murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

"But that's impossible," he said matter-of-factly. "I can't leave
anything out. I've been doing the same thing every day for ten years,
and once I start I do the whole routine unconsciously. If I left
something out, I wouldn't be able to do any of it."
There was nothing more for me to say. What could I have said? The
quickest way to put a stop to this was to wait for him to leave the
room and throw his goddamn radio out the goddamn window, but I
knew if I did that all hell would break loose. Storm Trooper treasured
everything he owned. He smiled when he saw me sitting on the bed at
a loss for words, and tried to comfort me.
"Hey, Watanabe, why don't you just get up and exercise with me?"
And he went off to breakfast.
Naoko chuckled when I told her the story of Storm Trooper and his
radio callisthenics. I hadn't been trying to amuse her, but I ended up
laughing myself. Though her smile vanished in an instant, I enjoyed
seeing it for the first time in a long while.
We had left the train at Yotsuya and were walking along the
embankment by the station. It was a Sunday afternoon in the middle
of May. The brief on-and-off showers of the morning had cleared up
before noon, and a south wind had swept away the low-hanging
clouds. The brilliant green leaves of the cherry trees stirred in the air,
splashing sunlight in all directions. This was an early summer day.
The people we passed carried their jumpers or jackets over their
shoulders or in their arms. Everyone looked happy in the warm
Sunday afternoon sun. The young men playing tennis in the courts
beyond the embankment had stripped down to their shorts. Only
where two nuns in winter habits sat talking on a bench did the summer
light seem not to reach, though both wore looks of satisfaction as they
enjoyed chatting in the sun.
Fifteen minutes of walking and I was sweaty enough to take off my
thick cotton shirt and go with a T-shirt. Naoko had rolled the sleeves
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