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Aug. 29th, 2025 10:31 pm It's hot.
That thought was so prevalent across the town, the prefecture, even the region that it was practically a legible chorus somehow wafting from the collective consciousness of mankind into the songs of the cicadas. Something about a cicada's screams just made it feel hotter still. It wasn't just that they were a bug known as The King of Summer. There was also the way it sounded like some kind of incessant hum of machinery or, for those ritzy enough to afford a lawn, a lawn mower. Very summery things, usually associated with having to deal with summer and its summeriness. Yet while one Ozaki Toshio had been one of those yard owning yuppies for most of his life, if through little choice of his own, the cicadas did not call forth a memory of lawns or even summer itself. While at least one part of his mind was amplifying the local collective consciousness's chorus of it's hot, it was at most a countermelody to the line that wouldn't leave his mind: the village is surrounded by death.
He preferred it's hot.
For the record he wasn't the kind of person who got a phrase in his mind. Hell, he rarely got songs stuck in his head. It might've had something to do with how much he was trying not to think about it. And there were a lot of its to not think about.
It was July 25th. Don't think about it.
Cicadas were associated with death. Not the topic he wanted but got him away from July 25th and what it meant coming up too close to consciousness, so as he stepped out of the hotel looking far more the part of a bum than the doctor he was acting as until about four hours ago, he'd try to think of what literature or art or whatever, specifically, tied cicadas to death so that he didn't go thinking about a particular collection of corpses whose memories all came with a similar soundtrack to the one playing now in this town of Bumfuck Somewhere. Which was not a complete Bumfuck Nowhere like Sotoba, but still not a proper and real town. But just like this paragraph outlining the avoidance thereof, there went his mind right too it. He took it, because it was, at least, not July 25th.
Speaking of Bumfuck Nowhere, back there, he might have (to his mother's unceasing pearl clutching) often looked the part of a bum but he at least had a white coat as a status symbol. This was not Sotoba. In Bumfuck Somewhere, he wasn't enough of a someone that he could just go around wearing his doctor's coat outside the workplace; out here, it'd be showing off instead of just being lazy, whereas in Bumfuck Nowhere, he was a walking status symbol, so shedding it hardly served any purpose besides having to move his cigarettes from his coat pocket to his pants pocket if he wanted to have any on hand when leaving the clinic. All of this is to say he had the habit of just leaving his cigarettes in said jacket for most of his life, and now, without said coat, he was without cigarettes.
It was hot enough that maybe even he could pass on getting a lung full of hot tar, could just get his fix breathing near the road that looked like it was melting if you stared long enough at it. But a cigarette run was the best excuse he had come up with for leaving the hotel on only four hours of sleep, and if he wasn't sleeping, he'd better be out all not sleeping with a purpose. Otherwise it was like he couldn't sleep. And then he'd have to think about why he couldn't sleep. He'd rather have hot tar in his lungs in the middle of a summer heat wave, thanks.
As for why he passed by several stores which would've had them--newspaper stands, convenience stores, stationary shops, grocery stores--that was because of those thoughts he was actively choosing not to have. It was surprisingly distracting not to have thoughts. Very Zen, like something a monk would
Quick, grab a surrounding distraction. What building was he in front of just then?
Both shoulders sank slowly down as his gaze took in the store there before him as if it were an imposing mountain mansion.
A book store. Of course it was a mother fucking book store. Oh, no, not just a mother fucking bookstore, but to add to the mental profanity, it was a mother fucking book store with that god damned hand written sign: 'Small town horror!' and a book with those two kanji. Corpse. Demon. How many people knew upon first glance the reading was Shiki?
The laugh that escaped his throat burned more than a whole case of cheap cigars in a hotbox would've managed. Once you put a thought into words, they were there, a formal thought. You couldn't go telling yourself you weren't thinking it. That was like that game of 'don't read this sign.'
"I'm beat," he announced to nobody, in a tone too raw to have dare let loose if anyone was actually around to hear it.
Fine. The thoughts were happening. Being overtaken by something so intangible and insurmountable in the dead of summer was so last year, really, but as a boy from Bumfuck Nowhere maybe that was just in his nature. He headed inside. The rush of AC was not a welcome relief in the slightest, by the way. Because as he came in, he remembered those words that left his mouth had also been his words back then. Back then, he was asked who had beat him. He'd been at a loss for an answer. Then, did he have an answer to who beat him today?
While he couldn't not read the title of that book, it is worth noting the single success since waking up that afternoon: he successfully really and truly didn't read the only other writing on the cover: the name of the author.
