現Slice of life · gen · what is present
The diary
A notebook written at street level: the tiny apartment, the fifty thousand yen a month, the train rides, the grey working days paid for in hours of life.
東京Novel · Christian Delgado · Tokyo
My New Life in Tokyo
«Energeia and I.»
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並hei · in parallel
A note on reading
Two stories, one single reading.
This is not a book split into parts. It is one single reading in which two stories advance side by side, chapter by chapter: an intimate notebook written at street level in Tokyo and, on the reverse of that same city, a thread of magical realism that only becomes visible once the eye has been trained.
現
幻Magical realism · gen · what appears
The other side
What happens in the same city when nobody is looking: a thousand-year forest opening under the rain, an immense owl in the mist, a library hidden among cedars.
雨
「
The finite is the beautiful. To fight the best fight within a finite life.
From the preface
Where the reading begins
The first chapters.
- 現5 min
Chapter 1
There I was, at that moment of existence and of life, alone in one of those so-called micro-apartments of Tokyo. The day had a greyish atmosphere…
- 現Soon
Chapter 2
Yumiko, that was her name. I met her by chance in a bar. I had to call her Hayashi, by her surname, and add the polite suffix «san»…
- 幻Soon
Chapter 3
I walk, I walk; I have been walking for days. The first hundreds of hours were glorious. I did not walk to arrive; I walked for the act of walking itself.
- 現Soon
Chapter 4
Before dawn, an orange cat doll falls onto the bar. Yumiko and I discover that we have both spent years hiding the broken part no one wants to see, hoping to find someone unafraid to truly look at us.
- 幻Soon
Chapter 5
“You have slept for two whole years,” the owl tells me. I turn and face my fifteen-year-old self: a frightened child laden with medals, his fingers hurt by relentless self-demand. It was time to lift the weight and embrace him.