Thank you for your help! ^_^
One day I went back to the old apartment to take care of the last of my things. When I opened the door, I shuddered. It was like coming back to a stranger’s house.
Cold and dark, not a sigh to be heard. Everything there, which should have been so familiar, seemed to be turning away from me. I entered gingerly, on tiptoe, feeling as though I should ask permission.
When my grandmother died, time died, too, in this apartment. The reality of that fact was immediate. There was nothing I could do to change it. Other than turning around and leaving, there was only one thing to do – humming a tune, I began to scrub the refrigerator.
Just then the telephone rang.
I picked up the receiver, knowing who it would be. It was Sotaro. He was my old...boyfriend. We broke up about the time my grandmother’s illness got bad.
“Hello? Mikage?” The sound of his voice made me want to weep with nostalgia.
“Long time no see!” I cried out joyfully. We were beyond displays of shyness.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t been coming to classes, so I started wondering what was wrong and I asked around. They told me your grandmother had died. I was shocked. …That’s really rough.”
“Yes. So I’ve been pretty busy.”
“Can you come out now?”
“Sure.”
As we decided where to meet, I looked up at the window. The sky outside was a dull gray. Waves of clouds were being pushed around by the wind with amazing force. In this world there is no place for sadness. No place; not one.
