If the world changed, I could not exist, and if I changed, the world could not exist - Yukio Mishima

Everybody's the same. People are all the same. But it’s the prerogative of youth to think it’s not so.

The parting, like the white fruit of an apple discolouring instantly around the bite, had begun three days before when they had met aboard the Rakuyo.

If he found himself penniless, suicide was always there as an option.
Suicide...
When his thoughts arrived at this point, he found himself overtaken by a kind of psychological malaise. No matter how you looked at it, he reflected, to kill yourself just because you've suffered some setback required too much effort. If you've finally managed to carve some time out for yourself and flop out, you're hardly in the mood to get up and fetch a cigarete that lies just beyond your reach. Sure, you're dying for a smoke, but it remains just outside your grasp. In fact, it requires a huge effort to heave yourself up and fetch that cigarette: just like when you're asked to push a car that has broken down. That, in a nutshell, is suicide.