Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Author:Mieko Kawakami [Kawakami, Mieko]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

That night, I could barely sleep.

My body was so heavy and ragged. I kept feeling like I had to throw up, but closing my eyes only stirred my nerves. The darkness behind my eyes drifted between deep and shallow, but it felt like sleep was never going to come. My throat hurt like I was being strangled, and my futon was stiflingly hot. It hurt to breathe. My attempts at sleep just scared sleep away.

I had told my mom a bike ran into me when I wasn’t looking.

She was stunned when she saw the bloodstains on my shirt.

When I said that I had only had a bloody nose, she looked skeptical, but she decided to believe me. After checking me for cuts and bruises, she said I could have hit my head and should probably go to the hospital. I said sure. Talking made my nose throb every time. If it had been broken, it would have hurt much worse. The pain was nothing compared to how it felt after it happened. I’ll try sleeping it off first, I said, and went up to my room. I didn’t want to talk anymore. Not to her, not to anybody.

I changed out of my bloodstained shirt and went to throw it in the laundry, but my mom said to toss it, so I handed it over without protest. Grimacing, she balled up the shirt and asked me what happened to the other guy. I said he rode away. She asked me what he looked like. I told her it was just some guy. I had been running into people since I was a kid. Bikes had actually run into me before, and I had fallen on my face. All because of my faulty depth perception.

“At least it was a bike,” she said and sighed. “What if it had been a car?”

I said I would have bled more—and maybe even died.

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