The Ten Loves of Nishino

by Hiromi Kawakami

  “Nozomi, I’m sorry,” Nishino said after another moment of silence.“It’s been a long time since I cried. Maybe since my sister died.”

  In spite of myself, my own tears welled up the instant I heard him say these words. Nishino’s crying must have been contagious.

  No way, I said as I turned away from Nishino. Without looking back, I walked out of the unisex bathroom.

  When I got back to where I was sitting, the boys from my class were singing a dirty song. With a sigh, I poured some saké into my cup. I let out several more sighs as I took small sips of the heated saké that had now cooled.

  I only saw Nishino once more after that. It was the day before I graduated.

  Since my place happened to be conveniently located for the commute to my new job, I was spared the need to find a new apartment and, without much sympathy for my hustling and bustling classmates, I passed the days idly.

  There was a light knock on the door. Suspicious, since there was an intercom, I left the chain on the door and opened it a crack.

  Hey, Nishino said through the narrow gap of the open door.

  Hey, I replied, unlatching the chain.

  Nishino came into the apartment with a nonchalant manner. If there are a thousand different variations on the way a guy might enter a girl’s apartment, there are far more deviations when the guy has already had sex with the girl.

  Nishino entry was neither overly familiar or overly guarded—he hit just the right note.

  Damn, this guy really could turn out to be somebody, I thought to myself.

  “Look, this is for you,” Nishino said, and from his pocket he pulled out something that gleamed, thin and silvery.

  “A thermometer?”

  What Nishino held in the palm of his hand was an old-fashioned tube with a light blue cap, inside of which was a mercury thermometer.

  “Yeah. It was my sister’s.”

  What? I gasped. I can’t accept something like that, I said reflexively.

  “I guess it’s kind of creepy,” Nishino said with a laugh.

  Yeah, it’s creepy, I bluntly agreed.

  “But I’ve been using it ever since my sister died,” Nishino stated with an odd reasoning.

  That makes it even creepier, I said.

  Nishino scratched his head. So you don’t want it? Even though my temperature replaced hers?

  “There you are, still immersed in your own world.”

  Nishino laughed heartily at what I said. Things seemed somewhat uncertain. Why had Nishino showed up at this odd moment to bring me this odd thing?

  Then we had dinner together—leftover curry from earlier in the day—and we parted without having sex.

  That represents the entirety of how I knew Nishino.

  Every so often, I still think back on what a strange guy he was. I never really knew him all that well. And yet, I’m left with the sense that we were quite close. We shared a certain sensitivity. But also, at times, an utter insensitivity.

  It has occurred to me that children might be like that too. Come to think of it, on the day I met Nishino in the clay sewer pipe, that night as he was drifting off to sleep Nishino had said, “I wish that my sister had had a son instead of a daughter.” When I asked him why, Nishino was silent for a moment, and then he replied, “Because then I could have been reincarnated in his place.”

  My goodness—Nishino, you were already born, you were already growing up, weren’t you? That’s not how reincarnation works, I had said. Nishino had pursed his lips and argued, “But at least then it would be easier for me to project myself onto him.”

  The next morning, I was brushing my teeth when Nishino came up behind me and said, “I’ve changed my mind.”

  About what? I asked, my mouth full of toothpaste and the toothbrush.

  “Since there’s nothing I can do about the dead, I’m not going to obsess about the past. Instead, from now on I’m going to become my sister, and give birth to a baby girl,” he said.

  That makes even less sense, I said dismissively. Nishino hung his head.

  Well, I just can’t accept it, he said, drooping even lower. The reason why, ultimately, I ended up having sex with Nishino may have been the way he hung his head then.

  I never heard anything else about Nishino. As for the mercury thermometer, he pressed it on me until eventually I accepted it. Every so often, just to see, I take my temperature. Most of the time it’s normal.

  After I’ve taken my temperature, when I shake it with a hard flick of my wrist to bring the mercury back down, the thermometer makes a faint sound as it cuts through the air. Whenever I hear that sound, I can’t help but think about Nishino’s life.

  I wonder if someday, somewhere, Nishino was ever able to meet his sister and her child again.

  Did he ever learn what is on the other side of the expanding universe?

  Was he able to live out his life, and to love someone?

  Did he ever find a place for himself in this relentless world?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hiromi Kawakami is one of Japan’s most acclaimed and successful authors. Winner of numerous prizes for her fiction, including the Akutagawa, Ito Sei, Women Writers (Joryu Bungako Sho), and Izumi Kyoka prizes, she is the author of The Nakano Thrift Shop, a Wall Street Journal Best New Fiction pick, Strange Weather in Tokyo, Manazuru, among others. Her short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review and Granta. She lives in Japan.