Lovers in front of the Tokyo Tower
“Why do men and women fall in love?”
Naked, 19 years old Toru who was standing next to the window on the second floor of a elaborately decorated Prince Hotel on Christmas night asked 41 years old Shifumi if she had ever thought about that question after they had made love for the second time that night. The scenery outside — Tokyo Tower standing unwaveringly like an experience mountaineer in the swirling snows of December — had plucked the string of his heart. He was so young. There were some many things he could not fathom. Sure he didn’t like to admit it, perhaps he didn’t even realize it himself. But in front of Shifumi, the edge in his voice had vanished. He was not afraid to let her know the question on his mind, even though it might seem like an idle speculation .
Shifumi, also without a piece of clothing on her, walked towards Toru and hugged him from behind. She was stunningly beautiful. She walked like ballerina and her movements agile and delicate. When she spoke, her voice sounded just like what her name implied, a poem. With a knowing smile of a wise man advising his young protégé who had finally asked the right question, she said. “Inspiration.”
“Inspiration?” Toru repeated. Baffled.
“Yes, we might be attracted by that person’s personality or look too.” She said. “But always by inspiration first.”
The word for “inspiration” in Japanese also means “aura”, an intangible but distinctive character of a person that separates him from everyone else. Shifumi’s unique choice of word had added another layer of depth to her answer. As usual, Toru was impressed. He was shaken to the core by her intelligence.
She asked him, “Do you ever think that we are terribly mismatched?”
“No, the more different we are, the more interesting we become.” He replied her in a sweet soft voice of a boy. “That’s why I’ve fallen in love with you.” He added. “The fact that we are so different.”
“You know, I was attracted to you the moment I saw you.” She told him.”On your mother’s business party. You were wearing a lean, striped suit in gray, drinking champagne…”
“Then you said it.” He recalled everything from that day vividly like it had just happened. “You said ‘Your son has a face of music.’ ” Again, he was relishing every word she said.
“Let’s replay the track again.” He said, and he walked over to the digital gramophone and pressed some buttons. Gustave Mahler’s 9th symphony filled every corner of the room. That was Shifumi’s favorite. Yet it was Toru who begged her to go to concerts with him to listen to the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra play Mahler’s last work over and over again. And he always teared at the end of the performance. One time Shifumi asked him why. He said that was the song he listened to every day while he sat alone in his room reading a good book, waiting for her to call at exactly 4pm.
“Because you said…”
“Because I said pleasant things should only be waited upon by pleasant thoughts.” She smiled at him. “You’re such a silly person.”
He smiled back. His innocence grimace at her. Then his melancholy caught up with him again. “I wish I was born earlier.” He said.
“Why?”
“So I can marry you. I would make you happy.”
“Toru, I’m all here. The school-girl me, the university-student me, the businesswoman me, the married me who would give anything to be with you, they are all here, right in front of your eyes.” She looked at him with an air of chastise that made Toru felt sorry immediately for saying something stupid like that, even though he didn’t fully understand why it’s stupid. “I could not have been more happy. It’s our fate. If we have met earlier, this will never be.”
Two people fell in love because of the possibilities of what the other inspires in oneself. Shifumi was the guiding light of Toru’s chase for the ideal that every young man has to journey upon while Toru was the answer to her prayer for boundless love and endless youth that every woman longed for. Such is “Inspiration”, as Shifumi had said. But they did not know it, not even Shifumi.
They just fell in love. It just happened.