Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

11

The next morning, a Monday, at ten thirty, Tsukuru visited Aka’s office. The company was located about five kilometers from the Lexus showroom in a modern, glass-enclosed commercial building, where it occupied half of the eighth floor. The other half was taken up by the offices of a well-known German pharmaceutical company. Tsukuru wore the same suit as on the previous day, and the blue tie Sara had given him.

At the entrance was a huge, smartly designed logo that announced BEYOND. The office was clean, open, and bright. On the wall behind the reception desk hung a large abstract painting, a splash of primary colors. What it was supposed to be was unclear, though it was not terribly puzzling. Aside from that one painting, the office was devoid of decorations. No flowers, no vases. From the entrance alone it was hard to know what sort of business the company was in.

At the reception desk he was greeted by a young woman in her early twenties, with hair perfectly curled at the ends. She had on a light blue short-sleeved dress and a pearl brooch. The sort of healthy girl lovingly raised in a well-off, optimistic sort of family. She took Tsukuru’s business card, her whole face lighting up in a smile, then pushed an extension number on her phone as if pressing the soft nose of an oversized dog.

A short while later the inner door opened and a sturdy-looking woman in her mid-forties emerged, dressed in a dark suit with wide shoulders and thick-heeled black pumps. Her features were oddly flawless. Her hair was cut short, her jaw firm, and she looked extremely competent. There are certain middle-aged women who look like they are outstanding at whatever they do, and this woman was one of them. If she were an actress she would play a veteran chief nurse, or the madam of an exclusive escort service.

She looked at the business card Tsukuru proffered, a hint of doubt crossing her face. What possible business could the deputy section chief of the construction section of the facilities department of a Tokyo-based railroad company have with the CEO of a creative business seminar company in Nagoya? Not to mention showing up without an appointment. But she did not question him about his reasons for visiting.

“I’m sorry, but I wonder if I could have you wait here for a little while?” she said, mustering the barest minimalist smile. She motioned Tsukuru to take a seat and then vanished through the same door. The chair was a simple Scandinavian design of chrome and white leather. Beautiful, clean, and silent, with not an ounce of warmth, like a fine rain falling under the midnight sun. Tsukuru sat down and waited. The young woman at the reception desk was busy with some sort of task on her laptop. She glanced in his direction from time to time, shooting him an encouraging smile.

Like the woman at the Lexus dealership, she was a type Tsukuru often saw in Nagoya. Beautiful features, always immaculately dressed, the kind of woman that makes a great impression. Their hair is always nicely curled. They major in French literature at expensive private women’s colleges, and after graduation find jobs as receptionists or secretaries. They work for a few years, visit Paris for shopping once a year with their girlfriends. They finally catch the eye of a promising young man in the company, or else are formally introduced to one, and quit work to get married. They then devote themselves to getting their children into famous private schools. As he sat there, Tsukuru pondered the kind of lives they led.

In five minutes the middle-aged secretary returned and led him to Aka’s office. Her smile had ratcheted up a notch. Tsukuru could detect a certain respect for someone like him who showed up without an appointment and actually got to see her boss. It had to be a rare occurrence.

She led him down the hallway with long strides, heels clicking hard and precise like the sounds a faithful blacksmith makes early in the morning. Along the corridor were several doors with thick, opaque glass, but Tsukuru could hear no voices or sounds from the rooms beyond. Compared to his workplace—with its incessantly ringing phones, doors constantly banging open and shut, people yelling—this was a whole other world.

Aka’s office was surprisingly small and cozy, considering the scale of the company. Inside was a desk, also a Scandinavian design, a small sofa set, and a wooden cabinet. On top of the desk were a sort of objet d’art stainless steel desk light and a Mac laptop. B&O audio components were set above the cabinet, and another large abstract painting that made copious use of primary colors hung on the wall. It looked like it was by the same artist. The window in the office was big and faced the main street, but none of the sound from outside filtered in. Early-summer sunlight fell on the plain carpet on the floor. Gentle, subdued sunlight.

