Translated by Hinh
I’ve eaten enough. My body says so: enough. My stomach feels heavy, as if my organs have been packed with stones, as if they might drop to the ground together with the food. But where is the sense of accomplishment? Or the brief sourness, sweetness, bitterness, saltiness that once crossed the tongue? They leave my senses quietly, without leaving behind even half a piece of pleasure. I feel so tired. I might joke that I exhausted myself by eating, but in essence this is just another kind of pain, another ordeal with no reward. Being full means fatigue. Satisfaction appears as fatigue. Happiness brings fatigue. Survival itself is full of fatigue. This is the main problem at the moment: trying to feel hope. But is hope really such an easy thing to find? Rationally speaking, yes — life is full of hope everywhere. Hope for tomorrow, the tests that are coming, something new, the sequel to a film coming out next month. Hope and anticipation often arrive together, like a pair of closely related sisters, but they refuse to visit my senses.
Youth may be a kind of capital. I am actually twenty-one, though those two digits feel distant and irrelevant. What is twenty-one supposed to feel like? It feels like the first time I have spoken my age so openly. It is an age neither too young nor too old: old enough to work, still young enough to be in school. Far from thirty, at the stage when youth is supposed to truly begin to unfold — a fresh branch just leaving childhood behind. I count the increasing dosage of my medicine. The doctor says to multiply by two: from one tablet to two, from two to four. And yet the sensation of youth is gone. Beautiful youth, or ugly youth.
Secret crushes, competition, friendship, classrooms, school uniforms, formulas; vitality, confusion, germination, joy, hope.
Everything arrives at a bad ending.