Chapter 15 Chapter fifteen

Min hadn't contacted me once since we parted at the port on the small Greek island, which was a bit unusual, because she promised to contact me about Sumire's matter whether she had clarified the situation or not.It can't be thought that she has completely forgotten my existence, and she is not a person who is perfunctory with that kind of character for a while. It must be for some reason that she has not found a way to contact me.I was going to take the initiative to call her, but when I thought about it carefully, I didn't even know her name, the name of the company or the location of the office.Sumire didn't leave me any specific contact information at all.

For a while, Sumire's room phone still had a message on the answering phone, and soon she couldn't answer it.I thought about calling Sumire's parents, but I didn't know the phone number.Of course, if I could get the Yokohama City Industry Classified Telephone Directory and find her father's dental hospital, I should be able to contact her, but I didn't have the heart to do that.I went to the library to check the August newspaper, and the society page published several reports about Sumire in a very small space: It was said that a 22-year-old Japanese female tourist was missing on a small Greek island. The local police searched, but Got nothing, and now nothing.that is it.I didn't write anything I didn't know.There are many people who go missing during overseas travels, and she is just one of them.

I no longer follow news reports.Whatever the reason for her disappearance, and no matter how the search progressed, one thing was clear: if Sumire came back, Min would have contacted me no matter what.This is very important to me. September is over, autumn is passing, and winter is coming.November 7th is Sumire's twenty-third birthday, and December 9th is my twenty-fifth birthday.Saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, the school year is over.Carrot didn't cause any problems after that. He was promoted to the fifth grade and transferred to the new class.I didn't talk to him about the pickpocketing again because I thought it was probably unnecessary from his behavior.Since I changed classes, I lost the opportunity to meet my "girlfriend".Whether for me or for her, I think this is something to be thankful for, after all, everything is in the past.But I still sometimes think of the warmth of her skin, and I almost called her several times.At that time, what made me rein in the precipice was the feeling of the supermarket warehouse key left in my palm that summer afternoon, the feeling of the little carrot hand.

From time to time I think of carrots under the touch of something.Incredible kid - I think that every time we meet at school, let me not think otherwise.What kind of thoughts are hidden behind that slender and obedient face?I can't deduce exactly.But there is no doubt that there are many thoughts in his head, and the practical ability to act quickly and steadily if necessary, this child also has it, and there is even a certain kind of thoughtfulness in it.In the restaurant that afternoon, I told him frankly that I should have done the right thing, no matter for him or me.In comparison, it is even more for me.He—strange to think—understood me, accepted me, and even forgave me, to a certain extent.

What days and nights (a growth period that seems to go on forever) will a child like a carrot, I wonder, grow up to be a man?It must be a painful thing, and there must be more painful things than non-painful things.I can predict the roughness of that pain from my own experience.He's going to fall in love with someone, right?Someone will accept his love smoothly, right?Of course, it's useless for me to think about it here now.After graduating from elementary school, he will go to a wider world that has nothing to do with me, but I will still have my own problems that I should consider.

I went to the record store and bought Elizabeth Schwarzkopf's "Mozart Songbook" and listened to it several times.I love the beautiful stillness in it.As soon as I close my eyes, the music takes me to that Greek island night. Sumire left me with only a few long letters and a floppy disk, apart from some vivid memories (of course including the surging sexual desire I experienced on the evening of moving).I read these passages time and time again, even reciting silently.And only in the time of rereading them, can I spend time with Sumire, and my heart is closely connected with her, and my heart is soothed with incomparable tenderness, just like looking at the distance from the window of a train driving through the boundless wilderness under the night. A small light in a farmhouse.The lights were swallowed up by the darkness behind me in an instant, but when I closed my eyes, the spot of light remained on my retina for quite a while.

