Note: Spoilers related to Apocrypha Ch 6 in this thread.

By the way, there is an older discussion thread on Apocrypha Chapter 5 here if you’re interested (which also has spoilers).

(SPOILERS BEGIN HERE)

Warning, long post!

Well, I think I had mixed feelings about this story, but I thought it’d be worth discussing because I know some people really liked it.

The story immediately introduces you to Yakumo as extremely unhinged, having just committed a mass murder by destroying a KMS building with his boss and coworkers inside. He proceeds to also kill Aldo, at which point time loops back.

We see Yakumo again in the past, this time as a quiet, reserved and docile character. He prefers to avoid social contact if possible and lacks confidence in himself. As you progress through the story, you see that he’s kind of a beaten down, down-and-out type of person. He’s bullied around and berated by the section Chief at KMS, his position in the company is in question due to his performance and poor fit for his role. Rather than doing research as he originally applied to the company, his manager puts him in charge of a sales role. And because of his shyness, he doesn’t have personal connections to others which might help alleviate his difficulties in the company, whether through having an advocate for his career or someone to commiserate with. Although he hates his job, he knows there are no other opportunities because KMS took over the market so that there are no other companies to work for. In his personal life, he lives in Dust City where his boss relocated him, a sort of ghetto / wild west. Even when he tries to find a minor reprieve by grabbing a meal, he’s victim to beatings by thugs for fun because the city is controlled by gangs.

He takes it as a matter of course because he’s internalized a lot of negative thoughts about himself. He comes home exhausted, but finds no rest in the knowledge that the next day will come soon and bring more bad experiences. Since he comes home so late, he also doesn’t have time for leisurely distractions like a TV show of a popular idol that many people enjoy. He feels trapped in an endless cycle of futility and anxiety, whom White Phantom finds as a perfect pawn to use to trigger a recurrence in this time layer. Phantom gives life to Kumos, the company mascot that Yakumo designed and is forced to distribute to the businesses of Dust City.

Although Aldo and Nona try to help him to try to do his job, he ends up being fired by the section chief for failing to meet his performance goals. He’s in a state of shock and outrage that after all of his efforts to do his job, it was meaningless. Because Yakumo values little about himself, the only source of external validation he has is taken away from him (being in a reputable company, albeit in very poor work conditions), as well as the means to support himself, meaning he won’t survive anyway without a job, so nothing matters. He is outraged and in a near-giddy state because there’s nothing left restraining him from acting on his bottled up anger. This is where we find the context for him going on a killing spree. At some point, he’s also gained superpowers through Kumos, and Kumos eggs him on to use them to get his revenge.

At first, I found it hard to sympathize with his response at first, since it reminded me of certain mass shootings in the news which are tragic and senseless, and innocent lives are lost. After thinking about it, I think some of those killings fit more under the category of hate crimes, whereas this event is more reminiscent of the phrase “going postal”. Aldo and Nona find Yakumo to be reserved and even a kind boss towards them, but his job forces him into a corner to become desperate.

This Vice article describes the origin of the phrase “going postal”, where in the 80s and 90s, US Postal Workers lashed out through occurrences of mass shootings in various postal offices, especially against their managers, and killing coworkers as well. In an aftermath of one of the shootings, one of the coworkers said, “In my mind, it could have been anyone,” and “I understand why he did it”. What contributed to these postal office mass shootings were a toxic work environment and the strained relationship between authoritarian managers and workers. Although I don’t want to downplay an individual’s responsibility in this, we can see that there are real-life examples of this occurring, hinting that it’s more than just a problem of one individual, but a societal or organizational problem. For every person who lashes out, there are many more people who suffer quietly in these situations, and just stopping these individuals doesn’t address the original problem or environment that caused it. I think it’s also worth mentioning that this story has special relevance in Japan, which has a widespread problem with work life imbalance and overworking. For a global audience, it may be less relatable what forces or pressures society places on the individual of another culture, but traditional work culture in Japan pressures people to work extremely long hours and neglect their personal health and family, leading to even “karoshi”, or death by overworking. Also, Japan places great importance on putting on politeness and appearances (it has a shame-honor culture like many Asian countries), so it becomes more difficult to express your true feelings. So rather than stigmatizing the feelings that workers experience, fiction can be a helpful device for expressing these thoughts in a safe way to reason about them, rather than repressing and hiding them for society’s sake.

There are more twists and turns in the story, but Yakumo finds his happiness doesn’t necessarily seem to be fulfilled by the time loop:

• He loses against Aldo and Nona and even ends up dying. Meaning he doesn’t get to live to see tomorrow.
• He sees his section chief die by jumping into a wormhole, but it doesn’t give him relief.
• White Phantom welcomes him to trigger the time loop, but it only makes Yakumo upset at being used.

