Paromita’s Reviews > Lady Joker, Volume Two > Status Update

Beyond the countless wrongs that existed in the world, it was the ignorance of the public, which allowed the wrongs to flourish and spread, that had a potent effect on him.

This image was like the spread of an influenza virus, impossible to determine its every vector. While the only thing to do was to treat the symptoms, and the virus itself could never be completely eradicated.

In the case of Commercial Code violations involving a giant securities company and a major city bank, only the individual mechanism of each separate crime came to light, while the real engine that propelled such mechanisms remained invisible, and where or how it existed was unknown. No matter how you chased after it the trail always went cold at some point, never leading back to the source.

In the end, he alone was responsible for his many regrets, deficiencies, and nature as a human being, and even as he wondered if he would be this way until the day he died, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the person who would brood over such things was a stranger to him, which gave him the bittersweet hope that perhaps he had changed just a little.

Of course, the facts of the crimes committed by Lady Joker would remain as they were, neither more nor less, but it now felt as if they had formed a sandbar in a great, muddy current. Once the water level rose, the sandbar was fated to be inundated, leaving no trace of its former shape behind,

It almost made him wonder if the purpose of his years spent in corporate society had been so that he could enjoy this freedom.

what surprised Shiroyama—more than the regret and disappointment at having failed to accomplish his ambitions—was his unbridled thirst, growing ever stronger within him, for the freedom that was imminent. Who knew that parting ways with the company and becoming someone entirely new, stripping off all the titles and concerns he had carried for so many years, would animate his spirit and so invigorate him?

The hundreds and thousands of memories, questions, concerns, and hopes inside his head were quickly losing shape, transforming into a mass of gray clouds. I see, this is what it feels like to be weary of life.

Yes, his mind and body, and his whole life were fatigued—they certainly didn’t work as well as they used to. The way that sunlight suddenly grows dim. As if his body was sinking beneath an increase in gravity. And yet, he could feel the position and contortion of his every internal organ so keenly it made him shudder.

he could only describe it as something out of a dream, an experience that he wasn’t sure if he had gone through himself or not. Like the accidental death of his grandson, the outrageous crime of extorting a corporation felt like it had been bound to occur, marking a page in his life though leaving him without a sense of accomplishment nor any change in his essential humanity.