A Last-Minute Heaven

While driving in the city, I was seized with an overwhelming urge to use the toilet.

Whipping my head this way and that to see whether there was a convenience store in the scenery streaming past on my left, I kept driving—and then, there it was.

Without a moment’s hesitation over no-parking rules, I made a beeline for an open spot on the road and dashed into the store. With half my heart lit in relief, I flung the tongue-twister “May I use your toilet?” at the clerk, and when I looked below the doorknob of the toilet—the red “occupied” mark.

How very hard it is to tighten up again a heart that has once loosened—surely you all understand?

To take my mind off it, at a magazine rack I had no wish to look at, I spread open a magazine that wouldn’t register in my head and waited for my moment, but whoever was inside just wouldn’t come out.

Out of patience, I left the store and headed straight for the toilet at the Starbucks next door.

Wiping away a cold sweat, my mood was excellent—phew, I somehow made it in time.

Returning to my parking spot in a leisurely, whistling mood, and seeing that my car hadn’t been ticketed, my heart—though it was still cold winter—was dyed all the more in the hues of spring.