Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen

Over a white dress, Shimamoto wore a baggy navy jacket with a small silver fish-shaped pin fastened to the collar.While the dresses were extremely simple and unadorned, the buds were incredibly elegant and decorative on the island itself.Compared with the last time we saw her, she seemed to be more or less tanned. "Thought you wouldn't come again." I said. "I say that every time I see you." Shimamoto laughed.She was still sitting on the bar high chair next to me, her hands on the counter, as usual. "Didn't you leave a message saying that it might take a while?"

"This period of time, Shimamoto, is difficult to calculate for those who are waiting," I said. "However, there are situations where it is necessary to use this term—a situation where it can only be used." "And presumably it's hard to calculate the weight." "Yeah," she said, with the usual faint smile on her face, smiling like a gentle wind blowing from somewhere far away. "It's as you said, sorry. But it's not my own defense, there is no way. That's the only way I can say it." "There's no need to apologize. As I said before, this is a store and you are a customer. You can come whenever you want. I'm used to it. I'm just talking to myself. You don't have to mind."

She called the bartender, ordered a cocktail, and then looked at me up and down for a long time as if checking something, "It's rare, I'm dressed relaxed today." "It's still the same as when I went swimming in the morning. I don't have time to change it." I said, "But it's not bad to wear it once in a while. I feel like I have regained my true colors." "It looks young, and you can't tell that you are thirty-seven." "You can't tell that there are thirty-seven." "But it's not like Twelve." "Not like twelve," I said.

When the cocktail was brought, Shimamoto took a sip, then quietly closed his eyes as if listening to some low voice.As soon as she closed her eyes, I could see the thin line on her lids again. "I said Chujun, I often think about the cocktails here, and I want to drink them. The cocktails I drink are different from the ones I drink here." "Going far away?" "How come?" Shimamoto asked. "It looks like," I said, "you always have that kind of breath on you—the smell of going to far, far away places for a long time." She raised her face to look at me and nodded. "Hey, Chu Jun, for a long time I..." At this point, she stopped as if suddenly remembering something.I looked at the way she was scratching her stomach.But it doesn't seem to be able to find the words.She bit her lip, and immediately smiled again: "I'm sorry, anyway. I should have contacted. But there is something I don't want to touch, and I want to keep it intact. Whether I come here or not—come When I'm here I'm here, when I'm not here...I'm somewhere else."

"No middle?" "There is no middle," she said. "Why, because there is no middle." "Where there is no in-between, there is no in-between," I said. "Yes, where there is no in-between, there is no in-between." "Just as there are no places for dogs, there are no kennels." "Yes, just as there are no places for dogs, there are no kennels," Shimamoto said.Then he looked at me funny. "You have quite a sense of humor." The piano trio began to play "STAR CROSSED LOVERS".Shimamoto and I listened in silence for a while.

"Hey, can I ask a question?" "Please." "What does this piece have to do with you?" she asked me. "It seems like you're bound to play it when you come here. Is it a rule here?" "It's not really a rule, it's just good intentions - they know I like it. So I play it a lot when I'm around." "Good song!" I nod. "It's very good. Not only good, but also complex, and you can hear it after a few listens. Not everyone can play it casually." I said, "STAR CROSSED LOVERS, Ellington 'Duke' and Billy S. Trejo wrote it a long time ago, in 1957."

"STAR CROSSED LOVERS," said Shimamoto, "what does that mean?" "Bad-born lovers, unhappy lovers. That's how it's called in English. This refers to Romeo and Juliet. Ellington and Strajo composed this piece for performance at the Shakespeare Memorial in Ontario. Suite included. Original performance Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone for Juliet and Paul Gonsalves on tenor saxophone for Romeo." "Lovers born under a catastrophe," Shimamoto said, "is like a song for us, huh?" "Are we lovers?" "You don't think so?"

I watched Shimamoto's expression.There was no longer a smile on her face, only a faint light shone in her pupils. "Shimamoto, I don't know anything about you today." I said, "Every time I look into your eyes, I think so. I don't know anything about you. Barely know, only when I was twelve years old You, Shimamoto, who lives nearby and is in the same class. This is twenty-five years ago. It was the era of twist dancing, streetcars running around, no cassettes, no tampons, no weight loss What happened in the food era is endless! And besides you at that time, I know almost nothing about it."

