When I was little, my mother constantly said bad things about others. She believed that, even when someone was kind to her, there must have been some plot behind the nice gesture. To sum up what she talked about every day, there are only evil people in this world. In kindergarten, mothers would fix a lunchbox for their kids and the kids would have it with their classmates and their teacher. At one lunchtime, when I was opening a lid of my lunchbox, I inadvertently dropped it to the floor without having a single bite and it overturned there. I lost my lunch. While other kids laughed at me, my teacher, who had been trying so hard to make me play with other kids, cleaned up the mess for me and took me to a small candy store outside the kindergarten. She told me to pick any bread I liked. I picked one timidly, feeling afraid what kind of trap this would be, as I didn’t have any money. She suggested one more. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and shook my head. She picked one more piece of bread by herself, took out money from her own wallet, and gave all the bread to me. I was stunned. She bought me lunch. It was the first time that someone unrelated to me was so kind to me. Since then, I had started talking to her. Even after I finished kindergarten, I had kept exchanging letters with her and I still send her a Christmas card every year. She was the first person who destroyed my mother’s theory of the evil world and taught me that there were some good people in this world…

I spent two years in kindergarten playing alone. The first year was quite peaceful because no one, including my teacher, cared that I didn’t play nor talk with anybody. But in the second year, the peace was broken by the teacher who took charge of my class. She did care and worried about my withdrawn attitude. One day, she suggested me to play with her outside at recess. She held my hand and took me outside. The biggest attraction was a trampoline at the playground. Kids would wait in line for their turn at recess. My teacher joined the line with me, saying to other kids ‘Let’s play with Hidemi! Make friends with her!’ They looked at me dubiously but reluctantly agreed because it was their teacher who told them to do. While I was waiting in line, I got more and more unbearable to be among others, standing so close to them. I observed the trampoline too, and it seemed impossible for me to reach the center of it by avoiding fall through gaps between the round frame and the mat. I began to search the way to escape from this deadlock but my hand was tightly held by my teacher’s. As my turn became imminent, I felt desperate. Then, the teacher said to me ‘Your turn is next. Now that you have this many friends, you can play without me, can’t you?’ and saying to other kids ‘Be nice to Hidemi!’ she returned inside. All at once, I ran away from the kids and the trampoline. I ran to the far edge of the playground and stood there. Kids were playing as if nothing had happened. I secured the enough distance from others and felt safe. Ironically, nothing has changed since then, as I’m still distant from the society…

I don’t get along with people generally and it had been so back in kindergarten already. I hated everything there. Other kids seemed too stupid and childish to me. The activities in the class were relentlessly silly. The teachers treated us like a bunch of fools. But seeing other kids do, I always thought they were actually a bunch of fools. I wished they grew up and got smarter fast. Soon after I got in the kindergarten, going there every day became a torture to me. Sleeplessness on weekdays was my norm. I got fed up with the whole stupidities there and stopped talking with anybody. Some kids even believed that I was mute. They played outside at recess but I had never joined them. I spent the recess alone in the classroom, rounding the clay into balls and rolling it into strings. I didn’t make them to form something by them. Balls and strings were the finished products. When I used up the whole chunk of my clay, I reversed the balls and strings to a wad and started making them all over again. I spent two years just doing that everyday while I was disgusted by other kids playing, jumping, and screaming outside childishly…

I don’t have a child and probably won’t have one all my life. But in my dreams, I’ve cuddled my baby for several times. It’s a boy and always the same baby, and I firmly believe I have a child in a different dimension. One day, in my dream, or in that dimension, I saw him in his twenties. It was the future. He lived in a secluded village and was devoted to an unfamiliar future sport. He didn’t notice me as I was watching him from somewhere far. I was so happy to see my baby have grown up and see him not working at an office as a businessman. An elderly man passed by me and I asked him about the sport my son was practicing intently. My question was if the sport was some kind of official, recognized, or popular, which was somehow a possible way to make money. He told me that this sport was completely unknown to the public and there was no event or competition, thus it never brought money whatsoever, not a cent. I burst into tears for joy. Not only he didn’t become an office worker for a steady income, but also he chose the profession that was totally unrelated to money or fame. He wasn’t interested in them. His only interest was the sport. I couldn’t stop crying for joy, thinking how ideally he had grown up and what a perfect son he was to me. I felt thoroughly proud of him and grateful for him to become as he was. Since I saw that dream, I’ve felt more confident of myself, because I’ve raised an honorable child in the other dimension…

My parents married by an arranged marriage. Marriage used to be a knot between two families, not individuals in Japan. A mutual acquaintance introduced my parents to both families with their photographs. Although my parents didn’t like each other, the tie as the family seemed favorable to their parents. My mother agreed with the marriage very unwillingly after the fortuneteller said that she would handle money by a million if she married my father. As for my father, he reluctantly obeyed his parents’ decision because he had never said ‘no’ to his father in his life. A month after the wedding, my mother decided to leave my father because she couldn’t stand to live with his parents any longer. She went back to her parents’ home but her father didn’t allow her to come back. She had no place to go and gave in to her dismal marriage. And I was born. I wasn’t the result of a happy marriage, but I embodied my mother’s resignation…