“You’ll have people visiting you at home,” the funeral director had explained.

Yoshio looked away from the table, dialed the number for Rairaiten, and ordered two bowls of vegetable ramen. The owner of the store answered, very awkwardly, “Ah, Mr. Ishibashi. Of course. We’ll bring it over right away.”

After he hung up he could still hear Satoko sniffling. No matter how much she sobbed she couldn’t sob out all her pain.

“Satoko.” Yoshio crouched down again on the tatami and called out to his wife’s back as she sat there, leaning toward the shelf on the altar. “Did you know that Yoshino was seeing this college student?”

It felt like the first time since the murder that he’d used his daughter’s name. Satoko lay prostrate before the altar now and didn’t reply. She was no doubt sobbing again; the candle on the shelf was flickering as her body shook.

“Yoshino isn’t the kind of girl they say she is. She wouldn’t go with guys and…”

His voice started to shake and before he knew it, tears were running down his cheeks. His wife began sobbing aloud, crying with clenched teeth, just as Yoshino used to do as a child.

“I won’t let him get away with it! I don’t care what anyone else says, I won’t allow it!” But his voice wouldn’t work. The words stuck in his throat and he gulped them back.

Some time ago, he couldn’t remember exactly when, Yoshino had made her usual Sunday evening call to them and she and Satoko were on the phone for a long time. The call came in just before Yoshio was about to take a bath, and continued long after he finished, so they must have talked for over an hour.

After his bath Yoshio was enjoying some shochu mixed with oolong tea, watching TV and half listening to their conversation. From Satoko’s answers Yoshio could surmise that Yoshino had been asking questions like “When you and Dad first met, who was the first to say ‘I love you’?” and “Since Dad was in a band and girls were really into him, how did you get him to fall for you?” To each of these Satoko gave an honest answer.

Usually at this point Yoshio would yell at them for talking too long, but considering the topic he wasn’t sure what to say, and instead drank at a faster pace than normal.

When Satoko finally hung up he asked, feigning ignorance, what they’d talked about, and Satoko, a happy look on her face, said, “Yoshino has somebody she likes.”

For a second he was taken aback. Yoshino likes a man? But then he thought it was touching, cute even, that she’d phoned her parents asking about how they’d first met.

“She’s going out with somebody?” Yoshio asked brusquely.

“I don’t think they’re actually going out yet,” Satoko replied. “You know, she always tends to act sort of tough in front of boys. She’s kind of stubborn, not so open… But it sounds like she’s really fallen for this guy. She was crying a bit. She’s still a little girl in a way, isn’t she, calling her parents about this instead of talking with her friends.”

Yoshio didn’t say anything, but instead drained his cup of shochu, and Satoko added, “The boy is apparently the son of a family that owns an upscale inn in Yufuin or Beppu or someplace.”

About a half a year ago Yoshio had taken a trip with the barber’s union to an inn at Yufuin and he was remembering what the town was like. The inn they stayed at was a cheap place, but when he went for a stroll he’d run across a famous old inn with a huge entranceway. The owner’s beautiful young wife just happened to be standing at the entrance, and though she recognized from the yukata they were wearing that they were staying at a different inn, she casually called out to them. When Yoshio and his group commented on how great the air was in Yufuin, the lovely young woman smiled and said, “Please come back and visit us again!”

That night, as he stared at Satoko’s backside as she washed the dishes, he pictured Yoshino in a kimono standing in the threshold of that nice old inn and smiling at him. He grinned wryly at how his mind had leaped ahead a few steps, but actually it didn’t feel too bad to imagine a future like this for her.

Staring at Satoko now, collapsed in tears in front of the altar, Yoshio again muttered, “He won’t get away with it…” If he could go back in time, he’d go back to that night, grab the phone away from Satoko, and tell Yoshino, “I don’t want you to have anything to do with that guy!”

It felt awful not to be able to do that. All he’d done was casually imagine his daughter standing there in a kimono, and he’d ended up feeling sad and impotent.

Koki Tsuruta realized that Keigo Masuo had been on his mind for several days.

There had been no word from the police since they came the day after the murder, so he’d relied on reports in the papers and on TV to follow events.

A classmate he was friends with had murdered a woman and was on the run. Put it like this, and it sounded like he was involved in quite a drama, but actually his days were pretty ordinary, as he stayed holed up in his room overlooking Ohori Park, watching his favorite movies-Ascenseur pour l’échafaud and Citizen Kane. Before he went to sleep each night, he’d switch to porn and make sure to come.

A classmate murdering someone and running away-it sounded like some lousy script he’d written himself. If it actually did become a film, it would be kind of boring. Still, the facts remained: Masuo really had killed a woman and was running from the police. This was no crummy script, but reality.

Ever since the incident, and actually before the incident, Koki had stopped going to school. He was sure the school must be in an uproar over what Keigo had done. He could picture everyone running around, as if it were the night before the annual university festival.

Keigo had been a well-known figure on campus, and those who liked him and those who didn’t were watching, all of them irritated with their selfish desire just to see how this would end up.

Since the murder, Koki had called Keigo’s cell phone every day, but he never answered. Koki realized once again that Keigo was his one link with the outside world. He relied on Keigo for everything he heard about school, about other friends, about girls-information that made Koki feel that he was just like everybody else, living an ordinary college student’s life.

Where was Keigo?

Was he afraid? Was he going to keep on running?

If he’s going to get caught, Koki thought, I don’t want any of this turning-himself-in stuff. He should keep on running as much as he can, until the cops have him completely surrounded, a blazing spotlight on him, and he shouts out some memorable line (which Koki knew he could never come up with), and then he takes his own life.

Koki was watching porn as he thought this, and he looked up and saw a fellatio scene on the screen. Morning had come, the sunlight streaming in on the messy room. The chirping of birds from the nearby park mixed with the slurping sounds of the girl in the movie. Before the scene was over Koki came. He tossed the sticky tissue into the garbage can and yanked up his underwear.

But why did he kill her?

Koki couldn’t think of a good reason why Keigo would kill the girl. He could picture a girl killing Keigo, who could be pretty cold-hearted. That would be a kind of fitting end to his life.

The girl on the screen was still performing fellatio, and Koki switched off the tape and went around the apartment, squinting in the sunlight, closing the curtains. He’d needled his parents into buying these special blackout curtains that even during the day turned the place as dark as night. Thinking of his parents’ money always upset him, but by taming those feelings, he’d been able to persuade them to buy these expensive curtains.

As he sprawled on his bed he pictured the faces of his parents, always calculating how much money they had. How they’d sit there, tapping out figures on their calculators as if the more they stared at their bankbooks, the more money they’d have in their accounts. Koki knew the necessity of money, but he also knew there had to be something more in life. And unless he found it, he couldn’t escape this listlessness.