Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.

I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.

Grandfather always said school’s a place where they take sixteen years to wear down your brain. Grandfather hardly went to school either.

What gave money its true meaning was its dark-night namelessness, its breathtaking interchangeability.

Thanks to the long days of rain, the blades of grass glowed with a deep-green luster, and they gave off the smell of wildness unique to things that sink their roots into the earth.

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.

Where are you now?’ Where was I now? Gripping the receiver, I raised my hand and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.