Christmas Eve - A Day for Joy. A day for friends, for families, for couples to be together.
A young man named Souta Minami stood on the balcony of his small apartment, looking out at the city of Tokyo and its beauty.
Souta, being an orphan whose parents died when he was just four, barely remembered anything about them.
He turned around and proceeded to walk to his living room. In the tiny "living" room, a thin futon lay folded in the corner. On a low table, an open can of beer lay and a book with a black leather cover. It looked old, maybe 30 years? maybe 40? It was impossible to tell.
Souta walked to the table, grabbed the can of beer, and gulped all of it down in one sip. Then he took the book and made his way to the front door, where a coat was hanging from a crooked over-the-door hook. He took his coat and put it on, then proceeded to open the front door and walk out of his apartment with the book in his hand.
Around 10 p.m., a man with unkempt medium-length black hair entered the Shibuya 109 building. Thin glasses rested on his face, hiding his tired, dull eyes. He wore a dark overcoat over a white shirt and jeans. In one hand, he held a diary. In another, he held his phone, seemingly texting somebody. His name was Souta Minami. Shibuya 109 was a well-known fashion mall in the Shibuya ward, which was the heart of Tokyo, usually buzzing with music and neon lights.
After putting his phone back in his coat's pocket, he walked past all the flashy stores and people while seemingly lost in thought.
"Am I really gonna do this? Maybe I can't. But... Maybe I really should?"
Souta makes his way towards the escalator and heads to the floor above him, all the while looking at all the people in the mall. friends, couples, families.
"I've never had a girlfriend before."
He chuckled while thinking to himself. He knew it wasn't something to laugh about, at least for him. He was a 22-year-old man who could barely support himself financially with multiple part-time jobs. He couldn't even get into the university he wanted to. How was he supposed to be happy then?
Souta made his way to the top floor of the mall using the public escalators. he turned to his right and walked for a minute until he saw a door marked "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY."
He then opened the door and entered the stairwell. He knew where all the entrances of this stairwell were since he had worked as a janitor here in this exact mall in the past and had used these stairs before. He started climbing up the stairs.
After a few minutes, Souta finally reached the top. there was a door in front of him.
He reached his hand out to open the door, but then stopped and thought to himself
"Maybe I shouldn't do it. but I can't stop now, I've come this far. I need to do it."
He then opens the door and goes through it.
Cold Wind blew past him as he walked to the edge of the rooftop. The beauty of Tokyo with the light snow on this night was breathtaking. Souta then looked at his old watch, the one he had bought for 1,000 yen from a pawn shop 3 years ago. It still surprisingly worked.
It was almost midnight now, just a few minutes before. It had almost been two hours since Souta had entered the mall. He couldn't explain to himself why it took him so long to reach here when it should've barely taken him 30 minutes. This had started happening to him often for the past few months, ever since he discovered the diary, which he had found tucked inside a cabinet in the apartment he had moved into. Souta thought to himself
"Well, it doesn't matter anymore."
He opened the diary, which was in his left hand, and took out a pen from his coat's pocket. He opened a page and started writing. He stood there writing for a few minutes with tears dropping from his eyes. Some tears landed on the diary, but it didn't affect the book at all. The pages were dry as ever. They were the same. They were always the same. The old, yellowed paper never soaked anything in. No matter what fell on it, the diary never changed.
In a way, the diary was like Souta.
After finishing whatever he was writing, Souta checked his watch. It was exactly 12.
He closed the book and whispered to it.
"It's funny how you never got wet. Anyways, I guess that's my final entry..."
As the clock struck midnight and snow drifted down all around him, Souta stepped off the edge—dying alone, just as he had lived.