Who Was It For?

Hey, you.

Have you done something “good” for someone lately?

Maybe you stopped to help someone who looked lost.

Picked up something they dropped.

Stepped aside on a narrow path to let a stranger pass.

You gave up a little of your time, a little of your effort, for someone you didn’t even know.

It feels good afterward.

Not because you want praise.

You just get to nod quietly to yourself and think:

Maybe I wasn’t such a bad person today.

But tell me.

How far do you have to follow that good deed before you can be sure it really was good?

Clink.

I pushed open the heavy wooden door of Aoi.

Whenever I walked through that door, it felt as though the noise of the city—and some of the unnecessary things I’d collected over the day—slowly peeled away from me.

I sat at the counter.

Without asking, Mama placed a glass of I.W. Harper in front of me.

The ice gave another small clink.

“Kenichi, you’ve got to hear this.”

At the end of the counter, Taka was wearing the most obvious look of dissatisfaction imaginable.

“No.”

“I haven’t said anything yet.”

“When you talk to me with that face, it’s never a good story.”

“That’s harsh.”

Tom smiled beside me.

“Just listen to him, Kenichi. I’ve already heard it three times.”

“Then we’re canceling the fourth. Too much of anything is bad for you.”

“Kenichi!”

“...Fine. Keep it short.”

Taka leaned forward as though he’d been waiting for permission.

“I tried to help an old lady at the station today.”

“Oh?”

“She had this enormous bag. Anyone could see she was struggling with it.”

“And?”

“I said, ‘Let me carry that for you.’”

“Responsible citizen.”

“Right?”

Taka immediately looked proud of himself.

I gave him a cold stare.

“But she said no.”

“End of story. Have a drink and go home.”

“No. The bag was obviously heavy, so I told her, ‘You don’t have to be polite. I really don’t mind.’”

“...You never change.”

“What?”

“You’re remarkably persistent when forcing kindness on people.”

According to Taka, the bag contained something important.

The woman said she couldn’t entrust it to a stranger.

Taka assured her he wouldn’t drop it.

She refused again.

“So we went back and forth for maybe thirty seconds.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Then some guy coming up behind us yelled, ‘You’re in the damn way!’”

I put my glass back on its coaster.

“Where exactly were you having this discussion?”

“You know that narrow passage just past the ticket gates?”

“What time?”

“About six-thirty.”

“You’re terrible.”

“That bad?”

“You blocked a narrow passage in a train station for thirty seconds in the middle of rush hour.”

“I wouldn’t say blocked. We were just standing there.”

“So you blocked it.”

“...Yeah.”

Tom swallowed some whiskey and laughed.

“And then this idiot starts saying, ‘I was only trying to help. Why should I get yelled at?’”

“Well, yeah.”

Taka still looked genuinely confused.

I took a sip of Harper.

“I’ll give you this. You weren’t trying to cause trouble.”

“Exactly.”

“But you were still in the way.”

“Ouch.”

“How many people passed through there in those thirty seconds?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred?”

“So you used thirty seconds of a hundred people’s time.”

Taka frowned.

“What kind of nasty math is that?”

“Three thousand seconds total.”

“Fifty minutes,” Tom said immediately.

“What kind of cursed arithmetic is this?”

“It’s true. A hundred people had their plans disrupted by thirty seconds.”

“It was only thirty seconds.”

“Maybe somebody missed a train because of those thirty seconds.”

“...Maybe.”

“Maybe they were late for an important appointment.”

“...”

“Could’ve been the most important job interview of their life.”

“Could’ve been a marriage proposal,” Tom added.

“Why are we all the way up to marriage proposals?”

“Lives branch in strange places. Sometimes thirty stupid seconds is enough.”

“So if someone got rejected tonight, that’s my fault?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Hell if you know?”

I laughed.

Of course I didn’t seriously think Taka was responsible for anything like that.

If we had to take responsibility for every possible consequence of standing in someone’s way for thirty seconds, nobody could leave the house.

But then something occurred to me.

“What about the opposite?”

“The opposite?”

“Because you stopped her, that old woman got thirty seconds to rest.”

“Okay.”

“If she’d kept walking, maybe she would’ve slipped on the stairs and badly hurt herself.”

“...I suppose that’s possible.”

“Then you saved an old woman from a serious injury.”

Tom grinned.

“Nice work, Taka. You saved a life.”

“Come on. That’s ridiculous.”

“Why?” I asked.

Taka looked uncomfortable.

“Because we don’t know whether she would’ve fallen.”

“We don’t know whether anyone missed a train either.”

“Oh.”

That was the thing.

When it came to bad consequences, we wanted to say:

You can’t hold me responsible for something I couldn’t see.

But with good consequences, we also hesitated to say:

That was all thanks to me.