The room was simple, with a uniform design and nothing extraneous. Each piece of furniture and equipment was clearly high-end, but unlike the Lexus showroom, which went out of its way to advertise luxury, everything here was designed to be low-key and unobtrusive. Expensive anonymity was the basic concept.

Aka stood up from behind his desk. He had changed a lot from when he was twenty. He was still short, not quite five foot three, but his hair had receded considerably. He’d always had thinnish hair, but now it had become even sparser, his forehead more prominent, as was the shape of his head. As if to compensate for the hair loss, he now had a full beard. Compared to his thin hair, his beard was dark black, the contrast quite striking. His metal-framed glasses, narrow and wide, looked good on his long, oval face. His body was as thin as before, without an ounce of extra weight. He had on a white shirt with narrow pinstripes, and a brown knit tie. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. He wore cream-colored chinos, and soft brown leather loafers with no socks. The whole outfit hinted at a casual, free lifestyle.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this in the morning,” Tsukuru said. “I was afraid if I didn’t, you might not see me.”

“No way,” Aka said. He held out his hand and shook Tsukuru’s. Unlike Ao’s, his hand was small and soft, his grip gentle. It was not a perfunctory handshake, though, but full of warmth. “How could I ever say no? I’m happy to see you anytime.”

“But you’re pretty busy, I imagine?”

“Work keeps me busy, for sure. But this is my company, and I make the ultimate decisions. My schedule can be pretty flexible, if I want it to be. I can take more time with some things, or shorten others. In the end, obviously, the accounts have to balance, and I can’t change the ultimate amount of time we get, of course—only God can do that—but I can make some partial adjustments.”

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk about some personal things,” Tsukuru said. “But if you’re busy right now, I can come back whenever’s convenient.”

“Don’t worry about the time. You’ve come all this way. We can take our time and talk here, right now.”

Tsukuru sat down on the two-person black leather sofa, and Aka sat on the facing chair. Between them was a small oval table with a heavy-looking glass ashtray. Aka picked up Tsukuru’s business card again and studied it, his eyes narrowed.

“I see. So Tsukuru Tazaki’s dream of building railroad stations came true.”

“I’d like to say that’s true, but unfortunately I don’t get many opportunities to actually construct a new station,” Tsukuru said. “They rarely build new train lines in Tokyo, so most of the time we rebuild and refurbish existing stations. Making them barrier-free, creating more multifunction restrooms, constructing safety fences, building more shops within the stations, coordinating things so other rail lines can share the tracks…. The social function of stations is changing, so they keep us pretty busy.”

“But still, your job has something to do with railway stations.”

“True.”

“Are you married?”

“No, I’m still single.”

Aka crossed his legs and brushed away a thread on the cuff of his chinos. “I was married once, when I was twenty-seven. But I got divorced after a year and a half. I’ve been alone ever since. It’s easier being single. You don’t waste a lot of time. Are you the same way?”

“No, not really. I’d like to get married. I actually have too much spare time on my hands. I’ve just never met the right person.”

Tsukuru thought of Sara. If it were her, maybe he would feel like marrying. But they both needed to know more about each other first. Both of them needed a little more time.

“Your business seems to be doing well,” Tsukuru said, glancing around the tidy office.

Back when they were teenagers, Ao, Aka, and Tsukuru had used the rough, masculine pronouns ore and omae—“I” and “you”—when they talked to each other, but Tsukuru realized now, seeing them sixteen years later, that this form of address no longer felt right. Ao and Aka still called him omae, and referred to themselves as ore, but this casual way of speaking no longer came so easily to Tsukuru.

“Yes, business is going well at the moment,” Aka said. He cleared his throat. “You know what we do here?”

“Pretty much. If what’s online is accurate.”

Aka laughed. “It’s not lies. That’s what we do. The most important part, of course, is all in here.” Aka tapped his temple. “Like with a chef. The most critical ingredient isn’t in the recipe.”

“The way I understand it, what you mainly do is educate and train human resources for companies.”

“Exactly. We educate new employees and reeducate mid-level employees. We offer that service to other companies. We create programs tailored to the clients’ wishes, and carry them out efficiently and professionally. It saves companies time and effort.”

“Outsourcing employee education.”

