A Japanese Love Story

Someone once told Ayako that music can influence ones mood and create internal experiences such as sadness or joy without any preceding events or reasons for those emotions but the music itself. She listened to a Tracy Chapaman CD while outside the rain was pouring and heavyhearted is how she felt.

"If he wants the chances that you took from him

and nothing that you own

Then there be no place to run to

There'll be no place to run

And if he finds himself to be

A reflection of us all

Bang bang bang

He'll shoot us down"

Was it solely the sad song that made her heart weigh a thousand pounds? Or was it because of an unconscious sphere in her brain that became conscious that very moment when she got a vivid piece of memory of the very first time she heard that Tracy Chapman song several decades ago?

Silly sadness overcame her when she thought of that one car ride half a century ago when Radio Nostalgia was playing on the old poor quality car stereos. Mount Fuji was visible from the dirt-coated window glass of the old Suzuki trash-piece of a car. The mountain was covered in snow and so was her heart. Her lover Haruki was behind the wheel, looking at the road he was driving on. When he smiled, he looked like a japanese version of Tom Cruise smiling - but as it was, he hadn't smiled in weeks. And having a smile that resembles that of Tom Cruise's smile wasn't something to be proud of, in any cultural circumstances. Ayako was thus in a way glad her lover Haruki hadn't smiled in weeks.

When that Tracy Chapman song played on the radio Ayako's lover Haruki told her he was going to war. He'd be bound to leave tomorrow morning at cockcrow. There Ayako knew she would never see him again. Ayako asked Haruki to promise her one thing: Never to smile again. And that Haruki did promise her.