Waking up in the middle of the night, I got out of bed (I couldn’t sleep anyway) and sank into the single sofa. While listening to Schwarzkopf, I recalled the small Greek island, recalling the scenes like quietly turning the pages of a book.The beautiful uninhabited beach, the open-air cafes in the port, the sweat stains on the backs of the waiters.In my mind, I put out Min's dignified profile, and reproduced the sparkling blue waves of the Mediterranean Sea seen from the balcony.The poor piercing hero who keeps standing in the square.Greek music from the top of the mountain at midnight.I vividly remember the strange reverberation of the music, the sense of being lost when awakened by that distant music, the elusive feeling as if some sharp thing pierced the numb body quietly and long Midnight pain.

I closed my eyes for a moment on the sofa, opened them, inhaled quietly, and exhaled.What I want to think and what I don't want to think, and there really isn't much difference between the two.I can't make a glaring difference between things and things, between things that exist and things that don't exist.I look out the window until the sky turns white, the clouds move, and the birds sing, and a new day rises to gather the fragments of the minds of the planet's inhabitants. I saw Min once—only once—on the streets of Tokyo.It was a warm and cold Sunday in mid-March, more than half a year after Sumire disappeared.The sky was overcast and overcast, and it looked like it was going to rain.People have prepared umbrellas since morning.On my way to a relative's house in the central area, I spotted a dark blue "jaguar" driving on a crowded road near the Hiroo Meijiya intersection.I took a taxi and the "Jaguar" was going in the straight lane on the left.I noticed this car because it was driven by a woman with beautiful white hair.The dark blue of the spotless car body and her white hair are in stark contrast even from a distance.Since I only saw her with black hair, it took a while to put the impression together, but there was no doubt that it was Min.She was as charming and charming as before, as delicate and refined.The breathless whiteness of the hair exudes an awe-inspiring aura that no one dares to approach easily, which can be called a myth.

But the woman in the car was not the woman who waved to me in the port of the Greek island.Although only half a year had passed, she was already a different person.Of course, there are differences in hair color, but it's not just that. It's just a cicada shell - this is my first impression of her.The image of Min reminds me of empty houses after people have all evacuated.Something vital (that had captivated Sumire like a tornado and tugged at my heartstrings on the deck of the ferry) had left her forever.The most important meaning left in it is not being, but not being.Not the warmth of life, but the tranquility of memory.The pure whiteness of the hair reminded me of the color of human bones inevitably bleached by the years, so that for a long time I couldn't exhale the breath I took in deeply.

Min's Jaguar was driving next to my taxi now and then.She didn't notice that I was staring at her nearby, and I couldn't say hello.I don't know what to say, the windows of the "Jaguar" are closed tightly, not to mention that Minzheng is holding the steering wheel with both hands, standing up straight and focusing on the distance.Probably thinking about something, or listening to "Fugue Technique" flowing from the audio device in the car.She maintained a snow-like stern look from beginning to end, her eyes hardly blinking.After a while, the signal turned green, and the dark blue "Jaguar" went straight in the direction of Qingshan, and the taxi I took was waiting to turn right.

