Only last night, I phoned my girlfriend with the good news: “Azami, things are looking up!”

And they were. Cash was flowing in steadily and I calculated that I would be able to clear 700,000 yen before the end of the month. [1] Not a fortune, I admit, but more money than I managed to earn in one hell of a long time.

And, the best part about it? Now that Yūko, my ex-wife, was another man’s headache and living in Tōkyō with the chump—er, pardon me—her new husband, she no longer needed my support. With her gone, I have been able to whittle down my monthly bills to about a third of my income.

“Meaning,” I said to myself as I did the books last night, “I should be able to plunk a good three-hundred—no, make that three-hundred and fifty thousand yen ($3,500)—into savings this month and still have more than enough to play with.”

I knew my girlfriend would be relieved to hear it. After dating me on and off for over four years—enduring the sickest, the thinnest, the very, very worst of times—Azami was finally able to hear the not so distant peal of wedding bells.

Go ahead, call me an arse, but however much I loved Azami—and I did, I do, I do, I do, I do—to me those bells still sound like a death knell.

Marriage, though, is a foregone conclusion. I know Azami and I will tie the knot sooner or later—preferably later, though, much, much later. No, all I want now is a bit of self-indulgent lotus-eating, some quality Me-time to heal the burns I got in that frying pan of a first marriage to Yūko before I jump into the fire with Azami.

“Things are going so well,” I told my girlfriend over the phone, “I’ll proabably have enough saved up by the end of the year to take you to see my family in Beirut for Christmas. Knock on woo . . .”

[1] Dollar amounts throughout this novel have been calculated according the actual exchange rate at the time an event in the story is taking place. The rate in the year 2000, for example, was about 105 yen to the dollar. In 2006, however, one dollar was worth around 115 yen. 700,000 yen was worth about $6,100.

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.