Prologue
The Awakening of Boredom

The alarm clock bellowed at 6:30 sharp, like every damn morning. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling of my shabby apartment before getting up, my body heavy. One more insipid day beginning for me, Yoshirō, a 42-year-old white-collar worker in Ōsaka.

My morning routine was a blessing: a hasty shower, a dark suit, a tie pulled tight as a tourniquet. Breakfast, swallowed on the run, just enough to keep me on my feet.

At 7:15, I melted into the swarming mass rushing toward the subway. The ride to Umeda was when I armoured myself mentally for another flavourless day.

At work, it was always the same old tune: endless meetings, reports to churn out. I got down to it with the enthusiasm of a condemned man, masking the emptiness that was eating me from the inside. Now and then I would glance out the window at the life pulsing below, before being called back to order by the mountain of work waiting for me.

In the evening, while my colleagues hurried back to their little lives, I stayed planted there. Not really out of necessity, more to put off the moment of finding myself alone in my sterile apartment.

On the way home, I passed lively bars and noisy game arcades. Sometimes I slowed down, drawn by the atmosphere, the laughter, the life. But I kept walking, a prisoner of my stifling habits.

In the silence of my den, I listened to the city that went on throbbing without me. I wondered whether this was all life had to offer me: a string of identical days, a comfortable routine empty of meaning.

Beneath my air of a well-behaved salaryman hid a frustrated man who wanted more, without having the guts to take the first step.

Sometimes, just before sinking into sleep, I felt rising in me an urge to throw it all away. To live, for God's sake. To feel adrenaline, to meet a woman who would make me shiver. But every morning the alarm screamed at 6:30 on the dot, and I plunged back into my dreary life.