“Correct. The business all started with an idea I had. You know, like in a comic book, where a light bulb goes off over the character’s head? Startup funding came from the president of a consumer finance company who believed in me and fronted me the money. It just happened that’s where the original funds came from.”

“So how did you come up with the idea?”

Aka laughed. “It’s not all that exciting a story. After I graduated from college I worked in a large bank, but the job was boring. The people above me were incompetent. They only thought about what was right in front of them, never thought long term, and only cared about covering their asses. I figured if a top bank was like this, then Japan’s future looked pretty bleak. I put up with it for three years, but nothing improved. If anything, it got worse. So I switched jobs and went to work for a consumer finance company. The president of the company liked me a lot and had asked me to work for him. In a job like that you have much more freedom to maneuver, and the work itself was interesting. But there, too, my opinions didn’t exactly conform with those of the higher-ups, and I quit after a little over two years. I apologized to the president, but there it was.”

Aka took out a packet of Marlboro Reds. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” Tsukuru said. Aka put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a small gold lighter. His eyes narrowed and he slowly inhaled, then exhaled. “I tried quitting, but just couldn’t. If I can’t smoke, I can’t work. Have you ever tried giving up smoking?”

Tsukuru had never smoked a cigarette in his life.

Aka continued. “I’m more of a lone-wolf type. I might not look like it, and I didn’t understand that part of my personality until I’d graduated from college and started work. But it’s true. Whenever some moron ordered me to do something stupid, I’d blow my top. It was like you could actually hear my brain explode. No way a person like that can work for a company. So I made up my mind. I had to go out on my own.”

Aka paused and gazed at the purplish smoke rising up from his hand, as if tracing a far-off memory.

“One other thing I learned from working in a company was that the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They’re actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that’s not how they really feel. They just grumble out of habit. If you told them to think for themselves, and make their own decisions and take responsibility for them, they’d be clueless. So I decided I could turn that into a business. It’s simple. I hope this makes sense?”

Tsukuru said nothing. It was a rhetorical question.

“I compiled a list of things I dislike, things I don’t like to do, and things I don’t want others to do. And based on that list, I came up with a program to train people who follow orders from above, so that they could work more systematically. I guess you could call it an original idea, but in part I ripped off elements from elsewhere. The experience I had myself, the training I received as a newly hired bank clerk, was extremely valuable. I added methods taken from religious cults and personal development seminars, to spice things up. I researched companies in the U.S. that had been successful in the same sort of business. I read a lot of books on psychology as well. I included elements from manuals for new recruits in the Nazi SS and the Marines. In the half year after I quit my job, I literally immersed myself in developing this program. I’ve always been good at focusing on one particular task.”

“It helps that you’re so bright.”

Aka grinned. “Thanks. I couldn’t very well come right out and say that about myself.”

He took a puff on his cigarette and flicked the ash into the ashtray. He raised his head and looked at Tsukuru.

“Religious cults and personal development seminars mainly try to get money from people. To do that, they perform a rather crude form of brainwashing. We’re different. If we did something that questionable, top corporations wouldn’t agree to work with us. Using drastic measures, forcing people to do things—we’re not into any of that. You might get impressive results for a while, but they won’t last. Driving the idea of discipline into people’s heads is important, but the program you use to do it has to be totally scientific, practical, and sophisticated. It has to be something society can accept. And the results need to be long lasting. We’re not aiming at producing zombies. We want to create a workforce that does what their company wants them to do, yet still believes they’re independent thinkers.”

“That’s a pretty cynical worldview,” Tsukuru said.

“I suppose you could see it that way.”

“I can’t imagine that everyone who attends your seminars allows themselves to be disciplined like that.”

“No, of course not. There are quite a few people who reject the program. You can divide them into two groups. The first is antisocial. In English you’d call them ‘outcasts.’ They just can’t accept any form of constructive criticism, no matter what it is. They reject any kind of group discipline. It’s a waste of time to deal with people like that, so we ask them to withdraw. The other group is comprised of people who actually think on their own. Those it’s best to leave alone. Don’t fool with them. Every system needs elite people like them. If things go well, they’ll eventually be in leadership positions. In the middle, between those two groups, are those who take orders from above and just do what they’re told. That’s the vast majority of people. By my rough estimate, 85 percent of the total. I developed this business to target the 85 percent.”

