Drops
of Rain
By Mir
Part II: Stream of Time (時流)
Perched above the shallow strip of blue water, I wilt beneath the summer heat despite my best efforts to ignore it. Market-bound, I couldn't help but pause for just a moment in a spot where I've pondered life many an afternoon before. Occasionally someone will stare—at me, the sakabatou, whatever—but most pass by without a second glance. As always, we see what we want to see and let our eyes glide across the rest.
Few people truly knew the horrors this new era was built upon. Perhaps it's best that way. For like the summer heat, memories too will fade, and all that will remain are nothing but names and words. Sometimes I laugh when I try to imagine how history will remember us. Not myself of course; the government will never admit to my role in Kyoto, and with Okubo stolen from us, with every passing year fewer and fewer will remember that I was actually flesh and blood. No, it is the politicians who whose faces stare out from textbooks' pages, whose memoirs will gather dust on our children's' bookshelves. Recognition is reserved for the architects of the new era, not the destroyers of the previous.
An insect of some sort circles around my head, and without thinking I raise a hand to brush it away. Behind me, the steady stream of wooden sandals flows back and forth across the arched bridge, and voices rise and fall with the light cadence of ocean tides. Kaoru doesn't hesitate to chide me—when my mind wanders into thought and leaves my body waiting expectantly behind. I should tell her that most of the time, it is the future that I'm pondering, not the past.
Almost reluctantly I turn away from the railing, away from the stillness of thought. The shadows, as ever, grow longer.
End Notes: Part two of this collection. I'm the middle of writing a paper about China's military industrial complex (in particular the telecommunications sector), and this is a nice respite from such an academic task.