Because we couldn’t see those either.

“This is getting complicated.”

“That’s why I said I didn’t want to hear it.”

“You’re the one making it complicated.”

Tom quietly put down his glass.

“You never see all the consequences from the start.”

“Sounds heavy coming from a former cop.”

“That’s how things are in the field. Should you stop someone? Let them go? You decide with whatever information you have at the time.”

“And sometimes the decision turns out to be wrong?”

“Plenty of times.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Of course.”

Tom narrowed his eyes slightly.

“But once every card’s been turned over, I don’t think it’s fair to put your past self on trial using everything you know now.”

“Your past self?”

“You know things now that you didn’t know then. There’s not much point asking, ‘How could I have made that decision?’ when the person who made it didn’t have the information you have now.”

I looked silently into my glass.

What I could see then.

What I knew then.

Within those limits, I thought and chose.

Maybe that was all any of us could do.

But—

was that enough?

“Then what if someone says, ‘I was trying to do the right thing’?”

Tom said nothing.

So did Taka.

“If the result is bad, does the good intention make it a good act anyway?”

“That can’t be right,” Taka said.

“Why?”

“Because if you ignore what the other person wants, then you’re just forcing your idea of help on them.”

“The old woman said no.”

“Oh.”

“You thought you were helping her. She told you she didn’t want your help.”

“...Yeah.”

“And you kept going.”

“Yeah.”

“So who was the ‘good deed’ for?”

Taka didn’t answer.

It wasn’t as though I had one.

If someone is struggling, you help them.

That sounds good.

But what if they don’t want your help?

What if your kindness causes trouble for someone else?

What if you never see what happens afterward?

How much are you supposed to consider?

Everything?

Impossible.

Then only what you can see?

How far does what you can see extend?

The more I thought about it, the less distinct the shape of a “good deed” became.

“That’s difficult.”

Mama had stopped polishing her glass.

“What do you think, Mama?” Taka asked.

She thought for a moment.

“I wonder if doing something good is something you get to decide for yourself.”

We went quiet.

“What do you mean?”

“You wanted to help that woman, right?”

“Yes.”

“That was your feeling.”

“Right.”

“But whether she was helped or not—isn’t that for her to decide?”

Taka was silent for a while.

Then he let out a small breath.

“...So maybe I can’t say, ‘I did something good.’ I can only say, ‘I tried to do something good.’”

Mama didn’t answer.

She put the glass she’d been polishing back on the shelf.

Clunk.

“The first time you offered, maybe.”

Taka looked up.

“The first time?”

“You wanted to help her, right?”

“Of course.”

“Then what about after she said no?”

Taka froze.

“...What?”

“The second time, when you told her she didn’t need to be polite.”

That was all Mama said.

She picked up another glass.

Taka said nothing.

Neither did I.

At first, it probably had been simple kindness.

The bag looked heavy.

So he wanted to help.

Then she refused.

And he kept reaching for the bag.

Was his reason still exactly the same?

Did he want to help the old woman?

Did he think she was only being polite?

Did he want her to accept the kindness he had already offered?

Or—

did he want to remain the kind of person who helped old women with heavy bags?

I looked at the ice in my glass.

Hell.

Forget the consequences.

We couldn’t even be sure of our own motives.

When I taught a junior colleague something at work.

When I told a family member, “I’m saying this for your own good.”

When I gave a friend advice they never asked for.

Was that really for them?

Of course I wanted to believe it was.

No business.

No ulterior motive.

Pure concern for the other person.

But could I honestly say there wasn’t even a trace of something else mixed in?

I want to be needed.

I want to be right.

I want to be a good person.

Could I swear none of that was there?

“...Humans are a pain in the ass,” Taka muttered.

“You’re only noticing now?”

“Did you already know all this, Kenichi?”

“Not a chance.”

Tom snorted.

“Anyone who understands human beings that well wouldn’t be sitting in a bar thinking about them.”

“Fair point.”

The three of us laughed.

Mama smiled too.

And that was the end of the conversation.

Or at least, we decided it was.

I finished the Harper in my glass.

The ice went clink.

We probably never get to know how far the things we do actually travel.

A few words you say to someone might save them.

They might hurt them.

They might leave no trace at all.

Whatever happens next, you can’t follow every consequence forever.

So maybe the least we can do is understand what we meant when we offered something.

...That was what I thought.

But do we even understand that?

Was it for them?

Did I want to do the right thing?

Or—

did I want to be the kind of person who does the right thing?

I stood up.

When I opened the door, the night air felt a little cold.

Hey, you.

That kindness you offered someone today.

You’ll probably never know everything that happened because of it.

But where did that kindness come from?

Do you really know?

See you again at Aoi.