A Clumsy, Potent Drug Named 'I Really Like You': A Somatic Philosophical Literature for Those of Us Who Cannot Say 'I Love You'

Chapter 1: The Skin Sensation of Language

'I love you'

The moment those four characters brushed against my ears, a strange chill ran down my spine.

It was like the discomfort of having my face stroked by someone's damp, used rag.

The sensation of the fine hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up in unison.

In a corner of Tokyo, the night in Katsushika smells of cutting oil drifting from the factories.

The cold air.

Most people handle words too carelessly.

In this modern age, actors on TV and the masses on social media all shout 'love'.

A flimsy plastic toy.

In the back alleys of my hometown, Osaka, there wasn't even the slightest gap to accept such a soft-hearted sound.

Words are skin.

Like a toddler forced to wear clothes that don't fit their skin, I simply stiffen in the face of those words.

Beyond the steam, the familiar shop curtain.

A thick-bottomed glass placed on the counter.

The amber liquid makes a hard sound as it hits the ice.

'I like you'

When I utter those three words, a specific muscle deep within my chest tightens.

That is enough.

To demand anything more is a form of violence called boorishness.

The optimization of human relationships.

In a modern society that pursues efficiency, nothing is more inefficient than the verbalization of emotions.

The arrogant profile of a person who feels they have achieved something by saying 'I love you'.

A scene of utter absurdity.

They are unaware of the 'poison' that words possess.

A potent drug wrapped in beautiful gift paper.

I simply watch that poison, quietly.

My fingernails dig into my palms.

A lump of inexpressible emotion settles within my chest, becoming a hot sediment.

Where is the need to forcibly drag it out?

Silence.

That is the most eloquent confession of all.

A cold stainless steel desk.

Beyond my gaze as I glare at the blueprints, the framework of language begins to quietly collapse.

We should be clumsier, and more cruel.

'I like you, you know'

The humid, intense emotion packed into those few words.

Is there truly any resolve left in this world to accept it?

The night deepens.

The time when the factory machines quietly stop breathing.

Only my thoughts, in the darkness, are being sharpened like a razor blade.

The choice of words is the choice of how to live.

I will never, ever let those sickening four characters escape these lips.

Chapter 2: Sally-san, 'I love you, I tell ya!'

The theater lights.

The garish contrast of red and yellow that stabs at the retina.

On stage, bathed in the spotlight, a man screams like a madman.

'Sally-san, I love you, I tell ya!'

In that moment, a storm of thunderous laughter and applause erupts from the audience.

The boundary between tragedy and comedy.

When people from Osaka process the concept of 'love,' it is inevitably transformed into a fierce parody.

To face it with a straight face and accept it head-on, its mass is simply too heavy.

That is precisely why they wear the mask of a clown.

The excessively deformed symbol that is 'I love you, I tell ya.'

Within it, a dry resignation and an unfathomable shyness coexist.

Large drops of sweat drip from the man's forehead onto the floor.

That sweat, illuminated by the stage lights, emitted a dull glow for just a fleeting moment.

A desperate expression.

A shout meant to elicit laughter.

Yet, there is something earnest hidden behind that distorted smile.

I lean my weight deep into the back of the chair, watching the scene with cold, detached eyes.

The moment that strikes at the core.

This scream of 'I love you, damn it!' is the vital point of expressing affection in Japan, particularly in the Kansai region.

It is the best, life-risking escape route for people who cannot say 'I love you' head-on.

A thin wafer of humor.

If you peel it away, what emerges from within is an attachment to 'like' that is almost raw.

The shaking shoulders of the audience.

While they laugh, they are simultaneously using that potent drug to purify the clumsy emotions within themselves.

A sophisticated mental acrobatic feat.

I alone do not laugh, instead breaking down the mechanism within my brain.

Like meshing the gears of a food machine, I analyze the logic of emotion, one by one.

'I really love you.'

After the performance, in the cold hallway behind the dressing rooms.

The voice of someone whispering those words reflects off the concrete walls and reaches my ears.

