cabin of Tokyo Tower

Emotional depreciation rate at Shibuya Crossing

In this labyrinth that weaves loneliness into the city's DNA, my business card says "temporary emotional architect". Those transactions hidden under the LED lights of vending machines are often closer to the core temperature of human nature than the neon lights of Kabukicho.

Specimen making class at Shinjuku Gyoen

The client is a retired pathologist who always comes to appointments with the smell of formalin. We sat on a bench in the Royal Rose Garden, and he taught me how to use tweezers to clip cherry blossom petals into the anatomical atlas: "Look, how similar the vein texture is to the myocardial slice..." When he suddenly turned to the last page of the specimen book - where his wife's dying electrocardiogram was posted, the automatic sprinkler system of the entire garden suddenly started, wetting the stack of tissues printed with "Body Donation Consent" between us.

Breathing adjustment in the glass cabin of Tokyo Tower

The wife of a bank executive who was required to play the role of "perfect wife" always took role tests at the 150-meter observation deck. She asked me to recite the annual financial report of Mitsubishi UFJ, but in the 90 seconds when the elevator suddenly lost power, she grabbed my wrist and measured my pulse: "Sure enough...a person's heart rate in the dark is the same as when the location of the cheating husband's phone disappears." The city lights under my feet unfolded like a pathological slice, and our reflections with the same lipstick overlapped on the glass to form a third woman.

Hospice care in Akihabara maid shop

The most absurd thing is to plan a "life rebirth" service for an otaku with terminal cancer. In the ward full of figurines, I read his high school diary in school uniform according to the script until I found a junior high school girl's uniform hanging on the infusion stand - that was the love letter he never sent. When he used his last strength to adjust the ECG monitor to the BGM of the game "Tokimeki Memorial", a balloon advertisement for the Comiket exhibition was floating outside the window.

Morning funeral in Yoyogi Park

The contract with the attempted suicide is always signed at dawn. She paid me to come every day at 5:30 to pick up the fragments of her suicide note that she had discarded the night before. One time, a rainstorm washed away all the scraps of paper, so we squatted under a wet bench and rewrote it with chalk. When morning joggers passed by, the postures of pretending to tie shoelaces were very similar to her physical memory of counting money at the counter of Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.