I am not hikikomori!

She was being locked out of her own son’s room. The hurt slapped across her as though her son had thrown a wet blanket in her face. 

CARVING A NICHE BY KAREN BREMER MASUDA 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 69

Jun Kosugi ran his fingers along the top of the desk. He could and would carve it into something spectacular. It was one thing he was grateful to his father for, that he’d built the desk of wood. No synthetics here. Jun could carve the desktop. He had a feeling of such joy and anticipation for what he might create. 

He had removed the plastic covering. He put it in the hallway. In the night Jun snuck out from his room and grabbed his father’s ashtray and lighter. 

He needed to get rid of the photos that had been mounted under the plastic, photos of a long-ago soccer tournament, when his team had won a first-place trophy.

Now he had no fond memories of soccer. He burned the photos one by one, watching his smiling face and those of his soccer teammates turn to ashes in the heavy cut-glass of the ashtray. 

Soccer was his little brother’s game, not his. He lived in the shadow of Nao, who did everything seemingly effortlessly. While Nao got better and better at soccer, Jun seemed to get worse and worse. Jun was benched during games for a girl on his team. 

Jun’s father went out to kick the ball around with him and Nao. But then Nao would just run circles around Jun making him feel stupid and hopeless. 

Jun would use any excuse he could to get away. He would go to the toilet and simply not return. His mother would ask him what was wrong when nothing at all was wrong, only that he did not like soccer. In junior high he got out of soccer and into art club. 

His father would say, “Why don’t you get on the basketball team?” Jun knew it would be a re-run of soccer. He would never be able to make his father as proud of him as Nao did all the time.

Jun left the ashtray filled with the ashes of the photos outside his room next to the plastic desk cover.

“What is this?” Jun’s mother woke him from the sleep he had finally succumbed to, still sitting at his desk, carving tools at hand. 

His mother rattled the bedroom door. “What am I supposed to do with this? Open this door, right now! Are you all right?” 

Jun retorted: “Leave me alone!” and then a feeble, “I am fine.” There was no lock on his door. He had blocked it with a bookcase that fit under the door handle making it impossible to turn the lever down. 

Jun’s mother was being locked out of her own son’s room. The hurt slapped across her as though her son had thrown a wet blanket in her face.