All the Lovers in the Night

by Mieko Kawakami

“I’ve had enough of this small town and the way everybody acts here.”

“What really matters is how much of this I can get rid of . . . all these things that were decided for me,”

“That’s why I need to get out of here. So I can live my life on my own terms, the way I choose. I’ll go somewhere I don’t know anybody, where nobody knows me, and make a real life for myself. It’s like my real life hasn’t even started yet.”

Things that I was certain I hadn’t noticed at the time, things that probably hadn’t even happened, and things I never imagined I’d remember sprang up and multiplied like wildflowers, growing silently and with incredible speed, filling my eyes and ears and heart.

People ask for advice all the time, right? But they’re not actually asking for somebody’s opinion, or what that person would do in a similar situation. Far from it. What they’re really doing is putting their thoughts or their own experiences into words. That’s why advice never solves anything.

I climbed into bed only to realize that I had no way to occupy myself, which gave rise to an unspeakable loneliness, although I had no idea what it was that made me feel so lonely.

I became incredibly depressed when I realized that there was no truth at all in the words “We regret the things we don’t do more than the things we do.”

Noriko always to my right, in the empty hours that we spent together before and after school, dressed in identical school uniforms, but now that wispy voice was being eclipsed by the face of a grown woman who was prone to sighing and wearing brown lipstick, her fleshy chin resting on the back of her hand, everything slipping further into the distance with each blink, with every second.

I’d been on my own for ages, and I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone, but now I’d finally realized how alone I truly was. Despite the crowds of people, and all the different places, and a limitless supply of sounds and colors packed together, there was nothing here that I could reach out and touch. Nothing that would call my name. There never had been, and there never would be. And that would never change, no matter where I went in the world. Surrounded by the grayness of the city, ever grayer in the misty rain, I was unable to move.

The world passed by without a sound, and the little part of the sky that I could see outside my window moved through a cycle of colors. As I idly stared into the blue of twilight, always coming as a mystery, I gradually lost the ability to tell it from its counterpart at dawn, until I wasn’t even able to discern what part of the day it was.

We’re expressing the way we feel about each other, as if we’re lovers, just enjoying our time together. And I always draw Mitsutsuka the same picture: a little house.

What if I cry.

Overcome by how refreshing and soothing it can be to stare into the eyes of somebody you feel this way about, to be this close to them, as if you’re being remade from the deepest parts of you,

I had no idea what I could do to return to the place where I’d been only a minute earlier, what it would take to make me feel what I had been feeling again.

I told Mitsutsuka about snuggling up under the covers and holding each other close had been a dream, bounded by the dreamworld, where everything began and ended. The place that I had just been sharing with Mitsutsuka was a dream, nowhere in this world. No matter where or how I looked, I knew that I would never find the time that we had spent together.

Had I ever chosen anything? Had I made some kind of choice that led me here? Thinking it over, I stared at the cell phone in my hands. The job that I was doing, the place where I was living, the fact that I was all alone and had no one to talk to. Could these have been the result of some decision that I’d made?

It occurred to me that maybe I was where I was today because I hadn’t chosen anything.

I had faked it the whole way. In all those years of doing whatever I was told to do, I had convinced myself that I was doing something consequential, in order to make excuses for myself, as I was doing right now, and perpetually dismissed the fact that I’d done nothing with my life, glossing over it all.

I was so scared of being hurt that I’d done nothing. I was so scared of failing, of being hurt, that I chose nothing. I did nothing.

I had to see Mitsutsuka or I would lose the only thing that really mattered. My only treasures were the memories of how it felt when we met up and talked, but they were disappearing, and soon they’d be gone forever. Truly lost.

The wind was strong, so I buttoned up my coat. As time went by, the cold that I had not so much as noticed earlier had deepened to a chill, but I was somehow still asleep in that elusive dream, my outstretched body floating in the heat of memory.

I squeezed my eyes shut, sweeping my memory in the desperate pursuit of any trace connected in some way to Mitsutsuka. The Mitsutsuka who came back over from the stairs up to the platform, the Mitsutsuka whose smile was almost bashful, the Mitsutsuka who would happily talk to me about light for as long as I liked, whenever I asked. Mitsutsuka. It was getting hard to breathe. These thoughts raced through my mind, one after another, all the happy moments, the way that Mitsutsuka listened to every little thing I said and nodded patiently, the sight of him from behind, the way he walked, the way he thought, the way he talked, the clothes he wore, the smell of winter, all of it, because I really liked him, even though I knew nothing about him, and he knew nothing about me, and maybe that was all that this would ever come to, ending without getting off the ground, despite how good I knew it could be, had already been, with more good times than I knew what to do with, but as the days without him added up, I knew that I would burn through every last one of the memories, the anguish and the premonitions, the regrets, the gratitude, all of which would pass, never to return.

I felt a pain pass through my chest over and over, and told myself that this would be the last time that I listened to the song. But the pain was already so far away. It was a pain that existed in memory, growing weaker by the day, a pain I was forgetting and would soon lose entirely.