“And your business is doing as well as you hoped it would?”

Aka nodded. “Things are working out now pretty much as I calculated. It was a small company at first, with just a couple of employees, but now it’s grown larger, as you can see. Our brand’s become pretty well known.”

“You’ve assessed the tasks that you don’t like to do, or the things that you don’t like to have done to you, analyzed them, and used this to launch your business. That was the starting point?”

Aka nodded. “Exactly. It’s not hard to think about what you don’t want to do or have done to you. Just like it’s not hard to think about what you would like to do. It’s a difference between the positive and the negative. A question of emphasis.”

I’m not too fond of what he’s doing. Tsukuru recalled Ao’s words.

“Aren’t you doing this, in part, to get personal revenge on society? As one of the elites, someone who thinks like an outcast.”

“You could be right,” Aka said. He laughed happily and snapped his fingers. “Great serve. Advantage Tsukuru Tazaki.”

“Are you the organizer of these programs? Do you do the presentations yourself?”

“In the beginning I did. I was the only person I could count on at that point. Can you picture me doing that?”

“No, not really,” Tsukuru replied honestly.

Aka laughed. “For some reason, though, I turned out to be really good at it. I shouldn’t brag, but I was well suited for it. Of course, it’s all an act, but I was good at seeming real and convincing. I don’t do it anymore, though. I’m not a guru, but more of a manager. And I keep plenty busy. What I do now is train our instructors, and leave the practical side of things to them. These days I’ve been giving a lot of outside lectures. Corporations invite me to their meetings, and I give talks at university employment seminars. A publisher asked me to write a book, too, which I’m working on.”

Aka crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Once you get the knack, this kind of business isn’t so hard. Just print up a glossy pamphlet, string together some high-blown self-advertising language, and get some smart office space in a high-end part of town. Purchase attractive furnishings, hire capable, sophisticated staff members, and pay them very well. Image is everything. You don’t spare any expense to create the right image. And word of mouth is critical. Once you get a good reputation, momentum will carry you. But I’m not planning to expand beyond what we do now. We’ll continue to focus solely on companies in the greater Nagoya area. Unless I can keep an eye on things myself, I can’t ensure the level of quality.”

Aka gazed searchingly into Tsukuru’s eyes.

“Come on, you’re not all that interested in what I do, are you?”

“It just feels strange. I never would have thought, back when you were a teenager, that you would open this kind of business someday.”

“Me either,” Aka said, and laughed. “I was sure I would stay in a university and become a professor. But once I got to college I realized I wasn’t cut out for academic life. It’s a stagnant, crushingly dull world, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life there. Then when I graduated, I found out that working for a company wasn’t for me, either. It was all trial and error, and eventually, I was able to find my own niche. But what about you? Are you satisfied with your job?”

“Not really. But I’m not particularly dissatisfied with it, either,” Tsukuru said.

“Because you can do work related to railroad stations?”

“That’s right. As you put it, I’m able to stay on the positive side.”

“Have you ever had doubts about your job?”

“Every day I just build things you can see. I have no time for doubts.”

Aka smiled. “That’s wonderful. And so very like you.”

Silence descended on them. Aka toyed with the gold lighter in his hand but didn’t light another cigarette. He probably had a set number of cigarettes he smoked every day.

“You came here because there was something you wanted to talk about, right?” Aka said.

“I’d like to ask about the past,” Tsukuru said.

“Sure. Let’s talk about the past.”

“It’s about Shiro.”

Aka’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and he stroked his beard. “I was kind of expecting that. After my secretary handed me your business card.”

Tsukuru didn’t reply.

“I feel sorry for Shiro,” Aka said quietly. “Her life wasn’t very happy. She was so beautiful, so musically talented, yet she died so horribly.”

Tsukuru felt uncomfortable at the way Aka summed up her life in just a couple of lines. But a time difference was at work here, he understood. Tsukuru had only recently learned of Shiro’s death, while Aka had lived with the knowledge for six years.

