Reality Within a Dream

I went off to Okinawa.

Temperature 23 degrees, shorts and a T-shirt, beach sandals—exceedingly comfortable. It makes me happy that within the same Japan there is a green island where hibiscus bloom in profusion all year round. My mood, too, somehow grew open, and before I knew it I found myself humming. Drifting further and further from my life in Tokyo, I even bought a rather flashy shirt and, in high spirits, wandered about a small town.

Ambling down a certain narrow alley, I found a curious flower—fringed hibiscus (fūrin-bussōge)—blooming in the garden of a house with no fence. I had seen it in field guides, but this was my first time with the real thing, and the sight of this flower swaying in the wind was so beautiful it hardly seemed of this world; it enthralled me into a dream world for a while.

At that moment of perfect happiness, from within the house came what sounded like a boy’s crying voice.

“I’m done with studying for exams! I’m not going to middle school!” With these words, my heart was carried back from dream to reality.

The fringed hibiscus swaying in the wind came to seem like young bewilderment—blazing red and trembling at the thought that even in a paradise like this one must fight the exam war—and it was funny, too, to feel that my flashy shirt was out of place here.

People truly are creatures swayed by their environment, I thought, and hurried off to find the next dream world.