Style 4 – Haruki Murakami // Japan, in the late 1960s
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I walked across the rooftop to where my new friends were smoking, laughing, and looking at the city scape below. It was pretty, but I could not concentrate on it. I couldn’t shake this feeling that I wasn’t supposed to be here, that I was supposed to be back in Tokyo, sitting in one of those jazz cafes like I did every day when I wasn’t at school and wait for him. I told everyone I wrote poetry and listened to records, trying to be the next generation of Japanese revolutionists without having to do a thing. But I was there, watching for Kaoru, because for many years I had loved him. To Kaoru, I was nothing, like a sheet of agar melting into simmering water.
There had been a party, and I had gotten drunk. I had spotted Kaoru, against the wall, looking very American and non-chalant. He was smoking, talking with a gorgeous blond woman about the latest rumor that a blunt had been found by he police which had shut down the entire production of Hair. It was a great scandal, at least in this scene I was pretending in as one of them. I should have cared.
I ended up alone, with Kaoru, and I kissed him. His face clouded and he left, leaving me, standing there like a phone off the hook.
I could not bear being in the same city as Kaoru, knowing we were walking the same streets, reading the same underground zines and listening to jazz records in the same cafes. It was unbearable.
So I told my parents I wanted to continue my studies in Europe for a semester. They were impressed, considering I had never once been passionate on my own, which also baffled me because the Japanese education system raises you to not have any thoughts at all. I packed my suitcase, methodically, careful not to pack anything I wore when I kissed Kaoru.
In hindsight, I was a coward. I was running away, as if Kaoru was all of Tokyo. But in this far continent my love for Kaoru did not lessen, and as the days went by, I became completely obsessed with wanting to know what he was doing. I called Shoko, in Shinjuku, and made her go to the cafe and wait for Kaoru. She called me back, with a phone card in the middle of the night, to tell me he was there and alone. He was smoking, and reading a book of poetry.
I had read the same one. I laid back on the bed in the small dorm I lived in and watched the moonlight come through the lace curtains and listened to Shoko. I thought about how funny it was that despite our distance, Kaoru and I were connected by the same book.
I lingered on this through-out the day, which ruined it. My new, artificial friends decided to take me to a spot in the city where we could watch the sunset and smoke. But as I strolled across the roof, I was struck with a terrible onset of ennui. It all looked wrong. I wanted nothing more than to go home to Tokyo, because I had to be where he was.
I made myself wait an anguishing long time where the time zones were. I made Shoko call and get his phone number from the directly.
I laid there in my bed and dialed his number. I watched the rain come down against the lead glass windows, and listened to my phone as it rang and rang and rang.
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Text is fictional. This is more serious than the other 3 I did, but it was the only author I could easily emulate. I like Yukio Mishima more than Murakami, but he’s more widely known.