A Man

by Keiichirō Hirano

If I were to pass the baton to someone at this

point, they might be able to lead my life better than I ever would have.”

“That’s the way legal entities have been conceived since the days of the Roman Empire. Even when the people changed, the nation remained the same. Roman law, which is the foundation for present civil law, presupposed the eternal continuation of the empire.

when we fall for someone, what part of them is it that we love, I wonder?

But if a lover finds out that their beloved’s past is in fact the past of a stranger, what happens to the love the two shared?”

“Once the truth came out, they’d have to renew their love,” she said. “I mean,

it’s not as if you love someone once and that’s it. You renew your love again and again over the long haul, through everything that happens along the way.”

“Love for another might remain the same love even as it keeps on changing. Or perhaps we can go further and say that love persists precisely because it changes.”

Assuming “Yoshihiko Sonézaki” was indeed Daisuké Taniguchi, Kido knew his face from photos.

There, at a four-seater table divided from the one beside it by a movable wooden partition, sat a man in a gray knit cap and an embroidered bomber jacket

While he had definitely aged, there was no mistaking Daisuké Taniguchi. He’s still alive.

“Daisuké Taniguchi?” The man who was supposed to be “Yoshihiko Sonézaki” hesitated, looking

harrowed for a moment, before saying, “Yeah.”

Once Kido had ordered a coffee, Daisuké said, “Um, can you call me Sonézaki? And do you mind if I smoke?” “Go right ahead. Sonézaki-san it is. Apologies.”

“If you cut off your relationships and move to a different place, the memories just fade naturally—I mean, if you hate your past, trying to forget will get you nowhere. You can’t erase it. You’ve got to overwrite it. Cover it over with someone else’s till it’s beyond recognition.”

“. . . I see. Did you . . . How can I put this? Were you aware who you were exchanging registers with?” “You mean Makoto Hara?”

“Did you know about Hara-san’s early days?” Kido asked. “Yup. Father was that killer, right?” “He was. So Hara-san changed his family register twice? First he became Yoshihiko Sonézaki and then—” “He swapped with me.” “Why did he trade twice?”

“Hara-san’s past was intense, so Sonézaki was pretty much his only choice for a swap partner.

Kido saw the pieces of the story coming together at last, realizing that it must have been this man, the original Sonézaki, who foisted Hara’s register on defenseless Tashiro.

“The family register for ‘Daisuké Taniguchi’ was a hot item,” said Daisuké,

it was so popular that one guy kept trading for better and better registers trying to land mine,

Then I met Hara-san and we talked a bunch and I thought my old identity might help him turn over a new leaf.”

he wanted to do his best to make the most of what remained of my life. If I was going to give away my life, I wanted it to be to someone like that.

“So, when you met him, Hara-san would have been going by ‘Yoshihiko Sonézaki,’ is that right? Was he the one who told you about his original life?”

In a way, it’s almost like a source of confidence for me now, I mean, when I think how I was born to this really badass family but that I’m hiding it so I can try to live honestly.”

the truth is, I never met the real Sonézaki-san, so I can’t picture him directly. I base him on Hara-san. I start by imagining what Hara-san might have been like if he was the son of a yakuza and build up my past from there.

“He’s passed away.” “What a shame . . . Though I do feel kind of relieved to know that Daisuké is gone. I wanted Hara-san to keep on living Daisuké for me, but it also kind of creeped me out whenever I remembered that the second son of that family was still out there, alive somewhere.”

“What? Really?” Daisuké made a sour face and looked as though he were reconsidering the meaning of Hara’s death.

“You wouldn’t consider going back to the Taniguchis? There is the estate, and I hear your mother wants to see you. For the legal problems, I could—” “No way!” snapped Daisuké, flinging the lighter he’d been holding onto the table. “If you’re going to talk about that, then I’m outta here.”

Misuzu is by far the hottest girlfriend I have ever had. Most of my memories of ‘Daisuké’ are just barely hanging on, but not the ones of dating her.

Now Kido wondered if the two brothers, Daisuké and Kyoichi, however different they appeared on the surface, might in fact be two of a kind,

Kido sensed a kind of psychological deterioration in the man, resulting no doubt from his unfortunate circumstances and irreducible to his innate character.

Daisuké had the look of an amateur investor who has just learned that a share he had put aside for more bullish times and finally sold off at a loss has just gone up in value.

he sympathized with Daisuké for the situation that had made him run away from the Taniguchis and was filled with sorrow at the thought of Hara’s single-minded adoption of that past as his own.

After meeting with Daisuké and interviewing him about his register swap with Hara, Kido finished the report for Rié.

Suddenly a line from a story he had read long ago flitted through his mind. “Ah, such a moment of such a day,”

I wonder if there’s a life out there that someone is about to part with that I might be able to lead better . . . If I were to hand off my life to someone right now, would he be able to lead the remainder of my life better than me?

was it more advantageous for the child to resemble the parent? Was it because of such resemblance that the parent raised the child with great care,

Just as it was for Daisuké—even Daisuké’s life might not have attained such enviable happiness if anyone other than Hara had picked it up.

For both Narcissus and Hara had wanted to depart from their bodies. If this had been possible for Narcissus, he would have been able to love himself, whereas Hara wanted to become someone else, to love another, and to be loved by that other.

Kido thought of not just Hara but the whole multitude who had exchanged their family registers through Omiura.

had been forced to transform into a different being, some finding love and happiness, others tumbling further from grace.

These rotten crews will buy a small plot right beside the mountain. Then they chop and haul all the trees where the owner is in question.”

“It’s a problem for the whole industry. Something’s got to be done. Now and then we look at family registers to check the owner of old mountain land, but it’s just a big mess,

“I keep beating myself up for what happened to Taniguchi-kun.

That was the one time I took on a site with poor conditions. The client was someone I just couldn’t refuse.”

Hara’s friends mourned his death—whether they had known him in his guise as Daisuké or, like the president of the boxing club, by his real name—and Kido sensed the lingering wound in their hearts. Not a single soul spoke badly of him.

It takes about three years before you’re fully trained in this industry. The government provides a training subsidy called the Green Employment program. Taniguchi-kun learned the whole job in about eighteen months.

“He used to draw pictures a lot. During lunch break

They were very honest pictures. Very Taniguchi. The personality you were born with really shows in things like that.”