21

I had decided to go until I could go no longer, but no matter what I did, all my mental tricks seemed to amount to spinning my wheels. Strong resolve or not, there was just nothing to do inside that tiny little closet.

Once my escape… or, well, the plan for my escape from my dramatic kidnapping had been decided, there was nothing else for me to do. I just had to sit in the closet and pass the time daydreaming.

I thought about how it was the release date for that one manga magazine, and wondered how the story was going. Then there was that one author’s new mystery novel that was set to release soon, and maybe it was already on store shelves (release dates for books back then weren’t given out with the urgent specificity they are now). I just thought about this thing and that thing, killing the time in my head.

This must be what it means to isolate yourself from the world, I thought. People jokingly call themselves hermits when they don’t have many friends or acquaintances, but I was the true hermit, cut off from all contact with the world. And not only did I have no outside contact, I hadn’t even had anything to eat or drink. Maybe I was being a bit too much of a hermit.

It was pretty typical for my mind to first wander to thoughts of my manga and novel updates, but it was still a weekday, which meant my mind wandered to all the university lectures I was missing… It was really stressful to think about, as a guy who values routine so much. Immediately my brain shifted to worst-case scenarios, like what if lectures advanced significantly in that one day, or what if there was a crucial pop quiz, but then the other side of my routine-driven brain just figured that it wouldn’t matter much, and I was just missing another day of the same old stuff. I suppose it balanced out one way or another.

To be honest, if you had asked me why I was attending university, I wouldn’t have been able to answer you. I probably would have equated it to something like compulsory education, but university schooling is the opposite of compulsory…

But when all was said and done, I think I was most concerned about the novel I was writing at the time. I was just about to finish a novel that I intended to send to a publisher when U took me away.

That said, a small voice inside me told me that even if I kept writing and managed to finish the novel for submission, nothing would come of it… At that point, I had already gained the vague sensibility that there was something fundamental missing from within my novels. It was probably a wall that anyone who spent their lives chasing after a dream would hit.

Something inside me probably wanted to accept being imprisoned… because as long as I was in that closet, I wasn’t facing the wall.

But that’s just me speculating a decade in the future. I have general memories of the time, but I can’t trace out my emotional roadmap perfectly, so there’s not much point in all that stuff I just said.

So, as those thoughts endlessly looped in my mind, or more likely as I sat there thinking about nothing at all, my eyes stayed unmoving on the house entryway. I had gotten excellent sleep the night before, and all that my eyes had was that slight gap in the closet door, so whenever I had free time (which was every single second of the day), I peered through that small sliver, eagerly awaiting the return of U‘s parents.

I wondered if perhaps the parents had jobs that reversed day and night cycles for them. Basically, I was working on the premise that the parents might get home from work once U left for school, and leave for work once U returned from school. But I wondered if any parents would be able to deal with that kind of lifestyle, regardless of their job. Wouldn’t that basically amount to child neglect?

Child neglect.

I had already broached the subject, so I should have pushed the thought further, but I didn’t have the information to go any further with it, and as a university student with sorely lacking life experiences, I didn’t have the imagination to take the concept to its conclusion. So much for the aspiring author.

As I’m sure any sensible reader has already concluded, despite all my cautious attention, U‘s parents never returned. Honestly, it wouldn’t make any sense for U to go to school with me there if her parents were going to return home, and I should have realized that. But since I still didn’t have a full grasp on how planned or unplanned the whole kidnapping was, maybe it’s fine that I didn’t consider her leaving as evidence of anything.

But I probably should have realized nobody else would be coming home when she decided to bring me there in the first place.

It’s hard to fully explain or understand this concept as a human, but think about what it means for an elementary schooler to “take responsibility” over a stray cat or dog, and really take the idea at face value. Would such a child leave the poor animal in a nearby closet, where their parents would easily find it? Absolutely not.

If I had come to that very simple conclusion, then I could have saved all the energy I spent carefully awaiting the parents’ return. But I was already so far gone at that point that thinking was hardly worth the effort.

That’s probably a tremendous blow to my mental state at the time to admit that I couldn’t even come to basic conclusions, but we’ll set that aside.

As I heard the sound of the door unlocking and saw the knob turn, I pumped my fist in excitement. Finally! I thought. Her parents were home, and all my waiting was rewarded. But there was no such reward. U had just come home from school.

I had actually spent an entire half day while U was away at school doing absolutely nothing. In a way, I felt like that was something of an accomplishment.

You know, when I think about it, I’ve never really minded waiting in line. You could even say I rather like waiting in line. I guess I just like to wait… Wasting time to accomplish something isn’t really the same thing as putting forth effort, but I’m at least confident in my patience. But in this case, and arguably in most cases, patience isn’t much of a virtue.

