Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage Part 6

"No, I don't think so. It's different with you. I really mean that. I want to open up my heart to you. I truly feel that way. That's why I'm telling you all this."

"You want to see more of me?" Sara asked.

"Of course I do."

"I'd like to see more of you, too, if I can," Sara said. "You're a good person, honest and sincere."

"Thank you," Tsukuru said.

"So tell me those four names. After that, you decide. Once I find out more about them, if you feel you don't want to see them, then you don't have to go ahead with it. That's entirely up to you. But apart from all that, personally, I'm curious about them. I want to find out more about these people who are still weighing you down."

When he got back to his apartment Tsukuru took an old pocket notebook out of his desk drawer, opened it to the list of addresses, and typed the four names, addresses, and phone numbers from when he'd last seen his four friends into his laptop.

Kei Akamatsu Yos.h.i.+o Oumi Yuzuki s.h.i.+rane Eri Kurono As he gazed at the four names on the screen, and considered the memories those names brought back, he felt the past silently mingling with the present, as a time that should have been long gone hovered in the air around him. Like odorless, colorless smoke leaking into the room through a small crack in the door. Finally, at a certain point, he snapped back to the present, clicked the key on his laptop, and sent the email to Sara's address. He checked that it had been sent and switched off the computer. And waited for time to become real again.

Personally, I'm curious about them. I want to find out more about these people who are still weighing you down.

Sara is right, he thought as he lay down on his bed. Those four people are still stuck to me. Probably more tightly than Sara can ever imagine.

Mister Red Mister Blue Miss White Miss Black The night that Haida told him the story from his father's youth, about meeting a jazz pianist named Midorikawa at a hot springs deep in the mountains of Kyushu, several strange things happened.

Tsukuru bolted awake in the darkness. A tapping sound had woken him, like the sound of a pebble striking a window. Maybe he'd only imagined it, but he wasn't sure. He wanted to check the alarm clock on his nightstand, but he couldn't turn his neck. His entire body was immobile. He wasn't numb, it was just that when he tried to make his body move, he couldn't. The connection between mind and muscles had been severed.

The room was swathed in darkness. Tsukuru had trouble sleeping when there was any light in the room, and always closed the curtains tightly when he went to bed, so there was no light filtering in from outside. Still, he felt the presence in the room of someone else, concealed in the darkness, watching him. Like a camouflaged animal, whoever it was held his breath, hid his scent, changed his color, and receded into the shadows. Still, for some reason Tsukuru knew who it was. Haida.

Mister Gray.

Gray is a mixture of white and black. Change its shade, and it can easily melt into various gradations of darkness.

Haida was standing in a corner of the dark room, staring down at Tsukuru, who lay faceup on the bed. As if he were a mime pretending to be a statue, Haida didn't move a muscle for a long time. The only thing that moved, possibly, were his long eyelashes. Therein lay a strange contrast: Haida chose to be completely still, while Tsukuru chose to move, but couldn't. I have to say something, Tsukuru thought, I need to speak and break down this illusory balance. But his voice wouldn't come. His lips wouldn't move, his tongue was frozen. The only thing slipping from his throat was dry, soundless breathing.

What is Haida doing here? Why is he standing here, staring so intently at me?

This isn't a dream, Tsukuru decided. Everything is too distinct to be a dream. But he couldn't say if the person standing there was the real Haida. The real Haida, his actual flesh and blood, was sound asleep on the sofa in the next room. The Haida standing here must be a kind of projection that had slipped free of the real Haida. That's the way it felt.

Tsukuru didn't feel that this presence was threatening, or evil. Haida would never hurt him-of this, Tsukuru felt certain. He'd known this, instinctively, from the moment they first met.

His high school friend Aka was very bright too, with a practical, even utilitarian intelligence. Compared to Aka's, Haida's intelligence was more pure iteration, more theoretical, even self-contained. When they were together Tsukuru often couldn't grasp what Haida might be thinking. Something in Haida's brain surged forward, outpacing Tsukuru, but what sort of thing that something was, he couldn't say. When that happened he felt confused and left behind, alone. But he never felt anxiety or irritation toward his younger friend. Haida's mind was just too quick, his sphere of mental activity too broad, on a different level entirely. With this knowledge, Tsukuru ceased trying to keep up with Haida.

