“The day gets darker as time passes, as does it lighten and brighten”, Wolf said, as he settles into the space beside Hayashi.
Shades of Kafka flash through Hayashi’s mind, as he considers the facts of his situation. This is fiction no more, Kafka – you had the benefit of prose, and the benefit of a flow of words from one of the most sublime consciousness writers of this day and age. Yes, you were fifteen, but at the same time you were infallible from the beginning. You were destined for greatness without your knowledge… What do I have?
“I am eighteen. Nothing much to look at – unlike you, Kafka – and not even close to being athletic. The only subjects I am good at in school are my languages; put simply, I find it hard to fail in something that I have to practice everyday.”
Wolf nods in agreement. Sadly, his own existence mirrors that of Crow, and the parallels annoy him a little bit. In the prose, Crow ended up getting in the way. Even in purgatory the dude was a mess.
“I still have to be the strongest 14 year old around.”
And with that, Hayashi took his eyes off the picture on the desk. It was one in which he was a mere child, holding on to his father’s arm. His mother, obviously, was not in the picture. She had left to pursue the completion of a book she was writing – about surviving falls. Her means of It was the kind of book you would pick up in the bookstore – caught by the catchy title (Surviving Death by Falling); a book you would flip through but never buy. Hayashi had only ever seen two copies of the book – one on his father’s bookshelf, and another in a rundown second-hand bookstore. He hated the book. Not because of its mediocrity, nor its more-than-charming subject of discussion, but because it was the one book that changed his life for the worse. This book had stolen his mother, and no matter the prose, she was never coming back.
Looking around the room for one last time – Hayashi would one day return, under very different circumstances – a tinge of fear hit him. He had always followed the rules to the letter, for his father had hit him for each and every one of his trespasses, and this was his first intentional violation of the father-son relationship. This was his baby step, unstable and lacking in certainty, but slowly and surely gaining independence from the crutches of his childhood.
Wolf placed the picture atop a neatly folded stack of clothes, and proceeded to pack them into a monochrome Adidas duffel bag. Hayashi was finally leaving.
The stars were out that night – a rare occasion in Singapore. The light pollution was always too pronounced, and people just one day stopped looking up at the sky; but the stars were out, as if to bless Hayashi’s journey into the wild, wild world. Wolf was good company during the escape, trailing along behind Hayashi and barking instructions whenever Hayashi looked lost.
The well-lit streets of Singapore proved friendly to Hayashi’s footsteps – he had walking shoes on, and the walk was easy save a couple of minor mishaps with a cockroach and a bumbling credit card salesman. Trudging on and on, and upon the Jubilee Bridge, he found himself faced with an otherworldly landscape.
It was the stuff dystopian (or perhaps utopian) stories were made of – an array of glistening skyscrapers which towered over a lake, and the lights from which made the water dance in perpetual glee. On the horizon was an immense structure made of three pillars and an ark-like installment linking each pillar at the top. A slight distance away, a giant wheel made it’s rounds through the warm midsummer’s night.
He walked down a flight of steps and sat himself down, above the dancing waters, and admired the beauty of Man’s creation – intricately interlaced with the beauty of Nature and combining to become a singular piece of art. Perhaps Man wasn’t all bad at all.
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Guys I will continue this.
