"Twice, not three times. And I wasn't suspended, just officially grounded," I explain. I breathe in deeply, then slowly breathe out. "I have times like that, yeah."

"You can't control yourself," Oshima says.

I nod.

"And you hurt other people?"

"I don't mean to. But it's like there's somebody else living inside me. And when I come to, I find out I've hurt somebody."

"Hurt them how much?" Oshima asks.

I sigh. "Nothing major. No broken bones or missing teeth or anything."

Oshima sits down on the bed, crosses his legs, and brushes his hair off his forehead. He's wearing navy blue chinos, a black polo shirt, and white Adidas. "Seems to me you have a lot of issues you've got to deal with."

A lot of issues. I look up. "Don't you have any?"

Oshima holds his hands in the air. "Not all that many. But there is one thing. For me, inside this physical body-this defective container-the most important job is surviving from one day to the next. It could be simple, or very hard. It all depends on how you look at it. Either way, even if things go well, that's not some great achievement. Nobody's going to give me a standing ovation or anything."

I bite my lip for a while, then ask, "Don't you ever think about getting out of that container?"

"You mean leaving my physical body?"

I nod.

"Symbolically? Or for real?"

"Either one."

Oshima flips his hair back with a hand. I can picture the gears going full speed just below the surface of his pale forehead. "Are you thinking you'd like to do that?"

I take a breath. "Oshima, to tell you the unvarnished truth, I don't like the container I'm stuck in. Never have. I hate it, in fact. My face, my hands, my blood, my genes… I hate everything I inherited from my parents. I'd like nothing better than to escape it all, like running away from home."

He gazes into my face and smiles. "You have a nice, muscular body. No matter who you inherited it from, you're quite handsome. Well, maybe a little too unique to be called handsome, exactly. But you're not bad looking. At least I like the way you look. You're smart, you're quick. You've got a nice cock, too. I envy you that. You're going to have tons of girls fall for you, guaranteed. So I can't see what you're dissatisfied with about your container."

I blush.

"Okay, I guess that's all beside the point," Oshima continues. "I'm not crazy about the container I'm in, that's for sure. How could I be-this crummy piece of work? It's pretty inconvenient, I can tell you. Still, inside here, this is what I think: If we reverse the outer shell and the essence-in other words, consider the outer shell the essence and the essence only the shell-our lives might be a whole lot easier to understand."

I stare at my hands, thinking about all that blood on them, how sticky they felt. I think about my own essence, my own shell. The essence of me, surrounded by the shell that's me. But these thoughts are driven away by one indelible image: all that blood.

"How about Miss Saeki?" I ask.

"What do you mean?"

"You think she has issues to overcome?"

"You'd better ask her yourself," Oshima says.

At two I take a cup of coffee on a tray up to Miss Saeki's room, where she's sitting at her desk. Like always there's writing paper and a fountain pen on the desk, but the pen is still capped. Both hands resting on the desk, she's staring off into space. Not like she's looking at anything, just gazing at a place that isn't there. She seems tired. The window behind her is open, the early summer breeze rustling the white lace curtain. The scene looks like some beautiful allegorical painting.

"Thank you," she says when I put the coffee cup on her desk.

"You look a little tired."

She nods. "I imagine I look a lot older when I get tired."

"Not at all. You look wonderful, like always."

She smiles. "For someone so young, you certainly know how to flatter a woman."

My face reddens.

Miss Saeki points to a chair. The same chair as yesterday, in exactly the same position. I take a seat.

"I'm used to being tired, but I don't imagine you are."

"I guess not."

"When I was fifteen I wasn't either, of course." She picks up the coffee cup and takes a sip. "Kafka, what can you see outside?"

I look out the window behind her. "I see trees, the sky, and some clouds. Some birds on tree branches."

"Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?"

"That's right."

"But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn't it?"

"I suppose so."

"Have you ever thought about that?"

"I have."

A surprised look comes over her. "When?"

"When I'm in love," I tell her.

She smiles faintly, and it continues to hover around her lips. This puts me in mind of how refreshing water looks after someone's sprinkled it in a tiny hollow outside on a summer day.

"Are you in love?" she asks.

"Yes."

"And her face and whole being are special and precious to you, each time you see her?"

"That's right. And I might lose those."

Miss Saeki looks at me for a while, and the smile fades away. "Picture a bird perched on a thin branch," she says. "The branch sways in the wind, and each time this happens the bird's field of vision shifts. You know what I mean?"

I nod.

"When that happens, how do you think the bird adjusts?"

I shake my head. "I don't know."

"It bobs its head up and down, making up for the sway of the branch. Take a good look at birds the next time it's windy. I spend a lot of time looking out that window. Don't you think that kind of life would be tiring? Always shifting your head every time the branch you're on sways?"

"I do."

"Birds are used to it. It comes naturally to them. They don't have to think about it, they just do it. So it's not as tiring as we imagine. But I'm a human being, not a bird, so sometimes it does get tiring."

"You're on a branch somewhere?"

"In a manner of speaking," she says. "And sometimes the wind blows pretty hard." She places the cup back on the saucer and takes the cap off her fountain pen.

This is my signal, so I stand up. "Miss Saeki, there's something I've got to ask you."

"Something personal?"

"Yes. And maybe out of line, too."

"But it's important?"

"For me it is."

She puts the pen back on the desk, and her eyes fill with a kind of neutral glow. "All right. Go ahead."

"Do you have any chidlren?"

She takes in a breath and pauses. The expression on her face slowly retreats somewhere far away, then comes back. Kind of like a parade that disappears down a street, then marches back up the same street toward you again.

"Why do you want to know that?"

"It's personal. It's not just some spur-of-the-moment question."

She lifts up her Mont Blanc like she's testing the thickness and heft of it, then sets it on the desk and looks up. "I'm sorry, but I can't give you a yes or no answer. At least right now. I'm tired, and there's a strong wind blowing."

I nod. "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"It's all right. I'm not blaming you," she says gently. "Thank you for the coffee. You make excellent coffee."

I leave and go back down the stairs to my room. I sit on my bed and try to read, but nothing seems to filter into my head. I feel like I'm gazing at some table of random numbers, just following the words with my eyes. I put my book down, go over to the window, and look at the garden. There are birds on some of the branches, but no wind to speak of. Am I in love with Miss Saeki when she was fifteen? Or with the real, fifty-something Miss Saeki upstairs? I don't know anymore. The boundary line separating the two has started to waver, to fade, and I can't focus. And that confuses me. I close my eyes and try to find some center inside to hold on to.