In Haida's brain there must have been a kind of high-speed circuit built to match the pace of his thoughts, requiring him to occasionally engage his gears, to let his mind race for fixed periods of time. If he didn't-if he kept on running in low gear to keep pace with Tsukuru's reduced speed-Haida's mental infrastructure would overheat and start to malfunction. Or at least, Tsukuru got that impression. After a while Haida would debark from this circuit and, as if nothing had happened, smile calmly and return to the place where Tsukuru lay waiting. He'd slow down, and keep pace with Tsukuru's mind.

How long did Haida's intense gaze continue? Tsukuru could no longer judge the length of time. Haida stood there, unmoving, in the middle of the night, staring wordlessly at him. Haida seemed to have something he wanted to say, a message he needed to convey, but for some reason he couldn't translate that message into words. And this made Tsukuru's younger, intelligent friend unusually irritated.

As he lay in bed, Tsukuru recalled Haida's story about Midorikawa. Before Midorikawa had played the piano in the junior-high music room, he'd laid a small bag on top of the piano. He'd been on the verge of death-or so he'd said. What was in the bag? Haida's story had ended before he revealed the contents. Tsukuru was intensely curious about what had been inside, and wanted someone to tell him its significance. Why did Midorikawa so carefully place that bag on top of the piano? This had to be the missing key to the story.

But he wasn't given the answer. After a long silence Haida-or Haida's alter ego-quietly left. At the very end of his visit, Tsukuru felt like he caught the sound of Haida's light breathing, but he couldn't be sure. Like incense smoke swallowed up in the air, Haida's presence faded and vanished, and before Tsukuru knew it, he was alone again in the dark room. He still couldn't move his body. The cable between his will and his muscles remained disconnected, the bolt that linked them together having fallen off.

How much of this is real? he wondered. This wasn't a dream, or an illusion. It had to be real. But it lacked the weight you'd expect from reality.

Mister Gray.

Tsukuru must have fallen asleep again, but he woke up once more in a dream. Strictly speaking, it might not be a dream. It was reality, but a reality imbued with all the qualities of a dream. A different sphere of reality, where-at a special time and place-imagination had been set free.

The girls were in bed, as naked as the day they were born, snuggled up close on either side of him. s.h.i.+ro and Kuro. They were sixteen or seventeen, invariably that age. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and thighs were pressed against him, their bodies smooth and warm, and Tsukuru could feel all this, clearly. Silently, greedily, they groped his body with their fingers and tongues. He was naked too.

This was not something Tsukuru was hoping for, not a scenario he wanted to imagine. It wasn't something that should be happening. But that image, against his will, grew more vivid, the feelings more graphic, more real.

The girls' fingers were gentle, slender, and delicate. Four hands, twenty fingers. Like some smooth, sightless creatures born in the darkness, they wandered over every inch of Tsukuru's body, arousing him completely. He felt his heart stir, intensely, in a way he'd never before experienced, as if he'd been living for a long time in a house only to discover a secret room he'd never known about. Like a kettledrum, his heart trembled, pounding out an audible beat. His arms and legs were still numb, and he couldn't lift a finger.

The girls entwined themselves lithely around Tsukuru. Kuro's b.r.e.a.s.t.s were full and soft. s.h.i.+ro's were small, but her nipples were as hard as tiny round pebbles. Their pubic hair was as wet as a rain forest. Their breath mingled with his, becoming one, like currents from far away, secretly overlapping at the dark bottom of the sea.

These insistent caresses continued until Tsukuru was inside the v.a.g.i.n.a of one of the girls. It was s.h.i.+ro. She straddled him, took hold of his rigid, erect p.e.n.i.s, and deftly guided it inside her. His p.e.n.i.s found its way with no resistance, as if swallowed up into an airless vacuum. She took a moment, gathering her breath, then began slowly rotating her torso, as if she were drawing a complex diagram in the air, all the while twisting her hips. Her long, straight black hair swung above him, sharply, like a whip. The movements were bold, so out of character with the everyday s.h.i.+ro.

The entire time, both s.h.i.+ro and Kuro treated it as a completely natural turn of events, nothing they had to think over. They never hesitated. The two of them caressed him together, but s.h.i.+ro was the one he penetrated. Why s.h.i.+ro? Tsukuru wondered in the midst of his deep confusion. Why does it have to be s.h.i.+ro? They are supposed to be completely equal. They're supposed to be one being.

