My apologizes if this is completely wrong, as I’m translating from a translation and my Chinese is exceptionally atrocious. These are just a few bits from The Hyde. (I’ll link back to the original Chinese translation when I find it again, but of course I accidentally closed the tab and now it’s practically lost for good.)

On Sakura’s arrest and replacement:

At that time, I was completely unaware that Sakura was still on drugs, though I knew that he had been doing them in the past. It was something I felt we had left far behind. Thinking back now, Sakura was often late back then, and would act really unnatural, so now it’s easy to understand what he was doing at the time, though in the moment it wasn’t clear to me. When he was arrested by the police, it came as a shock.

Then, in the chaos, we all began having meetings, the atmosphere absolutely depressed. Still, we had decided not to discontinue L’Arc.

Then L’Arc decided: Sakura’s situation aside, we had to first restart our activities.

As for me, I had so many thoughts and couldn’t relax, but still we had decided we wouldn’t be able to wait for him to come back.

If we were to get started again, the first matter of business was finding a support drummer. Just at that moment, we got a recording from someone who used to be in our company, Yukihiro, and immediately thought, “He might work.”

So we went with, “Let’s try Yukihiro out as a support drummer and see how it goes.” It was like they were asking me for permission.

The company president and other staff members also agreed, saying, “I’m thinking it might not be so bad.”

Not only was Yukihiro a concern, but so was Sakura. At the beginning there, Sakura might have felt an incredibly powerful sense of betrayal, and Yukihiro might not have been able to merge into the band.

But looking at it today, Yukihiro really was the perfect fit for L’Arc.

If L’Arc is, in terms of its bandmembers, very frenetic, then it needs a solid, bare-bones, agile drummer to balance it out.

On Kondo-san’s death:

I sat with a big tableful of friends from work, all of us eating together, when suddenly there was a phone call saying my dear friend had died in a vehicular accident, and we had to decide what to do with his inheritance in the wake of his death. At this time, no one dared to say anything, until I finally downed my glass of wine and let out a scream. Then we all released our sighs and began to discuss which charity agency to lend a helping hand to.

On the Tohoku earthquake:

In those first moments of this earthquake, everyone, myself included, lost contact with those in the south. I couldn’t reach my own father and uncle down there. I held my breath, sitting at a dinner that no one now dared to touch, until I I finally was able reached my dad, who was safe, over the phone. I raised my glass and wished for no harm to come to anyone else—Cheers!—as everyone sitting at the table did the same.