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Wind BanquetAuthor: Umezaki Haruo
| Original Title | 風宴 |
|---|---|
| Author | 梅崎 春生 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A young man drifts through days of listless inertia, haunted by surreal dreams of unearthed corpses and suffocating crowds. His existence revolves around aimless walks through Tokyo’s labyrinthine alleys and visits to Doriryūkan, a decaying boarding house where his enigmatic acquaintance, Mr. Amagami, resides. Shadows of mortality linger as a gravely ill girl’s fading breaths echo through paper-thin walls, her death unleashing a macabre wake steeped in drunken chaos and hollow rituals. Amidst clattering sake cups and dissonant songs, the protagonist grapples with gnawing emptiness—a disconnect from his studies, fleeting human connections, and his own unraveling psyche. The wind, a constant spectral presence, sweeps through graveyards and rattles shoji screens, mirroring his turbulent inner world. As boundaries blur between reality and hallucination, he confronts unsettling truths about identity, decay, and the fragile masks worn by those clinging to life’s edges. A haunting meditation on youth adrift, where every gust carries whispers of existential dread and fleeting glimpses of redemption just beyond reach. |
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