-Afternoon on the Islands of Langerhans-　Haruki Murakami

　　　A story from the past. In the spring when I entered junior high school, I forgot my biology textbook and was sent home to get it. My house was about a 15-minute walk from school, so if I ran back and forth, I could return to class with little trouble. I was a very obedient junior high school student (I feel like all junior high school students back then were obedient), so I ran back to my house as instructed, grabbed my textbook, drank a lot of water, and ran back to school. There is a river flowing between my house and school. It's a clean, shallow river with an old stone bridge that has a quaint charm. It's a narrow bridge that even motorcycles can't pass through. The surrounding area is a park, with rows of bamboo grass growing so densely that they block the view. Standing in the middle of the bridge and leaning against the railing, if you look to the south, you can see the sea reflecting the glittering light. It was a very pleasant spring afternoon, as if my heart was melting in the warm sunshine. Looking around, everything seemed to be floating about two or three centimeters above the ground. I took a break, wiped off my sweat, and lay down on the grassy riverbank, gazing up at the sky. I had run quite a bit, so taking a five or six-minute rest wouldn't hurt. The white clouds above seemed to be staying in one place, but when I held up my finger and measured, I realized they were slowly moving east. I could smell the scent of spring coming from my biology textbook that I had placed under my head. The optic nerve of the frog and the mysterious Langerhans Island also smelled like spring. When I closed my eyes, I could hear the sound of the river flowing gently, like brushing against soft sandy ground. I couldn't possibly run back to the biology classroom in this center of the spring vortex on this April afternoon. In the warm darkness of spring 1961, I reached out and gently touched the shore of Langerhans Island.