Tokyo: Who would still fall in love after being spoiled?

Chapter 97 In Haiku, "Cactus" is a metaphor for "Inoue is a fool"

The cactus doll I bought on the first day I moved out of the boarding house is still alive.

While the pork slices were being cooked, Takeda brought them down from his room on the second floor. He ran up and down the wooden stairs, afraid that he would miss the best time to eat the pork slices and let him scoop all the meat into his bowl.

"Follow me!" She stacked an upside-down plastic bucket on a stool, placed the cactus on the upside-down plastic bucket, and excitedly turned on the computer and issued commands.

"Follow me!" The familiar and strange voice of Cactus rang out in the dining room.

The most annoying thing about this doll is that it always twists its body along with the repeated sound, which is quite ironic.

"Idiot Inoue!" Seeing that he didn't react, Takeda became more and more aggressive.

"Stupid Inoue!" the cactus parrot mimicked.

If he had known earlier, he should have watched Takeda stuff it into the recyclable garbage bag, put it on the roadside, and take it to the garbage station with the garbage truck that came to collect garbage early in the morning.

It would be best to witness it being torn into pieces in the recycling bin.

"He prepared a large table of food, but only his roommate was willing to eat with him. Poor Inoue!" Takeda continued, and Cactus continued to repeat.

He was shocked by the function of the cactus. It was the first time he knew that this repeating toy could record such a long paragraph at one time.

"They didn't even prepare any wine! Who would be willing to eat hotpot with him?" Takeda and Cactus complained to him one after another.

She was complaining that he was being evasive on Line and not telling her directly that he wanted to have hotpot in the evening so that she could bring back some wine from the grocery store.

"There's still pear juice in the refrigerator that Kuroki brought last time." He enthusiastically recommended it to Takeda, who was looking for something to drink. "It's from Tottori."

"What about your home?" While chatting with him, Takeda took the initiative to turn off the repeat function of the Cactus.

"Who knows." He got up and took out the pear juice from the refrigerator. One bottle was empty, and the remaining three bottles were unopened. They were packaged in glass bottles and equipped with the same bottle opener as bottled beer.

"Isn't your home in Tottori?"

"Tottori Prefecture is so big, it can't all be my home."

"Don't you say there are several mountains at home?" Takeda said in a confident voice like an idiot, as if he had decided to give his head a good rest.

"How many mountains in Tokyo are as big as this?" He found a cup from the kitchen cabinet, kept the empty part of the pear juice for himself, opened a new bottle, and poured it for Takeda.

"There are differences between mountains, right? They're different in size." Takeda held his chin and watched him open a new bottle of pear juice, pour it, and place it in front of him.

He was already talking nonsense even without drinking. I can’t imagine what would happen if he really brought back a few cans of beer.

He was silent for a while, and Takeda couldn't help but chuckle.

"Now I am a fool too." After laughing enough, I announced to him.

"Even dumber than me," he added solemnly.

"Then you're definitely the dumber one," Takeda corrected.

"How could I possibly speak like you just did?"

"You want me to learn it again?"

Takeda became interested and turned on the cactus doll. She made full use of her skills as a voice actor and imitated his voice in a tone that was at least 50% similar to his.

"'It's too boring to eat alone, so I sent you a message to urge you to come back soon.'" When Takeda said this, he just felt it was interesting and was not angry.

When the cactus repeated it, he could no longer help but get angry.

"Didn't I tell you to get rid of it that day?" He asked about the cactus incident.

"No one buys it on the flea market..." Takeda said innocently.

"How much?" He decided to just buy it and dispose of it himself, and vent his anger at the same time.

"One million yen!" The profiteer raised the price and shouted excitedly.

At the same time, while his attention was always drawn to Takeda and Cactus, the profiteer Takeda also put all the pork in the hot pot into his own bowl and plate, piling it up into a pyramid of meat slices.

"Of course!" Takeda picked up a large piece of meat with his chopsticks, raised it to his mouth, and extended a finger to him with his other hand. "As long as you can buy two cans of beer, I will give you the cactus doll. It's an equal exchange!"

"Where is the equality?" He poured a plate of shrimps into the pot and added a piece of coal.

