The bus felt suffocating as I ran my finger along my sweaty arm, numb from leaning against the window frame. I was returning home from a friend's house, taking a familiar route that I knew like the back of my hand: every turn and roundabout, the sights I would pass, what type of people would get on, and where they would most likely get off. Yet there was one thing that was not of the mundane that day. The funeral. Well, not exactly. There was just a casket at the back of a black hearse parked neatly on the sidewalk, while an elderly man in a well-pressed suit placed a flower bouquet at the entrance of an ordinary building. There was no crowd, no sound of mourning; grief was silent in and of itself. But a pub was beside the building where the man parked the hearse, and I’m sure those who sat outside could have noticed the awkward casket. Death lay out before them, yet their laughter swallowed its voice.
It was the contrast that struck me. How simultaneously normal and dreadful it is that we live to see everything unfold in a single drop of time: people dying or living their best lives, people out celebrating sunny days in London or deep in an eternal rest - things that could have happened to me, to my seldom-seen neighbour, to the receptionist I pass by daily at the library entrance. Someone's deepest agony might be just a step away from another's happiest moment, and the world wouldn't find it unusual for an outsider like me to witness these two sides of the same reality. The complexity of life, the interwoven, meaningless, meaningful, loud, silent interactions—all are so powerful yet so insignificant. They can be overlooked completely or serve as a powerful reminder of one's fragile existence. Death confronts us every day, for those at the pub who sat close to the casket, for me, who was on a late bus home, for anyone who is out searching for the meaning of every breath already taken and eventually gets lost in the grand scheme of things.
How do you continue to live with death holding your hand and not fear the future? Which is more terrifying: certainty or uncertainty? Knowing exactly how much time you have left or not knowing when your last day will be?
I turned to Matsuri and Kazuto, looking for an answer to my raging thoughts.
One decade, two lifetimes.
I decided to watch Yomei 10 Nen (余命10年) because initially, I was curious about the lyrics that RADWIMPS wrote for this movie.
"Can't I take ten minutes from everyone's time and give them all to you?
Or if I split my life into two, and for you to take half of it?"
Matsuri was diagnosed with an incurable disease at that time and only had a decade more to see the world. She was young, fresh out of college, a flourishing writer who touched people with her words, or at least, her closest friends. Meanwhile, Kazuto, an old classmate, was a jobless man who ran away from his family to Tokyo, without money and love. A woman who wanted to live met a man who tried to leave. All of a sudden, certainty collided with uncertainty; someone who knew her remaining time gave something to someone who may have plenty but did not know how to spend it. And when you are caught between the two different spectra of life and death, what you long to feel isn't your own emotions. Instead, you yearn for a foreign experience that can soothe your pain, someone who may show you a different light to life so you can craft a meaning to yours. Someone who makes you feel like time is finally tangible, glistening in the palm of your hand.
Ten years may seem little, but when you move forward with no direction, the road suddenly gets hazy and your footsteps begin to echo loneliness. Clinging to time as a lifeline was cruel, yet it was all that Matsuri had to ground herself to reality and to a caring family who never gave up hope, as long as she was still breathing. At one point, it seemed as if Matsuri was merely existing, akin to a breath now and then, like a warm spring breeze that unfurls the sakura petals, or a gentle stream flowing in the open air. She was attentive to anything and everything except seeking a spark of happiness within herself. To her, life was nothing more than days and nights, awake and asleep, pills and check-ups, a mundane cycle that somehow stifled the overflowing tears and choked the flowers that were once full of life.
Time makes people conscious of who they let into their pages. Is it an act of selfishness or thoughtfulness to remain distant from others, lest the space you fill transforms into a grievous wound when you depart? Love can sometimes reel into such conflict by becoming an excuse to kiss with intense passion or to only offer a loose embrace that leaves behind a yearning warmth at one's shoulder. How could Matsuri ever love fully if death continues to swell up her already heavy heart? How many more times did she have to turn down Kazuto's unwavering sincerity even though hurting him was never her nature? Yet, when Matsuri brought a new palette of colors into Kazuto's life when she tended to the pain in his soul through her existence, she wasn't merely helping him; through loving him and letting him in, Matsuri finally discovered what she wanted to do for the rest of her time on Earth.
