日本語 ｜ 繁體中文 ｜ English ｜ 한국어 ｜ Tiếng Việt
The sound of rain filled the room.
I made coffee, switched on the TV without thinking, and Anpanman was on.
I watched for no particular reason, and Baikinman appeared.
The bad guy, I almost thought — and then my hand stopped.
Baikinman’s back
Baikinman gives it everything, every time.
No matter how many times he loses, he comes back for more.
If Dokin-chan asks, he will take on any impossible job.
Without a word of complaint, off he flies again.
I wonder whether anyone has ever said “thank you” to him.
Watching that back of his, I find myself sensing not evil, but a clumsy kind of sincerity.
About Horrorman
In Baikinman’s castle lives a lodger named Horrorman.
Going by the name alone, he sounds frightening.
And even to be kind, you could not call him cute to look at.
But he is gentle.
Ask him, and he goes without so much as a frown, always close at hand.
And Baikinman never throws him out.
Two frightening-looking figures, living quietly in the same castle — when I picture it, something in me grows warm.
Knowing, and deciding anyway
I think the same thing happens between people.
You believe you understand a friend you have known for years.
When your partner is in a bad mood, you decide “here we go again” without asking why.
You have convinced yourself that nothing will ever change with your family.
But when you actually talk, they were thinking something else entirely — that happens more often than you would expect.
We ought to know them, yet we start from assumptions, and we pass each other by.
Sometimes it was never a judgment of the other person at all; you were only talking to the “image” of them you carry inside.
Because some balls miss
One night, in a long stretch of rain, I happened to open the door of a pool hall I had always walked past.
It was quieter than I had imagined.
Everyone faced their own table, alone with their own balls.
No one was raising their voice.
No one paid me any mind.
It was nothing like what I had pictured.
Stand at the table, and almost nothing goes the way you want.
The ball you aim at misses. The cue ball rolls somewhere you never expected.
But because there are nights like that, there is the joy of the moment a ball drops.
Because some balls will not go, the ones that do are a joy.
Somehow it reminds me of Baikinman, losing every time and getting back up.
What we see, and what we don’t
Even the same sky can look an entirely different color to different eyes.
Baikinman will probably lose again today.
But what lies behind that back of his — perhaps, more than we think, no one really knows.
The coffee had gone cold.
The rain was still falling.
👉 Billiards resources from Japan and around the world, organized by purpose: Billiards in Depth (latest updated hourly)
