Free Hardboiled & Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto Page A

beginning is coming back for an encore now that the end is approaching. It takes time, and I doubt you’re going to get used to it, either.”
    “How come you know all this stuff?”
    “Because I understand you,” said Sakai.
    “Thanks, even if you are just saying that.”
    If only we could have talked at some other time, I thought, in other circumstances. Right now, I need time and I need space. But something in his easygoing ways made me feel so comfortable that I couldn’t be bothered about those needs.
    We walked into the café. It was empty.
    We sat down at a table by the window and sipped our coffee. Everything was very natural, except for the existence of my sister. She had penetrated my world like a dream silently raining down into my life. And the worst thing was that it didn’t bother me at all. I wouldn’t have minded if things stayed like this forever. Life was better this way, since the only alternative was a world without her.
    “Who can say that Kuni is unhappy, just because she’s in that state?” Sakai said. “It’s her life and only she can decide. No one else should try. I feel like thinking about that only makes her weaker.”
    “I agree. I’ve always been happy because Kuni and I were such good friends. And I’m sure things will never be harder than they are now. My mother doesn’t really have a cold, you know—she’s just feeling really down. But I know that sometime in the future, a day will come when my family will start to feel differently. The world out there, this landscape we’re looking at now, through this window, will start to seem good to us, and different from the way it is now—so different that we aren’t even allowed to imagine it yet. It’s just that I’m tired of waiting. Because in the early days, I was always waiting for a miracle.”
    Sakai nodded. “It’s natural for you to be tired. Everyone is still stunned by what happened. Even me, as removed from it all as I am. Even the tangerines. We’re all stunned that Kuni isn’t here anymore.”
    “Who would have imagined that something like this could happen? And yet right now, even as we speak, similar things are happening all around the world. There are plenty of stories like this in the hospital. I’ve talked with people about all sorts of problems. They’ve told me about all kinds of hard choices they’ve had to make. But until recently, I never even suspected that this world existed.”
    “That’s right. And I’m sure all those people are looking out the window, just like you. But if you turn to face in a different direction, you can get by without having to consider the fact that people like them even exist. Of course, those tragedies and all sorts of other tragedies keep happening whether or not the ones who don’t look out the window are aware of their existence.”
    “Which direction do you face?”
    “I think hard about whatever comes before me,” he said.
    For the first time since all this happened, I really laughed.
    Laughing made me forget about everything.
    There was a shopping arcade outside, and the strange music that was playing over its loudspeakers drowned out the Mozart playing in the café.
    There could be no more affection or hope or miracles now that my sister was getting ready to leave our world behind. Unconscious, her body warm, she gave us time to think. Steeped in that time, I smiled a small smile. There was eternity there, and beauty, and my sister was still with us, the way she was meant to be. Did anyone ever imagine, back in the old days, that eventually a day would come when people and their brains would each die a separate death?
    None of this mattered to my sister, who was dying. This was a sacred time set aside for us survivors to think about issues we didn’t usually consider.
    To focus on the unbearable only marred what was sacred.
    And it struck me that if anything was a miracle, it was this: the lovely moments we experienced during the small, almost