Skip to content
THEHUMAN DIARYThere is a word for what you felt.
Memory

Natsukashii

not-soo-KAH-shee

n.The warm gratitude of being unexpectedly returned to the past.

JapaneseEstablished linguistic term

The Smell of the Corridor

It was floor polish and something else — dust on a hot radiator, possibly — and it arrived in an office building in Yokohama at eleven in the morning on an entirely ordinary Wednesday.

Haruki stopped in the corridor.

He was forty-nine and was carrying a folder about a supplier and he stood outside a meeting room for perhaps four seconds with his hand not quite on the door.

Then he went in and did the meeting, competently, and thought about it for the rest of the week.

---

Continue reading

The rest of this story is for members. Reading is free — an account keeps the archive, your saved stories and your own writing in one place.

Today’s story is always free to read. Read today’s.