Saturday, July 26, 2008

Story of Miu 11

Continued from previous entries:
Story of Miu 10
Story of Miu 9
Links to Story of Miu 8 and previous entries to where it all started.

___________

The details, when put together, make for a rather fascinating profile of a young man.
Maybe because I am a writer I am by nature intrigued by descriptions of things that people do that offer insight into human nature that writers see as a mission to explore.
I still don't really know Yuga at all.
I only know what Miu told me.
Maybe she is telling only her side of what happened as people are apt to do.
And maybe she didn't even really know him either.
The bits and pieces came slowly and gradually.
But as our conversation went on, the crimes, the shortcomings, the mistakes of Yuga came from her in torrents.
Yuga had another identity, Miu says.
He went to clubs to pick up women.
For this, he went by a false name, Ryuga, which still sounded enough like Yuga so that if someone called out the name _ someone who really knew who he was, who happened to be at the same club, the same party, or the same sidewalk, "Hey, Yuga!" _ the girl he was trying to seduce wouldn't find out he had told her his false name, the lie, the other identity: The boy who wasn't a poor musician at all but an up-and-coming recruit at a PR firm, who had money and on his path to fame.
"That is so sad," Miu said to me, scoffing and sneering, although she was almost going to cry.
"I thought I came to Japan to find human relationships that were devoid of the separation of racism, to link with people in a way that wasn't tainted by the barriers of racial stereotypes. I just wanted a man who would look at me and not see a Jap before he saw anything else."
I touched her shoulder, pale and frail and trembling.
But nothing I could do or say was going to make Miu feel better.
When Yuga was Ryuga, when he wasn't practicing with Miu and the rest of his band, when he wasn't poring over his studies, he was talking to strange women as Ryuga in darkly deafening club after club, whispering strange nothings into their ears.

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