"Anyway, either one million yen or two cans of beer!" Takeda opened the cactus doll again.

"Dede..." He immediately stood up and walked towards the entrance.

"Are you really going to buy it?" Takeda was surprised.

"Don't drink?"

"No alcohol-free!"

He waved casually with his back to Takeda, changed into canvas shoes, walked out of the entrance hall, walked out of the front yard of the rental house, looked up at the direction of the moon, and walked in the opposite direction of the moon.

Walking past the wild cat cattery, he found a new cat house in the yard. It was about seven-tenths the height of the wall and was built with wooden boards. It looked like a house in a fairy tale book. There was a wooden sign at the top of the house with some words engraved on it.

He took out his cell phone, shone the light on it, and saw that it said "orange cat", but the cat sleeping soundly in the cat's nest was a fat white cat with a pure white body.

Perhaps this is the law of the jungle in the cat world where the strong prey on the weak.

He put away the light and continued walking in the direction with his back to the moon until he reached the corner. He counted the trees in the courtyards of the two houses on the left and right, and turned towards the road with more trees.

Just like that, I decided the direction by flipping a coin, passed by many houses aimlessly, walked through the alleys of the old residential area for a long time, and then randomly found an empty corner. I used the points to buy four cans of beer, put them in the plastic handbag without any trademark information printed on it that the system had given me, and returned the same way.

When I passed by the wild cat cattery again, I did not forget to look at the new house of the orange cat for the second time. There was a petite calico cat snuggled next to the fat white cat, but there was still no sign of the orange cat.

Cats only sleep for one or two hours at a time and move around based on this cycle, rather than working from sunrise to sunset like humans.

Maybe the orange cat is not in the cattery for the time being, so they have time to take a short rest inside.

Until he returned to the rental house, his mind was occupied by the class relations among the wild cats. When he came to his senses, he couldn't help laughing at himself.

Speaking of Takeda, he was drunk before he even drank any alcohol.

"The wine you asked for." He pushed the door open and saw that Takeda had already finished the pork slices from the previous round and started to work on the freshwater shrimp in the pot.

"Really?" Takeda was pleasantly surprised at first, then sighed worriedly, "There are still too many convenience stores and sundry shops in Tokyo that exploit loopholes to make unscrupulous profits."

"Don't drink anymore?"

"Of course!" Takeda placed the cactus doll in his hands with both hands, and from then on he let him do whatever he wanted.

He is sixteen now, and Takeda is also sixteen.

Now they both live in a rented house without adult supervision, cooking hot pot in the dining room and drinking beer that is legally prohibited from being sold to them.

So what if I just spend the night like this...

Tomorrow will still come as scheduled, and they will still be sixteen years old, except that they have spent one day longer than they do today.

Two years later they will be adults, ten years later they will be twenty-six years old, fifty years later they will all be old, and a hundred years later they will all become a handful of white soil and live in a box that is buried somewhere unknown.

Life is just such a period of time, and then humans themselves give it a certain meaning that only human society recognizes.

Although this view is extremely negative and he scoffed at it when he first saw it, it now seems that if a view can emerge and exist, it naturally has its value and meaning.

For those who have accomplished nothing, thinking this way can actually help them draw some nourishment from it, allowing them to accept their current situation calmly and continue living with peace of mind. So what if you have accomplished nothing? So what if you have achieved success? Sooner or later, everyone will die; sooner or later, everyone will disappear from the world.

By then, all the meaning of human civilization will eventually disappear, and no one will be able to truly achieve immortality...

This was the first time he had drunk alcohol in sixteen years. It was just beer, but he was actually a little drunk.

He thought of himself, and how he could be considered to have accomplished nothing in his previous life. He suddenly felt that he was just an empty shell of a life with physiological significance.

Why does he paint?
famous?

After becoming famous?

Who knows, he hasn't even become famous.

But even if he didn't do it, he could still make some hypothesis and imagine the possibilities after becoming famous.

But it didn't.

There is no possibility in his hypothesis.

There was only an endless desert, with no ups and downs, no cacti or oases, and even no sandstorms.

It's just so boring that no one would want to set foot in the nothingness here.

Perhaps, the reason why he hated the cactus doll so much was simply because it didn't exist in the desert.

