Status Updates From Runaway Horses

He could conceive of nothing less fitting than that a young man who had given his life so wholeheartedly to emotion should now rest beneath this mound of stone. The Kiyoaki of Honda's memories certainly had the hint of death about him. But even that aura of death was like a transparent flame, as if in him death itself was brilliant and volatile. This cold stone had nothing of all to say of Kiyoaki.

"How oddly situated a man is apt to find himself at age thirty-eight! His youth belongs to the distant past. Yet the period of memory beginning with the end of youth and extending to the present has left him not a single vivid impression. And therefore he persists in feeling that nothing more than a fragile barrier separates him from his youth."

Book 2 🇯🇵

How does it feel to slaughter? he asked himself, burning for an answer. The action, that instant of aiming the gun and pressing the trigger, had been a rapid flow of movement, with only the barest feeling of wanting to kill. That had amounted to even less than the wisp of black smoke that later trailed from the muzzle.