Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami

Author:Ryu Murakami [Murakami, Ryu]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-11-08T06:11:11+00:00

I ran after Lilly. On the tomato leaves brushing my arms grew a light down.

Lilly tore apart a tomato, Hey, Ryū, look, it's just like a light bulb, all lit up. I ran to her, grabbed the tomato, and threw it into the sky.

Get down, Lilly! That's a grenade—get down! Lilly laughed loudly and we fell to the ground together.

It's like we're down in the sea, it's so quiet I'm almost scared. Ryū, I can hear your breathing, and mine, too.

The tomatos looking up from this place were breathing quietly, too. Their breath mixed with ours and moved like mist among the stalks. In the puddly black earth were broken grass stalks, they pricked our skin, and thousands of tiny resting insects. Their breath reached here from deep in the earth.

Look, that must be a school, I can see a pool, Lilly said.

The ash-gray building drew in sound and moisture and pulled us toward it. That school building floating in the darkness was like the golden exit at the end of a long cave. Dragging our bodies, heavy with mud, and trampling on overripe fallen tomatos, we crossed the field.

When we got out of the wind and rain under the eaves of the school building, we felt as if we were in the shadow of a dirigible floating in the sky. It was too quiet, and the cold attacked us.

At the edge of the wide grounds was a pool, and around it flowers were planted.

Like the eruptions on a rotting corpse, like a serum with multiplying cancer cells, the flowers were blooming. Against the background of a wall that rippled like white cloth, they scattered on the ground or suddenly danced up in the wind.

I'm cold, as if I were dead, Lilly said.

She was shaking and pulled me back toward the car. The classrooms seen through the windows seemed ready to devour us. The desks and chairs in regular rows reminded me of a mass grave for unknown soldiers. Lilly was trying to escape the silence.

Running with all my might, I cut across the grounds. Lilly yelled after me.

Come back, I'm begging you, you just can't go!

I struggled up to the wire fence around the pool, and started climbing it. On the water below, ripples and counterripples blended into each other, looking just like a TV screen after all the day's broadcasting has ended. The water glittered, reflecting the lightning.

Do you know what you're doing? Come back, you'll die, you'll end up dead!

Her arms hugging her body, her legs twisted around each other, Lilly was yelling in the middle of the grounds.

Tense as a deserter from the army, I dropped down beside the pool. Thousands of ripples were forming constantly, the water looked like translucent jelly—I hurled myself in.

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