The Ten Loves of Nishino

by Hiromi Kawakami

  “I feel sorry for her,” Nishino replied. He gazed off into the distance as he spoke.

  I wanted to know what had happened to his sister’s husband, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. The air between Nishino and his sister was not quite what might exist between lovers, although neither was it anything like that between family members.

  “Yamagata, are you going out with Tanabe?” Nishino asked abruptly.

  “Uh, yeah,” I answered. I may have had my doubts about whether or not Toru Tanabe and I were officially “going out” but I nodded anyway.

  “I see,” Nishino said. “That’s too bad, ‘cause I kind of liked you too.”

  “Huh?” The moment I looked into Nishino’s eyes, he touched my chin with his fingers and, a thousand times more smoothly than Toru Tanabe, he tilted my head towards his and kissed me.

  Nishino’s lips parted and his saliva flowed into my mouth. It tasted sweet. Was this the taste of breast milk? Or was it the taste of Nishino? Without thinking, I put my arms around Nishino’s waist, and held him tightly.

  We kissed for a long time. Our kissing went on endlessly, with Nishino thinking of someone other than me, and me thinking of things other than Nishino.

  In the grass, as I took in mouthfuls of Nishino, I remembered all of the things that I had buried in the vacant lot.

  Kissing Nishino was wonderful. More wonderful than anything I had ever known. And kissing Nishino was also sad. It was one of the saddest moments I’ve ever known.

  As I was kissing him, I thought to myself, I may never come to this vacant lot again to bury something. I should tell my father that I don’t need a birthday cake anymore. Someday, I may be able to see my mother again. And from now on, I won’t be afraid of growing up.

  Nishino’s kiss accepted everything in my fourteen years, and at the same time, his kiss rejected it in full. We kept kissing, fervently.

  “Thank you, Nishino,” I said, once we had quite finished kissing.

  “Uh-huh,” Nishino replied, and then said, “Hey, why don’t you get rid of Toru Tanabe, and go out with me?”

  I glanced at Nishino with surprise, and saw a bashful look on his face as he stood up and gave the withering grass a swift kick.

  “But Nishino, you don’t really like me that much, do you?” I asked.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “C’mon.” I peered into Nishino’s face. Nishino turned just slightly away.

  “A girl like you . . . is too much for Toru Tanabe,” Nishino murmured.

  Is that so? But not too much for you, Nishino? I asked. You’re bold.

  “Tsk!” he responded.

  Nishino came and sat back down next to me. We held hands for a little while. It was completely different from holding hands with Toru Tanabe. When I held Toru Tanabe’s hand, it had felt like a strange creature from a faraway place. Big and warm, like something kind of scary I was seeing for the first time. But there was nothing the least bit odd about Nishino’s hand. While we were holding hands, it felt as though I no longer knew where his hand stopped and mine began.

  “I’m going to keep seeing Toru Tanabe,” I said.

  “Hmph,” Nishino snorted.

  “Toru Tanabe is different from me, and that’s why I’m going to keeping seeing him,” I repeated.

  “Okay, okay, I got it,” Nishino replied, laughing. I laughed with him.

  We both stood up at the same time. There were seeds from the grass stuck to the trousers of Nishino’s school uniform, and to my skirt as well.

  Autumn soon ended—before I knew it, winter arrived. The air was piercingly cold.

  I conducted my tenth film appreciation with Toru Tanabe. After our ninth appreciation, we had coffee at a coffee shop and then, as we always did now, we went to the park, where I succeeded in kissing Toru Tanabe for the first time. Ever since that earlier attempt, Toru Tanabe had become very hesitant, and I couldn’t help worrying about when we would actually succeed. After my kiss with Nishino, my feelings for Toru Tanabe had only grown stronger. In various ways.

  Nishino and I still never spoke to each other in the classroom. I had stopped going to the vacant lot, so now I had practically no chance to talk to him.

  When I happened to run into him on the way home one day, I asked Nishino about his sister.

  “She’s a little better.” Nishino answered the same way he did in class. With the bare minimum of words.

