I am amazed by you, you silly strange incredible person. What are you doing here? A thousand other places would beg for your presence, your talent and accomplishments yet you make your home here, among peasants and fishermen. Before you landed, no one felt the lack of your existence but now you will never be forgotten. You are integral to the fabric of this town, although you were not born here. No one here knows your first steps, and your family is known only through non-descript pictures, but I wonder if this doesn’t simple give the baa-chans greater incentive to adopt you and claim you as their own.
You are the man everyone knows. When I meet a new visitor to this town I am surprised when they are already speaking fondly of you as though you were brothers. Friends of friends cut the middle man and you take them under your wing and make them a part of your life directly. How are you able to trump time, commitment and history and become as important to their lives as your friend? How are you able to turn a chain into a triangle?
And you know how to use these connections. Already I can see if you wanted to, in a decade you could be the second westerner elected to the Diet! If you wanted to. You could go anywhere, and I worry this town is going to suffer some heartbreak over you. You may enjoy it here, but have you ever really been living here?
But I must acknowledge my selfishness. My observations are painted in jealousy, not admiration, and it is tempting to hate you for it. In many ways, your success only highlights my failure.
But to hate you would be to hate motivation, progress and pure, beautiful, intellectual curiosity. You push me to do better merely by the strength of your tale. In the face of failure and emotional disappointment, you don’t persevere. That would imply a change in quality of effort you exert on your life. That would imply a conservative stance. You never exhibit such a shift in perspective. Tragedy and life are not interrelated for you. They exist on two completely separate planes of reality, and you make your home in the latter.
I want to be a stronger, accomplished person because of you. For you? No, that cannot be right. I want to consider myself your equal. Please, can see me as your intellectual sibling?
No that cannot be right.
I want to make an impact on this world, to traverse it and come to understand it. And in exotic adventures, I want to meet you there.
No that is also not right!
I want to use my skills to become as respected as you. I want you to respect me. But this is not at all correct, for to require your approval would automatically make me less than you!
You are no god. I know your failings. I know that for all the amiable attention you receive, for all the time you spent in the lab, on the mountain tops, you have not been able to achieve the one thing you want most. For in your success you are hopelessly dependent on one connection more than any other. For you, she doesn’t have to be smart, she doesn’t have to be pretty, but she does have to exist, and your magic has not been able to conjure more than a temporary dream of her.
I see you, I know you, more than you really know yourself perhaps! You want to dump in her the insecurities that no one ever knew you had. In her you want to find the meaning to why you work as hard as you do. In return, to her you offer your success, and with it the respect that would naturally come from being your bride.
You don’t understand women, and that might be your downfall. What is illegitimate fame achieved under a false pretense of love?
I know what you need too. You need an equal. To have a pet can mean blind affection, but a human pet will just disintegrate into resentment.
I know I cannot be that equal. There is too much I have yet to work on. I cannot risk losing to you in anything.
No this isn’t right either. I need a more aggressive stance.
You do not ask for it of a woman, but I ask it of myself for you. When we meet at the table of equals, when my achievements exceed yours, when I can challenge you on neutral territory and give you a good fight, only then will I deserve you.
But please, as I prepare for battle, wish me good luck with a kiss.”
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