Whenever a new book comes out, Little Sister visits each nearby bookstore to see how her own books are selling. But after a few more years, once she has grown used to it, perhaps she will stop going to bookstores.
Human beings are creatures who easily grow accustomed to things. Whether sorrow or joy, we can gradually adapt to both.
[No, that is not right…]
Rather than adapting to those feelings, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the feelings themselves have faded.
Joy grows thin with time. Once you realize that, loneliness inevitably rises in your heart. But if you keep walking a few more steps, even that loneliness will fade. Maintaining the intensity of a feeling is difficult. If you want to preserve it, you must offer a considerable price. No matter how noble that feeling may be, this is always true.
[And because it cannot be renewed, memories begin to fade. There are limits to what the mind can remember. Even if you do not want to forget, memories still grow hazier and hazier. If you do not want that to happen, then of course you would not want to leave.]
It matches exactly what I felt after watching the Soul Land anime some time ago. I watched obsessively, neglecting food and sleep, for a short five-day stretch. The feelings afterward were incredibly sincere and intense. I did not want to let them go, but I also knew they would fade and be forgotten. So I wrote something like, “What I am afraid of is forgetting.” But thinking about it now, I can barely even remember what it felt like to be afraid of forgetting.
Feelings must be affirmed and sustained through contact.
It Is Not Time That Dilutes Feelings, but New Encounters
I had not considered this before. I thought that as time passed, I would inevitably forget little by little.
In fact, it is not time that dilutes emotions, but the new encounters hidden within time. After Battle Through the Heavens, I encountered many more things: Fighter of the Destiny, Yuan Zun, The Great Ruler, and so on. It was not time that made me forget, but new encounters—and not only with novels.
I find it remarkable that, after three years of high school, Little Sister still retains that longing for her “brother” and lives almost entirely with the aim of attending his university. She has not forgotten that longing with time. Instead, she is like a mayfly living on a single drop of blood from years ago. She remembers drawing diaries and all the outings they took together during summer vacations. She has no new encounters, living only on memories.
It is precisely these almost impossible conditions that let Little Sister appear at her brother’s door after three years of high school, almost unchanged.
Am I Part of the World?
In the eyes of the world, a sibling complex seems to be something unforgivable and intolerable; naturally, it is first of all unacceptable.
But after reading this work, after personally “experiencing” the feelings between siblings—especially as the novel depicts them—I can no longer call it inappropriate.
In the novel, the almost Platonic love between the brother and sister is truly enviable to me. And it is beyond reproach.
- 10 collapsed above
- 11Pandora's Box
- 12Reading Notes on Rashomon
- 13Sahara Stories: Reading Notes
- 14A Maverick Pig
- 15What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: Reading Notes
- 16Imouto Life· current
- 17A Snow Rabbit Twenty Centimeters from Spring and The Shawshank Redemption
- 18What Bad Intentions Could I Possibly Have?
- 19The Lychee of Chang'an
- 20Filled with Empty Things