"Is that written in my eyes? It says you don't know anything about me?" "There's nothing written in your eyes," I said. "It's written in mine: I don't know anything about you. It's just reflected in your eyes. Don't mind." "Hatsu-kun," Shimamoto said, "I can't tell you anything, I'm really sorry, I really feel that way. But there's nothing I can do about it, there's nothing I can do. So don't say anything anymore, okay?" "I said it just now. It's purely talking to myself. Don't take it to heart."

She put her hand on the neckline, and her fingers fumbled with the fish-shaped brooch for a long time.I listened to the piano trio in silence.At the end of the performance, she applauded, took a sip of her cocktail, then sighed and looked at my face. "Six months is a long time," she said, "but I guess you'll be here for a while, anyway." "Magic word." I said. "Magic word?" "Probably and for a while." Shimamoto smiled at me, took out a cigarette from his pouch, and lit it with a lighter. "Looking at you sometimes feels like looking at a distant star." I said, "It looks very bright, but that light was transmitted tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the luminous celestial body no longer exists now, but sometimes it looks But it’s more realistic than anything.”

Shimamoto was silent. "You are there," I said. "You seem to be there, but you may not be there. Maybe it is only your shadow that is there, and the real you may be somewhere else. Or have disappeared in the distant past. I don't know. .I don't understand what's going on more and more. Reach out to confirm, but every time you cover your body with a fog of 'probably' and 'for a while'. I said, how long is this going to last?" "Probably not long." "You have an incredible sense of humor." After that, I smiled. Shimamoto laughed too.It was the smile of the first sunshine after the rain pouring down through the gaps in the clouds.The warm crow's feet gathered at the corners of the eyes seemed to give me a good promise. "Hey, Chu Jun, I have a gift for you." She handed me a gift wrapped in beautiful wrapping paper and tied with a red gift knot. "It's like a record." I weighed it and said. "Nat 'Kim' Cole's records, the two used to listen to them together a lot. Kind? Here you go." "Thank you. But don't you need it? A souvenir from your father?" "There are several more, it's okay. This is for you." I looked intently at the pack of records tied with a gift knot in the wrapping paper.Then, the noise of the people and the piano trio receded into the distance like a rapidly retreating tide, and only Shimamoto and I were left here, and everything else was just a phantom.There is neither coherence nor inevitability here, just a paper stage device.Only me and Shimamoto are really here. "Shimamoto," I said, "shall the two find a place to listen to this?" "It must be wonderful!" she said. "I have a small villa in Hakone. There is no one there, and there are record players. At this time, I can drive there in an hour and a half." Shimamoto glanced at his watch, then turned to look at me: "Go now?" "Here we go." I said. She squinted at me as she did when she was looking at something in the distance. "It's past ten o'clock now. It's quite late to go to Hakone and come back. Are you okay?" "I'm fine. What about you?" She looked at her watch again, then closed her eyes for ten seconds.When she opened it again, a new look appeared on her face, as if she had gone somewhere far away during the time she closed her eyes, put something there and rushed back. "Okay, let's go," she said. I called an employee with similar managerial responsibilities, and told me that I would go back today, and he would be responsible for the rest of the work, "Close the cash register, sort out the bills, and put the turnover in the bank's night safe." Then I walked to the underground parking lot of the apartment and drove out the BMW, and then called my wife from a nearby public phone booth, saying that I was going to Hakone. "Go now?" She was taken aback, "Why go to Hakone now?" "I want to think about something," I said. "So you're saying you won't be back today?" "Probably not coming back." "I say," said the wife, "I'm sorry about today's incident. I've thought a lot about it and blamed me. You're right. The stocks are all settled, so you'd better go home." "Hey, Yukiko, I'm not angry with you, I'm not angry at all, you don't have to mind this matter. I just want to think about something, just let me think about it for one night." She was silent for a while, explaining clearly.The voice sounded very tired. "Okay then, let's go to Hakone. But drive carefully, it's raining." "Just be careful." "I don't understand a lot of things," said my wife. "You think I'm giving you trouble?" "No