If I could meet my senior, who might no longer be in this world, I would want to say 'thank you'

He was a hard-boiled man.

Deep wrinkles carved into his brow. Everything he wrote was always in an imperative tone.

He even once wrote on the classroom whiteboard, 'Whoever has submitted their assignment can go home!'

At first, I felt disgust and confusion, thinking, 'What is this guy's deal!?', but before I knew it, I was captivated by him.

Although I had entered a vocational school, I realized the difficulty of living in the world of creative work, and I was plagued by the anxiety of, 'How can I realistically make a living?'

To be honest about the situation, most people who enter creative vocational schools are the type who 'couldn't find anything to do, so they just enrolled.'

About 10 percent of the total manage to make it and fly off into the professional world, but the other 90 percent end up throwing millions of yen down the drain within a few years.

Since I was raised by a single parent, I also had a feeling somewhere inside that 'I can't face my parent if I make them spend all this money and end up with nothing to show for it.'

Thinking about it now, I was completely a 'frog in a well,' but I started to think that I first had to make an impression in the vocational school classroom that 'this guy writes interesting stuff.'

The first thing I kept in mind was impact.

You could call it pandering, but for the writing assignments I submitted, I aimed for the exact opposite of what everyone else would likely write, planning to get the instructor's attention by submitting something eccentric among the many submissions.

The hard-boiled man in question was the instructor's assistant. He was a man with long hair and glasses who wore a black tank top even in winter.

He had a dangerous aura that made it seem like he would attack you if you got close, so I, being a timid person, avoided him, but one day, I was called to the spiral staircase space where he was always smoking.

Was I going to get hit?

I walked to the place I was called to with my heart pounding. Not hiding my wariness, I stared at him silently from a distance.

He was sullen, beckoning me to come closer while holding a cigarette in his mouth.

'I've wanted to tell you this for a while now.'

He paused there, so my tension reached its peak.

'The work you write, I think it's good.'

My tension eased all at once.

You're quiet, but your work is quite flamboyant. I like guys like you.

He said this while looking down, avoiding eye contact, looking somewhat embarrassed.

Since I only ever submitted silly work, I was inwardly very worried that I might get scolded.

That conversation was the start of us getting along, and he began inviting me out for drinks often. I was even invited to his home.

I spent most of my high school days as a loner, seeking refuge at the racetrack, and it was at his house that I first experienced drinking all night after entering vocational school.

It was the Heisei era, but he was a senior who had a sense of dandyism, like a picture-perfect rogue. Naturally, he was popular with women and quite the ladies' man.

But he would say, 'I have more fun hanging out with guys,' and would take his favorite juniors out for drinks. He was a very masculine person.

And I had a vague feeling that he might not live a long life.

After that, he caused an incident and suddenly disappeared. Since then, I don't know where he is or what he is doing.

There was a rumor that someone passed him on a busy street, but it's not certain.

If I hadn't met him, I might have continued to avoid sharing drinks with people forever.

I still vividly remember the time I was invited to his house to talk about creative work all night, and for the first time in my life, I returned home in the morning.

While squeezed between salarymen on their way to work, I felt a strange sense of exhilaration thinking, 'It's morning, and I'm the only one heading home.'

Where is he now, and what is he doing?

He might not even be in this world anymore. Even so, if I could meet him, I would want to say, 'Thank you very much.'

If I hadn't met him, I surely would have chosen a life of staying more within my shell when I was young.