In Japan, some words have kotodama,56 which are spirits that live inside a word and give it a special power. The kotodama of now felt like a slippery fish, a slick fat tuna with a big belly and a smallish head and tail that looked something like this: NOW felt like a big fish swallowing a little fish, and I wanted to catch it and make it stop. I was just a kid, and I thought if I could truly grasp the meaning of the big fish NOW, I would be able to save little fish Naoko, but the word always slipped away from me.
