Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami Read Free Book Online Page B

without a password. At any rate, Sumire was ecstatic, her heart aflutter, just to be able to meet Miu and talk with her. That’s the desk where Miu sits, she thought. That’s the ballpoint pen she uses, the mug she drinks coffee from. No matter how trivial the task, Sumire did her best.
    E very so often, Miu would invite Sumire out for dinner. Since her business involved wine, Miu found it necessary to regularly make the rounds of the better-known restaurants to stay in touch with the latest news. Miu always ordered a light fish dish, or, on occasion, chicken, though she’d leave half, and would pass on dessert. She’d pore over every detail of the wine list before deciding on a bottle, but would never drink more than a glass. “Go ahead and have as much as you’d like,” Miu told Sumire, but there was no way Sumire could finish that much. So they always ended up with half a very expensive bottle of wine left, but Miu didn’t mind.
    “It’s such a waste to order a whole bottle of wine for just the two of us,” Sumire said to Miu one time. “We can barely finish half.”
    “Don’t worry.” Miu laughed. “The more we leave behind, the more people in the restaurant will be able to try it. The sommelier, the headwaiter, all the way down to the waiter who fills the water glasses. That way a lot of people will start to acquire a taste for good wine. Which is why leaving expensive wine is never a waste.”
    Miu examined the color of the 1986 Médoc and then, as if savoring some nicely turned out prose, carefully tasted it.
    “It is the same with anything—you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can’t learn it from a book.”
    Taking a cue from Miu, Sumire picked up her glass and very attentively took a sip, held it in her mouth, and then swallowed it down. For a moment an agreeable aftertaste remained, but after a few seconds this disappeared, like morning dew on a summer leaf. All of which prepared the palate for the next bite of food. Every time she ate and talked with Miu, Sumire learned something new. Sumire was amazed by the overwhelming number of things she had yet to learn.
    “You know, I’ve never thought I wanted to be somebody else,” Sumire blurted out once, perhaps urged on by the more-than-usual amount of wine she’d imbibed. “But sometimes I think how nice it would be to be like you.”
    Miu held her breath for a moment. Then she picked up her wineglass and took a sip. For a second, the light dyed her eyes the crimson of the wine. Her face was drained of its usual subtle expression.
    “I’m sure you don’t know this,” she said calmly, returning her glass to the table. “The person here now isn’t the real me. Fourteen years ago I became half the person I used to be. I wish I could have met you when I was whole—that would have been wonderful. But it’s pointless to think about that now.”
    Sumire was so taken aback she was speechless. And missed the chance to ask the obvious questions. What had happened to Miu fourteen years ago? Why had she become half her real self? And what did she mean by
half,
anyway? In the end, this enigmatic announcement only made Sumire more and more smitten with Miu. What an awesome person, Sumire thought.
    T hrough fragments of conversation Sumire was able to piece together a few facts about Miu. Miu’s husband was Japanese, five years older than she was, and fluent in Korean, the result of two years as an exchange student in the economics department of Seoul University. He was a warm person, good at what he did, in point of fact the guiding force behind Miu’s company. Even though it was originally a family-run business, no one ever said a bad word about him.
    Ever since she was a little girl, Miu had had a talent for playing the piano. Still in her teens, she won the top prize at several competitions for young people. She went on to a music conservatory, studied under a famous pianist, and through her teacher’s