【Short Story】Black Cat, Universe

When Aparin’s head begins to hurt, he becomes someone else.
Or perhaps he is still Aparin, but altered—slowed, softened, loosened from the world.
His speech loses its speed.
His voice rises unnaturally high, as if it has drifted away from his body.
He is still Aparin, but it feels like Aparin Part Two.
And sometimes—when it is very bad—he slips even further.
Then he is no longer Aparin at all.
He becomes Paarin.
His younger sister, Saparin, notices immediately.
She gently presses his back and makes him sit down—on a chair, on a bed, or if there is nothing else, on the floor. It is partly to keep him from falling and hurting himself when his balance goes, but there is another reason, a deeper one.
She is telling him, without saying it aloud:
You’re all right, big brother.
You are not floating away.
You have a body.
You are here.
You are grounded.
Aparin was once called a prodigy.
Saparin often says it was good that so many people knew that. Because it means everyone knows he isn’t stupid.
When Aparin comes back from that place—when his voice returns to its usual low pitch and his words start rushing out again—Saparin once asked him what it was like over there. That other world.
Aparin looked confused.
“What do you mean?” he said. “I was here the whole time. I could hear everyone talking. But I felt like I didn’t exist. Like I had no substance. That was the scariest part.”
He tried desperately to explain, but his tongue tangled, his words refusing to line up. By then the headache had gone beyond pain. His brain, he said, had swollen to the size of the universe, so vast it no longer felt like matter at all.
After that, Saparin learned what to do.
When Aparin says his head hurts, and his speech begins to slow, she helps him sit down—slowly, carefully.
In those moments, Aparin tells her stories.
They are difficult stories, but fascinating ones.
Stories about numbers and the universe arguing with time over the weight of existence. Aparin had become obsessed with these ideas after reading high school physics textbooks while he was still in elementary school. But no matter how many textbooks he read, he couldn’t find the answer that connected all three.
And yet, when the headache finally released him, Aparin smiled and said he could see the answer.
“An answer isn’t something you need,” he said.
“An answer is just something you force into a shape.
This isn’t like that.
It’s just… there.”
His words were Japanese, perfectly grammatical, perfectly meaningful.
And yet they were like sutras written on paper—flat, unreadable in depth. Words anyone could read, but no one could enter.
What Aparin had seen, Saparin thought, was the three‑dimensional volume of language itself—the depth that ordinary people could neither see nor imagine.
It must have been extraordinary.
Aparin tried so hard to explain it, but the meaning never quite formed. He might be a genius, but if no one can understand you, people may decide you’re a fool instead.
Aparin’s headaches come without warning and trap him for hours.
They made ordinary work impossible. In high school, he began falling asleep suddenly in class, and eventually he dropped out.
Saparin promised their parents she would take care of her brother for the rest of her life. She went to university and became a doctor—not to cure him, but to support him. So that Aparin could go on living as Aparin.
Saparin understood something very early.
Clever people often label those who cannot assert themselves, just to prove their own competence. And even if Aparin were officially declared disabled, it wouldn’t make life easier. A label, a mark, a diagnosis—accepting it means accepting someone else’s judgment of who you are.
Every human action is entangled with how one wants to live.
People do good things because they want to see themselves as good.
People do bad things because they like who they are that way.
Accepting someone else’s framework of judgment is something to avoid, if possible.
Better to live quietly.
Better to live unseen.
Saparin lives with Aparin, with the person she loves, with a child she took in from somewhere, and with animals. As the town doctor, she is the first stop for everyone. Aparin assists her carefully, examining patients and referring them to the right hospitals.
But she never takes Aparin anywhere else.
Aparin lives an ordinary life. Sometimes he works part‑time at the bakery near the station. He has no other job. But his old classmates know something else: under another name, Aparin has published books.
Stories about a black cat dancing with the universe.
They sound like children’s books, but they aren’t.
The black of the cat is the black of a black hole—absorbing everything, reflecting nothing. The cat is a phenomenon that follows only its own laws, unaffected by other events.
Only those who understand this click Buy on Amazon.
Anyone can buy the book.
Not everyone can read it.
In an age where everything is accessible from every direction, perhaps discrimination becomes even sharper.
People are free to call Aparin autistic, ADHD, highly sensitive—whatever they like. But what they see is only his two‑dimensional projection. Naming an incurable “disorder” without understanding what he sees is discrimination.
Or perhaps it’s jealousy.
Jealousy of someone who can see what they cannot.
With the authority of medical knowledge, they generalize, label, declare it common sense. I know. I understand. It’s just superiority dressed up as care.
They cannot see a single thing Aparin saw in the world of his headaches.
Living quietly.
That has become difficult.
Parents understanding their children—that too has become difficult. Parents want to believe their child’s strangeness is not their fault. They prioritize society’s values.
They cannot say: “No, thank you. This is normal for us.
This child completes our system.
Our solar system is already perfect.”
Everything comes down to appearances.
A society obsessed with how things look.
Even if you look strange, you still have to live.
Saparin gave up on society early.
At the same time, she acquired society’s seal of approval. She became a doctor—and decided not to cure Aparin.
There is nothing to cure.
As long as he can eat, that is enough. This life, lived in a physical body, is only a place of learning. No matter how strange Aparin is, what is inside him is precious.
Even if he produces nothing.
Even if he works no job.
Simply being alive is enough.
My brother is precious.
Holding that truth, Saparin walks straight into the headwind.
Be careful where discrimination begins.
It lies scattered at your feet.
If you pick it up, you will gain someone else’s evaluation.
Don’t pick it up.
That matters.
A diagnosis meant to make life easier must never become a label.
Living without accepting labels—that is the hardest, most important thing.
Only family can give you the courage to do that.

＊自作の原文をAIの助けを借りて翻訳しました。
＊随時、手を入れています。