She kissed me on the forehead and said she was sorry. ‘It’s just that I like you,’ she said. ‘I’ve worried about it for so long, and I had to try.’ ‘I like you, too,’ I told Sumire. ‘So don’t worry about it. I still want you to be with me.’
“As if a dam had burst, Sumire sobbed into her pillow for the longest time. I rubbed her bare back as she cried, from the top of her shoulder to her waist, feeling all her bones. I wanted to cry along with her, but I couldn’t.
“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.
“As if a dam had burst, Sumire sobbed into her pillow for the longest time. I rubbed her bare back as she cried, from the top of her shoulder to her waist, feeling all her bones. I wanted to cry along with her, but I couldn’t.
“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.