All of these upset expectations make him confused and think twice about what he really wants.
Finally, he realizes that he just wants to be able look forward to tomorrow, which doesn’t necessarily require him to trigger a time loop (aka, a very polite term for committing mass murder).

So he finds that the external solution he initially thought would bring him happiness doesn’t necessarily do that. He has to look within to find his answer. Earlier in the story, you see an example of this idea. He looks for the popular “Drinko Joy” which promises happiness and a “better” version of yourself. But he realizes he doesn’t want it because it’s not true happiness if you can’t be yourself. It’s more like a hyper caffeinated, manic version of yourself. He runs into a young man who’s devastated that they ran out of the drink, because he has social anxiety and feels that he needs the drink to be able to talk to people. But Yakumo tells him that he doesn’t need the drink to be happy. The young man realizes that he’s been talking to Yakumo this whole time and has done so without the drink.

In the same way, Yakumo realizes his happiness didn’t come from trying to control the outcome of the future. The future can’t really be controlled, as he found out (and from observing his future self). Controlling tomorrow was just an illusion of control, the same way that “Drinko Joy” gave the illusion of being a better, happier person. But he looks back on the time he and Kumos laughed together and realized that that was a brief moment of happiness in his life. He finds that there are a lot of things he still can’t control, but he realizes his problem was a lot simpler than trying to control fate and destiny. By acknowledging that he wanted to be happy, he could finally look forward to finding those moments in life, and thus hope for tomorrow.

I’d been ignoring my desire to be happy. I’d been acting like I didn’t even want it.

This kind of reminds me of a Zen Buddhist koan (a type of paradoxical story meant to provoke reflection and show the inadequacy of logical reasoning to arrive at enlightenment or truth) called “The Tiger and the Strawberry”.

You can look it up, but basically the story goes, a person finds themself chased by a tiger. They encounter the edge of a cliff and climb down a vine to escape the tiger. They look down and see a ravine, where yet another tiger is waiting to devour them. Looking up, there is a mouse that begins to gnaw at the vine holding the person. Then they see a strawberry growing off the side of the cliff. While still holding onto the vine, they take the strawberry and eat it. It is delicious.

The story has no solution to the predicament the person is in. Reasoning alone is inadequate to solve a situation that can’t be solved (i.e., the inevitability of death), and so you are unable to find a solution. However, it is possible to reach a type of acceptance and acknowledgement that it is possible to find happiness in that place.

I think Yakumo arrives at a similar conclusion:

After all that’s happened, I’m still just me. Work hasn’t changed. My personality hasn’t changed.
Still, I have no choice but to live like this.
I’ll have to keep searching for happiness within this cage.

Although one could argue his life changed because of his superpowers, he did try to use them, but it didn’t help his predicament. Also, one could argue that his life will get better since his boss is gone. That is true, and there can be much gained by changing your situation to make you happy, but I think the point of the story was that the kind of change he wanted came from looking to his own happiness than trying to change his situation (some of which are beyond his control).

After the true ending, he found that he slept peacefully. Light is shining through his window. He acknowledges that even though he has problems, he remembered something positive:

I get angry and sad every single day. But, sometimes I laugh, too. Like yesterday.

Then he uncharacteristically gets up to go to work early. He doesn’t know how to explain it. Kumos is surprised, to which Yakumo replies:

I just feel like it, I don’t know. Maybe we could grab breakfast somewhere.
So many strange things have happened. I think I went a bit insane. And now, I…
I’m sort of looking forward to what today will bring.

Yakumo (陽雲) means “daylight, the light of the sun” (陽), and “cloud” (雲). Hence the name of the chapter, “The Breaking Dawn”.

True to his name, Yakumo has found a light of hope.

If you made it all the way to here, thanks for taking the time to read this post.

What do you think, did you enjoy this story? Did you sympathize with Yakumo? What do you think about how the section chief treated Yakumo after the reveal that it was future self? That was weird. I feel like I didn’t quite grasp this story very readily, so other opinions are welcome. There are a lot of things in the chapter I didn’t mention here due to the length of the post, but we can discuss those as well.

I’ll admit I had a lot of trouble thinking about this story, and his casual deliberation about mass murder put me off, but I think it was well done, and it required me to think a lot about the story to understand the meaning. At least he admits he thinks he went a bit insane. However, I did end up liking the interactions between Yakumo and Kumos. I thought it was funny every time Kumos slapped him on the back.