After Dark

by Haruki Murakami

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

a sea of neon colors. They call this place an “amusement district.”

“It’s amazing how two sisters can be so different.” “We live two different lives.”

“I wonder how it turns out that we all lead such different lives.

people are all different. Even siblings.

if you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.”

“I’m not much of a talker. Never have been.” “I’d say you’ve been talking a lot to me.” “With you, I can talk, somehow.”

“Everybody’s got their own battlefields,”

preparations have been made to hide her personality and cleverly elude observing eyes.

the clock is the only thing in the room evidencing anything like movement: a cautious nocturnal creature that runs on electricity.

Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it’s not the same as in daytime.”

time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night,”

“The ordinary-looking ones are the most dangerous,” says Kaoru, rubbing her chin. “They carry around a shit-load of stress.”

the world’s a pretty scary place now if you stop and think about it.

“Three a.m. This is the darkest part of the night—and the hardest part.

any single human being, no matter what kind of a person he or she may be, is all caught up in the tentacles of this animal like a giant octopus, and is getting sucked into the darkness. You can put any kind of spin on it you like, but you end up with the same unbearable spectacle.”

Studying the law is not as much fun as making music, but what the hell, that’s life. That’s what it means to grow up.”

Being alone has never been hard for me.

“But it’s possible for people to draw closer to each other even while they keep a reasonable distance between them.” “Of course it’s possible,” Takahashi says. “But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

everybody waiting on her hand and foot. She just didn’t have any openings for me. In other words, when I needed her most, she had the least freedom to respond to my need.”

“We were sisters living under the same roof, but we grew up in two different worlds.

‘Walk slowly; drink lots of water.’”

You just have to live one day at a time.”

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you’ve had it: things’ll never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone down there in the darkness.”

In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I’m racing with my own shadow,” Korogi says. “But that’s one thing I’ll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”

“That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive.

“It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort. I don’t think you have a particularly dark character.”

during that whole time in the dark, Eri was holding me. And it wasn’t just some ordinary hug. She squeezed me so hard our two bodies felt as if they were melting into one. She never loosened her grip for a second. It felt as though if we separated the slightest bit, we would never see each other in this world again.”

The two of us became one: there were no gaps between us. We even shared a single heartbeat.