There is nothing more heartbreaking than a love lost without having had the chance to be born.

I’ll tell you a love story like those you will surely have seen in some films, a heartbreaking and at the same time tender and moving love story; a love story that has forever left its mark on my life, despite it being just a spark that never had the opportunity to catch fire. I’ll tell you the story that lived between me and Hikari.

Hikari was a girl who lived in Tokyo and who had a vast knowledge that she acquired thanks to her immense curiosity and her great ability to dominate any technological means. She was totally fascinated by jellyfish because, she said, they are fascinating animals in their simplicity and danger, which she hoped others would think of her.

Hikari had never seen a jellyfish live. Hikari was afraid, perhaps even terrified of being in a place devoid of technology, other than the city. Hikari had never been in Nature; she did not know silence.

I met her in a Japanese company where I worked for six months; she was my interlocutor with the managers of that company. Hikari loved jellyfish even though she had never seen one live; she spent long periods of time admiring their evolutions in videos and 3D animations projected on giant screens. Hikari had an extreme sweetness in her gaze, the result of a unique mix of: fear, courage, request for help, awareness of one’s own value. She had never experienced any reality outside of Tokyo; she lived in symbiosis with her technological gadgets. When I asked her to describe the smell of the forest or the sea, she didn’t know what I wanted her to tell me; the only thing she knew how to do, was access the technology, find there the words that did not blossom from her being and gave me perfect but distant answers …

For all the six months I stayed with her, I spoke to her about the silences of Nature, the sea, the woods, the sensations one experienced in contact with Nature; she listened to me putting her gaze into the deepest part of my being; then she contrasted everything with her technological sources and at that point, it seemed that she was no longer interested in my words and my stories. I invited her hundreds of times to visit with me any place outside Tokyo where she could feel Nature. She never accepted my invitation.

On the Friday of the last weekend before going back home, she arrived at the office with her long hair cut very short and asked me to take her to where I knew the jellyfish lived.

I took her to Jodogahama, to the sea. During the trip she was terrified, she didn’t speak, she was self-absorbed in her technology as if it were her safe haven. She smiled at me. I melted in the rapture of her gaze. When she saw the sea, she literally had a metamorphosis, she stripped off any technological gadget and most of her clothes. She remained silent for hours listening to the sea, smelling it, feeling it on her own skin. She spoke to me softly, she constantly whispered to me that it was the best thing he had done in her life. I caressed her gently and tried to explain to her the different smells, noises, changes in light that the sea and Nature offered us in that wonderful setting. She gave me a kiss in which I felt all of her being enter me; I saw her fears, her desires, her poignant need to understand. A kiss that I have never felt with any other woman in my life. We remained hugged for an eternity.

When the evening arrived, I tried to distract her from that state of deep concentration, but she asked me to stay longer; I told her that I would then go and get a jacket from the car to protect us from the cold. She nodded and we separated with difficulty because she didn’t want me to let go of her hand.

When I returned, Hikari was no longer there; she was gone. The only sign that Hikari had been there was the still warm space in the crushed grass where we had been together. I searched desperately for her in every possible place but there was no trace of her. An immense pain invaded my body and the deepest loneliness settled in my being for a long time. I don’t know how long I blamed myself for leaving her. If I had stayed with her, we would have definitely caught pneumonia, but who knows, love would have had a better chance to develop in all its noise and vital force.

Hikari disappeared from my sight and from my life; I guess she left the metaverse forever and joined her jellyfish… There is nothing more heartbreaking than a love lost without having had the chance to be born.

Listen to this poetic and musical masterpiece by Fabrizio De André to perceive the poignant pain of this story of lost love before even having had the chance to be born.