Akira Kurosawa chugged a flavored seltzer water in a way that almost felt like being happy, the carbonation swooping inside of him, the bubbling in his stomach and things. He had work in a few hours but couldn’t sleep because the neighborhood kids were knocking over trash bins outside his apartment, slamming them to the ground with wrestling moves. Akira Kurosawa worked as a retail associate at the world’s largest telecommunications company by revenue. The company’s motto was “A Better Future Isn’t Possible.” Often this job felt tangential to the rest of his life, like a delayed flight rerouting to the wrong city. The crashed airplane of youth, Akira Kurosawa thought vaguely to himself watching the neighborhood kids bring down another garbage can with a lariat, the squandered terrorist attack of childhood. He finished his seltzer. He put on a coat and went outside and asked the kids to please stop knocking over the trash. The kids stared back at him. Akira Kurosawa was surprised by their ugliness—had kids always been this ugly, he wondered to himself, he couldn’t remember. These kids on his street had pimples, their faces were a weepy seepage of acne. Toppled garbage surrounded them. It was too early and the morning air seemed to cling like a plastic bag, Akira Kurosawa felt, it stuck to him like litter that would never biodegrade. Akira Kurosawa asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. When they didn’t say anything, he added that he was a retail sales associate for the world’s largest telecommunications company by revenue and very depressed; he told them they should study hard and get a better job than his, one that not only paid more but was fulfilling in a spiritual capacity, so that they wouldn’t wake one day to suddenly find themselves sinking inexorably deeper into the bog of life. He used this exact phrase, the bog of life. He told them, chuckling self-consciously, to stay in school. He raised his hand in what he retroactively recognized as an attempt at a fist bump. He felt insane in a way that felt like being drunk, although he was not drunk. He felt the flavored seltzer water moving inside of him like blood. Then one of the kids burst out laughing at Akira Kurosawa. The kid said that Akira Kurosawa was on the side of the global hegemonic order, of big banks and Wall Street. The kid said that it didn’t matter if a person intended to be good or moral, if the sum total of their actions was contributing to the profit margins of Wells Fargo. It might be the least resistant path to help Wells Fargo, the kid argued, it might pay the bills and even give one a sense of purpose, but you should always be against the global hegemonic order, against the big banks and Wall Street, which Akira Kurosawa was not, the kid said. Then the kid called Akira Kurosawa an asshole and kicked him hard in the shin. While Akira Kurosawa doubled over in pain, the kid lifted a garbage can and hurled it into the road. The kid screamed something about capitalism and “the Marvel cinematic universe.” The kid shouted “Raaaagh!” and “Motherfucker!” before running away, the other kids following. Akira Kurosawa kneeled there in the middle of the now empty sidewalk. His kicked shin throbbed. The trash remained spilled and everywhere like a kind of dirty snow.