  Time passed. I was thinking of chopping all my hair off. My mother had always worn her hair short. From her, I had inherited the same soft fine hair, which tended to flatten against my small head. I thought that soon I might tell Toru Tanabe about my mother. And then I might even tell him about my goldfish Tara, and about the birthday cake with buttercream frosting. I wondered what Toru Tanabe’s face would look like while he listened to my stories.

  Soon after winter began, the vacant lot was leveled and put up for sale. Sometimes, in the pale light of winter, I thought about Nishino. Once we graduated from middle school, I might not see him again but, through the various stages of life, I knew that I would remember Nishino often.

  The small grass seeds stuck to Nishino’s trousers. The many things buried in the vacant lot. The rock beside the magnolia tree. The feel of digging up the moist earth. And the mysterious, milk-sweet kiss.

  I would always remember clearly what happened in the grass between our fourteen-year-old selves, in the elusive space between adulthood and childhood.

  GOOD NIGHT

  Yukihiko was savage.

  Some people might be surprised to hear me call him that. They might think a word like “savage” doesn’t befit a man such as Yukihiko.

  Thick hair. An angular but not too prominent chin. Deep dark eyes. A mouth always turned up at the corners.

  To this day, Yukihiko has never once raised his voice to me. Whenever he calls my name—Manami—his tone is soft. Yukihiko is always smiling. The moment he catches my eye, he looks as though he’s about to burst into laughter. The smoothness under Yukihiko’s chin. The shiver I feel when I touch the whiskers that are just starting to grow there.

  Yukihiko left nothing to be desired, in any aspect.

  This applied at the office as well. His subordinates trusted him. He was on friendly terms with his colleagues. His superiors liked to invite him out drinking. Yukihiko satisfied all of them, to an overly unobjectionable degree—it was actually quite boring.

  Nevertheless, Yukihiko was savage.

  Not because the first time Yukihiko kissed me was in the darkness, behind the closed doors of a conference room. And not because, right after his intense kiss, he pushed me down, bending me backward over a desk, and slowly began to unbutton my blouse. Not even because, despite not knowing if anyone might catch us, he remained calm as he fastidiously caressed my bare skin. Nor was it because although I said, Stop, over and over, each time he quietly replied, I will not stop.

  I never once acted as though I was in love with Yukihiko. I was Manami Enomoto, the deputy head of the division. Yukihiko Nishino was my subordinate. I was three years older than him. I had been at the company five years longer. We had never seen each other alone, nor had there ever been any hint of affection between us. Several times, the two of us went out on business meetings together—we took the train, and the bus if necessary, we had various appointments, then we took the train again (the bus too if necessary), and returned to the office. We would submit a meeting report and our expense slips, and be done with it—that was the extent of our work time together.

  However, I was in love with Yukihiko, from the beginning. Every time I sensed Yukihiko pass behind my chair, the phrase “mixing business with pleasure” flashed in my mind. I had always thought that I wanted to be successful at my job, and so I had no intention of conducting an affair at the office. Nevertheless, as soon as Yukihiko was assigned to my division, I fell in love w
ith him.

  Love? Even that word seems too tepid to describe what I felt for him—besotted, or fervent—less familiar words seem more apt. I was fervently, besottedly in love with Yukihiko. From the moment I met him.

  And Yukihiko knew it. He knew, and didn’t even bother to pretend otherwise. Despite his awareness that I didn’t want him to know.

  Yukihiko grasped perfectly that I was secretly in love with him, and that I was trying quell these innermost feelings, by any means, yet he gave me no reprieve. There was no relief, no chance that I would be capable of extinguishing this passion on my own.

  It was May when Yukihiko kissed me in the pitch-black conference room. It had been a year and a month since I first met him. In those thirteen months, I had become more infatuated, all the while trying to smother my ardor. Yukihiko’s gaze, when directed at me, had always been remote. But the more I tried to suppress it, the more my passion grew.

  That May, Yukihiko won me quite easily. Like a butterfly collector who spreads the wings of his specimen on a board, and pins them in place. Gently and carefully handling the now-dead body of an insect he has captured. I suppose you could say that Yukihiko had already entrapped me. Without us ever having shared a caress. Without us even having shared a glance.

