Ms Ice Sandwich by Mieko Kawakami

I didn't think too highly about Ms Ice Sandwich in the first tens of pages: the story is written in the perspective of a fourth grade Japanese schoolkid (the style is exemplary, and really captures the voice and observations of a fourth grader) who lives with his mother and his paternal grandmother and is infatuated with Ms Ice Sandwich, a lady at the sandwich counter at his local grocery store with large eyes and electric blue eyelids.

Our protagonist finds out, one day, that Ms Ice Sandwich is to leave the grocery store and disappear forever, Ms Ice Sandwich, who had been a part of his daily rhythms (and one that he looked forward to).

"As I ramble on like this to Grandma, I start to feel a pain in my chest and tears suddenly start to roll down my cheeks, and suddenly I'm crying my eyes out. I'm not sure what's causing it, why I'm so unhappy, but I can't stop the tears. The angel decorations in Mum's salon, or the smell of the blue crayon, the pattern on the zabuton cover that I trace with the tip of my finger, Tutti's backpack getting farther into the distance, maybe all of this--everything inside me feels scrambled..."

The above quotation cannot quite capture this raw poignant purity of the first goodbye, something that Kawakami was able to evoke so well, and remind me of what I'd lost

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