She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn't know how to handle.

I felt how important the simplest things were, like feeling proud, finding something funny, stretching yourself, retreating into yourself.

Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?’ I laughed. ‘Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?

Why were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.

Hitoshi: I'll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven't a choice. I go. One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I've yet to meet, others I'll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes. I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you. For waving good-bye, I thank you.

Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything.

Here in this ocean, in the midst of all this water, with the red flags on those distant buoys flapping in the sea breeze, I find myself unable to treat our house in Tokyo as anything but a dream.