LE RENAISSANCE

I hadn't been writing stories since my graduation from the creative writing course. It's been 6 years, or 7 years almost. Last night I accidentally found my old assignment in the wardrobe - my clumsy writing. The awkward use of words is too evident, and yet I could see that I was trying to find my style, experimenting by using different tenses in a story. I was enjoying it.


I thought I might start editing these stories a bit, just to see what will happen, for the heck of it.
It could be fun.
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It begins like this.

***

A flash back. A girl in a pale yellow dress, emblazoned with sunflowers is waving her hand. Her long straight hair, curling slightly at the end is waltzing in the gentle breeze.
Her expression is hardly visible in the shade of her lacy white hat.
She doesn’t know yet: in the next morning, she would come here just as usual and look around restlessly to find me.
Hey, she’s turning back, she’s turning back, and the sparkling pixels on her fine black hair disperse in my eyes as it flutters in the wind.
Then I try to say something at her back. I can’t. My throat is tight as if were strangled by a shapeless creature. And I swallow my words. I gaze at her small back diminishing in the fading light, for timeless time until my eyes get sore and something feverish comes up to my throat.

***

The night express train is finally arriving at Yokohama station. The destination on the plate says "Kokura" where I will transfer to a local train that takes me to Hakata, the final destination.

After having waited nearly half an hour, I enter the musty, dim carriage with tinge of anticipation and nagging hesitation. Half the seats are empty and most passengers appear to be pale-faced men heading for a business trip. These seats, covered with dust are used as alternative beds for those spend nights on the train and a neatly folded blanket is placed at the edge of each bed. This would suit me fine, I thought, this tiny, filthy bed and the dead quietness with fatigue aloft in the stuffy air. I brush the dust off, sit there leaning against the wall and shift my eyes crossways to the square shaped, fixed window that is no much larger than my face and wait for another 10 minutes or so before it departs.

The platform is at the rear end of this huge station on the top level. It is quiet here. It feels unreal just listening to the sound of local trains coming and going and the announcements, while hundreds of thousands of people are flooding over other platforms and stairs thrusting each other.
It is around 7pm. Every few minutes the tidal wave of people attacks a train and are plunged into those tiny doors. In a blinking moment the whole train is crammed up. The familiar scene filled with the depressing smell of weariness and frustration of human being, will be repeated countless times, at the same place, same time, with same faceless crowds.

And now, says I, my farewell to Yokohama.

*** To Be Continued ***