dressed.
Only the two glasses called to mind the events of the previous night, and they didn’t seem particularly significant with all this brilliant sunlight streaming into the room.
I quickly packed up my bag and went down to the front desk.
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
The woman smiled in reply as she accepted full payment for the room. “Sure, no problem. Take care of yourself.”
She acted as if nothing had happened. I chuckled to myself, thinking that this was just about as close to a one-night stand as you could get.
Outside, it was a typical morning in a country town.
One after another the stores were opening for business: gas station attendants went about their work, and an old cleaning lady was sweeping the street.
In the distance, mountains awash with the tints of autumn leaves stood in a line, the blue sky soaring up behind them.
What was all that about last night? I wondered.
Beautiful traces of the final dream still echoed in my heart.
I was glad I’d had a chance to see the real Chizuru in my dream. It could only have happened in that distorted temporality. And it’s true, I thought, interesting things do happen, even in the midst of the blackest nights. And when you take a spill, you can always rise up from it with something good in your hand.
I took out my map and began walking toward the station.
HARD LUCK
1
November
For the first time in ages, my mom wasn’t at the hospital when I arrived.
Sakai was there alone; he sat at my sister’s bedside, reading a book.
Kuni had all sorts of tubes hooked up to her body, just as she did every day. The awful sound of the respirator filled the quiet space.
I was used to this scene by now, though from time to time I would still see it in my dreams, and somehow the shock I felt on waking was much worse than what I experienced when she was actually lying there before me.
I always felt much deeper emotions when I visited her sickroom in my dreams. In real life, in the train on the way there, I could sense that I was readying myself, little by little. The emotions I would have when I saw her lying there, when I felt her skin, were slowly being pieced together. It was different in dreams. In my dreams, Kuni still talked and walked just like she used to. And yet even in those dreams, I knew it wasn’t true. The image of her room in the hospital was always there, somewhere, waiting for me. The scene was always in the back of my mind, always; and so over time the distinction between wakefulness and sleep had faded. No matter where I was, I always felt that something inside me was stretched to the limit, and there was no relief. From the outside, though, I must have seemed very calm. Because as autumn deepened, my face grew less and less expressive, and the tears I cried fell on their own, automatically.
Already a month had passed since my sister had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. It happened after she stayed up several nights in a row preparing a manual for the person who was going to take over her job when she quit to get married. One cerebral hemisphere was seriously damaged, and the resulting edema put pressure on her brain stem, so that it slowly ceased to function. In the beginning she could still breathe on her own, if only faintly, but eventually her respiratory functions gave out. For the first time, I realized that living on as a vegetable isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a comatose. Slowly but surely, my sister’s brain was dying.
Recently my whole family had started studying up on these things, and we had learned that my sister could no longer even be called a vegetable, not even that slim ray of hope was left. Just one week ago, we had been informed that her brain stem was functioning at such a low level that her body was only being kept alive by the respirator. My mother had been planning to keep her alive for years, if necessary, as long as she was a vegetable, but now that wouldn’t be possible. All we could do was
Only the two glasses called to mind the events of the previous night, and they didn’t seem particularly significant with all this brilliant sunlight streaming into the room.
I quickly packed up my bag and went down to the front desk.
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
The woman smiled in reply as she accepted full payment for the room. “Sure, no problem. Take care of yourself.”
She acted as if nothing had happened. I chuckled to myself, thinking that this was just about as close to a one-night stand as you could get.
Outside, it was a typical morning in a country town.
One after another the stores were opening for business: gas station attendants went about their work, and an old cleaning lady was sweeping the street.
In the distance, mountains awash with the tints of autumn leaves stood in a line, the blue sky soaring up behind them.
What was all that about last night? I wondered.
Beautiful traces of the final dream still echoed in my heart.
I was glad I’d had a chance to see the real Chizuru in my dream. It could only have happened in that distorted temporality. And it’s true, I thought, interesting things do happen, even in the midst of the blackest nights. And when you take a spill, you can always rise up from it with something good in your hand.
I took out my map and began walking toward the station.
HARD LUCK
1
November
For the first time in ages, my mom wasn’t at the hospital when I arrived.
Sakai was there alone; he sat at my sister’s bedside, reading a book.
Kuni had all sorts of tubes hooked up to her body, just as she did every day. The awful sound of the respirator filled the quiet space.
I was used to this scene by now, though from time to time I would still see it in my dreams, and somehow the shock I felt on waking was much worse than what I experienced when she was actually lying there before me.
I always felt much deeper emotions when I visited her sickroom in my dreams. In real life, in the train on the way there, I could sense that I was readying myself, little by little. The emotions I would have when I saw her lying there, when I felt her skin, were slowly being pieced together. It was different in dreams. In my dreams, Kuni still talked and walked just like she used to. And yet even in those dreams, I knew it wasn’t true. The image of her room in the hospital was always there, somewhere, waiting for me. The scene was always in the back of my mind, always; and so over time the distinction between wakefulness and sleep had faded. No matter where I was, I always felt that something inside me was stretched to the limit, and there was no relief. From the outside, though, I must have seemed very calm. Because as autumn deepened, my face grew less and less expressive, and the tears I cried fell on their own, automatically.
Already a month had passed since my sister had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. It happened after she stayed up several nights in a row preparing a manual for the person who was going to take over her job when she quit to get married. One cerebral hemisphere was seriously damaged, and the resulting edema put pressure on her brain stem, so that it slowly ceased to function. In the beginning she could still breathe on her own, if only faintly, but eventually her respiratory functions gave out. For the first time, I realized that living on as a vegetable isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a comatose. Slowly but surely, my sister’s brain was dying.
Recently my whole family had started studying up on these things, and we had learned that my sister could no longer even be called a vegetable, not even that slim ray of hope was left. Just one week ago, we had been informed that her brain stem was functioning at such a low level that her body was only being kept alive by the respirator. My mother had been planning to keep her alive for years, if necessary, as long as she was a vegetable, but now that wouldn’t be possible. All we could do was
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