Excerpt from The Hunting Gun by Yasushi Inoue.

even after I

die, my life will still be waiting here hidden in this letter until it is time for you to read it, and the second you cut the seal and lower your eyes to read its first words, my life will flare up again and burn with all its former vigour, and then for fifteen or twenty minutes, until you read the very last word, my life will flow as it did when I was alive into every limb, every little corner of your body, and fill your heart with various emotions. A posthumous letter is an astonishing thing, don’t you think? I brim right now with the desire to give you something true in the fifteen or twenty minutes of life this letter holds—yes, at least that much. It scares me to be saying this to you at this late date, but it seems to me that while I was alive I never once let you see me as I truly am. Now, writing this, I am the real me. Or rather, this me, the one writing, is the only one that is real. Yes, this is real…