trouble! You have no problem and no responsibility. If there is a problem, it is on my side. So you don't have to think so much. I just want to clear my mind." I hung up the phone and drove back to the store.Yukiko must have been thinking about what we said at the lunch table, what I said, and what she said herself.It was in the tone of her voice, tired and confused.Thinking of this, I feel uncomfortable for a while.The rain is still falling stubbornly.I put Shimamoto in the car. "Why don't you contact someone somewhere?" I asked Shimamoto. She shook her head silently, then pressed her face to the windowpane and stared out of the window like she did when she came back from Haneda. There are very few cars on the way to Hakone.I drove off the Tomei Expressway at Atsugi, and drove straight to Odawara along the Odawara Atsugi Highway. The pointer of the speedometer is always dangling between one hundred and three to one hundred and fourteen.The rain intensifies from time to time, but after all, it is the road I have run many times, and I remember all the turns and uphills on the way.After we hit the highway, Shimamoto and I barely spoke.I listened to a Mozart quartet at a low volume and concentrated on driving.She looked out of the window motionlessly, as if she was thinking about something, and turned to me from time to time, staring at my profile.After staring at her like that, my mouth couldn't help but rustle, and I had to swallow saliva to keep myself calm. "Hey, Chu-kun," she said, as we were speeding around Kofutsu, "you don't listen to jazz much outside the shop?" "Yes, I don't listen to it very much. I usually listen to classical music." "why?" "Probably because I count jazz into my work, and I want to listen to something else when I leave the store. Apart from classical music, I sometimes listen to rock, but I rarely listen to jazz." "What music does Madam listen to?" "She basically doesn't listen to music by herself. She only listens to it when I listen to it. She hardly ever plays the record on her own initiative. I guess she doesn't know how to play the record." She reached into the tape case and picked up a few to examine.There are also nursery rhymes that my daughter and I listen to together, such as "Police Dog" and "Tulip", which we often hum along on the way to kindergarten or back.Shimamoto took a tape with a label of Snoopy comics in his hand and looked at it curiously for a long time. After watching, she stared at my side face again. "Chu Jun," she said after a while, "seeing you driving from the side like this, sometimes I really want to reach out and grab the steering wheel and spin it violently. I'm afraid I'm going to die if I do that?" "I'm sure it's a shame. The speed is 130 kilometers per hour." "You don't want to die with me?" "That's not a fair way to die," I laughed. "Besides, I haven't listened to the record yet. We're here to listen to the record, aren't we?" "Don't be afraid, I won't do that," she said. "It's just a flash, every now and then." Although it is early October, the night in Hakone is still quite cool.When I got to the villa, I turned on the lights, turned on the gas fire in the living room, and took a brandy glass and brandy from the sideboard.After a while the room warmed up, and the two sat side by side on the couch as they had always done, putting a Nat "Kim" Cole record on the turntable.The fire was glowing brightly, and its light was reflected in the brandy glasses. Shimamoto lifted his legs up onto the sofa and sat folded under his hips, with one hand resting on the back of the sofa and the other on his lap, as usual.At that time, she probably didn't want people to see her legs, and as a habit, she still kept her legs even after the operation cured her legs.It's been a while since Nat "Kim" Cole sang "South of the Border." "To be honest, I've always wondered when I heard this song since I was a child: What is there south of the border?" I said. "Me too." Shimamoto replied, "When I grew up, I read the English lyrics and couldn't help being disappointed. It's just a Mexican song. I thought there was something great south of the border." "Like what?" Shimamoto raised his hand and brushed his hair back gently. "I don't know. It must be something very beautiful, big and soft." "Beautiful, big, soft thing," I said, "can you eat it?" Shimamoto smiled, showing his white teeth faintly. "Probably not edible, I suppose." "Can you touch it?" "I think I can probably touch it." "Probably seems like too much," I said. "There are probably many countries there." I reached out and touched her fingers on the back of the couch.It's been a long time since I touched her body. It was the first time since I touched her on the plane from Komatsu Airport to Haneda Airport.As