Gifts
"Can I open my eyes now, Mimi?" Jyou asked, frustrated. He was forced to walk through town for twenty minutes with his eyes closed, being guided only by his girlfriend, who pulled him by the right arm.
"Now you can!" Mimi announced, happily. He opened his eyes and saw an old bookstore.
"Why did you bring me here?" He asked, confused.
"When I lost my first internship, you were there for me and pampered me in a big way." She said. "I promised myself that, when I got a new source of income, it would be my turn to pamper you."
"You got a new job?" Jyou asked, excited. "Why haven't you told me that before? I would've prepared something to celebrate!"
"Hey, I'm the one in this relationship assigned to take care of celebrations. I thought you knew that." Mimi told him, giggling. "Besides, I wanted to surprise you before I start working next week. You can choose a book and I'll pay for it with my own money."
"But you haven't gotten any payment yet, have you?"
"I have some money saved, don't worry." Mimi assured.
Jyou entered the store, soon realizing there were only fiction books in there. Not that he would make her buy him a book about Medicine, anyway. He simply was not used to that kind of literature.
"Jyou! Jyou! Look at this!" Mimi suddenly came running in his direction, carrying a book. A young man with short and dark hair followed her. "The salesman said that this book is the greatest love story in all of Brazilian literature!"
Jyou took a glance at the cover.
"'The Devil to pay in the Backlands', by João Guimarães Rosa." He pronounced.
"The original title is 'Grande Sertão: Veredas.'" The salesman explained. "In my view, it's the greatest book ever written in Portuguese. Maybe the greatest book ever written!"
The enthusiasm of the salesman was so fiery that Jyou just had to ask Mimi to buy him that book.
In the following week, he read parts of it every break from classes and when he was alone in his apartment. At first, his plan was to read a chapter per day but he soon found out that the over 600 pages long novel was not divided in chapters. The narrative was not linear and worked as the narration of an old man talking to someone who could have been the author himself. It certainly felt like he was talking to Jyou.
Most of the story was hard to understand but Jyou got very attached to a character of immense importance in the narration. Someone whose presence still haunted the old man, and for whom he supposedly sold his soul to the Devil.
Diadorim.
By the end of her first week in her new job, Mimi arrived in her apartment and found Jyou there, sitting on the couch, waiting for her. He had the book firmly held with both his hands. His eyes were red, indicating that he had been crying.
"Did something happen?" She asked, worried.
Jyou left the book on the couch, stood up and walked to her. Then, he hugged her tightly.
"Never leave me." He pleaded. "Please. Never go to a place where I can't follow you. Please…"
He cried quietly on her shoulder. Mimi had never seen Jyou reading a book that had nothing to do with his studies before. She could not have expected that he would be so touched by a fictional story.
"Hey, don't be silly." She told him, forcing a laugh. "You're stuck with me for decades, until we both have gray hair and wrinkles."
"Please… Mimi…"
"It's not fair to ask me that, you know?" She murmured. "I don't want you to leave me either."
She hugged him back, determined to remember how his warmth felt against her body, suddenly afraid of the day that warmth could end. Why did he have to make her think about that?
They continued to hug each other, until Jyou whispered in her right ear something that she would remember forever.
"My Love."
It had been the first time he had ever referred to her in that way. The last time she would hear it would take long to come. It could have taken forever and yet it would have been too soon.
I didn't know how to write this without spoiling Grande Sertão: Veredas. Let's just say that if that book broke my heart and changed me forever, nothing fairer for it to do the same with Jyou. Easily the greatest book I've ever read.