And that was to be ordinary once more: to have a job that she grew to love, a book that she could write, a friend group to hang out with after work, a beach trip, a cozy Christmas party at home, a breakfast meal with her family, and someone to hold her hands when it gets cold in the winter months. For the first time, Matsuri came crying to her mom, wishing she could have had all of it - a truly normal life where she could marry, become a mother, watch her kids grow up, and grow old herself. Too frequently we are preoccupied with the luxuries and the desire to want more that we forget about the essence of the everyday moments—like waking to the alarm's sound and the blazing sunlight streaming through the window each morning. Far too often, we overlook our fortune to be here, while others can only yearn for an extra five seconds to hug their loved ones, to see them just 20 centimeters closer, to caress their cheeks once more.
Matsuri lived her last ten years finding solace in the in-betweens that made the pain bearable but death more daunting. Because, for the first time, she didn't want to die. Suddenly, there was so much to cling to life.
"She was the flower to my spring."
In Before Sunrise, Celine says to Jesse: "Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?". Many may view it as a cliché that movies about incurable diseases and tragic fates often result in some sort of love interest. While this sentiment resonates, the act of falling in love does not solely reside in a significant other, a soft-haired teenage boy, or a clumsy yet sincere man. It is the act of falling in love with life, with being alive, because the only thing that ever makes existing purposeful is the love that can be given and the depth it can go to change the hearts that it touches. We are nothing more than fireworks—a spark in the night that will soon fade into oblivion—and there's nothing we can do to avoid it. So while our eyes are still able to light up a small corner of the cosmos, let us love passionately. We all bid our farewell some time along the line and reach the same destination in the end, but certain feelings only come once in a lifetime, one sensation that may take a thousand lives to rediscover.
Kazuto could no longer hold Matsuri close and feel her heartbeat against his chest. He might spend the rest of his life keeping her memories vigorous while attempting to live a new life apart from the one they shared. There would be pain, sleepless nights, even days when even glancing at the pub he named after her was unbearable. But if there was no during Matsuri, there would be no after Kazuto. If she had not stepped into his humdrum life cautiously, unintentionally kind and sympathetic, Kazuto would have drowned in the ocean of his thoughts wondering if he's ever loveable or whether his younger self who wrote that time capsule back in school would be proud of him. Had Matsuri not come and shown him how breathtaking it is to stroll underneath the cherry blossom trees, he would have never found his reason to stay. Matsuri was his reason. She was his kaleidoscope to see the world in a different light; one that glows with companionship, laughter, intimacy, simplicity, and comfort; one that he dreads losing because grief is a testimony of love. Matsuri had spent her remaining time oblivious to how she had forged another life into Kazuto, how she made him feel seen with her existence, and how she saved two lives as the seasons passed by.
It takes time to realise that death and life are inherently intertwined, one adds meaning to the other; we feel the presence of loss every day, and in death, something new and beautiful shall grow out of it. The question was never about uncertainty or certainty because there will always be uncertainty even in certainty. The question is even when tomorrow is never promised, will you be able to fall in love like you have all the time in this world or not? You may bear wounds that sear through flesh, yet it's the realm of emotions that sets life apart. You don't simply endure hurt; you embrace it, for alongside joy that ignites your soul, pain also makes its melody known. For those who saw that casket by the pub, they will soon forget about it. For Kazuto, Matsuri might cease to become only a tingling sensation he faintly remembers in his eighties. Yet, this is beauty in the gift of life, and an honor in witnessing how loss arrives, how it claims, and how it leaves behind wounds that may soften but never truly heal. Grief redefines and nurtures you as much as happiness does. Sorrow can make you a better person as much as ecstasy can. For in the end, what truly matters is not how much time we have, or how certain we are about our future, but how deeply and authentically we have given into love.
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