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Often when Kentaro had been working on a part of Tokyo and talking to Naomi about that place, she would come back for her next session having visited that part of the city. She would bring a small present or souvenir for him – sweets from Harajuku, gyoza from Ikebukuro – and he would feel his face going red in embarrassment.
Dreams could sometimes invade reality, couldn’t they?
He knew then, with a terrible certainty, that if he were to glance up from the tattoo on Naomi’s body and look outside the door, he would see the cat sitting there, its green eyes watching him.
They only served the soup to tell themselves they were good people – it was obvious.
What would the old master who’d once trained him think of him now?
By living as outcasts, they paid every day. That was their punishment.
If they couldn’t laugh at life, what was the point?
To view the things in the scenery that he felt to be beautiful, the small things that gave him pleasure.
Imagine all the secrets and lies it had been privy to, the things that humans get up to when they think no one is looking.
But he saw it for what it was – the theft of his last worldly possession: his freedom.
The city was its friend. The city would provide.
Keita stared into space, as if he were looking at something Ohashi couldn’t see. ‘And how if you’d just done a few things differently, if you’d just made better choices, then you’d be in a better place right now.’
I remember going to Asakusa to get my tattoo done.
And whatever happened to the nice old guy with the purple bandana?
I used to meet him outside the shop and give him the food we were going to throw away. Poor old guy. But he’d just stopped coming, even before I quit the job.
Deru kui wa utareru – the nail that sticks out will be hammered in.
She’d read most of them, but there were a many waiting to be read, which gave her a sense of excitement, and conjured up one of her favourite Japanese words – tsundoku – a word that required a sentence in English: buying books and piling them up on a shelf without reading them.
the dark shape of a photographer crouching low to take the picture. She wondered who they might be
Professor Kanda attempted to morph the subject’s facial features in order to make it resemble the popular character Hello Kitty. It looked hideous. Reprint.
‘Freedom seems like a good Christmas present, right?’ He opened the cage door, picked the cat up and carried it carefully out of the science faculty building. He placed it on the ground and watched it bound away in the direction of Sanshiro’s pond. ‘Merry Christmas,’ said Bob, to no one in particular. He blew his party horn, then went back inside.
