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The SleeperAuthor: Hori Tatsuo
| Original Title | 眠れる人 |
|---|---|
| Author | 堀 辰雄 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A nameless narrator drifts through a shadowed town, drawn by a woman whose presence flickers between dream and wakefulness. Fatigue clings to them both as they wander streets swallowed by darkness, guided only by an unseen current of air. A white dog appears—a fleeting companion—before the woman vanishes into a shabby house, leaving the narrator adrift in a limbo of exhaustion and half-sleep. Reality blurs: time fractures, strangers merge into faceless crowds, and even daylight offers no clarity. \nElsewhere, Mari emerges—a woman of contradictions, magnetic yet distant, surrounded by whispers of her inability to love. Her abrupt departure on a solitary trip leaves unresolved tension lingering like smoke. Meanwhile, death encroaches: a friend’s suicide haunts the edges of the narrator’s consciousness, intertwining with Mari’s enigmatic allure. \nReturning to the night-shrouded town, the narrator follows the dog and woman once more, each step deeper into uncertainty. Streets twist into voids; shadows pulse with unspoken dread. Is this grief? A dream? Or a reckoning with existence itself? The wind stirs scraps of forgotten lives as the narrator stands paralyzed at a threshold—between pursuit and surrender, clarity and oblivion—where every breath tastes of emptiness, and night reveals its true, unfathomable face. |
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