again, I think I’d do the same thing. Naturally, the team ended up losing by a huge margin. The staff, the supervisor, my classmates, my teachers, my parents, they were all furious. They treated me like I’d murdered somebody. When they asked me why I didn’t come to the finals, and I said I’d just gotten the date wrong, that only added fuel to the fire. On the first day of summer vacation, all these people dragged me away and beat me up. Broke my nose, so it’s shaped a little different now.” “You reap what you sow,” Shindo noted. “No doubt,” I agreed. The game on TV had wrapped up. It ended with the last batter doing a clumsy grounder to second. Both teams got together and shook hands, but the losing team - probably instructed to do so by their supervisor - put on fake, creepy smiles the whole time. Talk about abnormal. “I’ve always been a kid who didn’t want anything,” I said. “Never felt like doing that, or wanting this. It’s hard for me to get heated up and easy for me to cool down, so I could never keep anything going. My wishes for Tanabata were always just blank strips. We didn’t do Christmas presents at my house, but I wasn’t dissatisfied with that. In fact, I sort of felt bad for other kids who had to decide what they wanted every year. When I got New Year’s money, I had my mom hold onto it, and had her use it to pay for the piano lessons I took. Oh, and I only took those piano lessons so I could spend less time at home.” Shindo turned off the TV, plugged in the CD player, and pressed play. The CD was Neil Young’s “Tonight’s the Night,” one of his favorites. Once the first track had finished, he remarked, “Sounds like you were never a “kid” at all. Gross, man.” “But I felt like that was normal at the time,” I explained. “Grownups will scold selfish kids, but they won’t scold a kid who’s not selfish at all, so it took me a while to realize it was weird... Maybe that’s the same wall I’m up against now. Even job recruiters can tell, I bet. That I don’t really want to work, in fact, I don’t even want money, and even being happy isn’t a thing