I am a writer in Tokyo

Ju was very familiar with his eyes. It was an indifferent attitude towards life. Different from the Buddhist attitude, most of them were a kind of heartless attitude that did not care about life from the perspective of death.

Or in other words, it is a state where one has no hope of living and can die at any time.

Although he was talking about his past, Ju felt that perhaps the state he was in at that time had been preserved until now, or that he had begun to wait for the arrival of death at his current age.

In fact, only a few elderly people can remain calm about death. This is often because of certain obsessions or illnesses that cause them to have a very strong desire to live, so they face the arrival of death with an extremely distorted mentality. Their eyes are full of unwillingness, but their bodies are often already exhausted.

Things like what we see now are still rare.

The old man paused. He felt thirsty after talking for a long time. After pouring a glass of ice water for Koma and Oshima Kazuya, he made himself a cup of hot tea.

The heat rose quietly, blurring the light, but making the wrinkles on his face appear very deep, hiding traces of time and years.

The wind made the door bang. After a while, the old man did not continue with his previous conversation, but instead talked about the family that lived next door to him after he moved to Tokyo.

His eyes fluctuated at this time, and there was a kind of expectation that had never been seen in his eyes before. He talked about a girl, and his words were very gentle.

"She is very pretty."

The old man didn't know many adjectives. For example, he described the girl as the wind that moved the clouds in the sky in summer. If he used his feelings to describe her, it should be something that was hard to describe and thus blocked his originally curious eyes.

When he talks about girls, his words become more frequent, his speech speed becomes much faster, and he uses some adjectives - this may be his way of expressing his love.

Oshima Kazuya also wanted to know how they survived the gas poisoning, but looking at the situation at the scene, he didn't speak easily.

Rather than being dragged here by this old oden-cooking man to listen to him talk about his ignorant emotions during adolescence, he would rather sit in Boss Ito's tavern, drinking a glass of wine and bragging about his daily experiences.

As another gust of wind pushed the rain in through the gap in the door below, the girl's story line had already merged with the train tracks of the lit stove.

"Everyone knows that we can't survive, including her." He was still reluctant to say the girl's name. The ignorance of adolescence and the forgetfulness after getting older made the girl's name disappear like the wind among the traces of time emitting broken golden light.

"She knocked on the door, and we were all lying down at the time. No one wanted to open the door because it would be a burden for any of us who were about to die."

"She started banging on the door because I had told her before that if I couldn't survive, I would close the door in the afternoon and then..."

The old man's neck was a little short, and his head wasn't very big either, but it just hung there, hung by his neck where it should be, just like a piece of moldy sorghum among the fruits in autumn.

"The door is open. That person is me. I still can't bear to let him go, even though my father said that we are all going to die and there is no need to have many unnecessary interpersonal relationships."

"After I opened the door, she was holding something in her hand. She looked very worried about me, which made me very happy. At least I could prove one thing: although we live a very tiring life, we can still have friends."

The old man lay back in his recliner and turned up the volume as high as possible so that the two people sitting outside the bar could hear him clearly.

"She told us at the time that if we couldn't find a job, we could try to make some food and sell it."

"So, you started making oden?" Oshima Kazuya asked weakly after listening for a long time without the next sentence.

The answer was affirmative, because oden is the simplest food and they were about to face a very cold winter.

"It was a good idea, so my parents started this small shop. However, there was not much space at the time, so my father placed the stove he used to commit suicide in the middle of the room. He also found a pot from somewhere and cooked some leftover ingredients in it."

"It's Tokyo after all. She helped us write a shop sign. After it was hung up, people started coming in. We started to earn income on the first day."

"It's similar to working as a laborer outside, but it's better than being relaxed. With the income, I started to try to make the pot better, buy some other ingredients, and use better kelp to make soup."

Oshima Kazuya and Koma looked at each other, and only then did he realize that this store was really just an ordinary store. He more or less knew Koma's intention and was afraid that it was a treasure shop hidden in the alley.

"Later, more and more people came. It's not because the food here is so delicious, but maybe they just wanted to have a bite, just like you." The old man sighed: "But life goes on after all."

When he said that you don't have to die, his tone was relaxed.

Ju thought, maybe this was similar to surviving a disaster, and it could be considered as dying once.

This kind of mentality is rare, or no normal person would have it. However, the old man in front of him is naturally not that kind of terrible mental patient.

If we have to give a so-called definition, it is a group of poor people who are crushed by the gears of time and have to separate and run away.

All the results can be summed up in just a few words: bad luck.

These three words can define all death, turning life into a light sound that can dissipate in the wind at any time, leaving no trace or sign.

"That girl must hold a very important position in your heart."

The answer Ju got was affirmative, but when Ju asked what happened next, the old man said that the girl was admitted to university and went to another city.

There is no better city than Tokyo, but there is no better life than Tokyo. This is the old man’s answer.

"then you……"

"I've been here all this time, cooking oden. The fire in this stove has never gone out since I was about to die."

Raindrops, sometimes big and sometimes small, fell on every corner of Tokyo, soaking the light and blurring the time. As the boy grew older, everything disappeared. It all seemed a sense of loss, but it also seemed so natural.

"I know what you want to say. I know it's impossible." The old man suddenly said, "Although we are all alive, I am dying." (End of this chapter)