Anyway, an entire half of a day had gone by, and U was home once more. That did away with my plan of calling the police while she was gone, at least until the next day. I just had to wait until the next day…

U took off her shoes and, without even taking off her backpack, walked right up to the closet and announced,

“I am home.”

Well, I certainly couldn’t deny that she had her manners down pat. But if I had to attribute it to politeness or routine, I would have chosen the latter. Offering niceties to the person she’s holding captive doesn’t make her polite.

But I was still upset about not returning her departure announcement that morning, so I replied with a standard, “Welcome home.” I guess we were both acting strange.

I saw U take a small knife out of her pocket. It was sheathed, which made sense since she had been holding it in her pocket, but she quickly pulled out the naked blade. She was only using one knife that day, though, rather than two.

I backed up instinctively as U took another step towards the closet. I was worried that she would seal the closet door gap with tape or something if she discovered I could see out.

That would take away what little sight I had, but more than that, it would also make suffocation a very real possibility. Just like any child would seal the holes in a bug cage without thinking about the consequences.

I heard a metallic rattling noise. I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was, but with a start, I realized U was unlocking the door of the storage room. And as I was thinking I had to be wrong, the door slid open, just like that.

I felt like the Gate of the Celestial Rock Cave had just been opened. But unlike the myth, it was plain old me inside, not the goddess Amaterasu.

U pointed a knife at me from the other side of the closet door… but given her position and distance, I hardly felt in danger. She wasn’t all that close.

The lack of imminent danger forced me to just sit there unmoving. As soon as I had a choice, I went into standby mode. Evidently I couldn’t do anything unless I was in real danger, but then as soon as I was in real danger, I became incapable of doing anything. So when exactly was I ever going to do something?

Was I just gonna sit in the closet for eternity, curled up in the fetal position while pretending to think about my options? I can hardly express how tremendously uninteresting that would make me as a person.

“…”

U mumbled something, trying to put down her backpack while pointing the knife at me at the same time. She managed to pull it off by switching hands halfway through… not that I really saw the point. It was like the more openings she gave me, the less I could do. I couldn’t stop from deriding myself that she probably could’ve kidnapped me without even having a knife.

U then put the knife aside as she opened her backpack. Definitely a chance of escape, but even the thought of escape was like poison to me. I mean, going for it there would have been blatantly taking advantage of her immaturity. I had to wonder if it was ethical to take advantage of mental immaturity to escape from an elementary schooler’s clutches. Maybe it would count if the situation was an emergency, but once U put the knife down, it wasn’t an emergency any more. Technically, the door was open and I wasn’t even being held captive at that moment.

Of course, in reality, it was an emergency. The front door was locked, and the multiple slash wounds on my back and stab wounds in my ankle hadn’t even healed.

In all honesty, I’m not sure if I was familiar with the term Stockholm Syndrome as a university student. I was picking up all kinds of trivia and fancy vocab words at the time, so I may have at least known of the word, but I don’t think I was fully familiar with the term and all it implied until after I became an author. Well, whether I knew what it was called or not, I’m pretty sure I was under its influence at that point.

Stockholm Syndrome is the phenomenon in which a kidnapping victim develops what they perceive as a positive psychological bond with their captor. Now that I’m writing about it, that term might actually be defining the relationship between robbers and their hostages, so maybe it doesn’t count here.

Anyway, there I was, waiting for U to take something out of her backpack. It turned out to be… plastic bags. Three of them, tightly tied at the top. She pulled each one out, carefully closed up her backpack, and handed the bags to me.

It felt like a re-enactment of Momotarou, the folktale of a boy born from a peach, as he gave his millet dumplings to a dog, monkey, and pheasant in order to befriend them. Well, not that I’ve ever met Momotarou himself.

“Food.” U said. She seemed to lose her patience over my shocked silence as I sat there doing nothing. She put the bags on the floor, stepped back, and picked up the knife, standing outside the closet.

Food?

I picked up the bags, my emotions shifting from timid to terrified. It was all just stuffed into bags, more like food waste than actual food. I couldn’t see through the colored plastic, so I hadn’t the slightest idea what could be inside, though it certainly didn’t feel like a bun purchased at a convenience store.

After quite some difficulty, I managed to wrest open the first plastic bag, finding yakisoba stuffed inside. Not yakisoba bread, but just the noodles. There was no packaging, just a serving of noodles unceremoniously dumped into a bag. Opening the second bag, I found… Strips of dried seaweed? The third contained a bread roll. I couldn’t have guessed what they were individually, but all together in a row, it was clear where the food had been obtained.

“A drink. If you please.” Looking as if she had forgotten something, U reached back into her backpack and pulled out a milk carton, which made my conclusion all the more certain.

It was lunch.

A school lunch. A single serving of a school lunch.

