Haha… Kamen Rider Zero one joke.
We’ll get to today’s reading in a bit. It didn’t speak to me in the moment but later I went OH SO THIS WAS FORESHADOWING, HUH…
So my plan today was pretty simple: I had already packed up, I get my therapy session, then head out.
Therapy got cancelled because my therapist had an emergency though, so I headed out kinda early. The hotel staff was very hands on, worried that I was walking out on bad weather (a mere shower) or that I needed to walk like 15 minutes with my bag.
I appreciated it and honestly the homely friendly air the place had was a highlight… but also I take these vacations to do things at my own pace, where if I do something immensely dumb I’m happy because it was an immensely dumb choice I made.
So like… amazing place, just a clash of personalities as it were. They did gift me a bag of some of the stuff they sell there as I checked out though, so…
My original plan was to take the bus that went out at 9:30AM, but I managed to get one at 8:40 that made me arrive at the station at 9:30 instead.
I was making good time, I even had a meal when I made it to the shinkansen, which was 3 hours and I’m gonna be honest, I was kinda drained by then.
I love to explore rural places in this country because they’re so different from what I usually see, but also fuck me access to them is an annoyance.
I made it home and I was so tired I didn’t wanna make any grocery runs and whatnot, so instead I went to a vending machine right in front of my building and got something to drink there.
Wish I could tell you I did something fancy, but I just made dialup noises until I went “I’m tired” and went to sleep.
And this is where the entry would stop normally, but not today.
So I’m sleeping, completely drained. I wake up ever so slightly at like 1AM and hear noises that were… too consistent to be the stuff I dropped sliding out of place.
Then I see someone trying to enter my bedroom and go “誰?!” (Who?!) and the person rushes out. I get out of my bed shouting “おい！”(おい！) and by the time I’m out they’re already over the lobby door.
So I return to bed after locking my door, I make sure that nothing was taken, and I make an assessment of the situation.
The first thing was fighting off the onset of PTSD. One of my problems with sleep is that SO MANY traumatic things happen while I’m asleep, from earthquakes to (the most relevant today) that one time our office house got raided on suspicion of mining bitcoin (we weren’t and it wasn’t illegal by the by).
That was… shockingly easy, all in all. Next was (connected to this), the fact that I didn’t freeze up let alone me shouting in Japanese specifically.
The wildest thing, and the reason why I’d be excused to think the intent was burglary is that… how does this person not realize it’s not their house?
I put dupe fridge magnets on my door, my entryway is cluttered, the hallway is filled with frames and photos. Let alone the fact that he tried to turn on the light of the hallway and instead turned on the light of the entryway outside.
There’s two key reasons why I don’t think it was burglary though.
The first is security. This is the sort of building where you need a key or intercom call to get into the lobby and then pass a SECOND door to get to the hallway with the apartments. This is also why, despite locking the door out of habit, there’s the odd day here and there where I let it slip if I’m too tired.
So it was someone either let in or someone that lives here, and considering the route they took it HAD to be someone that lives in this building.
The second reason is a small element I left out until now…
You wanna know how I’m sure which way they went? I SMELLED IT.
THEY LITERALLY LEFT A TRAIL OF BOOZE SMELL BEHIND THEM.
I just had a visit from someone that was not only literally drunk blind but also did it so often they were acting on faulty muscle memory.
And in the end that’s what today’s reading feels like it’s talking about. It’s reflecting how I was able to fight the old trauma and I’m here laughing about it instead of having A Moment.
The biggest silver lining is that with the prospect of a charge of tresspassing among other things, the other guy is probably scared sober right about now.
Or at the very least more scared than me.