The night of my first college life, gathered around a rotating table with eighteen-year-old innocents

After I started attending university, I gradually became friends with my peers.
S-da, I-to, S-moto, T-da... and a few others.
Everyone was eighteen or nineteen, and they still had a childishness that felt like an extension of high school, mixed with a strange confidence that they had become college students.
Since our seats were close in the studio, we naturally started talking, and we began going to the school cafeteria between classes or killing time at a nearby coffee shop.

At the coffee shop, while nursing a single cup of coffee for hours, we would talk about things like,
“What are we going to do about this assignment?”
“I don't know what this professor is talking about.”
“I brought my guitar, so I'll play it later.”
We would talk endlessly about such trivial things.
It wasn't rare for us to gather at someone's house to play games, play guitar, pass around manga, or just do whatever we liked until morning came.
That feeling of having “infinite time” when you’ve just started college.
That is something that only exists at that age.

One day, we decided to have a drinking party, partly as a way to get to know each other better.
We went into a Chinese restaurant near the university, sat at a table with a rotating center, and spread out the menu.
The interior was a bit old, red lanterns hung from the ceiling, and the faint smell of oil drifted through the air.
It had that atmosphere unique to restaurants near universities that students frequent.

S-da said, “Let's each order what we want to eat,” so everyone followed suit.
I actually thought it would be better to order a few large dishes to share, but I kept quiet because I felt like speaking up would make things awkward.
Looking at the menu, I saw a dish that mixed sea bream sashimi with Chinese salad, so I ordered that first.
A dish like Peking duck was also reasonably priced, so I added that, and we ordered bottled beer as well.

The others were also desperately looking at the menu and ordering, but for some reason, everyone ordered Chinese soup.
I tried saying, “Are you really having soup when we're about to drink alcohol? Wouldn't one or two be enough?” but,
“No, you have soup before a meal,” they insisted, and no one listened.
The way they said it was so strangely confident that I even started to feel like I was the one who was wrong.

Chinese soup bowls are generally all large.
I thought it would be tough for one person to finish, and as expected, a row of giant soups lined up on the rotating table.
Steam billowed up, and the center of the table looked like a steam bath.
There is a scene in a Bruce Lee movie where he is at a foreign restaurant, can't read the menu, and points at something at random, only for the table to end up covered in soup.
It was exactly that. No, it was even worse than the movie because the soup bowls were so big.

While I was eating my food and drinking beer normally,
everyone around me was slurping their soup with pained expressions.
The sight was so ridiculous that I couldn't help but burst into laughter.
Every time they drank the soup, their faces turned red and sweat beaded on their foreheads.
They had eyes that seemed to say, “Someone help me,” but no one could help them.
Because they were the ones who ordered it.

When I asked later, it turned out they hadn't eaten out much,
and they were operating solely on the image that “if you go to a steakhouse, you get corn potage first.”
In short, they were naive.
They would rush into things based on assumptions about things they would understand if they just thought about it, and they were too stubborn to listen even when warned.
Moreover, most of them were from A Prefecture, and I wondered if it was a cultural difference or an ethnic difference, though I couldn't really tell.
They asked me, “Please drink some soup,” but I refused because I was drinking beer,

and everyone looked lonely.
Even though we were the same age, I thought about how childish they were.
But that childishness was somehow endearing, and
I strangely realized, “Ah, I’m going to be spending years with these guys.”
The drinking party ended happily enough,
and everyone went back to their boarding houses or their parents' homes.

When we left the restaurant, the night air was a bit cold, and I could faintly see our white breath under the streetlights.
The area around the university became suddenly quiet at night,
and only the laughter of students echoed in the distance.
It was 1:00 AM when I got home.
My apartment room had completely lost the heat of the day and felt a bit chilly.

When I turned on the TV, the local program “Radio DE Gomen” was playing.
The main talent was talking in an excessively loud voice, but it wasn't funny at all.
Seeing his face somehow annoyed me.
That high level of intensity didn't match the lingering mood of the drinking party at all.
That day was Monday, and since I had the afternoon off the next day, I decided to sleep in.
When I got into bed, the sound of the TV was still echoing in the distance.

While listening to that crude, high-tension voice,
I vaguely thought, “I guess this is the kind of life that will continue for my college years.”
By the way, that talent was Koji Higashino during his unknown days.

#CollegeLife
#ArtStudentRecords
#1989
#MemoriesWithPeers
#NightAtAChineseRestaurant
#TheRidiculousnessOfYouth
#LocalStudentCulture
#LocalProgram
#RadioDEGomen
#KojiHigashino(UnknownDays)
#BoardingHouseLife
#TheBeginningOfYouth