No matter how hard you are punched, you must keep moving forward without resting.

Even though it rains once every three days in Tokyo, I have only a handful of memories of the rain.

This is because when it rains, I am allowed to stay home. It is truly a truth of this world. A form of forgiveness. After all, it would be a waste not to enjoy it when it has gone to the trouble of falling. The greatest benefit of rain lies in the single fact that you don't have to go outside.
A time when communication is washed away, and you don't have to connect with anyone. Rain wraps around loneliness, stretches a membrane between you and the outside world, and creates a cocoon-like sense of security.

Taking advantage of this, I diligently hole up at home, brew coffee, and watch movies. I read books, listen to music, and let my imagination wander quietly and far away. My memories don't increase at all, but the scenes I recall keep piling up.
For over thirty-some years up to this day, I have lived as a pure indoor person, so consuming content has become ingrained in my ecology.

A stratum stored deep in my heart. My own closed world. If possible, as much as possible, I want to stay there forever.

But life, it seems, doesn't work that way.

+

Once, in a moment of madness, I went to a barbecue with three other male and female friends. It was entirely a result of youthful folly. If you get too close to a dazzling light, you will suffer a painful backlash. It is just like the wings of Icarus. Well, Icarus didn't necessarily long for the sun, but it seems that youth doesn't know how to fly.

I believe it was early summer at Showa Kinen Park, right after I graduated from university. It was one of those places where you could go empty-handed, and they rented out charcoal, ingredients, and barbecue grills. When we arrived at the barbecue area, it wasn't completely full, but it was filled with a scattered, lively atmosphere. People who were clearly extroverts, drawn by the cheerful weather, had set up camp everywhere.

Now, what should we do?

We finished the check-in and received our supplies. Dark clouds were already gathering. I didn't know what to do from the very start. Somehow, with a hunched-over, cat-backed, 'excuse me' kind of vibe, we snuck into the venue. Barbecuing is difficult even just from choosing a spot. The extroverts were out in the sun, choosing the scorching heat without hesitation, truly the 'light' of the sun. Their presence was sparkling and dazzling. Ugh! I feel like I'm going to melt.

Meanwhile, we dithered and dithered before choosing a spot in the perfect shade. As a result, it was kind of dark. Subtly gloomy. We finally managed to light the fire and started grilling meat and vegetables, but something like leaf litter kept falling from the trees above, which was constantly annoying. Also, I didn't know you were supposed to put things on skewers for a barbecue. I see, you need skewers. Skewers. At this rate, no matter how you look at it, it's just grilling meat outside.
The meat just grilled away listlessly. A waste of far-infrared rays. Ah, all this cheerfulness is only working against us. It would have been better to just grill it indoors. With a dash of leaf litter. It's just hot.

'...The meat is delicious, isn't it!'
'Yes.'
'...Isn't it...'
'...'

Sizzle. A painful time where only the smell and sound of grilling meat drifted in the air. Forgotten memories and your voice return amidst the scattering leaf litter.

'I want to go home.'

There are feelings that are conveyed even without saying them out loud. This was the consensus of everyone. To each their own. Four shadows standing in the shade. Every living creature has its own suitable habitat. Hyururira. Hyururira.

・

・

・

'There are two types of young people. Either astronauts or astronomers.'

That was said by Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park III, but we were definitely the astronomer type. Or perhaps swallows. It's better to fly as low as possible and not get too close to the sun. And then, we end up making it rain. In exchange for my youth, I learned that a barbecue is something to be viewed from the outside.

+

When I was little, I often missed school due to asthma.

Once I had read through most of the books in the house, I had nothing to do. Because of the coughing, it was hard to just lie in bed all the time. At those times, I often watched movies. It was easy to just stare at them blankly. The first one I started with was Doraemon, and from there I began watching action movies and foreign films. Back then, there were no subscription services, and since I lived in a rural area on a remote island, there was no TSUTAYA either. I had no choice but to watch the movies I had recorded on video over and over again, so I would circle the ones in the newspaper's TV listings and stack them up. Among them, I especially liked and often watched the action heroes on Friday Road Show and Afternoon Road Show.

