This is a short story that can be found at the end of the book Kitchen. There’s a big dose of supernatural to accept here, and of course the theme of loss.
Satsuki’s boyfriend died in a car accident. She loved him, and to keep on living is so difficult now, but she tries. She goes running every day, to the bridge where they used to meet. She runs to keep living and let out what she has inside, but at the same time she goes to the bridge that binds her to him. She’s young, after all, and this feeling is very understandable and right. She keeps thinking of him, but at the same time tries to go on living.
She meets a strange girl, and something about her reaches Satsuki who feels close to her. Urara is her name. When Urara calls her at home, she explains that she only has to think that she wants to know something and she simply realises that she knows it, just like that.
It’s classic Yoshimoto here, when Satsuki thinks that since Urara said that so naturally, she simply thought “after all, why not?” and accepted it just like that.
They meet again, and Urara tells her to go to that bridge with her at a specific time, that something extraordinary will happen.
Satsuki goes. Urara tells her that every hundred years it’s possible to see someone who died, if the circumstances are right, if the thoughts of the deceased link with those of the person missing them, or something like that.
Satsuki sees Hitoshi. They both cry. She thinks she would like to go with him, he sort of frowns because of course he doesn’t want that. He soon goes away, but this time at least they get the chance to ‘say’ goodbye, something they didn’t have before. She feels she has to be strong, she has to go on with her life, but she feels better someone, and thanks him because when he went away he waved her goodbye, he waved many, many times...
(which is grazie di avermi salutato agitando la mano molte, molte volte - I just want to remember this)
It’s a little thing but it’s also so very important. He couldn’t speak, but she got to see him one last time and she got to say goodbye, in a way.
There is also a sort of side story, even if this is a short story:
when Hitoshi died, his brother’s girlfriend Yumiko was in the car with him and died too. Now Hiiragi has lost his brother and his girlfriend.
He’s presented like a peculiar character. He reacts in a different way. He likes talking to Satsuki because she’s mourning for his brother, they share the same pain, and all that. What other people can’t understand, is the fact that he goes to school wearing Yumiko’s uniform. He doesn’t care about what people say when they see him in a girl’s uniform. He wears it to feel closer to Yumiko. It was all so sudden and unexpected, that it’s difficult for everyone to deal with it, and everyone has his own way. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way, there is only the way that works for ‘you’, whatever that is.
Sooner or later, he will stop wearing it and will start to move on. Not forgetting her, but simply going on living.
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