There was a blush on Takeda's fair and shiny face, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. It was hard to tell whether his body was hot from eating hot pot or he was drunk.

His pronunciation and speech were not affected at all, and he continued to talk to him, showing off his knowledge and asking him to sing and tell stories.

He hummed a few lines, but found it boring without accompaniment, so he took the trumpet out of the box and played a piece of "The Dove and the Boy" for Takeda.

Takeda applauded, but stopped him from continuing, saying that she never wanted to see the trumpet again, saying that the trumpet was just a cactus doll in her eyes.

He had no choice but to obey and put the trumpet away and put it back into the house.

"Hey, Inoue, have you read haiku?" When she asked this question, she had already drunk a can of beer and hadn't cooked new ingredients in the hot pot for a long time.

"not interested."

"I just want to know if you've read it!" Takeda knocked on the table. "Although I'm not interested either."

"That means you haven't read it," he replied.

"My mother loves it," Takeda said. "She once told me that 'eating shabu-shabu' in haiku means summer."

"Is it……"

"What is this called, a symbol?"

"Metaphor." He summarized it using a word that would be used in a novel.

"Then metaphor!"

“At the time, I thought, since haiku is so simple, I can write it too!”

"Makes sense."

"Just like," Takeda raised a finger and smiled at him, "in my haiku, the cactus is a metaphor for Inoue being an idiot!"

"Dede..." He no longer expected what kind of haiku Takeda could write.

But Takeda still wrote a haiku called "The cactus died, but drinking beer and eating shabu-shabu, the cactus came back to life."

He was silent.

The anthracite coals under the hot pot had gone out, but they were still sitting in the dining room, chatting aimlessly.

"Hey, Inoue." Takeda suddenly called him again, the beer in his hand replaced with pear juice. "A voice actor agency has invited me for an interview. If I pass the interview, how about you accompany me to the agency to report?"

"Paid?" he simply asked.

"Yes! Yes!" Takeda suddenly got angry. "I just wanted you to accompany me to report, and I was thinking about the reward."

"I just made a random wish to some god I had no idea would come true, and I'm asking for five yen in return."

"So, you'll go with me for 5 yen?"

"I always grant requests. I'm a hundred times better than that unreliable god, right?"

"That's 500 yen? How greedy!" Takeda scolded with a smile.

"It's a very reasonable price, it's not expensive at all." He felt regretful.

It should be said a thousand times more.

"Hey, actually, I want you to accompany me on the day of the interview." Takeda lowered his voice and continued.

"That's another price." He was profit-driven.

"Just add another 500 yen," Takeda continued, then asked, "Have you read Bunshun magazine?"

"I read it to kill time." He thought for a moment and then asked speculatively, "Are you worried about problems?"

"Aren't you worried?" Takeda said dissatisfiedly, "Or do you think I'm not pretty enough?"

"I haven't thought about it." He said truthfully.

Takeda was silent, staring at him for a long time, and sighed softly.

"Hey, Inoue," she said, "don't you think you're being too heartless?"

"why?"

"You're living with a girl like me, with a pretty face, a nice figure, and breasts that are as well-developed as many of my seniors who are already adults, yet you keep treating me like this." Takeda drank pear juice like it was wine, looking pitiful. "I'm a girl too! I'm always sad."

"Sad?" He didn't know what to say for a moment, or perhaps he had a lot to say but didn't know how to put it into words.

"I'm so sad." Takeda puffed up his cheeks and glared at him.

"I'm sad too," he raised his glass and extended it to her. "Cheers?"

Takeda suddenly laughed, raised the bottle of pear juice and clinked it with his.

"I was just kidding." After drinking the pear juice, she said, "How could I be sad about something like this..."

He put the cup down.

"Mom is still in the hospital. I called Dad for several days, but he didn't come back to see me." Takeda talked about something else. "Hey, you know? A person's emotions are limited, just like a can of beer. There is always a time to finish it."

"First time I heard of it."

"What I mean is," Takeda looked into his eyes and blinked, "I've already used up all the sadness in my heart. It's not your turn anymore."

"Too."

He was a little drunk after all, and couldn't see clearly where the light in Taketa's eyes was reflected.

(End of this chapter)