On the outskirts of town, he was playing tag with her—a younger girl. It was still light outside, but not for much longer. It was exactly the time of day when the gas was lit in the lamp posts on the street corners.
"Come and catch me!" the boy called to the girl.
He ran away, fast and effortless on his feet. He looked back and saw her coming after him as the demon.
Her eyes were fixed on him. She chased him as fast as she could.
When he looked at her, he thought: "She's taking this game really seriously."
The memory of her face remained in his mind for a long time afterward. But with the passage of time, the memory completely faded away.
After about twenty years had passed, the boy met the girl on a steam train in the snowy provinces by chance. They weren’t a boy and a girl anymore, but were quite grown up into a man and a woman.
Everything was getting darker outside the window. The smell of damp shoes and coats in the train car was rapidly becoming overpowering.
"It's been a while, hasn’t it?" the man asked while holding a cigarette in his mouth. It was the third day after he’d gotten out of prison with his friends. He stared at her like he’d never seen her before.
She had recently lost her husband. She spoke with intense emotion about her parents and siblings.
When he looked at her, he thought: "She's taking this conversation really seriously."
At that moment, before he knew it, he was the twelve-year-old boy again, playing tag with her.
They are now married and have a house in the suburbs.
But after that day on the train, he never saw her eerily serious face again.
THE END
Translator's Note: 鬼ごっこ translates to "tag," the universal children's game in which one player chases the rest and tries to touch them. In Japanese, the chasing player is called 鬼, "demon."
No comments:
Post a Comment