My thoughts about Kemutai Hanashi - Chapter 4: Decisions

I am currently writing this reflection on a fan made website dedicated to the series. It is meant to be a 3D game focused on character interactions and basic introductions to the story, but right now it is still incredibly barebones. Honestly, I have been having such a rough time trying to wrap my head around three.js. It is the engine powering this entire project, and the sheer difficulty of learning it often leaves me staring at a blank screen for hours. During those moments of frustration, I find myself deeply pondering why I even decided to make this in the first place, and what the actual purpose of it is after all.

That personal questioning makes me realize how decisions often swallow us whole. We rarely understand why we truly want to do something at the start, or what we will actually gain from it in the end. It reminds me of what Søren Kierkegaard described as the dizziness of freedom. It is that feeling of looking into a vast, empty abyss of possibilities and realizing that the only thing tethering you to a path is your own choice. Everything in this life revolves around a massive and tangled web of different choices. You will end up regretting things whether you do them or avoid them, making regret an unpreventable situation anyway. Sometimes we make choices in reckless and sudden movements. Other times they emerge after a long period of quiet pondering, or as an imminent thought appearing randomly out of nowhere. There is simply no way to perfectly analyze the motivation of a character, or even a real person, because our minds are influenced by so many different and invisible factors.

But decisions do not just randomly come and go on the wind. They require a catalyst to truly take shape. A person usually makes a heavy decision either when they are completely suffering and have absolutely no options left, or during a singular and quiet moment that acts as a compass pointing toward a new path in their life. For the characters in this story, that compass was disguised as a very simple question.

"Aren't you going to help that cat?"

This is the exact moment where the story turns in a completely different direction to what we know right now. It is a tiny pivot that changes everything for them.

When you sit back and think about it, you realize how fragile that moment truly is. If it had not been for the stray cat, Oji, suffering out there during the pouring rain, and Arita happening to find her. If it had not been for the heavy rain that forced Takeda to find a random spot to wait for the storm to pass. Would they have ever crossed paths? If it was not for the help that Takeda was so used to giving out to others, only to get struck back by the world, and if Arita was not the one who stepped up to help him in return back in the school days. They simply would not have met. They would not have been seen together. Even though they live in the very same town, they would just walk past each other day after day without ever looking into each other's eyes.

A profound decision starts in the absolute smallest of steps at first. It moves slowly and steadily, but eventually it gathers enough weight to heavily occupy a person's mind. Without those tiny and seemingly insignificant steps, we would not have this story to read right now. Jean-Paul Sartre once suggested that we are nothing else but what we make of ourselves through these actions. Those two characters could have just continued their isolated lives, but they became something new the moment they chose to act. A decision comes and goes, and there is absolutely no second chance that can perfectly replicate a lost moment again.

Because these moments are so fleeting, it is a hard truth to admit that decisions are sometimes incredibly harsh. We cannot easily bear the terrible feeling of losing something right after making a choice to care for it. Think about the deep pain of losing an animal we love after taking care of it, even if we only had it for a short time, or the feeling of losing our minds before the storm comes even stronger. Decisions are never a one way street. They act like a two edged sword that points directly at our own hearts. Risking yourself emotionally, physically, and giving up every single part of yourself just to achieve a goal born from a fleeting moment in time is a genuinely harsh reality.

Yet, despite that harsh reality, decisions can also force a meaningful change into existence. This is true even if it feels like it does not change the broader situation very much at all. When faced with a difficult moment, people can easily choose to be mere bystanders safely looking at a situation from afar. People can be witnesses who just watch things happen and only offer empty words back. But then there are people who will actually reach out a hand to do something. They do this even if they are the ones who will end up hurt or completely disappointed. They act with the simple hope that their intervention might change the situation for the better.

I fully understand that decisions can act as both a good and a bad weapon. Like a single stone that kills two birds, there are always unseen consequences. The sheer gravity of those consequences falling onto the person who decided to help is strictly daunting. Even after giving everything, the person offering a hand often gets nothing at all in return. It is our society that has crafted this guarded mindset. Psychologically, we are often pushed toward the bystander effect, where we wait for someone else to take the risk so we do not have to. We are constantly taught to value our own benefits above everything else. We value staying out of situations just because getting involved might hurt us. Society has turned into a place where people only think about themselves, completely ignoring the struggles of others around them.

When two people actually defy that societal norm and make the risky decision to connect, the outside world tries to box them in. However, when it comes to a true decision of the heart, the arbitrary labels we create for it are ultimately undefined. As I talked about in the previous chapter, there is no true or correct term for a relationship. There is no perfect label that needs to exist, because a single person cannot be purely defined by who they are and what situation they are currently in. That desperate need for a label is a barrier for everyone. It comes from society, from our own harsh judgments, from our scattered thoughts, and from our past experiences. It is incredibly hard to escape fully from this mindset because it has been stitched into the very fabric of our world already.

But that is just our basic instinct and our desire to process things quickly talking. We can choose to forgive that instinct anyway. As Erich Fromm once wrote, to love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A decision is not there to make you scared. It is there to make you feel alive, to see if you genuinely feel the need to do something regardless of what others might call it. There is nothing strict to start and end with a decision anyway.

Ever since that "going to help" question hung in the air, Arita knew something deep down. He felt a profound sense of happiness because of that choice, simply because he likes Takeda for exactly that reason. It did not need a label, and it did not need to be overanalyzed.

There is no person who is right.

There is no person who is "right" for a decision to be said.

There is nothing right, and there is nothing "right" for a decision to be made.

There is no reason, and there is no "reason" for a decision to be thought of.

There is just us, and ourselves, standing there quietly to make a decision.

There hasn't really been a barrier for us to make a choice after all.

And there is no barrier for us to begin, right from the very beginning.