Midori breaks up with her boyfriend (b36770aa)

Midori breaks up with her boyfriend after recognizing that her bond with Toru Watanabe has become more important to her than the relationship she is in. Her decision is a clear turn in the triangle between the three of them, but it does not erase Watanabe’s continuing grief for Naoko or settle what he can offer Midori.

The estrangement and its cause

Midori explains that she had been angry because she and Watanabe had gone so long without seeing each other, and when they finally met he seemed absorbed in thoughts of another girl and barely looked at her. Beneath that immediate hurt, however, she had also chosen to keep away from him for a while so that she could understand her own feelings. The distance was not indifference: it was an attempt to get clear about a relationship that had become difficult to name.

She tells Watanabe that she enjoyed being with him more than being with her boyfriend. She still liked the boyfriend and described him as self-centred, narrow-minded, and rather fascistic, while also acknowledging his good points and the seriousness of her attachment to him as the first man she had felt deeply about. Her feelings for Watanabe were different: she called him special, said that being with him felt right, and told him that she believed in him and did not want to let him go.

The decision

Unable to resolve the conflict alone, Midori went to her boyfriend and asked what she should do. He made the choice stark: if she intended to keep seeing Watanabe, she should break up with him. Midori says she did so, just like that. As she reports the decision, she puts a Marlboro to her mouth, shields it with her hand while lighting it, and inhales; the ordinary, deliberate gesture accompanies a consequential act rather than softening it.

The breakup changes the status of Midori and Watanabe’s relationship. Midori’s account makes clear that her feelings are not a passing preference: she had already been weighing them for some time, and the ultimatum forced the question into action. The scene gives her agency in the choice while also showing its cost: she ends a serious relationship rather than remain in one while wanting someone else.

Aftermath and unresolved grief

The decision does not produce an immediate reunion or uncomplicated happiness. After Naoko’s death, Watanabe returns to Tokyo and shuts himself in his room for days, feeling defiled and keeping his memory fixed on the dead rather than the living. He has not yet turned toward Midori simply because she is available or because she has chosen him.

That delay places Midori’s decision against the novel’s larger treatment of loss. Watanabe had earlier come to understand death as part of life, but Naoko’s death teaches him that no truth, sincerity, strength, or kindness can cure the sorrow of losing someone. Midori’s willingness to choose him therefore opens a possibility, not a remedy: her directness establishes what she wants, while his mourning remains an obstacle to acting on it.