soon as I touched her fingers, she raised her face slightly to look at me, and immediately lowered her head again. "South of the border, west of the sun," she said. "What, west of the sun?" "There's a place like that," she said. "Ever heard of the Siberian sickness?" "do not know." "I read it in a book before, when I was in junior high school. I can't remember what book... Anyway, it is a disease of a farmer living in Siberia. Now, imagine this: you are a farmer, living alone in the Siberian wasteland, every day. Plowing the fields every day, I look around and see nothing. The north is the northern horizon, the east is the eastern horizon, the south is the southern horizon, the west is the western horizon, nothing else. Every morning the sun shines from the east When the horizon rises, you go to work in the field; when the sun is directly overhead, you call it a day and eat lunch; when the sun sinks to the western horizon, you go home and sleep." "Sounds like a very different life pattern from running a bar near Aoyama." "Yeah," she smiled, tilting her head slightly, "it's quite different. And it's been like this year after year and day after day." "But can Siberia be cultivated in winter?" "Winter rest, of course," Shimamoto said. "Stay home in winter and do what you can do at home. Once spring comes, go out and work in the fields. You are that kind of farmer, imagine!" "Imagine it," I said. "One day, something died in you." "Dead? What died?" She shook her head and said, "I don't know, what is it anyway. The sun rises from the horizon in the east, crosses the sky and falls to the horizon in the west - when you witness such a scene every day, something suddenly dies in your body. So you dropped your hoe and walked westward, west of the sun, without thinking about anything. You walked like a madman for days without eating or drinking, until you fell down and died. This is Siberia's sickness." In my mind, I conjure up the Siberian peasant lying on the ground and dying. "What the hell is west of the sun?" I asked. She shook her head again: "I don't know. Maybe there is nothing there, or maybe there is nothing. In short, it is a different place from the south of the border." Nat "Kim" Cole sang "Personality," and Shimamoto sang along in a low voice, as he always did. Pretend You are happy when You're b1ue, It isn't very hand to do. "Hey, Shimamoto," I said, "I've been thinking about you for almost half a year since you were gone. I've been thinking about you from morning till night for six months. I want to stop thinking about you, but I can't stop anyway. Finally thought like this: I don't ever want to go anywhere again, I can't live without you, don't want to lose you from my eyes anymore, don't want to hear anything for a while, probably don't. That's what I think .You said that you went somewhere if you didn't see it for a while, but you don't know when you will come back. No one knows, and there is no guarantee. You may never return, and I may never see you again This life is due to you. Thinking about it this way, I am really restless, and everything around me seems to have lost its meaning." Shimamoto looked at me silently, always with the same faint smile on his face.It was a peaceful smile that was absolutely undisturbed, and I couldn't read the emotion in it.There should be something hidden in the depths of this smile, but no clues were revealed to me.Every time I face this smile, I seem to lose my emotions for a moment, completely confused about where I am and where I am going.But I patiently figured out what to say. "I love you, I do. I have feelings for you that nothing else can replace. I've lost you before my eyes a few times, but that was wrong, it was wrong. I didn't deserve to lose you. I've figured it out for months: I really do love you, I can't bear to live without you, and I don't want you to go anywhere." After listening to me, Shimamoto closed his eyes and remained silent for a long time.The fire continued to burn, and Nat "Kim" Cole continued to sing old songs.I would like to add something, but have nothing to say. "Hey, Hatsu-kun, listen to me carefully," Shimamoto finally said, "This is a very important thing, listen carefully. As I said just now, there is no so-called middle in me. It doesn't exist in me. Something in-between. Where there is no in-between, there is no in-between. So for you, take me all in or leave me all. It’s one or the other. This is the basic principle. If you think It doesn't matter if this situation continues, I think it can last. I don't know how long it will last, but I can do my best to make it last. If I can come to see you, I will. For this reason I I will also make corresponding efforts. But if you can’t come to see me, you can’t come, and