Three Days of Happiness

139
After watching the sunset from a pedestrian bridge, I had the
special at a beef bowl shop. It used a meal ticket system, so Miyagi
bought her own ticket and handed it to me.
“Running out of things to do,” I said as I finished my miso soup.
“I’ve done everything on my Things to Do Before I Die list. So now
what?”
“Do what you like. Even you must have hobbies of some sort, yes?”
“Yeah, they were listening to music and reading. ...But now that I
think about it, those two were just means to keep living. I used
music and books as a way to make a compromise with life. Now
that there’s no need to force myself to keep going, they’re not so
necessary as before.”
“Perhaps you should change the way you appreciate them, then.
From now on, you can purely enjoy their beauty.”
“Yeah, but there’s a problem. No matter how I look at books and
listen to music, I feel distant, like it’s got nothing to do with me.
...Think about it. Most things in the world are made for people who
are going to keep living. Which is only natural, of course. You don’t
create for people who are going to die soon.”
A nearby man around 50 who was working through his beef bowl
furrowed his brow at me for talking to myself about death.
“Do you not appreciate anything more on the simple side? ...For
example, do you like looking at abandoned places, or walking along
tracks and counting railroad ties, or playing arcade cabinets
abandoned decades ago?”
“Those are awfully specific. Let me guess, you observed guys like