Teki Cometh

The days of Watanabe, a retired professor of French literature, follow a ritualized order – he devotes himself to cooking simple meals, writes columns on his field, and occasionally meets with former students. Outwardly composed, he secretly calculates how long his savings—and thus his life—will last. His fragile routine shatters when a cryptic message appears on his computer: “The Enemy Is Coming.” From that moment on, past and present begin to merge. His late wife Nobuko returns to scold him for his attachment to a former student, while a young admirer challenges his loneliness. Dreams of grotesque comedy tip into darker visions filled with guilt and longing. Boundaries between wakefulness and hallucination are deliberately blurred, drawing us into Watanabe’s disoriented inner world. Is the supposed “enemy” the onset of dementia, the fear of death, or his own guilty conscience?