Beyond that, he couldn't think. s.h.i.+ro's movements grew faster, more p.r.o.nounced. And before he knew it, he was coming inside her. The time elapsed between penetration and o.r.g.a.s.m was short. Too short, Tsukuru thought, way too short. But maybe he'd lost any sense of time. At any rate, the urge was unstoppable, and, like a huge wave cras.h.i.+ng over him, this urge engulfed him without warning.

Now, though, he wasn't coming inside s.h.i.+ro, but in Haida. The girls had suddenly disappeared, and Haida had taken their place. Just as Tsukuru came, Haida had quickly bent over, taken Tsukuru's p.e.n.i.s in his mouth, and-careful not to get the sheets dirty-taken all the gus.h.i.+ng s.e.m.e.n inside his mouth. Tsukuru came violently, the s.e.m.e.n copious. Haida patiently accepted all of it, and when Tsukuru had finished, Haida licked his p.e.n.i.s clean with his tongue. He seemed used to it. At least it felt that way. Haida quietly rose from the bed and went to the bathroom. Tsukuru heard water running from the faucet. Haida was probably rinsing his mouth.

Even after he came, Tsukuru's p.e.n.i.s remained erect. He could feel the warmth and softness of s.h.i.+ro's v.a.g.i.n.a, as if it were the afterglow of actual s.e.x. And he still couldn't grasp the boundary between dream and imagination, between what was imaginary and what was real.

In the darkness, Tsukuru searched for words. Not words directed at any particular person. He just felt he had to say something, had to find even one word to fill that mute, anonymous gap, before Haida came back from the bathroom. But he couldn't find anything. The whole time, a simple melody swirled around in his head. It was only later that he realized this was the theme of Liszt's "Le mal du pays." Years of Pilgrimage, "First Year: Switzerland." A groundless sadness called forth in a person's heart by a pastoral landscape.

And then a deep sleep violently took hold of him.

It was just before 8 a.m. when he woke up.

He immediately checked his underwear for signs of s.e.m.e.n. Whenever he had s.e.xual dreams like this one, there was always evidence. But this time, nothing. Tsukuru was baffled. In his dream-or at least in a place that wasn't reality-he'd most definitely e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. Intensely. The afterglow was still with him. A copious amount of real s.e.m.e.n should have gushed out. But there was no trace of it.

And then he remembered how Haida had taken it all in his mouth.

He shut his eyes and grimaced. Did that really happen? No, that's impossible. It had all taken place in the dark interior of my mind. No matter how you look at it. So where did all that s.e.m.e.n gush out to? Did it all vanish, too, in the inner recesses of my mind?

Confused, Tsukuru got out of bed and, still clad in pajamas, padded out to the kitchen. Haida was already dressed and sitting on the sofa, reading. He was lost in his thick book, off in another world, but as soon as Tsukuru appeared, he shut the book, smiled brightly, and went to the kitchen to make coffee, omelets, and toast. The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day. They sat across the table from each other and ate breakfast while listening to music, set low. As usual, Haida had dark toast with a thin spread of honey.

Haida explained, excitedly, about the new coffee beans he'd discovered, and the quality of the roast, but after that, he was silently thoughtful. Probably contemplating the book he'd been reading. His eyes were fixed on an imaginary point. Clear, limpid eyes, and Tsukuru couldn't read anything behind them. The sort of gaze Haida had when he was mulling over some abstract proposition, eyes that always reminded Tsukuru of a mountain spring, glimpsed through a gap in the trees.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It was a typical Sunday morning. A thin layer of clouds covered the sky, the sunlight soft. When they talked, Haida looked him right in the eye, and Tsukuru could read nothing in his look. Probably nothing had happened, in reality. It had to have been an illusion drawn by his unconscious, Tsukuru concluded. The thought embarra.s.sed and confused him. He'd had any number of s.e.xual dreams involving s.h.i.+ro and Kuro together. This was nothing new. The dreams came fairly regularly, always involuntarily, and always made him o.r.g.a.s.m. Yet this was the first time a s.e.xual dream had been, from beginning to end, so startlingly vivid and real. But what really baffled him was Haida's presence.

Tsukuru decided not to pursue it further. He could think about it all he wanted and never find an answer. He placed this doubt inside a drawer in his mind labeled "Pending" and postponed any further consideration. He had many such drawers inside him, with numerous doubts and questions tucked away.

