Free Harmony by Project Itoh

contribution to society.
    Making a contribution by going to a battlefield where I could smoke.
    Making a contribution by consciously choosing not to be part of society—where I undoubtedly would have either slashed my own wrists or cut into someone else a long time ago.
    Which was how I was able to agree with Cian, without a trace of sarcasm, that I was indeed making a great contribution to society.
    My path and Cian’s had diverged sharply after Miach’s death. For Cian, all the enmity she had felt toward society, her family, her hometown, and school had passed. For her it was like a rite of passage, a phase everyone went through before returning to a standardized life. For me, I had gone on collecting the knowledge I surely would have gotten from Miach were she still alive, and on the surface, I too appeared to be conforming, just like Cian. My grades kept climbing until I took Miach’s former place at the head of the class. In a sense, I had become Miach’s doppelgänger.I was becoming Miach Mihie.
    Cian wasn’t becoming Miach. She was joining a club—a club at least nine out of ten Japanese belonged to. A club with tightly defined body fat ratios and stable immune systems and known RNA transcription error rates.
    All while I went from party zone to party zone. Battlefield to battlefield.
    From airport to airport.
    Cigar to cigar.
    Bottle to bottle.
    Except this time, I’d gone from Château Petrus to insalata di caprese , in a place where there was little likelihood of seeing a single smoke or drink.
    I had said goodbye to the depressing, dizzying subway and now sat enjoying a healthy meal in an Italian restaurant with my old friend.
    There were slices of tomato burying water buffalo cheese that had been completely drained of fat, with a light sprinkling of olive oil on top. We were on the sixty-second floor of the Lilac Hills building. The meals here were noteworthy for each bearing a slight risk to the diner.
    When you ordered a plate, the menu displayed your total calorie intake and any potential risk of chromosomal damage you might suffer from consuming the food. Every single item on the menu had a warning attached. Once you had read the risk information to your satisfaction, you could order what you wanted to eat, within the prescribed limits set for you by the health consultant on contract with your admedistration.
    There were a few other people in the restaurant, but not too many. Everyone sitting around the marigold tablecloths were just like the people I had seen in the subway, each well within the margins of a healthy Japanese body.
    
    “It’s been a long time since we ate together,” Cian said, watching the server arrange our insalata . It occurred to me that since the day we had both tried to throw our lives away and failed, Cian and I hadn’t eaten together once.
    “No kidding.”
    “It’s a little strange, actually, being here with just the two of us.”
    I looked out the window at the view from the sixtysecond floor.
    The view that Miach wanted to mar.
    The view that Cian had gotten used to.
    The view I had escaped from.
    
    “Actually, I think this might be the first time we’ve ever eaten together without Miach. Just the two of us, I mean.”
    “I think I ate alone with Miach a few times,” I said, “ before she brought you into things.”
    “Yes, I think you’re right. You were friends before I met you, weren’t you?”
    “I wouldn’t call us friends. We didn’t find each other. Miach pretty much grabbed me.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. I was walking along one day and she literally ran up and grabbed me. Remember the story about the jungle gym?”
    “Oh, right.”
    “Wasn’t it pretty much the same way with you, Cian? With me she asked me whether I knew why the jungle gym twisted and warped like it did.”
    “Maybe she was casting a net.”
    “Huh?”
    “I mean, she was sitting in the park reading a book, right? Maybe she was waiting for someone to