We're all still alive now, too, I think.No matter how deadly what is lost, no matter how precious what is taken from our hands, no matter how completely transformed into another person and only a layer of skin remains, we can pass our lives in obscurity like this, and we can reach out and grab the extra. Time puts it behind us—sometimes done very quickly as a routine, repetitive task.Thinking of this, there seemed to be a huge hole in my heart. She must have returned to Japan, but she couldn't get in touch with me anyway.In contrast, what she wishes for is to remain silent, embrace memory, and be swallowed up by some nameless wilderness like that.That's how I figured it out.I don't want to blame Min, and certainly not resentment. At this time, what came to mind suddenly was the bronze statue of Min's father standing in a small mountain town in the north of Korea.I imagined the small squares of the town, rows of low houses, and dusty bronze statues.There is often a strong wind in that place, and all the trees are bent almost like virtual objects.For some reason, the bronze image became one with Min's figure at the wheel of the Jaguar. I think that all things have been quietly lost somewhere in the distance from the very beginning, at least as a unified image, they have the quiet place where they should be lost.Our survival process is nothing more than finding the intersection points one by one like thin threads.I closed my eyes and tried to remember--it's good to remember one more--the beautiful things there, and keep them in my own hands, even if they have only a fleeting life. dream.From time to time I feel that dreaming is the right thing to do.To dream, to live in the dream, as Sumire wrote.However, the dream was not long, and the awakening quickly caught me back. I woke up at three in the night, turned on the light, leaned over, looked at the phone next to my pillow, and imagined the figure of Sumire who pressed my phone number after lighting a penny in the phone booth: messy hair, manly body The woolen jacket was baggy, and the left and right socks were different.She frowned, took a puff of cigarette from time to time, and took some time to finally press the correct number.But her head was so full of things she had to say to me that she couldn't finish it in the morning, like the difference between a symbol and a symbol.The phone seemed about to ring at once, but it never did.I lay for a long time looking at the silent telephone. But once the phone rang, and it literally rang before my eyes, shaking the air of the real world.I pick up the receiver right away. "Hello." "Hey, I'm back." Sumire said, her voice was calm and clear. "It took a lot of trouble with this and that, but it finally came back. If Homer's Odyssey was made into a five-cross abbreviation, it would be like me." "That's good." I said.For a while it was hard for me to believe it.Her voice really came?Was it really her voice that came? "That's good?" Sumire (probably) frowned and asked, "What is this? I tried my best to talk about it, worked so hard, and went through this and that—I can't finish talking—and finally came back, and the result was only In exchange for you saying this? Tears are coming out. If it’s not good, what am I going to do? ‘That’s good’, unbelievable, unbelievable. Those heartwarming and witty lines are all reserved for you just now in class Are you a hairy kid who understands the four arithmetic operations?" "Where are you now?" "Where am I now? Where do you think I am? In a nostalgic old-fashioned telephone booth! In a nondescript square telephone booth filled with small advertisements for fake financial companies and IC card clubs. A moldy crescent moon, cigarette butts all over the place. No matter how much you turn around, you can’t find a comforting object. A symbolic telephone booth that can be exchanged. By the way, where is the location? I can’t figure it out now. Everything is too symbolic. Besides you I’m afraid I know that the location is the most troublesome for me, and I can’t express it verbally, so I always reprimand the taxi driver: Where do you want to go? But I don’t think it’s far away, it’s probably quite close, I think.” "Go and pick it up." "I'm so happy for Ken. Check out the location and call. I don't have enough change now anyway, just wait." "I really want to see you." I said. "I want to see you very much, too," she said, "and when I don't see you, it becomes clear to me, as clear as the planets line up in obedience - I really do need you, you are me, I am you! I tell you that I slit the throat of something in a place—inexplicable place—sharpening a kitchen knife with a heart of stone. Like when building a Chinese city gate, symbolically. I said Do you understand?" "I think I understand." "Come and pick me up here!" The phone hangs up suddenly.I held the receiver in my hand and stared at it for a long time, as if the receiver itself was important information, and its color and shape had a special meaning.Then he changed his mind and put the receiver back.I sat up in bed and waited for the phone to ring again.I leaned against the wall, focused my eyes on a certain point in the space in front of me, and repeated slow and silent breathing, constantly confirming the junction of time and time.The phone refused to ring.Uncommitted silence fills the space endlessly.But I'm not in a hurry, there's no need to be in a hurry.I am ready to go anywhere. Yeah? Yes. I turned over and got out of bed, opened the old curtains, pushed the window, and looked up at the still dark sky with my head out.There really was color suspended there like a moldy crescent moon.enough.We are looking at the same moon in the same world.We are indeed connected to reality by a thread, I just have to draw it quietly closer. After that, I spread out my ten fingers and fixed my eyes on the left and right palms.I'm looking for blood on it.But no blood.No gore, no tightness.The blood had probably quietly seeped somewhere.