Status Updates From Kim Các Tự

Death’s sky was bright and seemed to me like the sky of life. My gloomy thoughts all left me. This world was now devoid of agony.

Even after I had returned to the temple I did not tire of looking at my two acquisitions. I took the pocketknife out of its case and licked the blade. The steel immediately clouded over and the clear coolness against my tongue was followed by a remote suggestion of sweetness.

On my way back to the temple I thought about the purchases which I had made that evening. They were exciting purchases. Although I had bought the drugs and the knife for the remote eventuality of having to die, I was so pleased with them that I could not help wondering whether this was not how a man must feel who has acquired a new house and who is making plans for his future life.

Inasmuch as flies love putrefaction, had Mariko begun to putrefy? Did the girl’s total absence of belief connote putrefaction? Was it because she inhabited an absolute world of her own that the fly had visited her?

Mariko was devoid of belief. If there had been an earthquake directly before her eyes, she would not have believed it. If the entire world were to collapse, this girl alone would probably be spared. For Mariko believed only in things that happened according to her own private logic.This logic did not allow for any collapse of the world and accordingly nothing could possibly provide an opportunity for Mariko to think.