(wild, violent and simple)

Fujio Eihiko (crouched by the wall): "Was such a thing as "love"... Yamazaki... was I imposing such a boring thing on you? I don't want kindness. Being kind, making me happy. Being a bastard and thinking of the woman. They all can come at the end. First and foremost, think about loving me, Yamazaki....

I always hid behind kindness and compassion.... Why did I leave this longing for you.... Why didn't I protect it... that feeling that I long for you."

It's not as glamorous as saying I love you. It's wild, violent and simple, but....

Yamazaki Kenji (somewhere on the road): "Fujio..."

The feeling that I love you is the most beautiful thing in my life.

"I haven't properly confessed to you...." I'm making it shine like a diamond by polishing it every day.

"Fujio... listen...." Anytime, anywhere, even if you're broken or if I'm a bastard.... "I, for you...." No matter how hard or anxious or jealous I become, the feeling of love is shining brighter....

    Koi ga Bokura wo Yurusu Hani [As Far As Love Permits Us], Motoni Modoru

I often think that love-stories are hardest for me to write. It's probably the thing that comes closest to breaking that old rule about being able to write what you know. It seems like the deeper it digs into one, the more essential it feels, the more vital it is that it is expressed in all its complexity and inanity and intensity and insanity, the more difficult it is to write about.

I don't want to write about sweetness-- that thing I see most often. It's not my dream to realize that vision of devotion and completion and lovingkindness. I don't want that. I wouldn't feel that, to that violent insane frustrating degree that drives me mad with the need to express it.

I've never even come close to expressing this, though. It sort of makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, because-- because then I find it expressed, I see it done, exactly as I hoped I could one day do it, and it's so right... so completely recognizable, so completely a piece of myself, that I'm torn between utter joy and mad offers of any amount of babies, and sort of wanting to hurl myself off a cliff, because I've never come close, because my writing is so, so so far from this, and it means so much to me, it is my naked bleeding heart right there in these characters.

    Because that's it, that's it exactly-- love that isn't a creature of kindness. Being able to hide behind either kindness or cruelty to the beloved, either meaningless compared to the act of expressing love in whatever way is most natural, the act of loving being first and foremost, whatever form it takes. If only because loving is both and neither kind nor cruel-- "koi" love is desire, is longing, is needing. It can be kind, but that kindness can be cruel, and can so easily lie. In a sense, kindness would be too premeditated the way cruelty to the beloved could be. And that insincerity-- that dishonesty, most of all-- that would be the most cruel possible thing. The taking away of love.

And that's why I read. That's what my favorite stories do to me. Make me want to scream with both happiness and despair. And in some ways it's even funny, because I think in a sense I do love the story of that sort of violent and simple, wild love more than I love when I'm in love. But perhaps it's the same thing. I'm still not sure.

...All in all, I would have to say, one thing that's true is that right now this is my favorite love-story ever.