It happened a long time ago when I lived in Tokyo. My partner and I had
dinner at a restaurant one night after we hung around the mall. We came
back to our apartment that we had rented on the top floor of the
building as our home and the office for our record label.
When I
tried to turn my key on the front door, I noticed the door had remained
unlocked. It was weird. I may have forgotten to lock the door when I
left, which was highly unlikely since I was fussy about locking and
couldn’t leave without making sure that the door wouldn’t open by trying
the knob for a couple of times. I got in feeling dubious, but our
apartment didn’t look unusual. Then my partner suddenly said, “Why is
the cabinet open?” My heart began to beat fast with overwhelming
uneasiness and I hurried into the bedroom that had a balcony. The tall
window to the balcony had been smashed broken. It was a burglary.
I
called the police right away while my partner was gingerly looking into
the bathroom, the closet, and behind the drapes to see if the burglar
wasn’t still hiding. Those minutes were the scariest as too many movie
scenes flashed back to me. Thankfully, there was nobody. The police
arrived quickly since the station was ironically only a block away from
my apartment. Such a location apparently wasn’t safe enough to prevent
burglary.
The policemen came in and looked around. As they saw the
messy rooms, they showed sympathy saying, “It’s played havoc, huh?” It
was funny because my apartment had been messy as it was long before
burglary. But probably thanks to it, the burglar didn’t notice an
envelope that held a few thousand dollars for the bills and was mingled
with scraps of paper on the table. Instead of cash, a dozen of Disney
wrist watches that was my collection, a cheap wrist watch that was my
partner’s memento of his late mother, an Omega wrist watch that I
received from my grandparents as a souvenir of their trip to Europe
decades ago, and one game software were missing. Actually, those items
had been the only valuables in my office apartment. Other than those and
litter, my apartment had been quite empty. The reason was simple. I was
near bankrupt at that time.
I had started up my music label with my
partner and it had grown steadily as business. A person I had trusted
offered substantial financial support and I took it. I rented this
apartment and hired staff with that money. Then the financial supporter
tried to take over my label and threatened to suspend further finance if
I refused. Amid horrible disgusting negotiations, money stopped being
wired into my account. The label came to a standstill for lack of funds.
I laid off all staff and saw what took eight years for my partner and I
to build from a scratch crumbling down. The blow was amplified by anger
and self-loathing from the fact that I was deceived by a person I had
trusted. Despair and emptiness led to apathy. I stopped doing or
thinking anything and had played a game every day.
In hindsight, if
there hadn’t been burglary, my partner and I would have kept paying the
costly rent for the apartment and playing a game until we spent all the
money that was left. But something clicked when I saw the very game
software I had played every day picked among other many games to be
stolen, and the glass window of my dream penthouse apartment smashed. It
marked the point where I hit the bottom but also was a wake-up call. We
moved out the luxurious apartment immediately and rented a cheap studio
apartment in a small two-storied building.
That move left some money
in my bank account. The deposit of the penthouse apartment was
returned, too. Also, I received an unexpected insurance payout. The
expensive rent of my former apartment included a damage insurance. The
insurance company assessed the damage based on the report I submitted to
the police. For some reason, they calculated the payout more than the
total price of what were stolen. I discussed with my partner about what
to do with the money. We decided to go to California. A new start form
zero. And that was to be the beginning of all these, everything that I
do at present. My works have been taken to the world by that decision,
made by the burglary.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
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