"Shall we drink Calpis sour with me? Maybe this is my confession for her."

The skeleton boy unbuttoned his shirt and began counting his tiny nipples, attached by threads to a gaping ribcage. The third one, he said, was a relic from the time they stuck a tube into his lung to prevent his young death.

I asked why he didn't try to live instead of trying to die. He declared that he didn't know how but he was certain my forehead could teach him.

We were all charmed. The corpse of Kotaro had us in an uproar, to be sure, our fleshy faces warm with his words and ewok eyes. He lit up the room, but his own spirit was dim. And while we basked in appreciation for a rare and precious humor, he sat alone in the center, begging me to join him. It was because he loved his mother, he said, that he was not already dead.