After breakfast they went to the college swimming pool and swam together for a half hour. It was Sunday morning and they nearly had the pool to themselves, and could enjoy going at their own pace. Tsukuru concentrated on moving the required muscles in a precise, controlled fas.h.i.+on-back muscles, hip muscles, abs. Breathing and kicking were already second nature. Once he got into a rhythm, the rest happened on its own. As always Haida swam ahead and Tsukuru followed. Tsukuru watched as he swam, mesmerized by the subtle white foam rhythmically generated by Haida's gentle kicks. The scene always left him slightly hypnotized.

By the time they had showered and changed in the locker room, Haida's eyes no longer had that clear and penetrating light, but had regained their usual gentle look. Exercise had dulled Tsukuru's earlier confusion. The two of them left the gym and walked to the library. They hardly spoke, but that wasn't unusual. "I have something I need to look up at the library," Haida said. And this wasn't unusual either. Haida liked looking things up at the library. Generally this meant I want to be alone for a while. "I'll go back and do some laundry," Tsukuru said.

They came to the library entrance, gave a quick wave to each other, and went their separate ways.

He didn't hear from Haida for quite a while. Haida was absent from the pool and cla.s.s. Tsukuru returned to a solitary life, eating alone, swimming alone, taking notes in cla.s.s, memorizing foreign vocabulary and sentences. Time pa.s.sed indifferently, barely leaving a trace. Occasionally he would put the record of "Le mal du pays" on the turntable and listen to it.

After the first week with no word from Haida, the thought struck Tsukuru that his friend may have decided not to see him anymore. Without a word, giving no reason, he may have just gone away somewhere. Like his four friends had done back in his hometown.

Tsukuru began to think that his younger friend had left him because of the graphic s.e.xual dream he'd experienced. Maybe something had made it possible for Haida to observe all that had taken place in Tsukuru's consciousness, and it had disgusted him. Or maybe it angered him.

No, that wasn't possible-the experience couldn't have slipped outside his consciousness. There's no way Haida could have known about it. Still, Tsukuru couldn't shake the feeling that Haida's clear eyes had honed in on the twisted aspects that lay buried in Tsukuru's mind, and the thought left him feeling ashamed.

Either way, after his friend disappeared, he realized anew how important Haida was to him, how Haida had transformed his daily life into something much richer and more colorful. He missed their conversations, and Haida's light, distinctive laugh. The music he liked, the books he sometimes read aloud from, his take on current events, his unique sense of humor, his spot-on quotations, the food he prepared, the coffee he brewed. Haida's absence left behind blank s.p.a.ces throughout his life.

Haida had brought so much to Tsukuru's life, but, he wondered, what had he given to Haida? What memories had Tsukuru left him?

Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking. People came to him, but in the end they always left. They came, seeking something, but either they couldn't find it, or were unhappy with what they found (or else they were disappointed or angry), and then they left. One day, without warning, they vanished, with no explanation, no word of farewell. Like a silent hatchet had sliced the ties between them, ties through which warm blood still flowed, along with a quiet pulse.

There must be something in him, something fundamental, that disenchanted people. "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki," he said aloud. I basically have nothing to offer to others. If you think about it, I don't even have anything to offer myself.

On the morning ten days after they said goodbye in front of the library, Haida showed up at the college swimming pool. As Tsukuru was about to make another flip turn, someone tapped the back of his right hand as it touched the pool wall. He looked up and Haida was squatting there in his swim trunks, black goggles pushed up on his forehead, his usual pleasant smile gracing his face. Though they hadn't seen each other in a while, they didn't say anything, merely nodded and, as usual, started swimming in the same lane. The only communication between them in the water was the pliant movement of muscles and their gentle, rhythmic kicks. There was no need for words.

"I went back to Akita for a while," Haida explained later. They'd finished swimming, had showered, and he was toweling off his hair. "Some family matter suddenly came up."

Tsukuru nodded and gave a noncommittal reply. It wasn't like Haida to take off ten days in the middle of a semester. Like Tsukuru, he tried never to skip cla.s.s unless it was absolutely necessary. So it must have been something very important. But Haida said nothing more about his reason for having gone back home, and Tsukuru didn't push him on it. Yet his young friend's casual return made Tsukuru feel as if he were somehow able to spit out a hard lump of air that had been stuck in his chest. As if the pressure weighing on his chest were relieved. He hadn't been abandoned after all.

