I've thought a lot about you in that time. The more I've thought, the more I've come to feel that I was unfair to you. I probably should have been a better, fairer person when it came to the way I treated you.

This may not be the most normal way to look at things, though. "Girls" at my age never use the word "fair." Ordinary girls as young as I am are basically indifferent to whether things are fair or not. The normal question for them is not whether somethiing is fair but whether or not it's beautiful or will make them happy.

"Fair" is a man's word, finally, but I can't help feeling that it is also exactly the right word for me now.

And because questions of beauty and happiness have become such difficult and convoluted propositions for me now, I suspect, I find myself clinging instead to other standards - like, whether or not something is fair or honest or universally true.

In any case, though, I belive that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply. In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt myself just as deeply.

If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I am a flawed humann being - a far more flawed human being than you relize. Because if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces.

.

.

.

I  sometimes wonder: IF you and I had met under absolutely ordinary circumstances, and IF we had liked each other, what would have happened? Of course, this "IF" is way too big.

I hope to convey some small part of my feelings to you this way.

excerpted from Naoko's letter to Watanabe

- From "Norwegian Wood in Chapter 5" by "Haruki Murakami"