Hardboiled & Hard Luck

by Banana Yoshimoto

Things that don’t matter at all to one person can hurt another so deeply it seems as bad as dying.

There are, without a doubt, places in this world where something has settled, and it’s best for us little humans not to get involved.

I always thought that the most terrifying things anyone could ever think up were the things living people came up with.

I was already up to my neck in this night, submerged in this strange and lonely atmosphere.

I was like someone so sick with fever that she can’t remember what it feels like to be healthy.

And let her be reborn into an especially easy life. You can even take a year off my life if you have to, since it looks like I’ll be around for a while anyway.

I entered the world of sleep.

I guess I did pick up something on the road, after all. This mood.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, “but just having you here in my room wears me out.”

“In my case, things always had a touch of humor, and we had some good times, and beautiful moments—there was always something good.”

After all we had been through, the one tie that still bound my mother and me was the way time moved in our lives, because it had seeped down so deep inside us.

They were falling apart, and you could see they were in a very dangerous mood—you know what I mean?—something awful hung in the air around them . . .

It was a pretty dumb song, nothing special; the thing is, it came straight into my head. And even though it was winter, my mind became full of sunshine. And suddenly I knew: I’m going to die on a summer afternoon.