“Maybe there’s not much point in doing this now, but I wanted to clear up a misunderstanding,” Tsukuru said. “I don’t know what Shiro told you, but I never raped her. I never had a relationship like that with her of any kind.”

“The truth sometimes reminds me of a city buried in sand,” Aka said. “As time passes, the sand piles up even thicker, and occasionally it’s blown away and what’s below is revealed. In this case it’s definitely the latter. Whether the misunderstanding is cleared up or it isn’t, you aren’t the type of person to do something like that. I know that very well.”

“You know that?” Tsukuru repeated the words.

“Now I do, is what I mean.”

“Because the sand has blown away?”

Aka nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

“It’s like we’re discussing history.”

“In a way, we are.”

Tsukuru gazed at the face of his old friend seated across from him, but couldn’t read anything resembling an emotion in Aka’s expression.

You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them. Tsukuru recalled Sara’s words, and said them aloud.

Aka nodded several times. “Exactly. You can hide memories, but you can’t erase history. That’s precisely what I want to say.”

“Anyway, back then, the four of you cut me off. Totally, and mercilessly,” Tsukuru said.

“It’s true, we did. That’s a historical fact. I’m not trying to justify it, but at the time we had no other choice. Shiro’s story was so real. She wasn’t acting. She was really hurt. An actual wound, with real pain, and real blood. There was no room for us to doubt her at the time. But after we cut you off, and the more that time passed, the more confused we got about the whole thing.”

“How do you mean?”

Aka brought his hands together on his lap and thought for five seconds.

“In the beginning, it was small things. A few details that didn’t fit. Parts of her story that didn’t make sense. But it didn’t bother us much. They didn’t really matter at first. But these started to become more frequent, and we noticed them more and more. And then we thought, something’s not right here.”

Tsukuru was silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Shiro might have had some mental issues.” Aka fiddled with the gold lighter, carefully choosing his words. “Whether it was temporary, or more of a long-term condition, I don’t know. But something was definitely wrong with her then. She had a lot of musical talent. The kind of beautiful music she played blew us away, but unfortunately she demanded more from herself. She had enough talent to make her way through the limited world where she lived, but not enough to go out into the wider world. And no matter how much she practiced, she couldn’t reach the level she desired. You remember how serious and introverted she was. Once she entered the music conservatory, the pressure only mounted. And little by little, she started acting strangely.”

Tsukuru nodded but didn’t say anything.

“It’s not so unusual,” Aka said. “It’s a sad story, but in the art world it happens all the time. Talent is like a container. You can work as hard as you want, but the size will never change. It’ll only hold so much water and no more.”

“I’m sure that kind of thing does happen a lot,” Tsukuru said. “But saying that I drugged her in Tokyo and raped her—where did that come from? Granted, she might have had mental issues, but didn’t that story just come out of nowhere?”

Aka nodded. “Absolutely. It came out of nowhere. Which actually made us believe her at first. We couldn’t conceive of Shiro making up something like that.”

Tsukuru pictured an ancient city, buried in sand. And himself, seated on top of a dune, gazing down at the desiccated ruins.

“But why was the other person in that story me, of all people? Why did it have to be me?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Aka said. “Maybe Shiro secretly liked you. So she was disappointed and angry with you for going off to Tokyo by yourself. Or maybe she was jealous of you. Maybe she wanted to break free of this town. Anyway, there’s no way now to understand what motivated her. Assuming there even was a motivation.”

Aka continued toying with the lighter.

“There’s one thing I want you to know,” he said. “You went to Tokyo, and the four of us stayed behind in Nagoya. I’m not trying to criticize you for that. But you had a new life in a new city. Back in Nagoya, the four of us had to draw closer together as a result. Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

“It was more realistic to cut off me, as the outsider, than to cut off Shiro. Right?”

