Heaven

by Mieko Kawakami

I wasn’t sure how long you were supposed to watch someone walk away, but I watched until I couldn’t see her anymore.

“We’re a lot like things already.” She bit her lower lip and laughed. “You and I both know it isn’t true, but that’s what we are to them.”

“Trouble is,” Kojima said and took a deep breath, “even if we’re just things to them, they won’t leave us alone like actual things. We can never be like a clock on the wall.”

I tried to think of something I could say to her, crying silently beside me, but came up empty, unable to act on my feelings.

“If you want to, you can cut my hair,” I said, breaking the silence. “You know what you said before? Like, if you start to feel the normal slipping away. If that happens, you can cut my hair.”

Without school, I could get by without seeing anyone or being seen by anyone. It was like being a piece of furniture in a room that nobody uses. I can’t express how safe it felt never being seen.

At first, suicide was just a word, a vague idea separate from reality. It pointed at a way that other people chose to die, people I didn’t even know. But once the word became my own, it took on the strangest shape. I could feel it growing deep inside of me. Suicide wasn’t only something that happened to strangers. I could make it happen, if I wanted to.

At first, my desire to die was a desire to disappear. I wanted to erase myself and feel real peace.

I know that if I really died, I would have no way of seeing what the world would be like after I was gone, but I couldn’t resist imagining it.

Smells can remind you of all kinds of things. More than remind, they bypass your mind altogether, tingling your palms and nose, triggering feelings before they even become feelings.