Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

Author:Sayaka Murata [Murata, Sayaka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Adult
ISBN: 9780802159595
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 59793324
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2022-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Lover on the Breeze

Naoko calls me Puff, because I puff up in the wind and billow in the breeze.

She was in her first year at elementary school when her father, Takashi, hung me in her bedroom. Once he had fixed me in place with silver hooks, he stroked her head in satisfaction.

“Naoko, it’s light blue—your favorite color. Isn’t it pretty?”

“I wanted pink—blue’s for boys.” Naoko pouted, but she couldn’t take her eyes off my ever so pale, liquid-sky blue.

My role was to cover the right side of her bedroom window.

Outside, a white-painted veranda overlooked the garden beyond. The other cloth, my twin, said dismissively, “Now we’re stuck here, we’ll just get dirty in the wind,” and went to sleep. I wasn’t at all sleepy, and I gazed curiously around Naoko’s bedroom at the pink cushions and her shiny study desk. As if aware that I alone was awake, Naoko looked over at me. That’s when she named me Puff.

Come morning, Naoko went off to school, her red schoolbag on her back. Sometime later, her mother, Kazumi, came in to clean the room. “Let’s get some air in here,” she said, coming over to open the glass window behind me. For the rest of the day, until Naoko came home, I floated and flapped, almost swimming around the room.

When Naoko came home, she exclaimed, “It’s cold in here!” and shut the window. And, still with her schoolbag on her back, she said, “Puff, I’m back,” and buried her face deep in my folds.

Despite my name, I hated the wind. In winter it was cold, and in summer it was unpleasantly warm, and the sensation of being touched up all over my body was gross. Naoko always felt the cold and kept the window shut, for which I was thankful.

At night she would quietly bundle me up in her arms and nestle her face up close.

There in the darkened room, I would be caught in her embrace, listening as she murmured my name. Whenever she was sad, she always came to me for a cuddle.

Yukio first came to her room around the time I had just turned eleven. It was the season I hated most, when strong, gusty wind whipped up petals from the cherry tree in the garden and stuck them all over me.

Naoko had just started her second year in high school. Kazumi was jittery, and she kept coming up to the room with juice or snacks. Every time she went out again, Naoko and Yukio looked at each other and giggled shyly.

“Sorry,” Naoko said. “It’s the first time I’ve ever had a boy come to my room, so Mom’s getting a bit carried away.”

“That’s okay.”

Yukio was a rather slight, unremarkable-looking boy. He wasn’t all that tall, either, and his face, with its beautifully pronounced cheekbones, was smaller than Naoko’s.

The surface of his fine black hair shone pale brown in the sunlight streaming through the window. Beneath thin, delicate brows, his eyes were shaped like small leaves, the black pupils reflecting soft brown in the sunlight.

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