Aka didn’t reply, but let out a long, shallow sigh. “Of the five of us maybe you were the toughest one, at least emotionally. Unexpectedly so, considering how placid you seemed. The four of us who stayed behind weren’t brave enough to venture out like you did. We were afraid of leaving the town we were brought up in, and saying goodbye to such close friends. We couldn’t leave that warm comfort zone. It’s like how hard it is to climb out of a warm bed on a cold winter morning. We came up with all kinds of plausible excuses at the time, but now I see how true this was.”

“But you don’t regret staying here, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so. There were lots of good, practical reasons for staying put, and I was able to use these to my advantage. Nagoya’s a place where local connections really pay off. Take the president of the consumer finance company who invested in me. Years ago, he read about our volunteer efforts in high school in the paper, and that’s why he trusted me. I didn’t want to profit personally from our volunteer program, but it worked out that way. And many of our clients are people my father taught at the university. There’s a tight social network like that in business circles in Nagoya, and a Nagoya University professor is like a respected brand name. But none of that would make any difference if I went to Tokyo. I’d be completely ignored. Don’t you agree?”

Tsukuru was silent.

“Those practical reasons played a part, too, I think, in why the four of us never left town. We chose to keep soaking in the warm bath. But now it’s only Ao and me who are still here. Shiro died, and Kuro got married and moved to Finland. And Ao and I are literally down the street from each other but never meet up. Why? Because even if we got together, we’d have nothing to talk about.”

“You could buy a Lexus. Then you’d have something to talk about.”

Aka winked. “I’m driving a Porsche Carrera 4. Targa top. Six-gear manual transmission. The way it feels when you shift gears is amazing. The feeling when you downshift is especially great. Have you ever driven one?”

Tsukuru shook his head.

“I love it, and would never buy anything else,” Aka said.

“But you could buy a Lexus as a company car. Write it off.”

“I have clients whose companies are affiliated with Nissan and Mitsubishi, so that’s not an option.”

A short silence followed.

“Did you go to Shiro’s funeral?” Tsukuru asked.

“Yeah, I did. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen such a sad funeral, before or after. It’s painful to think about, even now. Ao was there, too. Kuro couldn’t come. She was already in Finland, about to have a baby.”

“Why didn’t you let me know that Shiro had died?”

Aka didn’t say anything for a while, gazing vacantly at him, his eyes unfocused. “I really don’t know,” he finally said. “I was sure someone would tell you. Probably Ao would—”

“No, nobody ever told me. Until a week ago, I had no idea she’d died.”

Aka shook his head, and turned, as if averting his gaze, and gazed out the window. “I guess we did something terrible. I’m not trying to excuse our actions, but you have to understand how confused we were. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were positive you would hear about Shiro’s murder. And when you didn’t show up at the funeral, we figured you found it too hard to come.”

Tsukuru didn’t say anything for a moment, and then spoke. “I heard that at the time Shiro was murdered, she was living in Hamamatsu?”

“She was there for almost two years. She lived alone and taught piano to children. She worked for a Yamaha piano school. I don’t know the details of why she moved all the way to Hamamatsu, though. She should have been able to find work in Nagoya.”

“What kind of life did she lead?”

Aka took a cigarette out of the box, put it between his lips, and, after a short pause, lit it.

“About half a year before she was murdered, I had to go to Hamamatsu on business. I called her and invited her to dinner. By this time the four of us had really gone our separate ways and hardly ever saw each other. We’d get in touch every once in a while, but that was it. My work in Hamamatsu was over sooner than I expected, and I had some free time, so I wanted to see Shiro for the first time in a while. She was more collected and calm than I’d imagined. She seemed to be enjoying having left Nagoya behind and living in a new place. We had dinner together and reminisced. We went to a famous unagi eel restaurant in Hamamatsu, had a few beers, and really relaxed. It surprised me that she was able to drink. Still, there was a bit of tension in the air. What I mean is, we had to avoid a particular topic….”

“That particular topic being me?”

Aka shot him a hard look and nodded. “It still made her uneasy. She hadn’t forgotten it. Apart from that, though, she seemed perfectly fine. She laughed a lot, and seemed to enjoy talking. And everything she said sounded normal. It struck me that moving to a new place had been great for her. But there was one thing. I don’t enjoy bringing this up, but—she wasn’t attractive like she used to be.”

