Birthday Girl is a short story written by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in 2004. Murakami was putting together an anthology of short stories on the theme of birthdays. He chose to write a story solely for the anthology. It is a typical Murakami tale with its Kafkaesque limbo reality.
A girl who works as a waitress gets her birthday wish granted on her twentieth birthday - a wish that takes the rest of her life to realize.