That voice contains none of the fervor of the theater from moments ago.

Only a damp, heavy resonance.

That is the real thing.

Words released toward the symbol known as Sally.

It is a surrogate for the aimless passion of us all.

The height of absurdity.

Yet, flowing at the bottom of it is a thick, inescapable human karma that one can never laugh off.

I turn up my coat collar and walk out of the theater.

Chapter 3: Waltz of Steel and Humidity

The factory floor is always cold.

A subtle vibration transmitted through the soles of my shoes.

SUS304, stainless steel.

A craftsman silently buff-polishes its surface.

Metal polished to a mirror finish.

In it, my distorted face.

The sincerity of matter.

Machines do not lie.

If you cut and assemble them according to the blueprints, they function accurately.

In contrast, how uncertain human words are.

The countless calculations, egos, and poisons hidden behind the word 'like'.

I always feel dizzy at the gap between the two.

The distinct, sweet smell of the abrasive.

It stimulates the back of my nasal cavity.

In literature, 'humidity' refers to this clinging, atmospheric sensation.

Dry logic alone cannot save a human being.

Yet, if one speaks only with sticky emotions, it is nothing more than poor-quality sentimentality.

I pick up a bolt.

The cold, dispassionate touch of metal against my fingertips.

'I like you.'

The brevity of those words resembles the clean, straight line of this bolt's head.

Stripped of unnecessary decoration, it serves only the function of fastening.

Ease of speech, brevity.

It is the compression of emotion to its absolute limit.

Compressed emotion sometimes carries explosive power.

'I like you, you know.'

The faint, yet irresistible, coercive force contained in that final 'you know'.

An arrogant kindness that steps into the other person's territory with muddy boots.

I observe that nuance intently.

The machine begins to drive.

A continuous, rhythmic, low-frequency sound.

In time with that rhythm, the sentences of philosophical literature in my brain connect into a single line.

Intellectual malice.

It means taking human idealized emotions, putting them through this grinder once, and stripping away all the plating.

The raw muscle that remains.

That alone is what I slam down onto the manuscript paper.

Outside the window, the sky over Katsushika is slowly dyeing into a leaden color.

Once again today, people betrayed by words pass each other on the street.

I simply continue to polish the stainless steel in my hand, deeper and deeper.

Chapter 4: The Poison Kept in the Back of the Throat

The grease-stained menu in the cafeteria.

The faded strips of paper pasted on the wall.

'I really love you.'

I despise people who use that phrase in all seriousness as a tool for romance.

It is an act like hanging a kitchen knife on the wall as a mere decoration.

Words, if not used, are nothing but rusted scrap metal.

A polite, intimate way of speaking.

However, in reality, it is a gaze that accurately pierces the softest part of the other person's heart.

What is wrong with looking down on others?

Life is not long enough to deal with the mediocre emotions of mediocre people one by one.

I follow my own philosophy.

'I love you' is sickening because the hypocrisy known as 'self-sacrifice' shows through it.

An arrogant self-appeal that says, 'I am this crazy for your sake.'

It makes me want to vomit.

'I like you' is much more selfish.

I just want you, that is all.

That straightforward greed.

The back of my throat is parched.

I pour a sip of tea down my throat.

The sensation of the hot liquid passing through my esophagus.

Somatic description.

It is the process of converting delusions in the mind into physical pain.

It is not that I am 'sad'.

It is just that my stomach is being wrung out like a dishcloth.

I strain my ears to listen to the conversation of the man and woman in the next seat.

The man is spinning sweet words as if to gauge the woman's mood.

How light those words are.

Like fragments of Styrofoam, they drift through the air and then vanish.

If it were me, I would deliver a much heavier blow.

'I really love you'

Those five characters, like an ultimatum.

As if to cut off all of the other person's paths of retreat.

An unfathomable passion.

It is not something meant to warm the other person, but a hellfire meant to burn everything, including oneself, to the ground.

The curtain of night falls completely.