“Wasn’t attractive?” Tsukuru repeated the words, his voice sounding far away.

“No, that isn’t quite the right expression,” Aka said, and thought it over. “How should I put it? Her features were basically the same as before, of course, and by all standards, she was definitely still a beautiful woman. If you hadn’t known her when she was a teenager, you’d think she was pretty. But I knew her from before, knew her very well. I could never forget how appealing she was. The Shiro in front of me now, though—she wasn’t.”

Aka frowned slightly, as if recalling that scene.

“Seeing Shiro like that was very painful. It hurt to see that she no longer had that burning something she used to have. That what had been remarkable about her had vanished. That the special something would no longer be able to move me the way it used to.”

Smoke rose from Aka’s cigarette above the ashtray. He continued.

“Shiro had just turned thirty then, and she was still young. When she met me she had on very plain clothes, with her hair pulled back in a bun, and hardly any makeup. But that’s not really the point. Those are just details. My point is that she’d lost the glow she used to have, her vitality. She was always an introvert, but at her core there had been something vital and alive, something that even she wasn’t totally aware of. That light, that radiance used to leak out by itself, emerging from between the cracks. Do you know what I mean? But the last time I saw her, it was all gone, like someone had slipped in behind her and pulled the plug. The kind of fresh, sparkling glow, what used to visibly set her apart, had disappeared, and it made me sad to look at her. It wasn’t a question of age. She didn’t get that way simply because she’d gotten older. When I heard that someone had strangled Shiro, I was devastated, and felt really sorry for her. Whatever the circumstances might have been, she didn’t deserve to die like that. But at the same time I couldn’t help but feel that the life had already been sucked out of her, even before she was physically murdered.”

Aka picked up the cigarette from the ashtray, took a deep drag, and closed his eyes.

“She left a huge hole in my heart,” Aka said. “One that’s still not filled.”

Silence descended on them, a hard, dense silence.

“Do you remember the piano piece Shiro used to play a lot?” Tsukuru asked. “A short piece, Liszt’s ‘Le mal du pays’?”

Aka considered this and shook his head. “No, I don’t recall that. The only one I remember is the famous piece from Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood. ‘Träumerei.’ She used to play that sometimes. I’m not familiar with the Liszt piece, though. Why are you asking?”

“No special reason. I just happened to recall it,” Tsukuru said. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve taken so much of your time. I should be going. I’m really happy we could talk like this.”

Aka stayed still in his chair, and gazed straight at Tsukuru. He was expressionless, like someone staring at a brand-new lithograph with nothing etched in it yet. “Are you in a hurry?” he asked.

“Not at all.”

“Can we talk a little more?”

“Of course. I have plenty of time.”

Aka weighed what he was about to say before he spoke. “You don’t really like me very much anymore, do you?”

Tsukuru was speechless. Partly because the question had blindsided him, but also because it didn’t seem right to reduce his feelings for the person seated before him into a simple binary equation of like or dislike.

Tsukuru carefully chose his words. “I really can’t say. My feelings are definitely different from back when we were teenagers. But that’s—”

Aka held up a hand to cut him off.

“No need to mince words. And you don’t need to force yourself to like me. No one likes me now. It’s only to be expected. I don’t even like myself much. I used to have a few really good friends. You were one of them. But at a certain stage in life I lost them. Like how Shiro at a certain point lost that special spark…. But you can’t go back. Can’t return an item you’ve already opened. You just have to make do.”

He lowered his hand and placed it on his lap. He began tapping out an irregular rhythm on his kneecap, like he was sending a message in Morse code.

“My father worked so long as a college professor that he picked up the habits professors have. At home he always sounded like he was preaching at us, looking down on us from on high. I hated that, ever since I was a child. But at a certain point it hit me—I’ve started to talk just like him.”

He went on tapping his kneecap.

“I always felt I did a horrible thing to you. It’s true. I—we—had no right to treat you that way. I felt that someday I needed to properly apologize to you. But somehow I never made it happen.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tsukuru said. “That’s another situation where you can’t go back.”

Aka seemed lost in thought. “Tsukuru,” he finally said, “I have a favor to ask.”

