Pathway to Japanese Literature
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Dreams Illusions Bubbles ShadowsAuthor: Tonomura Shigeru
| Original Title | 夢幻泡影 |
|---|---|
| Author | 外村 繁 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | Under a sky of unnervingly perfect blue—a fragile beauty threatening to shatter—a man watches over his ailing wife. Her nights are tormented by neuralgic pain and fractured sleep; his days blur into exhaustion. Between midnight massages and sudden emergencies—a smoldering futon, a choking cry—their shared life frays like worn fabric. Her deteriorating mind mistakes day for night, reality for dream, while his guilt festers: Did he ignore her suffering? When she slips into a coma, diagnosed as cerebral softening, he clings to hope even as her stillness deepens. Death arrives quietly, leaving him adrift in a hollowed world. Memories flood him—their youthful passion, decades of struggle—yet their children adapt with unsettling ease. Grief becomes a visceral ache, sharpened by unanswerable questions: Was her death an accident? A release? In sleepless nights, he traces the void she left—a chasm where love and regret collide, and the clock’s relentless ticking echoes like a ghost. |
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