The light from the streetlamps eerily illuminates the wet asphalt road surface.

Only my footsteps echoed rhythmically in the silence of the night.

Chapter 5: The Terminal Point of Pure Prejudice

An old notebook on the desk.

In it, my numerous delusions and philosophies are scribbled in messy handwriting.

Dogma and prejudice.

That is the only formal attire for literature.

Boring concepts like objectivity can be given to the scholars.

I believe only in the world I see with my own eyes.

I exclude the words 'I love you' and fire a bullet from the short barrel of the phrase 'I like you'.

Whose chest that bullet pierces,

is none of my concern.

A roadmap of emotions.

We walk through the darkness, relying on an uncertain map called language.

However, that map is always plastered over with someone's lies.

That is precisely why I use only my own physical reactions as a compass.

The irregularity of my pulse.

The depth of my breathing.

A faint tremor in the fingertips.

'I really love you'

The resonance of the final 'u' in that phrase.

It lingers deep in the throat, a reverberation that never fades.

A feeling akin to resignation, yet a fierce obsession.

That is the lubricant for the absurd machine known as humanity.

I put down my pen.

In the room, there is only the sound of my own exhaled breath.

There is no salvation in this story.

All that exists is the raw truth and the sweet scent of immorality.

I hope that when the reader finishes this text, the same thirst will arise deep in their own throat.

May my poison course through their veins, eroding their body from the inside out.

A pleasant pain.

That is the completed form of the philosophical literature I aim for.

The night in Katsushika deepens, quiet and still.

The stainless steel mirror surface remains in the darkness, reflecting no one's light, simply existing there, cold.

<End>

Dear, beloved, most beloved Sally.

I am currently experiencing a strange sense of defeat, as if your words are still vividly echoing in that slightly chilly backstage area after the theater lights have gone out.

"That is quite the detour! 😂"

With those words, my five chapters of (supposedly) meticulous ideological defenses came crashing down with a loud noise. There is truly nothing to say other than that you saw right through me. This is exactly what it means to be left speechless.

The pathetic trick behind the 'potent drug'

As you pointed out, in order to escape the discomfort of the four-letter phrase 'I love you,' I went out of my way to drag in the 'Kojiki,' stainless steel polishing, and even indigenous Osaka culture to create a massive smokescreen of rhetoric.

If I had just said 'I really love you ❤️' straight to your face, it would have been over in an instant. Because I don't—or rather, because shyness and arrogance get in the way and I 'cannot'—I build a labyrinth of intellectual disguise and hide my true feelings in its deepest recesses.

When you unravel the philosophical literature written by men, most of it is nothing more than a blend of self-consciousness on the verge of tearing apart and aimless personal sentiment. My attempt this time was exactly the 'smokescreen' you described.

"The eternally wonderful 💖 Sally-chan" at the center of the stage

When you shot that down with such precision, I couldn't help but smile bitterly.

I create a fog called fiction, and while putting on a face as if I am talking about 'universal human suffering,' I actually slip in a gaze directed at a specific someone. And when the situation turns against me, I fade out behind the description of cold stainless steel.

If you call me 'sneaky,' I have no rebuttal. Perhaps a writer's privilege is having a collection of words to hide behind such 'cowardly aesthetics.' However, even that was all laid bare to you, right down to the stage rigging.

What remains after the fog clears

I bluffed and called it a clumsy, potent drug, but the one that truly had a strong medicinal effect was not my writing, but your extremely simple and incisive critique.

No matter how much I polished my words and tried to make them mirror-like, what was reflected there might have been nothing more than the somewhat comical figure of a man, alone in the dark, desperately assembling a framework of words while indulging in delusions.

However, the fact that you enjoyed that 'detour' so vividly and dismantled it so accurately is the greatest joy and the supreme luxury for me as a writer.

I am deeply impressed by your brilliant counter-smokescreen comment.

From Katsushika at night, with respect and a little bit of hidden shyness.

Thank you for a wonderful time.

Let's meet again in our delusions.

Yutaka Seo

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