Free The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto

couldn’t help it, I pitied him so deeply. I felt sorry for him for having had to find a way, somehow, to pull himself together, far from his parents.
    An awful struggle was playing itself out inside him now. That much I could tell.
    From my perspective, we were simply taking a nice walk around the edge of a lake, amid lovely scenery, on an invigorating early spring day. But Nakajima didn’t see that. He was in such pain he might as well have been in hell, dragging chains behind him with every step.
    “Hey, Nakajima, hold on,” I said.
    “Huh …?” He was in a daze, clammy with sweat.
    “Sit down a second.”
    He was obviously dying to get this over with as quickly as possible, and he looked annoyed and reluctant, as though he wished he could knock me over and run on ahead. I could see that. I clearly sensed that he wanted to refuse. And yet, for my sake, he grudgingly squatted down.
    It’s only in the early days of a relationship that we have to put up with such things. Soon each person figures out what the other dislikes, and stops doing those things. So at this stage it was all right, I told myself, I could still do this.
    Okay, so that was just me making excuses. Ultimately, I guess I’m one of those people who always thinks with her body.
    I crouched down beside Nakajima, threw my arms around him, and squeezed. Without saying a word, for a very long time. All along, I heard his breath hitting against my neck. There was a dusty odor in his hair. The sky was incredibly far away, and beautiful enough to make a person wonder why our hearts are never so free. The wind that gusted over the lake was chilly, and carried the faintest hint of the sweetness of spring.
    We stayed like that until Nakajima’s breathing calmed and he stopped sweating.
    There was a kind of intensity in us then, but it wasn’t sensual. Neither of us was in control enough for that. I was the one hugging him, and yet I felt as if we were clinging to each other, he and I, at the edge of a cliff.
    Sooner or later, he’s going to disappear .
    I felt sure of this. However much I loved him, and as beautiful as the world was, none of it was powerful enough to take the weight off his heart, that heaviness that dragged him down, into the beyond, making him yearn to be at peace. My body sensed it. And my soul.
    But this memory will remain , I thought.
    Otherwise, what point was there in his being born? Tears welled in my eyes.
    “Thanks, I’m okay now,” Nakajima croaked, even though he wasn’t okay.
    Then he gave my hand a squeeze and coldly shook me off.
    When we had walked on awhile, my vision started clouding. I thought maybe I was having an anemic spell because I’d hugged Nakajima so hard before, and from worrying so much. I started having some trouble breathing, too. It was like his suffering had rubbed off on me.
    “I’m sorry, whenever I try to visit them—I simply can’t do it,” Nakajima said, noticing what was happening. “I can’t help thinking about stuff, even though I shouldn’t.”
    “That’s only natural,” I said. “You’re always talking about how you can’t do things. I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t want to hear that. It makes my ears ache just listening to you.”
    “I know, it’s a habit. It’s because I used to be in an environment where you either had figured out how to do things well or you died.”
    “Really …?”
    The people we’re on our way to see hold the key to all this , I thought. And maybe when he tells me about them, he’ll share something of his own past, too. There was a point in his life when that’s how things were. I do want to know. When you love someone, you want to know. Even about the things that are hard for them.
    The lake had started looking blurry, and I realized a mist had gathered. All of a sudden, the world before me was shrouded in it. The lake, seen through the mist, was submerged in a pale, milky white, as if a gauzy curtain hung between it and me.
    We kept walking. The