by the end, I was very impressed, going “Aha, I see… ”
In other words, if we assume that the half-developed fetus growing in the womb has awareness, the moment it first wonders what it is, in so far as the basis for its assessment is its current self, I considered: Would he or she keep mistaking itself for an amoeba? Or a fish? Or a lizard? I’m sure plenty of my readers right now are thinking, “Who gives a shit?” But think about it. We’ve actually already experienced something just like this, after leaving the eggshell that is the womb. No, really.
Supposedly, when you’re a kid, there’s a time that everyone thinks they’re number 1. Looking back at my own childhood, I get the feeling there were a lot of times where I might not have been so honest with myself about a number of things, but I did think that people who think they’re amazing are the coolest in the world. As I grew up, I started to catch on that they weren’t necessarily all that, and that I and things related to me weren’t really all that significant.
Having said that, not all misconceptions disappear once you’ve grown up. Rather—and this is just my personal viewpoint—the things I thought about when I was a child were so primitive that they were guaranteed to be off, but in the same way that a life that’s only just sprung into being thinks “I’m a cell.” In a way, it’s still more accurate than the “I’m a fish” thought that’s further down the line, isn’t it? Then, isn’t it actually worse when a misunderstanding has grown to a certain size? Even though they’re both still part-way, don’t people just tend to think that the place they’re in now is the most correct one?
Having said all that, I have no intention whatsoever of claiming that the pure feelings of childhood are the closest we’ll come to the truth. Children’s notions go too far overboard and are totally hopeless at dealing with reality. Just look at me, the guy who’s childish enough to keep digging myself into holes, who can’t improve himself despite all the hardships he’s going through. So it has to be true! Though…to sum it up, I think all I want to really say is this, to one strangely self-assured individual :
“How can you be sure you’ve got yourself all figured out now? You got it so wrong when you were a child.”
You might still be “midway[2],” and you don’t even know what’ll come next! You seem to think that ultimately, that’s just the way the world and your inner self are, but what if that very state is inside the egg and still hasn’t become what it was meant to be? Maybe none of us have even broken our shells and worshipped the sun!
Anyway, yes, things like that.
(…Really though, isn’t this very text an immature piece of work that’s still in its shell?!)
(Hmm… Well, whatever. And that attitude’s probably a misunderstanding right there, huh…)
BGM: “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” by Pink Floyd
TL Notes for the Afterword
[1] A Horror mangaka
[2] This term, 途中 (tochuu) or “midway” appears in this segment a lot but keeping the term the same is difficult in this section. The fetus is “midway,” people are just “midway” as they get older, ect.
[3] Basically, means that a person is “putting on a brave face.” Was going to localize the phrase but kept it as-is because of the connection to Tooru.
[4] More wordplay with 途中. Once again made it a bit more literal to at least attempt to preserve the multiple meanings. It’s a jab at his own writing for being “immature” but it’s also a play on that this is an unfinished story, much like how an Embryo is an unfinished lifeform.