Read Online Hardboiled & Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto - Free Book Online
Authors: Banana Yoshimoto
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eccentric.
I’ve always had a soft spot for wackos and oddballs—in fact, my very first love was Tōru, “the boy who swallowed a tadpole in front of everyone”—and Sakai was certainly peculiar enough to intrigue me. Maybe that was why my sister had tried so hard to keep us apart. She was a sharp woman who knew my character well, so she found a way to prevent anything from developing between us. She must have worried a lot, because it really was very hard to know what to make of him. We met for the first time only after my sister was hospitalized.
I was so thouroughly exhausted the first time he came to visit that I was feeling a bit high, and the moment I saw him I thought, Wow, this guy is awesome! But since I was so preoccupied with my sister’s sickness, I suppressed the feeling. I have always found it relatively easy to keep my emotions in check. I stop being able to savor, even in the secret recesses of my own mind, the ache I feel, and my heart stops dancing when we talk—I convince myself that I never felt anything at all. Kuni always used to say that if I was able to do that, I couldn’t really be very deeply in love. When you’re in love , she once said, it really hurts, it aches, and you can’t suppress it, you want to see it through to the end even if it means that someone has to die, and so you end up causing a whole lot of trouble for everyone. Judging from the tenor of her comments, I would guess that she was having an affair with someone, probably a married man, at the time.
I used to look at Kuni, envious of the fun she was having. Would she still urge me to fall in love, I thought, even if she was the one who was dying? I always told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about, she just fell in love too easily, that was all. Who knows, I said, maybe I’m actually more passionate than you!
But we always enjoyed these differences in our personalities.
I was so carried away by my pain and all the things I had been doing during the past weeks that I forgot how much I had liked Sakai in the beginning.
Now, for the first time since all this had started, my heart had a little room in which to maneuver. Except that ultimately that space was where I would have to learn to leave my sister behind.
“In November the sky always looks so high up, somehow, and it has such a sad, lonely feel to it,” said Sakai. “Which month do you like best?”
“November.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because the sky is high and lonely, and it makes me feel very alone, and that makes my heart dance, and then I feel stronger. But at the same time, there’s this energy in the air; it’s a time of waiting, before winter really sets in.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah... I don’t know, I just like it a lot.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s my favorite, too. Hey, you want a mikan ?”
“Is it tangerine season already?”
“Come to think of it, it was something else—some other fruit with a ‘kan’ at the end. I forget what they’re called. Your mom said some relative had sent them.”
“I wonder who? My aunt in Kyushu, maybe?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll have one. Where are they?”
“Right here.”
Sakai spun around and took a single round fruit from a basket on top of the TV, a set that was only there for visitors. Kuni wouldn’t be watching TV anymore. She would never again get to see Nakai, her favorite member of Smap.
“My sister loves these things,” I sighed. Every year she would look forward to eating them—these fruits that looked kind of like mikan .
“Really? Well, then, let’s give her one to smell!”
Sakai grabbed another piece of fruit, split it in two, and held it under my sister’s nose. A sweet, tart aroma wafted through the room, and somehow I found myself watching as a certain scene unfolded before me.
I saw my sister sit up in bed, bathed in afternoon light, and say, with a big smile and in that bell-like voice of hers, “God, what a wonderful
I’ve always had a soft spot for wackos and oddballs—in fact, my very first love was Tōru, “the boy who swallowed a tadpole in front of everyone”—and Sakai was certainly peculiar enough to intrigue me. Maybe that was why my sister had tried so hard to keep us apart. She was a sharp woman who knew my character well, so she found a way to prevent anything from developing between us. She must have worried a lot, because it really was very hard to know what to make of him. We met for the first time only after my sister was hospitalized.
I was so thouroughly exhausted the first time he came to visit that I was feeling a bit high, and the moment I saw him I thought, Wow, this guy is awesome! But since I was so preoccupied with my sister’s sickness, I suppressed the feeling. I have always found it relatively easy to keep my emotions in check. I stop being able to savor, even in the secret recesses of my own mind, the ache I feel, and my heart stops dancing when we talk—I convince myself that I never felt anything at all. Kuni always used to say that if I was able to do that, I couldn’t really be very deeply in love. When you’re in love , she once said, it really hurts, it aches, and you can’t suppress it, you want to see it through to the end even if it means that someone has to die, and so you end up causing a whole lot of trouble for everyone. Judging from the tenor of her comments, I would guess that she was having an affair with someone, probably a married man, at the time.
I used to look at Kuni, envious of the fun she was having. Would she still urge me to fall in love, I thought, even if she was the one who was dying? I always told her that she didn’t know what she was talking about, she just fell in love too easily, that was all. Who knows, I said, maybe I’m actually more passionate than you!
But we always enjoyed these differences in our personalities.
I was so carried away by my pain and all the things I had been doing during the past weeks that I forgot how much I had liked Sakai in the beginning.
Now, for the first time since all this had started, my heart had a little room in which to maneuver. Except that ultimately that space was where I would have to learn to leave my sister behind.
“In November the sky always looks so high up, somehow, and it has such a sad, lonely feel to it,” said Sakai. “Which month do you like best?”
“November.”
“Really? Why?”
“Because the sky is high and lonely, and it makes me feel very alone, and that makes my heart dance, and then I feel stronger. But at the same time, there’s this energy in the air; it’s a time of waiting, before winter really sets in.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah... I don’t know, I just like it a lot.”
“As a matter of fact, it’s my favorite, too. Hey, you want a mikan ?”
“Is it tangerine season already?”
“Come to think of it, it was something else—some other fruit with a ‘kan’ at the end. I forget what they’re called. Your mom said some relative had sent them.”
“I wonder who? My aunt in Kyushu, maybe?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll have one. Where are they?”
“Right here.”
Sakai spun around and took a single round fruit from a basket on top of the TV, a set that was only there for visitors. Kuni wouldn’t be watching TV anymore. She would never again get to see Nakai, her favorite member of Smap.
“My sister loves these things,” I sighed. Every year she would look forward to eating them—these fruits that looked kind of like mikan .
“Really? Well, then, let’s give her one to smell!”
Sakai grabbed another piece of fruit, split it in two, and held it under my sister’s nose. A sweet, tart aroma wafted through the room, and somehow I found myself watching as a certain scene unfolded before me.
I saw my sister sit up in bed, bathed in afternoon light, and say, with a big smile and in that bell-like voice of hers, “God, what a wonderful
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