Haruhiko Katô credited as playing...
Ryosuke Kawashima
- Harue Karasawa: I've always wondered what it was like to die, from when I was really little. I was always alone.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Any parents or family?
- Harue Karasawa: Sure, but they're irrelevant.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Right.
- Harue Karasawa: That after death, you live happily with everyone over there.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Can we stop talking about this?
- Harue Karasawa: But it may be true.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Sure, but...
- Harue Karasawa: Then in high school it dawned on me, you might be all alone after death, too.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: There's no way to know, how could you know?
- Harue Karasawa: The idea was so terrifying, I couldn't even bear it, that nothing changes with death, just right now, forever. Is that what becoming a ghost is about?
- Ryosuke Kawashima: What's this?
- Harue Karasawa: That? Something we programmed here. If two dots get too close, they die, but if they get too far apart, they're drawn closer.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Huh... what's it for?
- Harue Karasawa: A miniature model of our world... but only the grad student who designed it understands it.
- Harue Karasawa: What got you started on the Internet?
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Nothing in particular.
- Harue Karasawa: You don't like computers.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Not really.
- Harue Karasawa: Wanted to connect with other people?
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Maybe, I don't know. Everybody else is into it.
- Harue Karasawa: People don't really connect, you know?
- Ryosuke Kawashima: What?
- Harue Karasawa: Like those dots simulating humans. We all live totally separately. That's how it seems to me.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Just maybe in 10 years, or at least while we're still alive, they'll invent a drug that prevents death. Then, we could live forever and ever. Of course you might say I'm crazy, but I'd rather bet on *that*.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: [reading a book about phantoms] "Everyone dies; therefore, there's no logical reason for ghosts not to exist. How many ghosts have existed since prehistoric times?"
- Ryosuke Kawashima: What have ghosts to do with us? Besides, we're alive.
- Harue Karasawa: Then who are they?
- [turns on the monitors]
- Harue Karasawa: Are they really alive? How are they different from ghosts?
- [pause]
- Harue Karasawa: In fact, ghosts and people are the same, whether they're dead or alive.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: It's not right, it's wrong. They're all crazy! Nobody knows what happens when you die, all this about ghosts, but I won't believe in them, even if I see one.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: [reads an instruction manual] Welcome to the Internet.
- [gets on the computer]
- Ryosuke Kawashima: "Have fun". Okay, I'll have fun.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: Can a computer dial you up itself?
- Yoshizaki: Are you in computer science?
- Ryosuke Kawashima: No, economics, no relation.
- Yoshizaki: Huh, sounds like a hacker.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: A hacker, huh... it said "Do you want to meet a ghost?" Some web site like that.
- Yoshizaki: A ghost, huh?
- Yoshizaki: Through that process, it spread around the world. But now, they're no longer the faint presence they began as. You saw one yourself.
- Ryosuke Kawashima: I don't believe your stories.
- Yoshizaki: Right, sorry, it's all hypothetical.