it’s impossible to come when you want. This is very clear. But if you don’t like this and don’t want me to go elsewhere, then You must take me all in, all up and down, inside and out, with what I drag and what I carry. And I also take all of you, all of you! Do you understand this? Understand what this means?" "It's clear." I said. "So you still really want to be with me?" "I've made up my mind, Shimamoto," I said. "I've thought about it countless times during your absence, and I've made up my mind." "But Chu Jun, what about your wife and two daughters? Don't you love your wife and daughter? You should cherish them very much." "I love them, I love them very much, I cherish them very much, exactly as you say. At the same time, I also understand-that alone is not enough. I have a family and a job. I have nothing wrong with both, so far It's all going well. But it's not enough, and I understand that. After meeting you a year ago, I understand it clearly. Shimamoto, my biggest problem is what I lack, who I am , What is missing in my life, what is missing. The missing part is always hungry. That part cannot be filled by my wife and children. You are the only one in this world who can fill it. When I am with you, I feel that part is full. Only after I was full did I realize how hungry and thirsty I was all those long years ago. I can never go back to that world.” Shimamoto put his arms around my body and leaned against me, resting his head on my shoulder.I can feel her soft skin - warm against mine. "I love you too, Chu Jun. I have never loved anyone in my life except you. I don't think you know how much I love you. I have loved you since I was twelve years old. Even when others conceived Here, I always think about you. It is because of this that I want to see you, and I know in my heart that it will be difficult to end seeing you once, but I can’t see you. I planned to go back immediately after seeing you, but I couldn’t help but see you I want to say hello." Shimamoto still rested his head on my shoulder, "I've wanted to give you a hug since I was twelve years old. Don't you know?" "I don't know." I said. "Since I was twelve years old, I have wanted to take off my clothes and hug you. You don't know that, do you?" I hugged her tightly and kissed her.She closed her eyes and remained motionless in my arms.My tongue mingles with hers.Her heart beat under her breasts, a sharp, gentle rhythm.I close my eyes and imagine the bright red blood flowing there.I touch her soft hair and smell it.Her hands wandered back and forth on my back as if looking for something.After the record is finished spinning, the chassis stops and the needle returns to the needle seat.Only the sound of rain enveloped the surroundings again.After a while, Shimamoto opened his eyes and looked at me. "Chu Jun," she whispered as if talking to herself, "is that really okay? Do you really want to take me in? Is it okay to abandon everything for me?" "Yes. It has been decided." "But, if you don't meet me, wouldn't you live your current life smoothly without any dissatisfaction? Don't you think so?" "Maybe so, but I saw you as a reality, and I can't go back the same way." I said, "As you said last time, certain things cannot be undone, but can only be moved forward. Shimamoto , no matter where, the two of them can go wherever they can. The two of them start from scratch!" "Hatsu-kun," Shimamoto said, "can you take off your clothes and show me your body?" "I take off?" "Well. You take it off first, and I'll see your naked body first. Don't want to?" "Where, since you want that," I said, undressing in front of the fire—windbreaker, polo shirt, jeans, socks, T-shirt, underpants.Shimamoto made me, naked, kneel on the floor.I had a long, hard erection there, which embarrassed me.She stared intently at my body from a little distance away.And she didn't even take off her jacket. "It's just weird for me to be naked." I laughed. "Great, Hatsu-kun!" After saying that, Shimamoto came to my side, gently wrapped my fingers around my place, kissed my lips, and then touched my chest.She spent a long, long time licking my nipples, stroking the hair in between.She put her ear to my navel, put the testicles in her mouth, and then kissed my whole body, even the soles of my feet.It looked as if she simply loved time itself, caressed, sucked, licked time itself. "You don't take off your clothes?" I asked. "Wait a minute," she said, "I want to take a good look at your body, lick it, and touch it. But if I strip off right now, don't you want to touch my body right away? You can't help it if you don't touch it." ,perhaps?" "perhaps." "I don't want that, I don't want to be in a hurry. After all, it took so long to get to this point. I want to see your body one by