  If you had told me this before I met Yukihiko, I would have laughed in your face. “What kind of nonsense are you talking about?” Love doesn’t begin until you’ve gotten to know someone well enough. We’re beyond the ridiculousness of youth. We’re too old for falling in love with the idea of love. When you’re a grown-up, love means being attracted to someone and wanting to be near them, reading and decoding the signs and scents the other gives off, communicating with someone, and sounding out how the other feels. That’s what I would have told you, with a laugh. But you won’t hear me laughing anymore. Foolish love. Love that makes you go numb, that paralyzes you, that doubles you over like a wounded animal. Yukihiko used no weapons, he used no claws or talons or fangs, to deliver the injurious blow of his love—he won me quite easily. If you had seen the way that I trembled. The frissons that welled up within me. Frissons that erupted from the joy of being captured by Yukihiko.

  The first time he touched me—gently but with confidence—Yukihiko was truly savage. Neither his bated breath, nor his tender caress, nor his soft voice could conceal Yukihiko’s savagery. It’s the nature of the beast, when capturing its prey. The brute seizes the smaller creature, with perfect grace and not a single wasted motion. The brute is all the more savage for his elegance and lack of frivolity.

  Manami . . . Yukihiko had called my name. In the darkness of the conference room. In the shadows, with the shades lowered. I said nothing in reply. It came as a shock to me, that Yukihiko knew my first name, having only ever referred to me before as Ms Enomoto, Deputy Head of Division. It came as a shock to remember that I had this other name, to hear it melting sweetly on Yukihiko’s lips for the first time. Behind my closed eyes, I saw the cloudless sky that must have been just outside the window. Yukihiko lay me down, my upper body resting on top of a desk in the conference room.

  No, I said softly. I repeated the word over and over. Yukihiko silenced me with his graceful savagery. Yukihiko made me utterly his own.

  My body, my mind, my heart—these all belonged to me. And yet everything that was mine was also entirely Yukihiko’s. From that day on, a year and a month after I had first met him. Even though a person can never really belong to someone else. Despite that, I wanted to become his. I had decided that I would give myself to him.

  Of course, when the two of us emerged from the conference room, the corridor was deserted. Always careful Yukihiko. There was the slightest flush in my cheeks. Yukihiko’s white shirt was spotless, and his necktie was perfectly knotted—he was cool and collected. I went left, and Yukihiko went right, as we parted. He went straight to the elevator, pushed the button, and stood there waiting. I opened the door to the emergency staircase, my heels clacking as I descended the steps. When I reached the floor below, I pressed my cheek against the steel door. The heavy door felt cool against my skin. I shed a few tears. Then I touched my hair to make sure that it wasn’t out of place, softly wiped the tears from my chin with a handkerchief, and blinked several times. I pushed open the steel door and dug my high heels into the beige wall-to-wall carpeting as I started walking.

  Yukihiko was nowhere in sight on this floor. I exhaled softly as I passed behind the division manager, whose gaze was focused on a pile of documents. It seemed strange to me that I was still breathing. That I was standing up straight. The May sky was bright, and I was a strange being beneath it. I returned to my desk and popped a mint candy into my mouth. And I quietly went back to work.

  Once, I met one of Yukihiko’s old girlfriends.

  “Kanoko,” Yukihiko called out to her. I was livid. Why would he call her name, in front of me? The name of a former girlfriend. And so tenderly too.

  “Good evening. Nice to meet you.” These were the words that came out of my mouth, despite my fury.

  Kanoko suggested that the three of us go out to eat together, Yukihiko had told me a few days earlier.

  Who’s this Kanoko? I asked.

  A friend, Yukihiko replied. He was caressing my buttocks at the time. Girls’ bottoms are always so cool, so smooth—I love them . . . Yukihiko murmured contentedly. Your bottom is cool too, why don’t you play with your own then, I replied. Yukihiko chuckled. I did too. But while I was laughing, I was also imagining what this “Kanoko” was like.

