On the 100% Perfect Person

Fictional. Based on Haruki Murakami’s ‘On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning’

One beautiful balmy winter morning in June, in a park by the river, in the leafiest suburb south of the city, I found the 100% perfect boy.

I don’t know what it was that attracted me to him. He was, in fact, not very good looking. Dressed in casual jeans and a T-shirt (the slogan: ‘Video games ruined my life. Good thing I have two extra lives.’), he was walking his dog, a small Jack Russell Terrier. His cropped blond hair was peeking from underneath a cap, his glasses perched high atop the bridge of his nose. His face was serious; he must be deep in thought. He wasn’t young too – early thirties perhaps?

I had always thought that my perfect partner would be this: physically - tousled hair, tall and reasonably fit; character wise – funny, smart, emotionally sensitive, respectful.

But between the 100 metres or so that separated me from him, it didn’t matter anymore. My heart was pounding, my mouth dry, taking it all in, greedily absorbing all the pleasures from that moment my eyes first caught sight of him. I knew then: he is the 100% perfect boy for me. And he was looking at me too.

“After all, attraction is emotional, not logical.” I told a friend the day after.

It reminded me of a story, of a boy and a girl. He was 18, she 16. He was not exceptionally good-looking and she was not particularly pretty. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl. But like everyone else, they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere out there, lived the 100% perfect partner for them. Yes, it would be a miracle. And one day, it came true.

They met in a park by the river, in the leafiest suburb south of the city, one balmy winter’s morning in June.

“This is amazing.” He said. “I’ve been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you’re the 100% perfect girl for me.”

“And you,” she said to him. “are the 100% perfect boy for me. You are as I have dreamt you to be.”

They sat on a park bench, the city skyline framed by the blue river. They introduced themselves, held hands and talked for hours on end. In those snatched moments, they filled the other in about all that has happened in their lives, as if catching up on lost time. They were hungry – for stories, for opinions, for laughter and life. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect partner. What a wonderful thing to have happened.

As they sat and talked, however, a tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts. Was it really all right for one’s dreams to come true so easily?

And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, “Let’s test ourselves once more. If we are really 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, when we know for certain that we are a 100% perfect, we’ll marry then and there. What do you think?”

“Yes.” She said. "Let us do that."

And so they parted. She to east, and he to west.

They should not have considered the test; it was utterly unnecessary. They should never have done it for they were truly 100% perfect for each other. It was a sheer miracle that they had met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent ways of fate was waiting to toss them unmercifully.

Time passed with shocking swiftness. They both grew to become respectable citizens, holding respectable jobs. There may have been moments when they nearly could have met: she was entering the train whilst he was exiting from a different carriage. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love. Soon, the boy was 32 and the girl 30.

One beautiful June morning, whilst in search for a cup of coffee, the boy was walking from east to west and the girl from west to east, in a narrow street in a busy city. They passed each other, right at the centre. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew:

She is the 100% perfect girl for me.

He is the 100% perfect boy for me.

But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of those years earlier. He was thinking about the exams that he was sitting in a few months, she was worried about applications into specialist training. And all that had passed over those years, those wasted moments loving others and being loved so momentarily, it had numbed them, for the pain was far greater than the pleasure. There were other things in life that they could control, and love was not one of them.

And so, without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.

“A sad story, don’t you think?” I said to my friend.

“So what happened between you and your 100% perfect boy?” she asked.

“We had eye contact, we smiled. We spoke casually for a while about ourselves and our future. For that short moment, we connected. And then we moved on in our lives.”