seven the youth (ultraseven for adults) #29 lonely earthman

This story is a homage to Ultra Seven, Tsuburaya and dedicated to the Youth.

#29 lonely earthman

Feel lonely in condominium or in hometown, everywhere.  So many people around, where have they gone?  Had been originally all alone, could have given up.  There were exactly a lot of people around.  They suddenly disappeared, as soon as took a leave of absence from work.  In retrospect, have hurt not a few people, so often think that would have to pay for them.  Which might be high time.  Pretend to be strong, but actually get lonely easily.  About to be killed by loneliness and sense of guilt.

About two months since Father was hospitalized, accompanied by Mother.  Father talks, but repeatedly asks what and what, because he has poor ears from aging.  Mother also repeats the same talk, because of dimentia.  Moreover at last, stopped hearing from wife.  So came to talk with nobody, left alone on the Earth.  How many lonely earthmen should there be? 

Since left work it is more than one year and half, but depression has not at all been healed.  Although started work-return training, the decision might have been premature.  Usually these two months, drive back and forth between TOKIO and Ashikaga, TOCHIGI on weekdays, and stay at parents' house on weekends.  But this weekend I feel sick in bed, TOKIO.  Hospital training is left just a fourth, after which school training will start.  

Have got used to everyday crowded train, and opened up to other trainees, to whom did not even say hello first.  Totally, three men and six women.  Two women have decided to resign from teaching work during the training.  Commonly, such a thing is come out in public during group mental therapy.

The shortage of teachers is actually a serious problem in TOKIO. right now, because more teachers resign and less people want to be a teacher.  Most quit because of mental disease.

Some trainees repeat thd training more than a year, some leave work the second time, and some have family.  HATAORI Kazuo (#16)(#23) has got interested in one woman.

She is the youngest in her mid twenties, with much of face behind long black hair and large white mask.   She left work just a few months after she began working at school, she says.  She had been kept from trying to jump into train at the nearest station, lie or truth.  But more or less, these patients sometimes want to kill themselves.  

One day, she is absent from training.  Fundamentally, the patient are not allowed to take a day off, because it is also a kind of training, except special reason.  (She didn't either,) Kazuo says to himslf.  But the next training, model lessons, she is present.  She seldom says a word, but in her lesson she gives an "awesome" class, as if she were not what she always is.  Spnaking fluent Kyoto dialect, she teach junior-high Japanese classics to the students, or the patients.  Kazuo has since been charmed with her lesson, as a religious believer.

She is dressed in white with clear skin and voice, and black hair and eyes.  Looks like yuki onna, or snow woman in fairy tale.  He is following her with eyes naturally, and at last just thinking about her comes to make him heavy hearted.  He will not do something.  But the less about her he tries to think, the more often their eyes comes to meet.  

When he finishes Friday training, lonely weekend will come again.  Thinking of going to hometown, he has decided not to today.  He is spending the night of loneliness in the room of darkness, lying on the bed with his eyes up to the ceiling.  He can neither fall asleep nor stay awake for such a while as he does not know.  The rope ring is still hanging down, which is not merely a border between two rooms but also one between life and death.  The longer time he stares into the rope ring, the larger the space inside the ring seems to become. 

One moment, he finds somebody in white has suddenly appeared.  
""HATAORI han, I'm here now.""
"Wh, why are you here now?  How?"
""You're lonely, n't you?  That's why I'm here now.""
A moment, she is in his arms with nothing on.
The moment he holds it tight, he wakes up.
(Dream, of course.)
He becomes all the more lonely for the happy dream.  And closes his eyes again.  To his surprise, she is still in his.  
""If you like, I'd like to be with you.""
While sleeping and waking over and over again, he is going staler and staler, or more and more life is taken.  Nevertheless, he does not mind.  He would rather die a happy death than live a lonely life.

Kazuo's life has been targeted by mental attacker types of aliens because of extremely negative power.  Alien PROTE also wanted it, so possessed the young woman suicider, first.  Kazuo was the next target.  Indeed, much power is needed to live, but more power might be necessary to end life.

As well as other aliens, MOROBOSHI has realized how much tremendously negative energy Kazuo potentially has.  So he pays attention to Kazuo as often as he can.  He happenes to pass Kazuo's condominium, when ET radar is responding.  Instead of knocking the door, he teleports into the living room so that he cannot be recognized.  The room is filled with darkness and weirdness.  At the other side of rope ring, Kazuo is lying or being laid on the bed.  Taking a closer look, MOROBOSHI has found alien PROTE, which looks like a huge gecho, on the ceiling right above Kazuo.  Its long tongue is hanging from under its mask down into his mouth and sucking up his energy of life.

""Who's it?  Don't disturb.""
The moment it glares at MOROBOSHI through its long hair, the knife of light has cut the rope ring and  the tall tongue.  The next moment, the beam from forehead has burnt down the alien.

Kazuo woke up.
(Too much sleep?)
In the darkness, he did not know whether it was day or night.  Turning on TV, there was SHO-TEN on air.
(Sunday evening!  So much sleep.  Dad might be watching on TV.)
Opening the curtain, he saw the sun fading out into haze or smoke, whether he did not know.  Finding the rope on the floor, which had been cut and fallen.  He did not have no idea why, but it also did not matter to him.  Staring at the ring, loneliness and darkness appeared again like his old friends.  The rope ring, falling down, had changed from round room with nothing into round face of floor, but, nevertheless, it still remained the border between life and death.  All he managed to do was listen to the sound of silence.

Since the next day, she has never ever appeared at the hospital training.  Although one of the nine trainees disappeared, MYSTERIOUSLY, the number of trainees is the same, nine.  He knows she has gone, but does not know who is in place of her.
(If I saw you next, I might be able to talk to you.)
As a matter of course, she also has not shown up in his dream.  
(You've gone, I don't know why.  Alone again.)

Hospital will not tell him any personal information about her.  Where does she live?  What kind of life will she live?  Whether she was an alien or not, nobody knows.  No more way to find the answer, at least on the Earth.

#29   the end