[FESTIVAL - STRUGGLE]

Masaru and Valerie watch as people fill in from the streets, stands, and even more from the surrounding woods to create a massive marching formation hundreds of people dense, with each column headed by a man carrying one of the logs.

“LET’S GO! LET’S GO!” They all shout in unison, their pace and combined might. The float takes the lead with one log remaining, marked and waiting with a single mask tied to it: a challenge for a daring soul.

“Oh…” Masaru scoffs. “They’re uh… that’s a pretty wide parade,” Masaru notes before turning to look at the road ahead.

A wide avenue of stone steps ascends high to the peak of the region’s tallest mountain… and the walls flanking both ends are so high that a person would need a ladder to get over it.

“Uh,” Valerie clears her throat. “I think we need to start moving,” she says.

They both get up just as the parade reaches them, the bench crushing under the conjoined weight of the tightly packed column.

“…Ah,” Valerie groans as she slings her rifle over her shoulder and begins jogging forward, just as Sato jogs by.

“Run, idiots!” Sato, already sweating, croaks out.

Masaru and Valerie are already picking up the pace. The humid summer night makes it hard to breathe at the pace, but at the rate the parade is moving, if they aren’t at least power walking they’ll be trampled by the incoming crowd filling up both sides of the walled path.

“We were looking for you!” Masaru says as he quickly catches up with the lumbering Sato.

“Isn’t it a little hot to be wearing that?” Valerie asks with a smile as she folds her jacket under her arm.

Sato shakes his head, beads of sweat flicking from his face as he jogs on at a snail’s pace. “You can keep that to yourself! This is Akihabara style!”

Masaru chuckles.

“You’re not going to a maid café, man, we’re going up to a shri-”

“Why do you need to wear it?” Valerie interrupts, winning a heated glance from Masaru.

“I-” Sato wheezes in air. “This always happens. I try to be myself and these bastards just run right over me!”

The two slimmer ones hold pace with Sato as the round fellow continues to pull in urgent, exhausted breaths one after the other.

Masaru opens his mouth to talk but stops himself as Valerie looks at him with a warning glare.

What, does she get it already? He wonders to himself.

“Sato,” Valerie begins. “Don’t you think that your individuality is getting in the way of you getting up to the shrine?”

The large fellow sobs out between his gasps. “What?! No! This is a test from the gods to see if I’m willing to compromise my ideals, but I’m not going to do that! I’m just going to…” he gasps again, coughs, and then takes a very different-sounding breath. “I’m going to give up!”

As if cut by the reaper’s scythe, Sato collapses on the ground in a heap of sweat, tears, and steam.

“What the hell?!” Valerie blurts out as she crouches down and puts her arms under his shoulders. “Get up! What are you doing?!”

“It’s… useless,” Sato sobs out between his wheezing.

Masaru looks behind them. Only seconds away, the parade shows no signs of slowing down.

“They’re going to run right over you,” Masaru says, scooting up his sleeves.

“I know!” Sato cries. “It just can’t be do- no!”

Working with Valerie, the two get Sato back to his feet just as the parade begins chanting a continual phrase.

“Come on, man!” Valerie shouts, pushing with all she has to get him forward.

Sato begins lumbering on again, but at a much slower pace.

“Just conserve your energy,” Masaru says. “This isn’t a test of your individuality; these people want you to join them!”

Sato cries up into the thick night air as the parade instruments hold rhythm to each marching step forward.

“Look!” Sato shouts. “That’s like… a thousand steps!”

“Don’t be lazy!” Valerie snips. “Do… do you think a girl will ever like you if you give up when things get hard?!”

Nice one, Masaru thinks as he flashes a smirk at Valerie, who just nods.

Sato, however, isn’t having any of it.

“If she can’t accept me for who I am, then what’s the point?!” he whines as the front of the parade lurches closer and closer to them.

Valerie purses her lips in frustration as a glint sparks in Masaru’s eyes. “I mean… can’t you be stronger? All you need to do is take off that coat-”

“No!”

“Idiot!” Valerie hisses as she reaches to undo his buttons, but Masaru stops her.

“What?! He’s going to di-”

“You’re right,” Masaru says. “We’re here for him,” he says, “and he’s here because he needs to do it himself.”

She groans and just pushes Sato forward as best she can as Masaru, supporting him at the other shoulder, looks to the man.

“Sato,” Masaru addresses as he reaches into his briefcase.

“Y…yeah?” Sato, his eyes closed in pain, sighs back.

“You gave me these, right?” Masaru asks as he displays the non-prescription glasses in his hands.

Sato wheezes a few more times as he trundles forward, wavering with every step. “O-of course! Obviously! Are you crazy?!”

Masaru doesn’t flinch, but instead leans in.

“This is as part of you as your jacket, isn’t it?”

Sato shakes his head, tears rolling down his cheeks between gasps for air.

“I… Yes, it is!”

“It’s not easy to give up a piece of yourself to become part of a team, but what you’re calling surrender is actually a sign of strength.”

“I…I can’t give it up!”

Keeping pace, Masaru puts the glasses back and places his hand on Sato’s shoulder. “We all have to sacrifice things to be a part of a collective, but when we’re out of here, those glasses aren’t coming with you, you’ll have your real ones.”

“I know!... I know!”

Masaru nods, doing his best to hold eye-contact with the gasping man. “You’re not losing yourself, joining a collective – you’re playing your part to join something bigger. You can always come back. You can always put your glasses on.”

Sato slows down, his eyes now glued to the mossy brick below him.

“Come on, man!” Valerie snap as they approach the steps.

Masaru gives Sato a single, firm pat. “You can always come back to who you are. I go home at the end of my shift, and I play Sanguine Souls.”

Sato’s eyes flicker.

“But… you’re a salaryman. You can’t…”

“Yes, I can! No one can tell me what to do when I’m done playing my part for the day. I’m still me, no matter what happens.”

Sato stops.

Valerie roars as she attempts to pull him forward with all her strength, but he won’t budge.

With the parade only seconds away, Masaru taps Sato one final time.

“You can always put the jacket back on. You can have both.”

“Dude!” Valerie snaps. “What are you even talking about?! He’s about to die just because of a stupid fashion statement, and you’re lecturing him about his identit-”

Sato undoes the zipper on his puffy jacket, and slings it off.

Neither Masaru nor Valerie were prepared to see the defined, bristling muscles underneath it.

“I can still be… me… I can still go to the gym, I can still work on my Gunzons, I can… They won’t forget me, because… because at the end of the day, it’s always still me.”

Valerie, her eyes struggling along Sato’s sweat-drenched chest, covered only by a tight fitting t-shirt, fails to find the words as Masaru gives him not a tap, but a shove.

“That’s right! And they can’t ignore you if you’re amazing!”

There’s a pause, the parade front just an arm’s width behind them.

Just before he’s toppled by the front of the log-carriers, he offers Masaru his jacket.

“Hold this for me,” Sato says.

All at once, the parade stops.