All My Friends Are Fictional’s Reviews > All The Lovers In The Night > Status Update

“San-zoku-ame, I said to myself. I could see it now. The sky goes dark over the mountain, closing in, and then there’s a crash of thunder, followed by a vicious rain that drenches the earth with a sound like every sheet of paper in the world being torn. I focused my imagination on the rain, letting it wash away all I could see and all I couldn’t see, obliterating everything.”

I didn’t choose any of this. Not my family, not my house, not my parents, not my school. This town is overflowing with things I never wanted. But everyone goes around with blank expressions on their faces, like they’re wearing matching masks or something. [..] People here confuse boredom and stagnation with peace and safety. I swear, everyone in this town is pretty much a cow. They just huddle together and moo.

“Always,” I laughed. “Books are so full of mistakes, it almost makes me wonder if they only exist so that the mistakes can pass their genes on to another generation.”
[…]
“I don’t know, constantly looking for mistakes like that . . .” […] “Doesn’t that wear you down a little? To keep looking for something you’ve decided is definitely there, when you can’t really say for sure?”

“As I passed below the haloes of the green and red traffic signals, I was taken by this strange view of the evening, the city streets full of people—people waiting, the people they were waiting for, people out to eat together, people going somewhere together, people heading home together. I allowed my thoughts to settle on the brightness filling their hearts and lungs, squinting as I walked along […].”

“The first thing they teach you as a proofreader is that you’re not supposed to read the story on the page. That goes for a novel or any other kind of book. No reading allowed. […] Anyway, the idea is to keep our emotions out of it . . . to focus our energy on finding all the errors hiding in the book.”

“Some writers are great, but not successful. Then you get other writers who are successful, but not so great. […] Then again, I guess there are things like that everywhere. We get this all the time as women, right? Like, if you make plenty of money but don’t have any kids, you might get called successful. But unless you have kids, no one will ever call you a great woman. You know what I mean?”

“It’s not the same as relying on someone. […] I mean, I guess it’s all about both parties counting on each other.”
“It’s like they say, trust is a two-way street. Reliance can be one-sided, though. Know what I mean? One side depends on the other. That’s not a partnership. And that’s why relationships based on reliance are pretty unstable. One little hiccup and everything could disappear.”

I replayed the last words Kyoko said inside my head. Carve out just a little time. After I had started at the company and grown accustomed to my work, I stopped watching TV, unable to endure the frustration of not being able to correct the errors I found in the text appearing on the bottom of the screen. I didn’t usually read books or listen to music. I had no friends to go out to eat with or to chat with […].

„Why is the night so beautiful? Why does it shine the way it does? Why is the night made up entirely of light?
The music flows from the earphones filling my ears, filling me—it becomes everything. A lullaby. A gorgeous piano lullaby.
[…]
The light at night is special because the overwhelming light of day has left us, and the remaining half draws on everything it has to keep the world around us bright.“

““Because at night, only half the world remains.” I count the lights. All the lights of the night. The red light at the intersection, trembling as if wet, even though it isn’t raining. Streetlight after streetlight. […] Why is the night so beautiful? Why does it shine the way it does? Why is the night made up entirely of light?“