5

Have you ever seen a girl’s body get torn apart and tossed around? I have. It goes without saying that it was shocking. So shocking that I had a hard time looking at other humans for quite a while afterwards. It made me really think about what a human was, and changed some of my previous assumptions.

I saw that happen 10 years ago.

I was obviously not an author at that time, but as a man who had just hit 20, I think it’s fair to say I wanted to be an author more than I do now. But really, I was just a nobody back then. To use straightforward, unassuming language, I was an aspiring author. A young man who wrote novels (or something approaching novels) and submitted them to every contest I could, hoping to get even a single award.

That said, on the inside, I was more or less the same person I am now. I was still a mental kindergartener back then, and my personality was honestly not all that much different from now. But that’s just me talking, and I could very well be glamorizing my past self and belittling my present self to make sense of things, or possibly the other way around. Objectively speaking, I was likely a more animated person back then, but now I’ve shifted to being a much more distrustful person. I don’t know. There are things that have changed, things that were forced to change, and things that accidentally changed. That’s all very possible… Actually, I’m sure that’s what happened. It would be stranger if things hadn’t changed.

With that in mind, the me from 10 years ago is practically a different person. So, if I had to talk about myself, it might be more polite to talk as if I were sharing someone else’s story. Or at least, I know I wouldn’t want myself in 10 years from now to talk about my current self as if we were one and the same. Who does that guy think he is to talk about me like that? I don’t know him, and I don’t want him talking like he knows me.

Anyway, this is the story of a young man who wanted to be an author.

He wasn’t all that different from the other young men around him. A little bit quicker at writing, but not extraordinarily so. He was just a university student skilled at writing essays and reports and, looking back, was always the first person in class to finish an essay assignment. He was just a guy whose specialty happened to be writing. At the same time, he wasn’t any good at writing novels, so try as he might, he never did win any awards for all the manuscripts he submitted.

He had the fortune to come across several companies and editors, but none of those meetings ever bore fruit. Perhaps someone with more interpersonal skills could have seized those golden opportunities, but to this day I continue to miss out on those kinds of chances.

Frankly, all those editors who wrote me off as hopeless were completely right. I was pretty impetuous about it at the time, wondering how they couldn’t see the brilliance of my novels, but it’s evident to me now how vacuous my writings were. Besides, even if you mercifully ignored all the blatant issues with them, those novels (or so I called them) were missing a certain sparkle.

They weren’t novels written by an author, but rather an aspiring author.

As someone who has now had to choose between authors for awards, I can say for reference that the difference between those two types of novels is rather slight. As far as grammar, or perhaps technique, is concerned, there isn’t some significant gap between authors and aspiring authors. On the contrary, an aspiring author would actually be more careful in that area, like how a driver’s ed student is far more careful at the wheel while trying to get his permit. And just like driving and roads, rough handling isn’t very desirable in a novel.

So, if I had to say what the difference is between an author and an aspiring author, and keep in mind this is purely my personal opinion, it’s the ability to create a story within your own work.

Authors create stories. Aspiring authors just lie. The line dividing a lie and a story is very fine indeed, and intuitive at best, so I can’t really nail it down, but suffice it to say that it’s the job of an editor to draw that line, and in their eyes back then, I didn’t make the cut.

I really was no more than a liar and a blowhard back then. You might think I’m being a bit too harsh on myself, but those weren’t my words. They were a fair assessment from experienced editors towards my works.

There is a real difference between being able to create a story and just telling a lie, in the same way that there is a difference between writing sentences and authoring a novel.

Nowadays I can talk about this stuff as if it’s obvious, though I may sound a bit preachy, but back then I couldn’t accept what I was being told, and just kept writing and writing and writing without applying any of the criticism I was given.

If I had to measure the objective amount of work, like the kind you might get by multiplying Joules or Newtons, then I probably worked more at that time than I do now. Then again, it might not really be considered work, since I wasn’t getting paid, but when I was younger I was capable of filling two or three hundred pages of manuscript paper a day.

Can’t really say that I was authoring novels, though. The best I can say is I was writing something approaching novels.

Maybe saying that those experiences shaped who I am today would sound pretty cool, that those reckless and misguided efforts led me here, but I just don’t think that’s true. At most it feels like all that time summed up to a pointless detour. I can’t help feeling that there was a more efficient path to get to where I am now. Maybe some people wouldn’t like me bringing up efficiency in the pursuit of a dream, but let’s be real, nobody likes wasting time on a detour, no matter what you’re doing.

The one genuine praise I can offer for him from where I am now is that despite having taken such a great detour in his pursuit of becoming an author, he didn’t get lost.

It’s actually quite amazing that I never thought about giving up on being an author or going for something else. Then again, that determination may have just been driven by my absolute powerlessness, and the feeling that there was nothing I could do if not write.

Ultimately, if that event hadn’t happened to me, I would never have been able to achieve anything as an author. A part of me wonders if I could have found another job that took advantage of my specialty for writing, but another part of me doubts I could have settled like that, so I may have just gone for a completely unrelated field. After all, not many people get to turn their specialty into a job.

It’s said that you shouldn’t turn what you love into a job, and it’s certainly fair to acknowledge that doing what you love as a job can bring about its own unique sufferings, but I don’t think I want to deny the simple, happy blessing that is turning your specialty into your work.

It is something to be happy about, so there’s a piece of me that feels that I should be grateful to that kid. By kid, I mean that girl. I’ve thought that, at least, but I can’t say I’ve genuinely felt it.

