Listening to the music while stretching her body close to its limit, she was able to attain a mysterious calm. She was simultaneously the torturer and the tortured, the forcer and the forced. This sense of inner-directed self-sufficiency was what she wanted most of all. It gave her deep solace.

Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.

Whoa!" he says with a smile. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen. "Chicken salad a la George Orwell!

An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence

Is this what it means to go back to square one? Most likely. He had nothing left to lose, other than his life.

No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.

Any explanation or logic that explains everything so easily has a hidden trap in it. I'm speaking from experience. Somebody once said if it's something a single book can explain, it's not worth having explained. What I mean is don't leap to any conclusions.