Haida continued to act the same as always toward Tsukuru. They talked and ate together. They'd sit on the sofa, listening to the cla.s.sical CDs Haida borrowed from the library, discussing music, and books they'd read. Or else they'd simply be together, sharing an amiable silence. On the weekends Haida came to his apartment, they'd talk until late, and Haida would stay over on the sofa. Never again did Haida (or his alter ego) visit Tsukuru's bedroom and gaze at him in the dark-a.s.suming, of course, that this had actually happened the first time. Tsukuru had many more s.e.xual dreams involving s.h.i.+ro and Kuro, but Haida never appeared.

Still, Tsukuru felt that Haida's clear eyes had seen right through him that night, to what lay in his unconscious. Traces of Haida's gaze still stung, like a mild burn. Haida had, at that time, observed Tsukuru's secret fantasies and desires, examining and dissecting them one by one, and yet he remained friends with Tsukuru. He had just needed some time apart from Tsukuru in order to accept what he'd seen, to get his feelings in order and compose himself. Which explained why he'd deliberately avoided Tsukuru for those ten days.

This was mere conjecture, of course. Baseless, unreasonable speculation. Delusion, you might even call it. But Tsukuru couldn't shake that thought, and it made him anxious. The idea that every fold in the depths of his mind had been laid bare left him feeling reduced to being a pathetic worm under a damp rock.

And yet Tsukuru Tazaki still needed this younger friend. More than anything.

Haida left Tsukuru for good at the end of the following February, eight months after they'd first met. This time he never came back.

The end-of-year exams were over, the grades posted, when Haida went home to Akita. "I should come back soon," he told Tsukuru. "Winters in Akita are freezing cold, and two weeks home is about as much as I can stand," he said. "Much easier to be in Tokyo. But I need to help get the snow off the roof, so I have to go there for a while." But two weeks pa.s.sed, then three, and Haida didn't return to Tokyo. He never once got in touch.

Tsukuru didn't worry too much in the beginning. He figured Haida was having a better time at home than he'd thought he might. Or maybe they'd had more snow than usual. Tsukuru himself went to Nagoya for three days in the middle of March. He didn't want to visit, but he couldn't stay away forever. No snow needed to be shoveled off the family roof in Nagoya, of course, but his mother had called him incessantly, wondering why, if school was out, he didn't want to come home. "I have an important project I need to finish during the break," Tsukuru lied. "But you should still be able to come home for a couple of days at least," his mother insisted. One of his older sisters called too, underscoring how much his mother missed him. "You really should come home," she said, "even for a little while." "Okay, I get it," he said. "I will."

Back in Nagoya, except for walking the dog in the park in the evening, he never went out. He was afraid of running into one of his four former friends, especially after he'd been having erotic dreams about s.h.i.+ro and Kuro, essentially raping them in his imagination. He wasn't brave enough to meet them in the flesh, even if those dreams were beyond his control and there was no way they could possibly know what he'd been dreaming. Still, he was afraid they'd take one look at his face and know exactly what went on in his dreams, and then denounce him for his filthy, selfish illusions.

He refrained from masturbating as much as he could. Not because he felt guilty about the act itself, but because, as he touched himself, he couldn't help but picture s.h.i.+ro and Kuro. He'd try to think of something else, but the two of them always stole inside his imagination. The problem was, the more he refrained from masturbating, the more frequent his erotic dreams became, almost always featuring the two girls. So the result was the same. But at least these weren't images he'd intentionally conjured. He knew he was just making excuses, but for him this explanation, basically just a rephrasing of events, held no small importance.

The contents of the dreams were nearly always the same. The setting and some of the details might change, but always the two girls were nude, entwined around him, caressing his whole body with their fingers and lips, stroking his p.e.n.i.s, and then having s.e.x with him. And in the end the one he always e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in was s.h.i.+ro. He might be having steamy s.e.x with Kuro, but in the final moments, he'd suddenly realize he'd changed partners, and he'd come inside s.h.i.+ro's body. He'd started having these dreams in the summer of his soph.o.m.ore year, after he'd been expelled from the group and lost any chance to see the two women again, after he'd made up his mind to never think of his four friends again. He had no memory, before then, of ever having a dream like this. Why he started having these dreams was a mystery, another unanswered question to stuff deep inside the "Pending" drawer in his unconscious.

