Golden Time:Volume4 Chapter1

Status: Incomplete

7% completed (estimated)

   

Golden Time 4: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

(Linda...)

"...ngh..."

In the middle of his futon, Banri opened his eyes.

Linda, he'd said.

Almost in shock, he gradually felt around his cheeks the heat of a long sigh he let out.

Was what he was seeing a dream?

The warm remnants had dripped from the core of his body into the pit of his stomach, but the aftertaste of calling out to her was simply too vivid. His heart was still beating hard.

The towel-blanket that covered him to his head was damp from his night sweat. In the thin darkness, suffused with his own body odor, he realized that he was curled up and dug deep under like an animal in a deep burrow.

As if he were twisting himself, he stuck his head out and at the same time, his cell-phone's alarm sounded beside his bed. It was morning.

The world before his eyes: his familiar one room apartment.

His own room for living alone. The interior, an idiotic beige and white, wood-tone.

As he did it, Banri thought 'what an awful mess.' Not having arisen from his bed yet, only his eyes were moving. Where there would be a television screen, there was a still open notebook computer, half-empty PET bottles and snack-food bags. And disposable chopsticks. Not wanting to get his hands dirty, Banri eats potato chips with chopsticks. And because washing the chopsticks for the sake of the potato chips was bothersome, he was using those disposable chopsticks they have set by the cash register at the convenience store for the benefit of people buying boxed lunches, by the sign saying "Please use chopsticks!" Up to this point, he had never turned them down.

Everything he couldn't tidy up was scattered aimlessly around the center cushion: a charger, gum, some bags, a wallet, comics, discarded socks, nose-blown tissues, finger wiped tissues, tissues dirtied somehow at the formation of the galaxy, and in another alternate universe were discarded clothes, lecture handouts, loose-leaf papers, and miscellaneous things stuffed in through the mail-slot.

And stretched across the floor, a parallelogram.

It was the shadow of a stool.

In the north and south, through the gaps in the yellow curtains the morning light shone through, cutting straight lines, and in them the dust in the air could be seen drifting, dancing in the beams. He thought: it’s the world of morning. The sunlight was brilliant. It looked like today’s weather would be good again.

It was already time when he had to get up and go to first period.

But, far from getting himself up, he could not, so long as he could stop the cell-phone alarm. Banri remained lying down still, his chest moving up and down with his shallow breathing.

His outstretched arms felt heavy, his legs had no strength, and he was unable to throw off his towel-blanket. The back of his head buried in the pillow still, he kept looking up vaguely at the ceiling.

The morning light on the other side of his eyelashes was dazzling. Frowning with eyebrows unkempt since the trim he’d received the previous month, Banri resisted still the shrill sound of the alarm.

In Tokyo, July had arrived.

Three months had passed already since he’d come up to Tokyo.

The stickiness of his skin was surely due to the heat of the night.

Still laying down in the bed soaked with his body heat and sweat, Banri pressed the back of his hand against his forehead. His forehead was hot and sticky, and where he touched his body felt bad.

He wondered what the heck happened overnight, where he’d gone.

Was that all--- a dream?

<~~7% Completed~~>

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