Fire of Freedom
Shinzo never knew how freeing it was to have his house on fire. The firemen ran around him with hoses, but Shinzo didn’t care if every inch of it was incinerated. So much of his life was just maintaining possessions! He didn’t want to destroy them himself, but now that the only way to save them was to enter an inferno, he was content to let them burn. His old record albums, which he had been carting from house to house without even owning a record player any more, were no longer a concern. His college textbooks and old manga, which took up an entire room and were still in cardboard boxes, were no longer a concern. The heavy oak furniture carried up the stairs into the bedrooms, which he would invariably have to move back down when they moved next time, were no longer a concern. His wife came home from work, saw Shinzo standing by himself in front of the still-burning house, and began wailing. Shinzo tried to calm her down, to say that nothing inside the house mattered. His wife wailed even harder. She was still attached to the furniture, and the books, and the children.