“What kind?”

“I have something I want to tell you. A confession, you might call it, that I’ve never told anybody before. Maybe you don’t want to hear it, but I want to open up about my own pain. I’d like you to know what I’ve been carrying around with me. Not that this will make amends for all the pain you endured. It’s just a question of my own feelings and emotions. Will you hear me out? For old times’ sake?”

Tsukuru nodded, uncertain where this was going.

Aka began. “I told you how, until I actually went to college, I didn’t know I wasn’t cut out for academic life. And how I didn’t know I wasn’t cut out for company life, either, until I started working in a bank. You remember? It’s kind of embarrassing. I probably had never taken a good, hard look at myself. But that’s not all there was to it. Until I got married I didn’t understand how I wasn’t suited for marriage. What I’m saying is, the physical relationship between a man and a woman wasn’t for me. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

Tsukuru was silent, and Aka went on.

“What I’m trying to say is, I don’t really feel desire for women. Not that I don’t have any desire at all, but I feel it more for men.”

A deep silence descended on the room. Tsukuru couldn’t hear a single sound. It was a quiet room to begin with.

“That’s not so unusual,” Tsukuru said to fill in the silence.

“You’re right, it’s not so unusual. But to confront that reality at a certain point in your life is a hard thing. Very hard. You can’t just dismiss it with generalities. How should I put it? It’s like you’re standing on the deck of a ship at sea at night and suddenly you’re thrown overboard, alone, into the ocean.”

Tsukuru thought of Haida. About how in the dream—and he presumed it was a dream—he’d come in Haida’s mouth. Tsukuru remembered the utter confusion he’d felt at the time. Being thrown overboard, alone, into the sea at night—the expression hit the mark exactly.

“I think you just need to be honest with yourself, as much as you can,” Tsukuru said, choosing his words. “All you can do is be as honest and free as you can. I’m sorry, but that’s about all I can say.”

“I know you’re aware of this,” Aka said, “but although Nagoya’s one of the largest cities in Japan, in a way it’s not all that big. The population’s large, industries are doing well, and people are affluent, yet the choices you have are unexpectedly limited. It’s not easy for people like us to live here and still be honest with ourselves and free…. Kind of a major paradox, wouldn’t you say? As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.”

“I hope everything will work out for you. I really do,” Tsukuru said. He truly felt that way.

“You’re not angry with me anymore?”

Tsukuru gave a short shake of his head. “No, I’m not angry with you. I’m not angry with anybody.”

Tsukuru suddenly realized he was using the familiar omae to address Aka. It came out naturally at the end. Aka walked with Tsukuru to the elevators.

“I may not have a chance to see you again,” Aka said as they walked down the hallway. “So there’s one more thing I wanted to tell you. You don’t mind, do you?”

Tsukuru shook his head.

“It’s the first thing I always say at our new employee training seminars. I gaze around the room, pick one person, and have him stand up. And this is what I say: I have some good news for you, and some bad news. The bad news first. We’re going to have to rip off either your fingernails or your toenails with pliers. I’m sorry, but it’s already decided. It can’t be changed. I pull out a huge, scary pair of pliers from my briefcase and show them to everybody. Slowly, making sure everybody gets a good look. And then I say: Here’s the good news. You have the freedom to choose which it’s going to be—your fingernails, or your toenails. So, which will it be? You have ten seconds to make up your mind. If you’re unable to decide, we’ll rip off both your fingernails and your toenails. I start the count. At about eight seconds most people say, ‘The toes.’ Okay, I say, toenails it is. I’ll use these pliers to rip them off. But before I do, I’d like you to tell me something. Why did you choose your toes and not your fingers? The person usually says, ‘I don’t know. I think they probably hurt the same. But since I had to choose one, I went with the toes.’ I turn to him and warmly applaud him. And I say, Welcome to the real world.”

Tsukuru gazed wordlessly at his old friend’s delicate face.

“Each of us is given the freedom to choose,” Aka said, winking and smiling. “That’s the point of the story.”

The silver door of the elevator slid open soundlessly, and they said goodbye.