one, touch it in my hand, and lick it in my mouth. To Slowly confirm one by one. If I don’t finish doing this, I won’t be able to move forward. Hey, Chu-kun, don’t take offense even if what I do doesn’t look normal. I did it because it was necessary. Don’t do anything. Say, let me handle it." "It doesn't matter, it's up to you. It's just that it's a little strange for you to stare at me like this." I said. "But aren't you mine?" "That is." "Isn't there nothing to be embarrassed about?" "Indeed." I said, "I must not be used to it yet." "Be patient for a little while longer. It's been a dream of mine for years to do this," Shimamoto said. "Is it your dream to see my body like this? You see and touch my naked body with clothes on?" "Yeah," she said, "I've been imagining your body for a long time, and imagining what your naked body would look like—what shape would a penis look like, how hard it would be, how big it would grow." "Why do you think about this?" "Why?" she said, "Why do you ask this? Didn't I say I love you? What's wrong with thinking about the naked body of the man you like? You haven't thought about my naked body?" "Thinking about it." "Think about me masturbating naked?" "I think I did, during middle school and high school." After that, I added: "Ah, not only that time, but also not long ago." "Me too, I imagined you naked. It's not like women don't do that." I hugged her again and kissed her slowly.Her tongue stuck in my mouth. "Love you, Shimamoto," I said. "I love you, Chu-kun." Shimamoto said, "I have never loved anyone except you. Well, how about your body after a while?" "Okay." I said. She wraps her palms gently around my penis and balls. "It's so good," she said, "I can't wait to bite it off." "It will be troublesome if you bite it off." "I just want to bite." As she said, she held the testicles in her palms for a long time, motionless, as if measuring them, and slowly licked and sucked my place, then looked at me and said, "Hey, I can do whatever I want at first. ? Let me do whatever I want?" "It's up to you, whatever you want." I said, "As long as it doesn't really bite off, it doesn't matter." "It's a little weird, don't mind. You don't say anything, I'm sorry." "Say nothing." She asked me to kneel on the floor, with her left arm around my waist, while wearing a dress, she took off the stockings with one hand and pulled down the briefs.Then he took my penis and testicles with his right hand and licked them with his tongue. He put his hand inside the skirt and moved his hand slowly while sucking my place. I don't say anything.She has her way.I watched the slow movements of her lips, her tongue, her hand in her skirt, and I couldn't help but think of Shimamoto, stiff and pale in the rental car in the bowling alley parking lot.I still clearly remember what I saw in the depths of her pupils at that time—it was a cold and dark space as hard as an underground glacier.There is only silence, a silence that absorbs all sound and does not allow it to rise again.Frozen air cannot convey any kind of sound. That was the first death scene I ever witnessed in my life.Before that, I had never experienced the death of anyone around me, nor had I witnessed anyone die in front of my eyes, so I couldn't specifically imagine what death was like.But at that time, death lay before me in its original form, only a few centimeters away from my face.This is what is called death, I think.It told me: you too will come to this point one day, and that anyone will soon fall into this dark abyss, this sympathetic silence, in inevitable and incurable loneliness.Facing the world of death, I feel a suffocating horror.This dark pit is a bottomless pit. I called out her name into the frozen depths of darkness: Shimamoto!I have called out countless times, but my voice has been sucked into the boundless nothingness.No matter how I call, the things in the depths of her pupils remain motionless.She still continued to breathe with a weird sound that seemed to come out of nowhere, and that even breathing told me that she was still in this world, and in the depths of her pupils was the world on the other side where everything died. While I was staring at the darkness in her pupils and calling Shimamoto's name, I gradually had an illusion that my body was being dragged into it, and that world was sucking in the surrounding air like a vacuum. The body that drew me in, I can still remember the reality of its power—at that time, death was trying to draw me in too. I closed my eyes tightly and pushed the memory out of my mind. I reached out and stroked Shimamoto's hair, touched her ear, and put my hand on her forehead.Shimamoto's limbs were warm and soft.She was sucking on me like she was sucking on life itself.Her hand caressed