I have never derived the least joy out of amusements. Perhaps that is a sign of the impotence of pleasure. I ran riot and threw myself into wild dive… - Osamu Dazai

To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one percent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine percent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born.

The only reason you helped me out was because I’m a tortoise and my tormentors were children. To intervene between a tortoise and children isn’t likely to bring about much in the way of repercussions. What did you give them—five coppers? That’s big money to a child, but it’s not much skin off your back, is it? I thought you’d put up a bit more than that. Miserly isn’t the word. How do you think it makes me feel? Five coppers for my life. For you it was just a whim of the moment. ‘A few coppers to rescue a tortoise—oh, hell, why not?’ But suppose it wasn’t children teasing a tortoise but, say, a group of rowdy fishermen tormenting some sickly beggar. Would you have offered so much as a single copper? Hardly. You would have scowled and hurried past, not wanting to get involved.

How cruel of you. What part of what you see here is carefree? If only you could understand the sadness of the ones who grow the delicate flowers of buffoonery, protecting them from but the slightest gust of wind and always on the verge of despair!