Kenji: Thank you all for being here, in person and virtually to say goodbye to Hiromi.
We have friends beaming in from 21 different countries - so once again, and for the last
time…
Hiromi is bringing the world together.
Ryo: (sings) Seven days since the funeral.
Kenji is starting to Feel it for real now, and he’s decided he’ll
move back in with his folks so he’s packing up the house.
Eleven days since the funeral; All of the walls are bare.
Everything’s packed away.
Kenji just drifts around and sits around and stares and Hiromi isn’t here.
And I binge the news until my eyes are sore, till I’ve no idea what anything I’m doing
is for.
And before I know it I am drafting an email to my manager
Saying, “Sorry for the lack of notice but I’m leaving, effective immediately”
and what’s weird to me is I don’t edit the language, I write
“Sorry - but my life is just too goddamn short to be wasting it here in this job that
is miles from who I want to be.”
And I end it: “Sorry if you’re offended.”
And before I can believe what I’m doing I send it.
Ryo: Thirteen days since the funeral.
Kenji is going to head home tomorrow.
There’s ten unread messages from Rose
and I don’t know how to answer them right now.
Fifteen days since the funeral.
Kenji’s not here now But I have been allowed to hang around a week
but when the renters come … Then I’m not sure what I’ll do.
And I’m going to find my way, there isn’t any doubt.
If I keep my focus I know I can work it out.
So all day, every day, I’m relentlessly trawling the internet.
Dozens of deep dives and multiple tabs.
Look, there are so many different things that someone like me could be thinking of doing
that could feel right.
Like there’s this punk band in Tokyo that I discover at the bottom of a chatroom
and I can just see that I discover at the bottom of a Reddit thread and I can see
That all they need to really take off is a good videographer and that could be me.
I look for a flight but then I think, what’s the point of that?
It’s more of the same.
Just more bottomless content.
Just churning out swill for an overfed, biased-from-birth system that’s
on its knees and that can’t protect the sick.
So I decide what I’ll do is just Opt out of it totally.
Unplug myself straight away and go camp in the hills,
and remind myself about what’s real and who I was in my heart at the start, that just
might do the trick.
But oh my God.
like how many times am I gonna run away?
When am I gonna actually get on with a life?
Have a house, or a family, or job, or community.
When will I be certain what to do??
It’s been three weeks since Hiromi died Totally pointlessly, and rather than healing
it’s just worse every day.
And now I’m thinking that fleeing back home to stay with my parents might be all
I can do till this feeling goes away, away
Kenji: Ryo?
Ryo: Hey, Kenji, what are you doing back?
Kenji: I’m clearing Hiromi’s stuff out of the garden.
It’s a shame, the roses are starting to bud.
Ryo: Yeah.
Kenji: What are you doing - I could hear you talking to yourself from outside?
Ryo: I don’t know.
I quit my job, I quit everything.
I have no idea why.
Kenji: How’s Rose?
Ryo: I haven’t messaged her for three weeks.
How would it work?
She’s five thousand miles away.
Kenji: When you find someone like that you cannot just walk away.
And it’s a much smaller planet now.
Kenji: I miss Hiromi.
Ryo: Yeah.
Yeah, I know.