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invitation) and sit across from each other, drinking something, while I told her
everything
.
There were so many things he wanted to tell her! “I still remember when you
squeezed my hand in that classroom. After that, I wanted to be your friend. I wanted
to get to know you better. But I just couldn’t do it. There were lots of reasons for that,
but the main problem was that I was a coward. I regretted it for years. I still regret it.
And I think of you all the time.” Of course he would not tell her that he had
masturbated while picturing her. That would be in a whole different dimension than
sheer honesty.
It might be better not to wish for such a thing, though. It might be better never to
see her again.
I might be disappointed if I actually met her
, Tengo thought. Maybe she
had turned into some boring, tired-looking office worker. Maybe she had become a
frustrated mother shrieking at her kids. Maybe the two of them would have nothing in
common to talk about. Yes, that was a very real possibility. Then Tengo would lose
something precious that he had cherished all these years. It would be gone forever.
But no, Tengo felt almost certain it wouldn’t be like that. In that ten-year-old girl’s
resolute eyes and strong-willed profile he had discovered a decisiveness that time
could not have worn down.
By comparison, what about Tengo himself?
Such thoughts made him uneasy.
Wasn’t Aomame the one who would be disappointed if they met again? In
elementary school, Tengo had been recognized by everyone as a math prodigy and
received the top grades in almost every subject. He was also an outstanding athlete.
Even the teachers treated him with respect and expected great things from him in the
future. Aomame might have idolized him. Now, though, he was just a part-time cram
school instructor. True, it was an easy job that put no constraints on his solitary
lifestyle, but he was far from being a pillar of society. While teaching at the cram
school, he wrote fiction on the side, but he was still unpublished. For extra income, he
wrote a made-up astrology column for a women’s magazine. It was popular, but it
was, quite simply, a pack of lies. He had no friends worth mentioning, nor anyone he
was in love with. His weekly trysts with a married woman ten years his senior were
virtually his sole human contact. So far, the only accomplishment of which he could
be proud was his role as the ghostwriter who turned
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