Memories are what warm you up from the inside. But they’re also what tear you apart.

Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like an amusing friend you can’t really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own - with whatever guts you can muster.

What had I ever known about Kumiko? Soundlessly, I crushed the empty beer can in my hand and threw it into the trash. Could it be true that the Kumiko I had thought I understood, the Kumiko I had held close to me and joined my body with over the years as my wife - that Kumiko was nothing but the most superficial layer of the person Kumiko herself, just as the greater part of this world belongs in fact to the realm of the jellyfish? If so, what about those six years we had spent together? What had they been? What had they meant?

She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.