One Hundred Fifty

41 - The Clueless Writer

"The Clueless Writer" a fiction close ending of 'The Barn' by Haruki Murakami.

Warning, boring and all.

And there wasn't still a sign of her.

I was old enough to have a lot of fortune but becoming a writer is a pace not everyone can put up to. For some reason, I ended up writing news in the suburbs for the expenses I have to live by.

It was an afternoon in October, the cafe's scent is a mixture of perfume and grinded coffee and I was bewildered while covering up a mysterious seemingly myth about a couple of women suddenly vanishing out of thin air for a ridiculously short amount of time in some part of Tokyo. For a lot of reasons, she entered my mind and I just realized how long it has been. Coincidentally, it was also an afternoon in October, the last time she enunciated to drop by and the last time I ever held and smoked Marijuana.

I shrugged off the thought as it might push more ideas I do not want to consume my time. I still have a lot of work to do.

"Do you mind?"

I raised my head to look at the man in front, and with a sudden realization, I was stunned and held back my pen.

He didn't wait for the polite reply I was going to give him and immediately made himself comfortable in his seat.

"I certainly don't. How are you?"

"You looked surprised." A trace of a smile played at the corners of his mouth carrying a familiarity. He put out a cigarette from his well-polished clothes and lit it with the fire of the never-changing silver metal lighter. "It's been a long while, isn't it?"

His face was still the same, expressionless but mocking, or I was the only one interpreting it as it is. His sudden appearance was honestly a moment of confusion, and I haven't been feeling it for a while, not even when my wife decided to file an annulment of our marriage.

"I mean, it's been so long. How do you still recognize me?"

"Well, I can see you're quite confused." He paused as he took a glance over my books and the old newspaper of the Tokyo Review, sipped the coffee he put in, and continued. "You are the first person I spilled milk from, and I haven't been around here because as you can still remember, my occupation requires exportation in a lot of different locations just in case you were wondering."

It wasn't even a thing to be confused about, a friend of a friend disappearing for 10 years aligned with the time interval the friend also disappeared. So I tried to not mind the situation that keeps on begging and tried to make a balanced communication with him who seems to have become older but not strangled and calculated unlike before.

But the conversation became frustrating, at the back of my head, there was a begging situation left, playing inside my thought that I can't seem to focus on my paper nor on the face of the man I know but still in a strange way, we talked.

"Have you... had any communication left with her?" I asked, finally putting out the words bothering me.

"Her? Ah, unfortunately. That was the last time I saw her. I could tell that it was me who was at fault for her disappearance. But I cannot find any logical reason for her to include not appearing to you as her only guy friend."

His existence right in front of my eyes just added to my exploration of why she left without any right way of communicating to us the conflict of her own. It felt like... I was abandoned.

"It was indeed wrong and concerning but it was her who left with nothing for us to prepare with. So, I give up. I realized she may not want to be found."