After Dark

by Haruki Murakami

Our line of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it—a sea of neon colours. They call this place an “amusement district.” The giant digital screens fastened to the sides of buildings fall silent as midnight approaches, but loudspeakers on storefronts keep pumping out exaggerated hip-hop bass lines.

He thinks about her words for a few moments and then says, “I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives. Take you and your sister, for example. You’re born to the same parents, you grow up in the same household, you’re both girls. How do you end up with such wildly different personalities? At what point do you, like, go your separate ways? One puts on a bikini like little semaphore flags and lies by the pool looking sexy, and the other puts on her school bathing suit and swims her heart out like a dolphin …”

“Yeah,” Mari says. “But it’s possible for people to draw closer to each other even while they keep a reasonable distance between them.” “Of course it’s possible,” Takahashi says. “But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

“It’s my motto for life. ‘Walk slowly; drink lots of water.’”

“Some day you’ll find the right person, Mari, and you’ll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That’s what I think. So don’t settle for anything less. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”