Filled with desultory feelings of frustration, Tsukuru returned to Tokyo. There was still no word from Haida. He didn't show up at either the pool or the library. Tsukuru called Haida's dorm, and was told each time that Haida wasn't there. He realized he didn't know the address or phone number of Haida's home in Akita. While all this went on, the spring holidays ended and a new school year began. Tsukuru was now a senior. On the trees, cherry blossoms bloomed, then scattered, but still no word came from his younger friend.

He visited the dormitory where Haida had lived. The dorm manager told him that, at the end of the previous school year, Haida had submitted a form requesting to move out, and had taken away all his belongings. When Tsukuru heard this, he was speechless. The dorm manager knew nothing about why Haida had left the dorm or where he might have gone. Or perhaps he knew, but was merely claiming he didn't.

Tsukuru went to the college registrar's office and learned that Haida had been granted a leave of absence. The reason why he'd applied to do so was confidential, and they wouldn't tell him anything more. All he knew was that, right after final exams, Haida had stamped his seal on the leave of absence form and the form to vacate his dorm. At that point, he was still seeing Tsukuru often. They were swimming together at the pool, and on weekends Haida was visiting Tsukuru's apartment, where they'd talk until late and Haida would stay over. And yet he had kept his plan to leave school a total secret. "I'm just going back to Akita for a couple of weeks," he'd informed Tsukuru, as if it were nothing important. And then he had vanished from sight.

I may never see him again, Tsukuru thought. For some reason Haida was determined to leave without a word of explanation. This didn't just happen by chance. There had to be a clear reason why he chose to act that way. No matter what the reason was, though, Tsukuru felt that Haida would never come back. And his hunch turned out to be right. At least while Tsukuru was in college, Haida never re-enrolled in school. And he never got in touch.

It's strange, Tsukuru thought at the time. Haida is repeating his father's fate. He leaves college when he's around twenty, and disappears, as if retracing his father's footsteps. Or was that whole story about his father a fabrication? Had he been trying to relate something about himself, making it sound as if it had happened to his father?

Somehow Haida's disappearance this time didn't confuse Tsukuru as deeply as he'd been confused before. He didn't feel bitter about Haida abandoning him. Rather, after losing his friend, he felt a strangely neutral quiet descending over his life. At times the odd thought struck him that Haida had partially absorbed Tsukuru's sin, his impurity, and as a result he had had to go far away.

Of course, Tsukuru felt lonely without his friend. He regretted that things had worked out this way. Haida was a good friend, one of the few he'd ever had. But maybe it was unavoidable. All he'd left behind were his little coffee mill, a half-filled bag of coffee beans, the three-LP set of Lazar Berman playing Liszt's "Le mal du pays," and the memory of his unusually limpid eyes, and that gaze.

That May, a month after Tsukuru learned that Haida had left campus, he had his first real s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p with a woman. He was twenty-one then, twenty-one and six months. Since the beginning of the school year he'd begun an interns.h.i.+p doing drafting at an architectural firm, and the person he slept with was an unmarried woman, four years older than he, whom he met at the office. She did clerical work there. She was on the small side, with long hair, large ears, gorgeous legs, and a taut body. More cute than beautiful. When she joked around, her smile revealed beautiful white teeth. She was kind to him from the first day he started work, and he could sense she liked him. Raised with two older sisters, Tsukuru always felt comfortable around older women. The woman was the same age as his second sister.

Tsukuru found a chance to invite her to dinner, then back to his apartment, and there he took the plunge and lured her into bed. She accepted his overtures with barely a moment's hesitation. Though it was Tsukuru's first time with a woman, things went smoothly-no confusion, no nervousness-from start to finish. Because of this, the woman seemed convinced that he was more s.e.xually experienced than most young men his age, even though the only s.e.x he'd had with women had been confined to dreams.

Tsukuru really liked her. She was bright and attractive, and while she didn't provide intellectual stimulation like Haida, she had a cheerful, open personality, plenty of curiosity, and was an enjoyable conversationalist. She enjoyed making love, too, and being with her taught him much about women's bodies.