That thought was so prevalent across the town, the prefecture, even the region that it was practically a legible chorus somehow wafting from the collective consciousness of mankind into the songs of the cicadas. Something about a cicada's screams just made it feel hotter still. It wasn't just that they were a bug known as The King of Summer. There was also the way it sounded like some kind of incessant hum of machinery or, for those ritzy enough to afford a lawn, a lawn mower. Very summery things, usually associated with having to deal with summer and its summeriness. Yet while one Ozaki Toshio had been one of those yard owning yuppies for most of his life, if through little choice of his own, the cicadas did not call forth a memory of lawns or even summer itself. While at least one part of his mind was amplifying the local collective consciousness's chorus of it's hot, it was at most a countermelody to the line that wouldn't leave his mind: the village is surrounded by death.
He preferred it's hot.
For the record he wasn't the kind of person who got a phrase in his mind. Hell, he rarely got songs stuck in his head. It might've had something to do with how much he was trying not to think about it. And there were a lot of its to not think about.
It was July 25th. Don't think about it.
Cicadas were associated with death. Not the topic he wanted but got him away from July 25th and what it meant coming up too close to consciousness, so as he stepped out of the hotel looking far more the part of a bum than the doctor he was acting as until about four hours ago, he'd try to think of what literature or art or whatever, specifically, tied cicadas to death so that he didn't go thinking about a particular collection of corpses whose memories all came with a similar soundtrack to the one playing now in this town of Bumfuck Somewhere. Which was not a complete Bumfuck Nowhere like Sotoba, but still not a proper and real town. But just like this paragraph outlining the avoidance thereof, there went his mind right too it. He took it, because it was, at least, not July 25th.
Speaking of Bumfuck Nowhere, back there, he might have (to his mother's unceasing pearl clutching) often looked the part of a bum but he at least had a white coat as a status symbol. This was not Sotoba. In Bumfuck Somewhere, he wasn't enough of a someone that he could just go around wearing his doctor's coat outside the workplace; out here, it'd be showing off instead of just being lazy, whereas in Bumfuck Nowhere, he was a walking status symbol, so shedding it hardly served any purpose besides having to move his cigarettes from his coat pocket to his pants pocket if he wanted to have any on hand when leaving the clinic. All of this is to say he had the habit of just leaving his cigarettes in said jacket for most of his life, and now, without said coat, he was without cigarettes.
It was hot enough that maybe even he could pass on getting a lung full of hot tar, could just get his fix breathing near the road that looked like it was melting if you stared long enough at it. But a cigarette run was the best excuse he had come up with for leaving the hotel on only four hours of sleep, and if he wasn't sleeping, he'd better be out all not sleeping with a purpose. Otherwise it was like he couldn't sleep. And then he'd have to think about why he couldn't sleep. He'd rather have hot tar in his lungs in the middle of a summer heat wave, thanks.
As for why he passed by several stores which would've had them--newspaper stands, convenience stores, stationary shops, grocery stores--that was because of those thoughts he was actively choosing not to have. It was surprisingly distracting not to have thoughts. Very Zen, like something a monk would
Quick, grab a surrounding distraction. What building was he in front of just then?
Both shoulders sank slowly down as his gaze took in the store there before him as if it were an imposing mountain mansion.
A book store. Of course it was a mother fucking book store. Oh, no, not just a mother fucking bookstore, but to add to the mental profanity, it was a mother fucking book store with that god damned hand written sign: 'Small town horror!' and a book with those two kanji. Corpse. Demon. How many people knew upon first glance the reading was Shiki?
The laugh that escaped his throat burned more than a whole case of cheap cigars in a hotbox would've managed. Once you put a thought into words, they were there, a formal thought. You couldn't go telling yourself you weren't thinking it. That was like that game of 'don't read this sign.'
"I'm beat," he announced to nobody, in a tone too raw to have dare let loose if anyone was actually around to hear it.
Fine. The thoughts were happening. Being overtaken by something so intangible and insurmountable in the dead of summer was so last year, really, but as a boy from Bumfuck Nowhere maybe that was just in his nature. He headed inside. The rush of AC was not a welcome relief in the slightest, by the way. Because as he came in, he remembered those words that left his mouth had also been his words back then. Back then, he was asked who had beat him. He'd been at a loss for an answer. Then, did he have an answer to who beat him today?
While he couldn't not read the title of that book, it is worth noting the single success since waking up that afternoon: he successfully really and truly didn't read the only other writing on the cover: the name of the author.