I’m going to be vague about the date and time this all happened. The season, too.

I had been biking that day from the one-room apartment I was renting towards my university. Just writing that sentence made me realize how little I’ve biked recently, and now I feel all nostalgic. Even thinking of how many nostalgic feelings I’ll have to tediously fight back while telling this story makes me feel exhausted. I’m already feeling like giving up. Nonetheless, I shall continue.

It’s hard to say who might be more self-conscious between the present and past me, but I suppose I’ll have to give it to the guy biking to and from school on a road racer. I was careful and alert enough to prefer biking on the sidewalk rather than the road, but that care was wasted on a bike that was entirely unsuitable for idle rides around town.

I took my typical route to school, headed to my first lecture of the day. Although I was only an aspiring author, I still took my lectures rather seriously. Besides, university classes are like a gathering place for people who can’t hold their alcohol, so I didn’t have anything better to do than attend my lectures. But then, even if I wasn’t such a lightweight, I never would’ve been able to get into any of the drinking parties or mixers with my very wanting interpersonal skills.

But anyway, this is about the journey to my lectures. I can’t exactly remember the distance between my apartment and the university, but I’m pretty sure it took somewhere around an hour. The time wasn’t actually due to the distance, but rather the insane number of traffic lights. I counted them once, and even now I still remember that number clearly. There were 32 traffic lights across some 40 intersections.

Thinking about it now, it’s rather strange that traffic accidents weren’t more common, given the sheer number of intersections.

That’s probably why it happened.

I sat waiting on my bike at a red light as a little elementary school girl got run over by a humongous ten-ton truck. I can’t really prove that it was a ten-ton truck, but it certainly felt that large as it smashed into her without so much as braking.

I say it smashed into her, but really, it’d be more accurate to say it obliterated her. As I put it earlier, her body was torn apart and tossed around. All that was left on the spot where she once stood was her backpack, somehow nearly undamaged. She hadn’t been in any position of putting it down, so that alone should be enough to imply what happened to her body.

It all happened right before my eyes.

An instantaneous death, with not even a shred of a chance for any life-saving efforts.

The light was red, which meant the girl had ignored the traffic signal, but such a gruesome punishment far outweighed any faulty action on her part.

The truck applied brakes directly after hitting her, but that was too little too late, and it simply skidded to a halt shortly after the crosswalk.

A singular, small life was lost that day.

That’s an objective summary of the phenomenon. Of what directly took place.

Now, don’t misunderstand: Being a witness to such a tragic traffic accident was not the incident that had the major impact on my life, or what caused the trauma, or even what turned me into an author.

Several of my writings released under the banner of novels have depicted a variety of characters, girls or otherwise, in all sorts of traffic accidents. Those are all unrelated to the traffic accident that I witnessed that day. Those are simply an expression of the frequent traffic accidents that I have personally witnessed.

I’m no stranger to witnessing traffic accidents. There are several in my town with its many intersections, but I have seen them all over the place, on many travels far and wide. Over thirty years, I’ve witnessed quite a great number of them. In a way, I’ve come to consider them normal. In fact, I’ve been the victim of three separate traffic accidents. I was hit once by a motorcycle, once by a bicycle, and once by a car, and each one landed me in the hospital. The motorcycle incident was after I had become an author, and I did as much work as I could manage from the hospital, but my pace still slowed significantly, so those familiar with my release schedules may be able to identify that time period. But I figured it was only natural that I ended up hospitalized, and that being there would interfere with my work.

Despite all that, it would seem that my life experience has led me wrong, and that traffic accidents are actually somewhat uncommon. I only learned that recently during a conversation with an acquaintance. I was rather surprised, but what’s more embarrassing to think about is how surprised the acquaintance that I was talking to was.

It’s not like my hobby is traveling to places with frequent traffic accidents, so I can only explain it as coincidence. I guess I was born under the wrong zodiac sign. The zodiac of traffic accidents or something. Not really sure which one that would be.

Fatalities weren’t terribly rare among all the traffic accidents I’ve witnessed, and despite the loss of such a young life, tragedy aside, I ultimately can’t think of the accident itself as particularly special. Putting aside the ones I’ve witnessed, traffic accidents are happening everywhere in the world, even right this very moment.

However, at that time, the accident had occurred directly in front of me, so I distinctly remember how my body stiffened in shock. I couldn’t bring myself to cross the street once the light finally flicked to green.

Okay, in all honesty, that wasn’t how it went. I was just embellishing my memories, making myself look a little better. My body stiffening had nothing to do with witnessing the accident itself.

I never had many significant relationships as a teenager, so I somewhat lack a core ability to empathize with another’s pain. I understand intellectually very well that a little elementary school girl being run over is a very sad thing, and I may have understood that in the moment to some extent, but there was still a small, subconscious part of me checking to see if any blood had splattered onto my favorite bike. I am aware of what the world thinks of people like me, and the labels they would put on me. I can accept being called a weirdo, though I don’t think it’s particularly valid as a criticism. Not much I can do other than accept it. I can’t deny the reality that I failed to develop important human sensibilities through my teenage years.

But, at least for that day in particular, I can give a good excuse. A good reason for my lack of empathy, for my apparent coldness in not feeling sad about the girl’s death or rushing towards her.

The reason was right there, just behind where the truck had passed.

There was another little girl, standing all alone.