She wasn't good at cooking, but enjoyed cleaning, and before long she had his apartment sparkling clean. She replaced his curtains, sheets, pillowcases, towels, and bath mats with brand-new ones. She brought color and vitality into Tsukuru's post-Haida life. But he didn't choose to sleep with her out of pa.s.sion, or because he was fond of her, or even to lessen his loneliness. Though he probably would never have admitted it, he was hoping to prove to himself that he wasn't gay, that he was capable of having s.e.x with a real woman, not just in his dreams. This was his main objective.

And he achieved his goal.

She stayed overnight at his place on weekends, just as Haida had done not so long before. They would make love leisurely, sometimes having s.e.x almost until dawn. As he made love to her, he tried hard to think of nothing beyond her and her body. He focused, switched off his imagination, and chased away everything that wasn't there-s.h.i.+ro and Kuro's naked bodies, and Haida's lips-as best he could. She was on the pill, so he could come freely inside her. She enjoyed s.e.x with him and seemed to be satisfied. When she o.r.g.a.s.med she always cried out in a strange voice. It's okay, Tsukuru told himself. I'm normal, after all. Thanks to this relations.h.i.+p, his erotic dreams disappeared.

They saw each other for eight months, then mutually agreed to break up, just before he graduated from college. A railroad company had offered him a job, and his part-time work at the architectural firm was over. While she was seeing Tsukuru she had another boyfriend, someone back in her hometown in Niigata, whom she'd known since childhood (information she had disclosed from the first day they slept together). She was going to marry him in April. She planned to quit her job at the architectural firm and move to Sanjo City, where her fiance worked. "So I won't be able to see you anymore," she told Tsukuru one day as they lay in bed.

"He's a very good person," she said, resting her hand on Tsukuru's. "We're well suited to each other."

"I hate the thought of not seeing you again," Tsukuru said, "but I suppose I should congratulate you."

"Thank you," she said. Then, as if writing a tiny footnote at the corner of a page, she added, "I might have a chance to see you again, someday."

"That would be great," Tsukuru said, though he found it hard to decipher that footnote. When she's with her fiance, he suddenly wondered, does she cry out in the same way? The two of them made love again.

And he really did feel bad about not being able to see her once a week. He knew that if he wanted to avoid having graphic erotic dreams, and live more in the present, he needed a regular s.e.xual partner. But still, her marriage was, if anything, a good development for him, as he'd never felt anything for her beyond a calm fondness and a healthy physical desire. And at that point Tsukuru was about to embark on a new stage in his life.

When the call came in on his cell phone from Sara Kimoto, Tsukuru was killing time, sorting the doc.u.ments that had piled up on his desk, discarding the ones he didn't need, reorganizing the clutter that had acc.u.mulated in his desk drawer. It was a Thursday, five days since he'd last seen her.

"Can you talk?"

"Sure," Tsukuru said. "I'm just taking it easy today for a change."

"Good," she said. "Are you free later? Even for a little while? I have a dinner at seven, but I can see you before then. If you could come to Ginza, I'd really appreciate it."

Tsukuru glanced at his watch. "I can be there by five thirty. Just tell me where to meet you."

She told him the name of a coffee shop near the Ginza-Yonchome intersection. Tsukuru knew the place.

He wrapped up work before five, left the office, and rode the Marunouchi line from s.h.i.+njuku to Ginza. Luckily he happened to be wearing the tie Sara had given him last time.

Sara was in the coffee shop when he arrived. She had already ordered coffee and was waiting for him. She beamed when she saw the tie. When she smiled, two charming little lines formed beside her lips. The waitress came over, and Tsukuru ordered coffee. The shop was crowded with people meeting up after work.

"Sorry to drag you out all this way," Sara said.

"No, it's good for me to get to Ginza every once in a while," Tsukuru said. "I only wish we could go somewhere and have dinner together."

Sara pursed her lips and sighed. "I wish we could, but I have to attend a business dinner tonight. There's this VIP from France who's here and I have to take him to an expensive kaiseki restaurant. I hate these kinds of dinners. I get all tense and can't even taste what I'm eating." She'd taken even more care with her appearance than usual, Tsukuru noticed. She wore a nicely tailored coffee-brown suit and a brooch on her collar with a tiny diamond sparkling in the center. Her skirt was short, and below this were stockings with a detailed pattern the same color as her suit.