Goodbye Tsugumi

by Banana Yoshimoto

But Yōko wandered around looking as if she felt all alone in the world, and if she came across something that had been forgotten by one of the kids she’d been friendly with she would even start to cry. The part of people that feels this kind of loneliness is actually very small, and I think anyone who really tries can get by without suffering from it at all. All you have to do is keep the spotlight turned in some other direction. It’s perfectly obvious that letting yourself focus on that area is what makes you get all sentimental and lonely, so the more opportunities you have to experience these goodbyes the more skilled you should become at distracting yourself, and thus at coping with these little lonelinesses. And yet Yōko had done precisely the opposite. Something in her had continued protecting that feeling, had nurtured that loneliness, taking special care to keep it safe. I suppose she didn’t want to lose it.