“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.”