Hmm... Other books by Fuyuki Murakami



· IQ42

· After Dusk But Still a Bit Light Outside

· Hokey Pokey Hokey Pokey

· The Elephant Plays Hide-and-Seek

· Wonderland Scrambled with Bacon on the Side

· Kafka Shipwrecked

· Norwegian Forest

· The Fluffy Windowside

· The Nejimaki Island Chronicles



· What I'm Talking About is What I Talk About When I Talk About Talking: Notes on a Memoir of a Journal as Told to Myself While Thinking About Talking Crap! It'd take me all day just to read this list of book titles. How many books can one dude write? Doesn't it take like twenty years to write a book? Feh. Can't let that damn Kotomi catch me reading manga, though. I'll suffer through this as long as it takes. Flipping ahead...aha! Here we go. Might as well try to get into this. I'll live vicariously through the main character, and it might be almost as good as watching anime. Chapter 1 From July of her sophomore year in high school until the following January, all Tomoko Kuroki could think about was dying. She turned sixteen during this time, but this special watershed meant nothing. Taking her own life seemed the most natural solution, and even now she couldn't say why she hadn't taken this final step. Crossing that threshold between life and death would have been easier than slipping on a smooth, slippery banana peel. She only spoke to people when necessary, and after school, she would return to her solitary bedroom, sit on the floor, lean back against the wall, and ponder death and the failures of her life. Sometimes she would do this for as long as ten, fifteen minutes before turning on the computer and surfing the net. The reason why death had such a hold on Tomoko Kuroki was clear. One day her four closest friends, the friends she'd known for a long time, announced that they did not want to see her, or talk with her, ever again. It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise. They gave no explanation, not a word, for this harsh pronouncement. And Tomoko didn't dare ask. Pure chance had brought them together, three girls, and two boys. During summer vacation of their freshman year, they all did some volunteer work together and became close friends. Even after their freshman year, they remained a close-knit group. The only source of tension among them was the uneven number. If they had become couples — boy, girl, boy, girl — one of the girls would be left out. And aside from Tomoko Kuroki, they all had one thing in common. They were popular. From the very beginning, this made her feel left out. How long would they allow her to remain a member of the group, an unpopular fifth wheel? Colorless Tomoko Kuroki — closed the book, sighed, and carried it back to the front of the library. "Put this back for me." "Put it back yourself," snapped Kotomi, the volunteer librarian. "Stop trying to show off by reading books you don't understand." "I understand that one fine. It's just too depressing. He keeps going on and on about killing himself, and I'm starting to wish he would." Kotomi was about to say something else, but stopped because Tomoko seemed genuinely depressed. It was as if all the color had run out of her soul, leaving nothing but a gray shell. Her shoulders slumped more than usual as she padded sadly out of the library. "She's always surprising me. Did the Murakami actually affect her that much?" Tomoko walked home under a cloud. The more I think about it, the madder I get. What right does somebody like that have to kill himself? I'd put my miserable life up against his any day. Fifth wheel, what an insult to people with real problems! I've never had four friends all at once in my entire life. Hmm... Or had she? She counted. There was always Yuu-chan, of course. Imae, the upperclassman — could she count her as a friend? She had said so, after all, but it wasn't as if they spent time together. Even Yuu-chan was only there for her sometimes, since she went to a different school. In her homeroom, a really cute bitch named Nemoto had begun talking to her, sometimes. She had even let Tomoko use her chapstick, that one day. "Ha! That's only three! Wait — why do I sound so happy about that? The name Kotomi faintly echoed in her head. "Shut up!" Kotomi makes four. Tomoko growled. "Kotomi isn't any friend of mine," she argued with herself. "Just because I can talk to her normally, that doesn't mean anything. I can only talk to her because I hate her guts." It doesn't matter anyway. There's mom, and dad, and Tomoki, too. Tomoki, of course, was Tomoko's brother, younger by just one year. No matter how unhappy I am, what right do I have to do something — something like that, to them? You've got to draw the line somewhere. I mean, I fight with Tomoki, but...but... In her mind's eye, she saw her brother at her funeral, barely containing his tears, standing by her coffin. Some bitch was comforting him in his grief. "Damn him to fucking hell. Using my death to pick up sluts, I'll get him for that!" Besides. She stopped, looking at something in the sky, nothing in particular. I'm not popular, yet. What's the point in giving up? I want to have some fun before I die. If I die, I'll never have any friends, ever. And I'll be damned if I die a virgin! The next day, Kotomi's forehead was twitching as Tomoko waved the gray Marukami novel at her. "Damn you, Tomoko, I just got through shelving that!" "I wanna check it out. Gotta see how it ends." "Eh?" Tomoko left the library, walking straight and tall, as tall as a small girl like her could walk. "Dammit," Kotomi seethed. "The only thing that makes dealing with that bitch even remotely bearable is knowing she's a colossal idiot. If she stops being an idiot, I'll have to find another way to deal with her." "Oh, I see." At home, Tomoko plowed through the first half of the book, and found that the hero eventually stopped having suicidal thoughts. "It's a phase. I'll have to remember that." The hero of the book eventually found a girlfriend who helped him understand his pain. Kind of like Yuu-chan. Sometimes. The hero of the book went back and visited his old friends from high school, the ones who had cruelly abandoned him, to find out what really happened all those years ago. It turned out that one of the girls in their little group had been raped, and they all blamed him, even though some of them weren't completely sure how it could have been him. They had no choice but to believe the girl who accused him. Bitch, Tomoko snarled. In the end, the hero's girlfriend dumped his ass for another dude. "Wait, what?" Tomoko flipped back and reread the end of the book. "After all that? All the pain and suffering he went through? It wasn't even his fault! All his friends abandoned him, and now this bitch, too? And who raped that other girl, the girl who caused all this in the first place? And who was it who killed her? Even Conan the detective wouldn't leave all these loose ends! Doesn't this bastard know how to write a book?" Tomoko flipped back and forth through the final pages. She couldn't find any stitch of a happy ending, and finally flung the book across her room. "Fuck Murakami!" Colorless Tomoko Kuroki sat in the corner of her solitary bedroom and fumed. "I don't want to see or read another fucking book as long as I live." It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise.