Goodbye Tsugumi

by Banana Yoshimoto

Each one of us continues to carry the heart of each self we’ve ever been, at every stage along the way, and a chaos of everything good and rotten. And we have to carry this weight all alone, through each day that we live. We try to be as nice as we can to the people we love, but we alone support the weight of ourselves.

We ran into lots of old friends. Friends from elementary school, junior high, high school. Everyone had matured in their own way, and even as we stood face to face with them they seemed like people from dreams, sudden glimpses through the fences of our tangled memories.

Autumn was definitely here. The sky echoed with the clear tones of a pale faintly greenish blue, the blue stretching on and on as far as your eye could see, and the trees swayed slowly back and forth, cutting wide arcs into the sweeping autumn wind. Everything was steeped in the tranquil fragrance of autumn, and it all came together to form a soundless and translucent world. It felt as if it had been ages since I’d tasted the joy of a morning this dazzlingly bright, and for a while I just sat there with a blank mind, gazing out at the land before me. It was all projected so clearly into my head that it made my heart ache.