The Strange Library

by Haruki Murakami

“Our worlds are all jumbled together—your world, my world, the sheep man’s world. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t.

No matter what the situation may be, I still take pleasure in witnessing the joy of others.

“Is anything bothering you?” “Yes,” I said. “Can you tell me if my mother and my pet starling are all right? That’s got me very worried.” The old man frowned. “The world follows its own course,” he said. “Each possesses his own thoughts, each treads his own path. So it is with your mother, and so it is with your starling. As it is with everyone. The world follows its own course.”

she came close and planted a small kiss on my cheek. Then she slipped through the door and vanished. I sat there on the bed, dazed, for a long time. The kiss had shaken me up so much I couldn’t think straight. At the same time, my anxiety had turned into an anxiety quite lacking in anxiousness. And any anxiety that is not especially anxious is, in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning.