Chapter 1: One Morning, After Opening My Eyes

Part 1

I simply wanted to become a perfect, tidy, kind of being.

–That was who my brother was.

You probably know the story of dropping the axe in the spring. Did you drop a golden axe? Or perhaps this silver one? It’s a pretty famous fable.

Of course, the answer is just as famous; just say “No, mine was an old iron axe” and you’ll receive both the golden axe and the silver axe. If anyone were to encounter this situation now, they would be sure to answer this way. After all, anyone who knows the right answer is able to get by fantastically. My brother was someone who seemed to know all of the answers in advance. If he were to meet the goddess in the spring, he’d boldly laugh and say the answer as if it came naturally. “I admit, my axe is iron. So then, I guess I deserve the golden and silver axes.”

The goddess surely would not deny him these. And so my brother would end up with all three axes. The thought of discarding the iron axe would cross his mind but-

“If I don’t have that axe, how will I do my work?”

He was the kind who also managed to keep touch with reality.

My brother was perfect, and tidy. He’d be able to see right through the aforementioned situation and reason his way to the correct answer.

That’s why I aspired to become like him, why I thought I perhaps could become like him.

I wonder how he’s doing right now?

My perfect brother, boldly laughing, breezed his way through the exams and left home to attend college. He studied sciences with names like “Biofrontier” all cluttered with katakana**, and I couldn’t even tell what exactly it was that he studied. My mom said, “Well, since it’s him, he can’t go wrong, I suppose,” and sent him off.

He’d said, once, “ I want to create a perfect world.”

I was simply an ordinary middle schooler, wanting to be perfect and tidy like my brother.

He had always been by my side, yet at the same time shining brightly far above me, and now he had started on a path apart from mine. So as stars that I had pointed at faded before my eyes, I was left, swimming aimlessly in an empty sea of unease, like a kite cut from its spool.

“Even if an obstacle in your path disappears, don’t get carried away.”

I still remember these ill-tempered words from my homeroom teacher. I’m not sure what he thought of his own family. But if I were to surmise based upon the nuances contained within those words, I would say he probably had an older brother or sister — that was his complex.

Of course when I think of my teacher’s words, I also think of my brother’s.

“The thing with teachers is, they’re bound to hold some sort of complex or another. The most common one is where, having graduated college, they start teaching right afterwards and therefore have no idea about the world beyond teaching.”

When he said this, my brother was in high school, and I had just entered middle school, and so I listened, while, slightly shocked, wondering if it really was alright to talk about teachers in this way. And my brother, as always, simply laughed his bold laugh.

Unsurprisingly, I felt for my brother, who surpassed everyone in things he did, a feeling that itself surpassed respect. So when he disappeared from my life, I became nothing more than a young man utterly unable to surpass anything.

However, for some reason, I believed I could become like him, and did not doubt that belief.

**TL note: Katakana is one of the Japanese alphabets, usually used for foreign words.