  “Manami, what is it that you like about Yukihiko?” Kanoko asked me. What a bitch. I became livid, but my outward expression did not betray my fury. I merely smiled timidly.

  Yukihiko remained calm throughout the meal. Everything was extremely proper. We drank an appropriate amount of saké. The conversation was innocuous. The evening wore on, gradually. Kanoko seemed to have decided to treat me lightly. Oh, this woman is Yukihiko’s new girlfriend? How boring! She barely even tried to conceal these thoughts. For my part, I behaved like an adult (like a sensible, mature woman three years their senior), drinking my saké with a radiant smile and, when the dessert of pear sorbet arrived, dipping my gleaming silver spoon into it with relish.

  When at last we parted from Kanoko, I promptly turned my back to Yukihiko and started walking briskly.

  “What’s the matter, Manami?” Yukihiko asked, chasing after me. I didn’t answer, I just kept walking. As forcefully as a mammoth striding across the tundra.

  “Are you angry?” Brisk, brisk. “I don’t get it.” Brisk, brisk.

  Eventually Yukihiko came around in front of me and embraced me tightly. I exploded. Like I really meant it. Yukihiko immediately withdrew from me.

  “Why would you introduce me to one of your old girlfriends?” I thundered. Yukihiko’s mouth was slightly agape.

  “You could tell?”

  “It was completely obvious!”

  “But, how’d you know?”

  “I’d have to be stupid not to!”

  “You think so?”

  “You’re so insensitive!”

  “Me, insensitive?”

  “You lack any delicacy!”

  “I have no delicacy?”

  “You’re a man-child!”

  “Me, a man-child?”

  Yukihiko repeated everything after me, with a genuinely awestruck expression. I rapidly lost steam, crouching down where I was and starting to sob. After letting me cry for a moment, Yukihiko crooked his arms under my armpits and brought me swiftly upright. Then he lifted my chin and kissed me. Twice, three times—Yukihiko’s light kisses were like a ripple. I leaned against him and continued to sob.

  “I’m sorry,” Yukihiko said. I nodded, through my tears.

  Yukihiko apologized again. I clung tightly to him. I was aware of how preciously I was behaving, yet still I clung to Yukihiko. I hated precious wom
en. I didn’t want to be one. At that moment, in the midst of my preciousness, I resolved never to call Yukihiko again. Having turned into something I despised, I had to impose at least certain strictures on myself. And so I vowed this to myself.

  The moment when Yukihiko fell in love with me . . .

  Even once the two of us started seeing each other, even once I started staying over at Yukihiko’s apartment (for the same reason I wouldn’t call him on the phone, I refused to let him into my apartment), Yukihiko didn’t have strong feelings for me. Somehow I just knew this. Yukihiko maintained a smooth abstraction. That smoothness made it impossible to tell, without paying very close attention, whether he really was lost in his own world or not.

  It was the mechanical clock.

  What part of Tokyo was it? We had probably gone to see a movie. It was spring, and I had taken off my long-sleeved jacket and was carrying it over one arm. From the window of the train, I remember seeing many of the embankments in bloom with yellow rapeseed blossoms and pale violet cress. Yukihiko and I walked side by side on the street to the cinema. The asphalt had been vibrating under our feet.

  It was noon. The people walking ahead of us suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky. A couple diagonally to the side of us looked upward at the same angle. Yukihiko and I stopped walking too. There were clouds floating in the sky, but nothing else.

  “There isn’t anything to see,” I said, just as Yukihiko pointed in the general vicinity of the roof of the department store across from us.

  “There!” he said.

  Yukihiko was pointing at a marionette clock. A number of figures were emerging and then disappearing, as a cheerful yet melancholy tune played. There were bells clanging. The passersby—all of them—had stopped and were looking up at it.

  “If I could, I would like to be one of those frog dolls,” I said.

  Yukihiko and I stood still, holding hands, even after the clock had finished chiming and the people looking up at it had started walking again. The frog doll had appeared from behind the four on the clock’s dial. After emerging, it had frozen for a moment before spinning around once. Almost as if it were doing a somersault. And then it quickly retreated.