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I rarely share this part of my life with others, but I want to tell it to you now. A piece of armor, because I trust you. A glint of falling steel, because I feel safe with you.

Capricious Aoyama Chizuko and accommodating Ō Chizuru—Ông Tshian-hóh—who submitted to the former’s every whim: no, theirs was not an equal relationship in any sense. All my offers to be her “easterly wind” had only been a manifestation of my superiority complex.

There is nothing in the world more difficult to refuse than self-righteous goodwill.

“If you want to quit, why don’t you just say it outright?”
“Would you accept my resignation?”
“No, I wouldn’t. And that’s why you want to force me to dismiss you, is that right? But that’s not very strategic of you, is it, Miss Ō Chizuru?”

“Aoyama-san, you were saying? If I’m not comfortable wearing it… do I not have to?”
“That’s right. If that’s the case, then don’t wear it anymore!”
She was quiet.
“I don’t want to force you.”
“And yet you did not say so earlier.”

Hm … it’s so expensive that I feel it to be a rather heavy burden.

And as for what those so-called true feelings were—
The Empire’s Southern Expansion Movement and so-called National Spirit Mobilization Movement had taken shape as imperial assimilation movements here in the colonies. Were they not, in essence, brute acts of erasing the distinctions of individual cultures? I couldn’t help but feel resistance and disgust whenever I considered the matter seriously.

"It was ōmagatoki,(3) roughly five in the evening" - "(3) Ōmagatoki is Japanese for the time of day when the sky grows dark." - This is the equivalent of "All according to keikaku (keikaku means plan)" - just say dusk?

“That Ō-san is so hardworking, I can hardly tell if she’s a personal assistant or an interpreter. For all that work, she ought to have two salaries!”

“And all the steps it takes to make it! How extravagant!”
“Aoyama-san, are you only now realizing what a luxury jūn piánn is?”

“But why walk when there are buses in the city?”
“So that I can buy things to bring here along the way, of course.”

The rain and roiling river made for a water song that, in the dark of night, pierced through the earthen roof tiles and wooden awning to serenade me in bed.

Tristan, the world was made so that we could find each other in it. Already the world is fading, returning to the sea. My pulse ebbs with yours. Death frees us from the torment of parting. I cannot part with you. I am you.

The world is nothing. Love formed it.
The world vanishes without trace.
What is left is love.

You had crept along my blood vessels through the wound, and the blood that circulates returns to the heart. You circulated me, you made me blush like a girl in the hoop of your hands. You were in my arteries and my lymph, you were the colour just under my skin, and if I cut myself, it was you I bled. Red Isolde, alive on my fingers, and always the force of blood pushing you back to my heart.

This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

It’s better if I think of my life like that – part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.

Don’t regret your life, child. It will pass soon enough.

Miss Pinch came visiting, and asked me what I intended to do with my Future. She spoke about it as though it were an incurable disease.

‘Keep me by you,’ he said. It was almost a prayer, but like most of us he prayed for one thing, and set his life on course for elsewhere.

Tell me a story, Pew.
What kind of story, child?
A story with a happy ending.
There’s no such thing in all the world.
As a happy ending?
As an ending.

The lighthouse is a known point in the darkness.

Where to begin? Difficult at the best of times, harder when you have to begin again.

There were two Atlantics; one outside the lighthouse, and one inside me.
The one inside me had no string of guiding lights.

It was a long story, and like most of the stories in the world, never finished. There was an ending there always is – but the story went on past the ending – it always does.

We are lucky, even the worst of us, because daylight comes.