Sweet Bean Paste

If all you ever see is reality, you just want to die. The only way to get over barriers, she said, is to live in the spirit of already being over them.’

All experience adds up to a life lived as only you could

But what about a child whose life is over before he or she even turns two years old? People may wonder, in their sorrow, what point there is in a child like that even being born.

I have learned the answer to this. I am sure it is for that child to perceive wind, sky, and voices in his or her own unique way. The world that child senses exists because of it, and therefore that child’s life, too, has purpose and meaning.

We have the ability to open up our ears and minds to anything and everything.

All the time he had ever squandered in his life seemed to be clinging to his footsteps, dragging him down. He felt as if he were a scrap of rubbish, drifting through one backstreet alley after another.

Nevertheless human lives had been swallowed up by this place and for a hundred years, continually spurned.

‘She did. Honest. We were looking at the full moon together. You could see it above the cherry tree outside the shop. She said it was so lovely, we should go outside and look. Then while we were staring at the moon she said that about Marvy. It was a promise between the three of us – Tokue, and me, and the moon.’

‘A promise to the moon? But I think Tokue lives in the sanatorium.’

‘She said that though.’

‘All right then, I’ll write and ask.

Tokue opened the back door and stepped outside. Sentaro went with her, close by her side. Out on the street leaves drifted down from the cherry trees, hazily lit by streetlights.

‘When I first came here the blossoms were out, but it’s a sad sight now,’ she said.

‘Yes, all we need is a bit of blue sky.’

He didn’t need to make Tokue leave. Although Sentaro was convinced of this now, he was still not sure how to handle the situation.