U had brought home a school lunch for me to eat. Really, it felt like the kind of food someone would put together to give a stray dog… But U had brought it for me in response to my complaint of hunger. I was in no position to be picky. I should be grateful.

Wait, grateful? To a kidnapper?

Nothing was making sense any more.

My mind was already gone. To be grateful at that point would leave me imprisoned for the rest of my life. And besides, the normal me wouldn’t just eat a school lunch thrown into random plastic bags, even upon request. The milk and bread was one thing, but to eat the yakisoba and seaweed would be crossing a line.

With that in mind, I decided to try the bread. It had been a half-day, and although I wasn’t starving by any means, I was still hungry. The milk seemed a bit too thick for my parched throat. Those kinds of indulgent thoughts were my enemy.

At that moment, which is to say the moment I brought the bread up to my mouth, a knife flew right towards my feet. I’m not speaking metaphorically, it was actually flying at me. Well, okay, fine, to be pedantic, it was thrown at me.

Maybe if this was a manga or a movie, the knife would’ve stuck in the ground right between my toes, but knives in real life don’t just travel in a straight line, especially not when thrown by little elementary school girls. The knife spun on its center of gravity as it sailed through the air, scoring a direct hit on my bare foot. And I mean a direct hit.

Fortunately, the rotation was somehow in my favor, so the knife hit me with the handle rather than its blade. It still hurt, but if it had been just half a turn off, then it very well could’ve gone right through my foot.

It certainly wouldn’t have threaded any gaps. That’s just movie magic conjuring up a fantasy. I had forgotten just how terrifyingly irrational U was. I was so careless.

I looked up from my foot towards U.

“…”

She was powerfully gritting her teeth. She looked exactly like any child does right before they cry… or in this case, throw a tantrum.

“You… don’t you…”

She spoke in stuttered words, forcing each one out.

“Don’t you know… that before you eat… YOU HAVE TO GIVE THANKS FOR THE MEAL?!”

I had seen her cry the day before… Well okay, I didn’t see it, I only heard it through the door… but I had never seen her angry before.

All because I didn’t give thanks for my food. The fact that I didn’t do one particular thing had made her absolutely furious. Finally, the inexplicable elementary school girl with such a vague identity and purpose started to look more alive.

At that moment, I felt U‘s oppressive commitment to “manners” for the first time. Literally, I felt it on the top of my foot.

I thought of the first line that U ever said to me, the one I couldn’t make out. It hadn’t been a threat. She really just said, “It is nice to meet you.”

“Uh… Thank you for the food, thank you for the food, thank you for the food… right?”

I reacted to U‘s repeated cries with complete submission, hurriedly putting the bread back in its plastic bag and saying what she asked for. I realized that with how long I had lived alone, I hadn’t actually given thanks prior to eating in a long time.

Then, like a switch had been flipped, U‘s rage completely subsided. She didn’t seem to be in a good mood by any means, but she was at least back to neutral as far as I could tell.

I know that’s a little vague, but she had closed and locked the closet immediately after I said my thanks, so I couldn’t know what she looked like after that. For all I know, she went up to her room and took out all her anger on the furniture. Or maybe she just went to bed in a huff.

I will never know.

The only thing I did know was that she hadn’t thrown the second knife that she should have had on hand… which I guess was good? If she had been aiming, then maybe she could have gone easier on me, but given the rage she had flown into, I don’t think she was all that concerned about the outcome.

With that thought, I realized that U had never picked up the knife she had thrown at me. It was right on the ground where it had tumbled to after bouncing off my foot.

I carefully picked it up.

It turned out to be a regular knife with nothing all that special about it. All that stuck out was U‘s name written on the handle in felt-tip pen. Only the last name.

It was certainly careless of her to let her captive get ahold of something like that… unless she just hadn’t thought about it. Or maybe it was a hidden message for me to take my own life if I didn’t like the conditions?

That thought was a bit too much to handle. I would rather beg her forgiveness. I assumed she would be back to get it soon, but didn’t want to risk the danger of leaving it lying on the floor, so I placed it on top of a small, nearby box.

Perhaps it could be useful for something, at least something other than suicide… I guess this is where I admit that it was never useful. It never came in handy for some novel-esque plot twist.

All that was left for me was my meal. I had the food, but no plates or silverware, and not even chopsticks, so I was left eating with just my hands. I only wanted the milk and bread in that case, especially given how much the yakisoba and seaweed gave off leftover vibes. But I had already given thanks for my meal, even if not of my own will, so I couldn’t ignore the extra bags. Better to appreciate the full meal.

I certainly wasn’t in the position to be picky about likes and dislikes. Leftovers or not, I was hungry, so I had to eat. But I couldn’t know when U would feed me next, so I figured it was wise to divide the food into portions.

It’s amazing how I was having such thoughts in a country and time period of such great abundance as I began divvying out small portions of my first school lunch in eight years.