Aerial shots, crowds, explosions, boom.
John McClane. Ethan Hunt. Sarah Connor. Riggs & Murtaugh. Indiana Jones. Tough protagonists defeating enemies or using their wits and courage to overcome difficult situations. It was just cool how they carved out a future in a mere two-hour grand adventure. Yippee-ki-yay, indeed.

Perhaps it was similar to revenge bedtime procrastination. I would project the things I couldn't do as I wanted, the things I couldn't achieve, and the things I missed onto the world inside the television. I would project myself onto the action heroes and save the world one by one. Perhaps the symptoms and the prescription haven't changed much even now.
Come to think of it, the habit of accumulating strata of content began around this time. Every now and then, I would pull out a scene from there and somehow manage to live through my days.

A room with the shutters closed. The flickering of the television. The end credits of a movie. Coughing alone. It has been raining there the whole time.

+

I remember the rain in Nagatacho as being the coldest rain in all of Tokyo.
A few years ago, when I was overwhelmed by being too busy and worked on a holiday, it started raining as if it had been planned. Naturally, I had forgotten my umbrella.
While my home is a cocoon that wraps me in solitude, once I have to go outside, it is completely heartless. Ah, the working adult. I spent the morning in my wet suit just like that, and like a desperate gasp for air, I went out for my lunch break at a trot.

I ducked into a Doutor. While sipping coffee at a window seat, I stared blankly at the intersection in front of me. Apparently, there are even girls' bars in the middle of the city's office district. In the middle of a holiday, in the rain, a young woman was soliciting customers at the intersection with an umbrella.
The framed scenery wavered hazily. Red light, green light, flashing. Red light, green light, blinking. Reflections on the asphalt. Across the line of cars flowing smoothly, I found myself following the path of a flyer that no one would take. Phew. Even in this rain, that's quite a lot of trouble, isn't it?
As I imagined the tough time the young woman was having and rippled the surface of my now lukewarm coffee, a certain phrase resurfaced from the strata of content.

"Life is not about how hard you can hit."

A line spoken by the retired boxer Rocky as he looked back on his life to his son. "Rocky Balboa," the film where this line appears, is the final work in the series, and I have watched this preachy, American-dream-cleanup-like movie over and over again.

The climax of life, the entrance to the downhill slope. Words spoken by Rocky in his 50s. To arrive here, I keep going back to the Rocky series. Six films including the final one. At each stage, Rocky, who stands his ground on both feet and fights, is tough and strong. The way of life of Rocky, who is frank, straightforward, and clumsy. In life, there are things that don't go well, opportunities, and things you can't do anything about—there are all sorts of things.

I don't end up fighting terrorists every Christmas, and no killing machines are sent from the future. Of course, I'm not a boxing champion either. If anything, my days are calm. Even so, both I and that young woman are taking some pretty heavy punches in the rain in reality right now.
Even if you want to run away, it's life. You are the one fighting in the ring. One way or another, you have no choice but to hold on until the gong rings. I would prefer to avoid trading blows for the full rounds if I could, but that's not how it works. Even if it's ungraceful, even if it's exhausting, you have no choice but to keep getting hit by heavy punches until the end.

What comes after "Life is not about how hard you can hit"? Let's see, what did Rocky say again? I think it was—.

+

The lunch break is almost over. I finished my coffee and looked back at the intersection, but the young woman was gone before I knew it. I hurriedly looked for where she went. ...There she was.
Everyone walking in the city still had their umbrellas up, but she was under the eaves of a soba shop on the first floor of a multi-tenant building. She looked up at the sky and closed her umbrella.
The first thing I noticed after the rain stopped was the young woman in the rain.

This essay is a work I wrote and read aloud at the reading event "While Sheltering from the Rain - If You Listen to the Words That Don't Stop -"!

The end.