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Collected translations of Maaya Sakamoto news, essays, interviews, and articles

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Maaya Sakamoto's Full Moon Recital Hall
Maaya Sakamoto's Full Moon Recital Hall

Bedtime Story, Part 10

Part 10 of 12 in a series:
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English

0:00 It happened one day when I had a job offer from a company in hand and my university graduation in sight. 0:10 I was feeling listless, and when I had a doctor examine me for what I thought was a cold, an abnormality in my blood components came up. 0:20 A bone marrow test came back filled with neoplastic leukemia cells. 0:29 The doctor’s diagnosis was “acute leukemia”. 0:36 Something’s amiss in the factories that make blood in my bones, and they put out nothing but defective products. 0:47 My listlessness was also caused by the loss of functional red blood cells, which made them unable to properly carry oxygen throughout my body. 0:58 When I looked it up on the internet, I vomited when I found a page that said “without any treatment, death is likely in days to weeks.”

1:13 Leukemia is a cancer of the blood. 1:18 I tried controlling it with doses of anticancer drugs, but with no signs of improvement. 1:25 When my hair fell out in clumps, I thought I had reached the end. 1:32 Repeated stays in the hospital strengthened my conviction: 1:37 I probably wouldn’t live through the next six months. 1:42 The expressions on the doctors’, nurses’, and my family’s faces were dark. 1:47 A heavy cloud of sorrow filled them.

1:52 Just one person—just Shiina, for some reason, never showed an attitude of giving up….

2:02 She stopped attending classes and spent nearly all her time with me in my hospital room.

2:11 But my condition only worsened. 2:15 Perhaps because of the lack of oxygen in my blood, merely lying in bed saps me of energy to even think. 2:22 I’m feverish and feel nauseous as well, and since the defective blood ruined my organs I have hematuria. 2:32 I have panic attacks and see things that aren’t even there. 2:37 When that happens, Shiina persuades me that what I’m seeing doesn’t exist.

2:47 Lying on my bed in the hospital, I feel afraid when I fall asleep.

2:55 When I close my eyelids and enter the darkness, it feels as though I might go from there to beyond the end of the Universe, to a place infinitely far away. 3:08 But there’s no such thing as Someone Else there. 3:15 In a world without advances in science, or if Someone Else was there who would comfort us, I may have believed in it. 3:28 But this is a different time. 3:34 Going there to me means only ceasing to exist. 3:41 No one exists there, in that pitch black, lonely place. 3:48 No, there is no loneliness. 3:53 There is not even a world.

3:57 That’s why sleep frightens me….

4:04 When my fears were keeping me awake, Shiina started to tell me bedtime stories.

4:12 Her voice is gentle, and warm.

4:18 While listening to that voice as though clinging to it, I close my eyes.

4:24 My breathing becomes calm.

Part 10 of 12 in a series: