A Perfect Day to Be Alone

by Nanae Aoyama

I hadn’t bothered introducing myself properly when I arrived. It had just seemed too embarrassing. I wasn’t in the habit of going around declaring my name to people like that. Nor was I used to others actually calling me by it.

I felt suddenly lonely, in the anxious way that nostalgia always seemed to trigger.

warily from the corner of the room.

I tried blaming my bad moods on my parents, but that just led to tedious, drawn-out conversations, and in the end my adolescence had simply fizzled out with everything still up in the air.

“Chizu, you don’t know what living in a big city is like. You’ll just end up exhausted, and then you’ll come running back here. Plus the rent and everything is so much more expensive there.”

I’d find myself about to mutter something about how hard it was to know what old people were thinking, only to stop short when I realized that I also didn’t care.

On my way to the station, I stopped and looked around. The street seemed to be filled with couples and families. Ahead of me, a couple in school uniforms were linking arms, their bodies squeezed up against each other like they were trying to form an airtight seal. I sat on the edge of a raised flower bed and tried giving them all nasty looks, but nobody returned my gaze.

What did people actually mean when they said they were in love? Whatever it was that was bringing all these people together and keeping them there, it was a complete mystery to me. In any case, I had the feeling that the couples filing past me were experiencing something different from whatever I’d been doing all this time. How was I supposed to prevent the excitement of every new relationship from curdling into boredom? Was it even possible to stay together without that happening?

Unlike the last time I’d been here, there wasn’t a single cherry blossom petal to be seen. Instead, when I looked up through the fresh summer leaves, I could see patches of sky so bright that I couldn’t tell if they were blue or white. Everything was so dazzling it felt like it might give me a rash. Instead of sunshine and breezes, I wanted to f...

The people trooping down the street without even a glance in my direction looked like figures in a pencil sketch – scraps of paper that might, at any moment, be scattered by the warm breeze. But before I knew it, I could feel those flimsy scraps making shallow cuts in my skin. I sighed, folded...

With the breakup and everything, I felt like I needed a new start, so I got a haircut. I had it cropped short so that I looked like some fleet-footed primary school kid, and adopted a tough-looking expression to match.

“I feel like maybe I should use up all my sadness now, while I’m young. So I don’t end up all miserable when I’m old.”

“Oh, you bet. Pain, suffering – that stuff’s always scary, no matter how long you’ve been around.”

I’d have liked to stay young, to lead a quiet life sheltered from all the drama of the world. But it seemed that wasn’t an option. I was braced for my fair share of hardship. I wanted to try being an ordinary person, living an ordinary life. I wanted to become as thick-skinned as possible, to turn myself into someone who could survive anything.

I didn’t know what dreams I was supposed to have for the future, or what people meant when they talked about meeting the love of their life. But those were the kind of things I found myself vaguely longing for.

Telling myself that none of this meant anything, and that tomorrow would be just the same as today, I put the dolls back together again. When I’d finished, I sat there for a while, my head propped on one hand, staring at the tap above the sink.

It all seemed so hopeless. When would I stop feeling so alone, I wondered, and then flinched at my own thought. Was I really so scared of being on my own? It seemed like such a childish thing to be afraid of…

I felt somehow exhausted. Exhausted by my own endless inner monologues, by the blue of the sky, no longer what it had been in the summer, by the thin legs of the children, by this boring walk down this boring path, and by the life with the old lady who was waiting at the end of it.

felt like I’d never be able to lead a normal existence. Everything that came into my grasp I threw away, or else it was snatched from me, while anything I actually wanted to be rid of remained stubbornly by my side. That was all life seemed to consist of.

It unsettled me that my connections to others could be so flimsy. I seemed incapable of establishing a solid bond with anyone. I wanted to live on my own. Instead of other people always leaving me, I wanted, just once, to be the one to leave.

I felt myself becoming less and less attractive. This is a disaster, I would think bitterly as I looked in the mirror of the office bathroom.

I wanted to ask Ginko when that hardship was coming for me, and what form it would take. And I wanted her to teach me how I was supposed to let it into my life when I had no one to share it with.

It was always like this. Goodbyes were much harder when you had time to see them coming.

And so I had replaced the people in my life with new ones. I had thrust myself among people I didn’t know. It wasn’t a question of being optimistic or pessimistic about life. The days simply rolled into view when I woke up in the morning, and somehow I got through them, one at a time.