that part of herself in the skirt as if to convey something.After a while, I poured out in her mouth.She stopped moving her hands, closed her eyes, and licked every drop of my discharge. "I'm sorry," Shimamoto said. "No need to apologize." "I wanted to do this at the beginning," she said, "I'm sorry, but if I don't do it the last time, I can't calm down. It's like a ritual for me. Understand?" I hugged her and pressed my cheek lightly against hers, and I could feel the real warmth on her cheek.I brushed her hair, kissed her ears, looked into her eyes.I could see my face reflected in her pupils.In the depths of it is still a bottomless clear spring, in which there are faint light spots, like the lamp of life.Maybe there will always be a day when it goes out, but the light is indeed there at this moment.She smiled at me, and when she smiled, the thin crow's feet gathered at the corners of her eyes as usual, and I kissed them. "This time you come to take off my clothes and let you enjoy yourself. I let you enjoy yourself just now, and this time you can enjoy yourself to your heart's content." "I'm very average. Is it okay to be average? Maybe I lack imagination." I said. "Okay." Shimamoto said, "I like the general ones too." I take off her dress and pull down her underwear.I made her lie down and started kissing her all over.I looked up and down, touched up and down, kissed up and down, and printed them in my mind one by one.I've spent a lot of time on this.After all, it took a long time to come here.I'm just as restless as she is.I restrained myself as much as possible, and slowly entered her body when I could no longer restrain myself.It was dawn when I fell asleep.We did it a few times.At the beginning, it was tender and tender, and then it was surging.Once in the middle, Shimamoto burst into tears as if the emotional thread was suddenly broken, and beat my back and shoulders hard with his fists. During this time, I just hugged her tightly.If you don't hold tight, Shimamoto is likely to fall apart.I kept stroking her back, kissing her neck, and combing her hair with my fingers in a coaxing way.She is no longer the calm Shimamoto with a lot of self-control.The things that had been frozen in her heart for many years began to melt little by little and surfaced.I could feel her gasping and faint fetal movements.I hugged her tightly and absorbed her tremors into my body, so that I could make her my own step by step.I can't get out of here. "I want to know about you," I said to Shimamoto. "I want to know everything about you—how did you live before this? Where do you live now? Are you married or not? I want to know everything. I can't continue Put up with your keeping secrets from me, no matter what kind of secret." "Wait until tomorrow," Shimamoto said. "I'll tell you everything until tomorrow. Don't ask anything until tomorrow. You'll be in the dark today. If I tell you everything, you'll be fine." It can never go back to where it came from.” "Anyway, I can't go back, Shimamoto. Maybe I can't wait until tomorrow. If I don't come tomorrow, I will end my life without knowing anything about the secret in your heart." "If only I didn't come tomorrow," Shimamoto said. "If I don't come tomorrow, you can never know anything." When I was about to say something, she stopped my mouth in one breath. "I hope it will be eaten by vultures tomorrow," Shimamoto said. "Is it okay to be eaten by vultures tomorrow?" "Yes, yes, it's perfect. Vultures eat both art and tomorrow." "What do vultures eat?" "The corpse of an unknown being," I said, "is nothing like a vulture." "Vultures eat art and tomorrow?" "good." "A perfect match, it seems." "I also eat the new catalog of Iwanami Bookstore as a dessert." Shimamoto smiled. "Wait until tomorrow anyway," she said. Tomorrow will come on time, of course.But when I woke up, I was alone.After the rain, the bright morning light poured in from the bedroom window.The hour hand passed nine o'clock.Shimamoto was missing from the bed.The pillow next to me is slightly dimpled to match the shape of her brain.She was nowhere to be seen.I got out of bed and looked for her in the living room, looked in the kitchen, the kid's room and the bathroom, but she was nowhere to be found.Her clothes were gone, too, and her shoes had disappeared from the door.I took a deep breath and reconnected myself with reality. However, the reality always seems to make people feel awkward and uncomfortable.现实已呈现为与我所想的现实不同的形式，是不应有的现实。 我穿衣服走到门外。宝马仍停在昨夜停的位置。没准岛本一大早醒来独自外出散步去了。我在房子周围打着转找她，之后开车在附近一带兜了一会儿，又开上外面的公路，一直开到宫下那里。岛本还是不见踪影。回到家里，岛本也没见返回。我里里外外搜寻一番，看有没有纸条什么的留下来，但根本没那玩艺儿，连她待过的痕迹都无处可觅。 没了岛本的房子变得冷冷清清，令人窒息。空气中好像掺杂了粗粗拉拉的什么颗粒，每次吸气都刮嗓子。随后我想起唱片，她送给我的那张纳特·“金”·科尔的旧唱片，不料怎么找也找不到。看来岛本出去时连它也一起带走了。 岛本又一次从我眼前消失，这回既无大概又无一段时间。