Excerpt from Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami.

All over

again I understood how important, how irreplaceable, Sumire was to me. In her own special way she’d kept me tethered to the world. As I talked to her and read her stories, my mind quietly expanded, and I could see things I’d never seen before. Without even trying, we grew close. Sumire and I exposed our hearts to each other, an experience I’d never have with anyone else, anywhere. We cherished what we had together, though we never put into words how very precious it was.