Kizuki Character Analysis

“Do you think we could see each other again? I know I don’t have any right to be asking you this.”

“‘Any right?’ What do you mean by that?”

[…]

“I don’t know… I can’t really explain it,” she said. […] “I didn’t mean to say right exactly. I was looking for another way to put it.” […]

“Never mind,” I said. “I think I know what you’re getting at. I’m not sure how to put it, either.”

“I can never say what I want to say.”

The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. When it took the seventeen-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me as well.

I can’t seem to recall what we talked about then. Nothing special, I would guess. We continued to avoid any mention of the past and rarely mentioned Kizuki. We could face each other over coffee cups in total silence.

I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever.

Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The assholes are earning their college credits and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.

“The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.”

I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had some­how abandoned him. […] The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. […] I’m going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of cry­ing is going to bring that back. I can’t explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.

“Do you think we could see each other again? I know I don’t have any right to be asking you this.”

“‘Any right?’ What do you mean by that?”

[…]

“I don’t know… I can’t really explain it,” she said. […] “I didn’t mean to say right exactly. I was looking for another way to put it.” […]

“Never mind,” I said. “I think I know what you’re getting at. I’m not sure how to put it, either.”

“I can never say what I want to say.”

The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. When it took the seventeen-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me as well.

I can’t seem to recall what we talked about then. Nothing special, I would guess. We continued to avoid any mention of the past and rarely mentioned Kizuki. We could face each other over coffee cups in total silence.

I felt as if the only thing that made sense, whether for Naoko or for me, was to keep going back and forth between eighteen and nineteen. After eighteen would come nineteen, and after nineteen, eighteen. Of course. But she turned twenty. And in the fall, I would do the same. Only the dead stay seventeen forever.

Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The assholes are earning their college credits and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.

“The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living.”

I felt guilty that I hadn’t thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had some­how abandoned him. […] The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. […] I’m going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of cry­ing is going to bring that back. I can’t explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say.