"Hello," she says in a natural tone of voice, just like when we passed in the corridor of the library. She's wearing a long-sleeved navy blue blouse and a matching knee-length skirt, a thin silver necklace, and small pearl earrings-exactly as I'm used to seeing her. Her high heels make short, dry clicks as she steps onto the porch, a sound that's slightly out of place here. She stands gazing at me from the doorway, as if she's checking to see whether it's the real me or not. Of course it's the real me. Just like she's the real Miss Saeki.

"How about coming in for a cup of tea?" I say.

"I'd like that," she says. And, like she's finally worked up the nerve, she steps inside.

I go to the kitchen and turn on the stove to boil water, trying to get my breathing back to normal.

She sits down at the dining table in the same chair the girl had just been sitting in. "It feels like we're back in the library, doesn't it?" she says.

"Sure does," I agree. "Except for no coffee, and no Oshima."

"And not a book in sight," she says.

I make two cups of herbal tea and carry them out to the table, sitting across from her. Birds chirp outside the open window. The bee's still napping above the windowpane.

Miss Saeki's the first one to speak. "I want you to know it wasn't easy for me to come here. But I had to see you, and talk with you."

I nod. "I'm glad you came."

Her trademark smile plays around her lips. "There's something I have to tell you." Her smile's nearly identical to the young girl's, though with a bit more depth, a slight nuance that moves me.

She wraps her hands around the teacup. I'm gazing at the tiny pearl piercings in her ears. She's thinking, and it's taking her longer than usual.

"I burned up all my memories," she says, deliberately choosing her words. "They went up in smoke and disappeared into the air. So I won't be able to remember things for very long. All sorts of things-including my time with you. That's why I wanted to see you and talk with you as soon as I could. While I can still remember."

I crane my neck and look up at the bee above the window, its little black shadow a single dot on the sill.

"The most important thing," she says quietly, "is you've got to get out of here. As fast as you can. Leave here, go through the woods, and back to the life you left. The entrance is going to close soon. Promise me you will."

I shake my head. "You don't understand this, Miss Saeki, but I don't have any world to go back to. No one's ever really loved me, or wanted me, my entire life. I don't know who to count on other than myself. For me, the idea of a life I left is meaningless."

"But you still have to go back."

"Even if there's nothing there? Even if nobody cares if I'm there or not?"

"That's not why," she says. "It's what I want. For you to be there."

"But you're not there, are you?"

She looks down at her hands clasping the teacup. "No, I'm not. I'm not there anymore."

"What do you want from me if I do go back?"

"Just one thing," she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. "I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don't care if everybody else forgets."

Silence descends on us for a time. A profound silence.

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it plugs up my throat and makes it hard to breathe. I somehow swallow it back, finally choosing another. "Are memories such an important thing?"

"It depends," she replies, and lightly closes her eyes. "In some cases they're the most important thing there is."

"Yet you burned yours up."

"I had no use for them anymore." Miss Saeki brings her hands together on the table, her palms down the way the young girl's were the first time. "Kafka? I have a favor to ask. I want you to take that painting with you."

"You mean the one in my room in the library? The painting of the shore?"

Miss Saeki nods. "Yes, Kafka on the Shore. I want you to take it. Where, I don't care. Wherever you're going."

"But doesn't it belong to somebody?"

She shakes her head. "It's mine. He gave it to me as a present when he went away to college in Tokyo. Ever since then I've had it with me. Wherever I lived, I always hung it on the wall in my room. When I started working at the Komura Library I put it back in that room, where it first hung, but that was just temporary. I left a letter for Oshima in my desk in the library telling him I wanted you to have the painting. After all, the painting is originally yours."

"Mine?"

She nods. "You were there. And I was there beside you, watching you. On the shore, a long time ago. The wind was blowing, there were white puffy clouds, and it was always summer."

I close my eyes. I'm at the beach and it's summer. I'm lying back on a deck chair. I can feel the roughness of its canvas on my skin. I breathe in deeply the smell of the sea and the tide. Even with my eyes closed, the sun is glaring. I can hear the sound of the waves lapping at the shore. The sound recedes, then draws closer, as if time is making it quiver. Nearby, someone is painting a picture of me. And beside him sits a young girl in a short-sleeved light blue dress, gazing in my direction. She has straight hair, a straw hat with a white ribbon, and she's scooping up the sand. Steady, long fingers-the fingers of a pianist. Her smooth-as-porcelain arms glisten in the sunlight. A natural-looking smile plays at her lips. I'm in love with her. And she's in love with me.

That's the memory.

"I want you to have that painting with you forever," Miss Saeki says. She stands up, goes to the window, and looks outside. The sun's still high in the sky. The bee's still asleep. Miss Saeki holds up a hand to shield her eyes and looks at something far off, then turns to face me. "You have to go," she says.

I go over to her. Her ear brushes against my neck, the earring hard against my skin. I rest both palms on her back like I'm deciphering some sign there. Her hair brushes my cheek. She holds me tight, her fingers digging hard into my back. Fingers clinging to the wall that's time. The smell of the sea, the sound of waves breaking on the shore. Someone calling my name from far, far away.

"Are you my mother?" I'm finally able to ask.

"You already know the answer to that," Miss Saeki says.

She's right-I do know the answer. But neither one of us can put it into words. Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.

"A long time ago I abandoned someone I shouldn't have," she says. "Someone I loved more than anything else. I was afraid someday I'd lose this person. So I had to let go myself. If he was going to be stolen away from me, or I was going to lose him by accident, I decided it was better to discard him myself. Of course I felt anger that didn't fade, that was part of it. But the whole thing was a huge mistake. It was someone I should never have abandoned."

I listen in silence.

"You were discarded by the one person who never should have done that," Miss Saeki says. "Kafka-do you forgive me?"

"Do I have the right to?"

She looks at my shoulder and nods several times. "As long as anger and fear don't prevent you."

"Miss Saeki, if I really do have the right to, then yes-I do forgive you," I tell her.

Mother, you say. I forgive you. And with those words, audibly, the frozen part of your heart crumbles.

Silently, she lets go of me. She takes the hairpin out of her hair and without a moment's hesitation stabs the sharp tip into the inner flesh of her left arm, hard. With her right hand she presses down tightly on a vein, and blood begins to seep out. The first drop plops audibly to the floor. Without a word she holds her arm out toward me. Another drop of blood falls to the floor.

I bend over and put my lips on the small wound, lick her blood with my tongue, close my eyes, and savor the taste. I hold the blood in my mouth and slowly swallow it. Her blood goes down, deep in my throat. It's quietly absorbed by the dry outer layer of my heart. Only now do I understand how much I've wanted that blood. My mind is someplace far away, though my body is still right here-just like a living spirit. I feel like sucking down every last drop of blood from her, but I can't. I take my lips off her arm and look into her face.