The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

the half circle of coffee dregs. The bottom of the cup,
round like the lens of a telescope, obstructed his view.
The bottom of this world showed a clean white face of
porcelain.
Turned half away, Furusawa suddenly spoke as if
throwing the butt of his words into the ashtray. “Have
you ever thought of suicide?”
“No.” Tōru was startled.
“Don’t look at me like that. I haven’t thought of it all
that seriously myself. I don’t like the weak and the sick
sort of people that commit suicide. But there is one
variety I accept. People who commit suicide to
establish themselves.”
“What sort of suicide is that?”
“Are you interested?”
“A little, maybe.”
“Then I’ll tell you.
“Take a mouse that thinks it’s a cat. I don’t know
how, but it does. It’s gone through all the tests and
concluded that it’s a cat. Its view of other mice
changes. They are its meat, that’s all, but it tells itself it
refrains from eating them just to hide the fact that it’s a
cat.”
“A rather large mouse, I suppose.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not a question of size but of
confidence. It’s sure that the concept ‘cat’ has taken