4

Trauma. Truth be told, I don’t like that word very much. Every time I hear it, I can sense an air of self-indulgence around the person saying it. I guess that’s what happens when the depth and tragedy of a word get completely buried by its excessive overuse.

At this point, whenever I see that word in a soap opera or something, I, and I assume everyone else watching, think, “Good grief, that again. Guess they have to say that, since we’re in modern times.” I honestly find myself wondering if trauma is even something that really exists in this day and age.

Now, every effect has a cause, and I think it’s reasonable that there could exist a cause to create legitimate trauma. At the same time, call me an extremist, but I think it’s hard to say which might be the worst of your options: to have a worry with no clear cause, to have a vaguely bad feeling, or to have a problem with a clear cause. It’s a relief to know what you’re up against, even if that turns out to be a past event or a past self.

Be that as it may, I will still use trauma here, a medical term that has degraded into a rather cheap phrase. Perhaps using it is somewhat self-defeating, but then, bringing all this up in the first place is pretty self-defeating, so I’ll go ahead and just use it and ignore the overall self-defeated value, if that makes any sense.

My main reason (if not my only reason) that I continue to write is due to my trauma. My life’s gone relatively smoothly, which is to say that I never really tried to rock the boat, and my experience has been rather peaceful and ordinary… as long as you consider becoming an author to be equal to the job-hunting process. However, there was one incident in my life that could be called truly special, and not in some acted or directed way.

That event formed the foundation behind how I make stories.

…Still, I think it’s best to preface this story somewhat. Not for the sake of being pretentious; in fact, now that I’ve started, I’d rather get it over with as soon as possible. Not like I don’t want to write a masterpiece of over 1000 pages someday (which, let’s be honest, is far more realistic than breaking my silence ever will be), but you will not find that in this book. I’m not that good at long stories, when it comes down to it.

I’m not a particularly chatty person. Especially when it comes to myself.

At any rate, I only want to use a preface because it is absolutely necessary, like putting your socks on before your shoes. I may be an eccentric, but I’m not a magician who can put his socks on over his shoes.

So, as I said before, this event that occurred in my past, which is very much just an experience that many may find uninteresting, is traumatic, and creates a clear throughline into my becoming an author in the last ten years. However, this story should by no means be considered some kind of guide to becoming an author.

I don’t want anyone to misunderstand, at least not through my personal actions. The purpose of this story would fail if anyone drew the conclusion that, “Oh, so if I had that happen to me, I could become an author.” Now, my experience requires a few active participants, and could not be purposely imitated to my knowledge, but the world and the people in it is vast and varied, so it’s technically not impossible to replicate my experience. Still, I believe I have a duty to state the usual, “Don’t try this at home.”

Besides, I get the feeling that I might be the only person who could have used that experience as a kind of fertilizer to become an author in the first place.

As a further preface, I should make it known that this is not a fictional story, as all my others thus far have been. This isn’t some fictional event meant to be more valuable than reality, but a real event that happened. That makes this book quite different to all the others I’ve published thus far. My intention is to avoid overstatement and unnecessary description, which means there will be a deficit of entertainment value, and there won’t be some brilliant intro, development, twist, and conclusion structure that is the beating heart of fiction. Even trying to briefly recall the event gives me haphazard, incoherent flashes of memory, which is just how reality works.

Now, the author in this experience is certainly immature, that I won’t deny, but since this is still a retelling of reality, it would be wrong to criticize what follows by calling it absurd and slapdash.

I am only going to write exactly what happened.

Now, even in just writing the story as it was, there is a level of consideration I have to take as a member of modern Japanese society. That is, consideration for human rights, personal information, and privacy.

From hereon out, I will refrain from using personal names and locations as much as possible, and if they must be used, they will be pseudonyms. Since that means I must mask what I say to avoid identifying anybody, the story may be difficult to grasp at times.

I hope you can understand. You must know that this is an adult situation. Once you hit your 30s, it doesn’t matter how mentally inept you are, you are still expected to be considerate in these kinds of ways. I may play the eccentric, but I couldn’t pull off the innocent act if things went south.

To cap off this preface, I will explain why I have decided to reveal my trauma. Otherwise, readers will be left wondering what the whole point of this story is. A novel can hardly be exciting when you’re busy questioning the author’s ulterior motives all throughout.

I had never intended to talk about this event, initially. I was prepared to keep my mouth shut about it for my entire life. After all, who would willingly want to blab about their trauma to the public? This may not make sense, given I’m about to tell you, but honestly, I never wanted anyone to know about this. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that I never wanted to remember it. It’s a horrible memory that I’d rather forget.

I thought I’d take it to my grave. Not, of course, that I’d be able to put the secret in my grave, but I was prepared to take it with me into the next life.

So, as for why I decided to talk about it, that can be explained rather simply. It’s because my editor, who has taken such good care of me for so long, is leaving her company to go get married. I’ve been in such good hands, which is another way of saying that I’ve caused a lot of trouble, and I’d been so incapable of repaying that care, meaning I’ve never been able to get my manuscripts done in time. I at least wanted to offer repayment in the form of one final and truly impressive manuscript, and perhaps, in some strange way, feel human.

I wanted to add some color to her final work as an editor, and I’m more than happy to expose myself to a bit of shame to that end.

There are no other reasons.

Besides, for all my bluster about taking this story to my grave earlier, that was just how I felt, just my intention, and I don’t think I really could have done that.

I think I would’ve had to talk about this someday, one way or another.

You could say this is just a convenient opportunity. A good chance to kill two birds with one stone, using the excuse that it’s to repay a favor, while getting to say exactly what I’ve wanted to say for so long. I fulfill both obligation and desire, and perhaps you could call such shrewdness an ulterior motive. Frankly, I’m astounded by the staggeringly human level of emotions this is all giving me.

But that about sums it up. I hope that the readers won’t get caught up in the details, and just listen, or rather read. And just to be sure, I’m going to repeat myself once more.

This is not a story.

This was a real event. An incident.