Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE 5 Centimeters per Second 1 That night, she dreamed. It was a dream from a very long time ago. She was still a child, and so was he. It was a quiet night, and snow was falling soundlessly in a vast, rural, silvery landscape. Only the lights of a few sparse houses were visible, far in the distance, and the only marks in the new-fallen snow were the footprints they’d left. A big, solitary cherry tree stood there. It was deeper and darker than the night around it, like a bottomless abyss had suddenly opened in space. The two of them stood in front of it, transfixed. As she gazed at the endlessly black trunk and branches, at the countless snowflakes drifting down between them, she considered her future. The boy standing next to her—someone who’d been her lifeline until now, someone she loved—was going far away. She’d already prepared herself for that; she’d come to terms with it. Ever since he’d written a few weeks ago and told her he’d be transferring schools, she’d thought, over and over again, about what that meant. But still. Still, when she thought of losing the height of his shoulder as he stood next to her, and his kind presence, she felt that particular anxiety and loneliness that came from peeking into fathomless darkness. I never thought I could feel that again, she thought as she dreamed. And yet there it was, so vivid it might have been brand-new. I wish this snow was a flurry of cherry blossoms instead, she thought. I wish it was spring now. I wish we’d come through that winter safely together and greeted the spring. I wish we lived in the same town and that we always looked at cherry blossoms like this on our way home. I wish that was what we were doing now. One night, he was in his apartment, reading a book. He’d gone to bed around midnight, but he’d given up on actually trying to fall asleep. He’d pulled a random book out of the stack on his floor and was reading it while drinking a beer. It was a cold, quiet night. He had the TV on with the volume turned down low in lieu of background music, and a late-night foreign film was playing. The curtain was half open, and beyond it were the countless lights of the city and the falling snow. It had started snowing after noon that day; the precipitation had sporadically turned into rain, then back into snow, but after the sun went down, the snowflakes had gradually grown larger until an earnest snowfall was coming down. He couldn’t concentrate on his book, so he turned off the TV. Then it was too quiet. The last trains had already run; he couldn’t hear the noise of traffic or the sound of the wind, and he could sense the snow falling in the world outside, on the other side of the wall. Out of nowhere, a sense of nostalgia, of warm protection, came back to him. While he was trying to figure out where it had come from, he remembered the cherry tree he’d seen that winter, long ago. …How many years ago was it? It had been at the end of his first year of middle school, so fifteen years now. Sleep showed no sign of coming. Sighing, he closed the book and drained the last of his beer in one gulp. Three weeks ago, he’d left the company where he’d worked for close to five years. He didn’t have any leads for his next job, and he’d been drifting absently through one day to the next. Still, his heart was calmer and more tranquil than it had been at any point in the past few years. …What’s the matter with me? he wondered. He got up from the kotatsu table, took his coat from its peg on the wall (his suit was still hanging beside it) and pulled it on, stepped into his shoes in the entryway, grabbed a vinyl umbrella, and went outside. As the snow softly fell on his umbrella, he walked to the local convenience store, slowly enough that the trip took about five minutes. Setting a shopping basket that held milk and deli sides down at his feet, he hesitated in front of the magazine rack, then picked up a monthly science magazine and flipped through it. He’d read this one enthusiastically in high school, but he hadn’t picked it up in a few years. There was an article about receding ice at the South Pole, and one about gravitational interference between galaxies, and one about the discovery of a new elementary particle, and one about interaction between nanoparticles and the natural environment. The world was still filled with discoveries and adventure, he mused as he skimmed the articles. Suddenly, he was struck by a sense of déjà vu: He’d felt like this long ago. After the space of a breath, he realized, Oh, it’s the music. The music playing from the store’s sound system was a hit song he’d heard over and over years ago, probably when he was still in middle school. As he was reading through the fragments of the world described in the science magazine with that nostalgic music in his ears, feelings he’d thought he’d forgotten long ago had welled up in his heart, stirring his emotions. Even after the wave had passed, gentle ripples spread over its surface. When he’d left the store, his chest still held a little of that heat. It had been a very long time since he’d really noticed where his heart was. As he watched the snow fall steadily, he thought of the season when it would change, at last, into cherry blossoms. 2 After Takaki Tohno graduated from high school on Tanegashima, he moved to Tokyo to attend university. He rented a small apartment about a thirty-minute walk from Ikebukuro Station for a convenient commute. He’d lived in Tokyo from the time he was eight until he was thirteen, but he’d been in Setagaya Ward then, and that was the only area he remembered. Aside from that, Tokyo was practically unknown territory. Compared with the people on the little island where he’d spent his teenage years, the residents of Tokyo seemed coarse and indifferent, and their speech was rough. People spat on the street without a second thought, and the roadsides were littered with cigarette butts and countless small scraps of garbage. He had no idea why the streets had to be strewn with plastic bottles and magazines and convenience store box lunch containers. His memory of Tokyo was of a calmer and more refined place. Well, never mind. At any rate, I’ll live here from now on, he thought. He’d transferred schools twice, and he’d learned how to make himself at home in new places. Besides, he wasn’t a powerless child anymore. He still had vivid memories of the anxiety he’d felt when they’d moved from Nagano to Tokyo because of his father’s job. As he held his parents’ hands, the landscape he’d seen from the train between Omiya and Shinjuku was nothing like the mountainous scenery he was used to. He couldn’t imagine himself living here. However, when he’d transferred from Tokyo to Tanegashima a few years later, he’d felt rejected then, too. When their propeller plane had landed at the island’s tiny airport, and when he’d looked out at the farm fields going by as his father drove, what he’d felt was an intense homesickness for Tokyo. In the end, everywhere was the same. Besides, I’m here of my own free will this time, he thought, standing in the little apartment with its stacks of boxes he hadn’t unpacked yet, as he gazed through the window at the layered streets of Tokyo. His four years at the university hadn’t held anything worth mentioning, at least not to him. His science department classes had kept him busy, and he’d had to devote a good part of his time to studying. However, he hadn’t hung out much on campus aside from the times when he actually had to be there. Instead, he’d spent his days working part-time jobs, or going to movies on his own, or wandering around the city. Even on the days when he left his apartment to go to school, if given the opportunity, he’d sometimes pass right by the university and spend his time reading a book in a small park on the way to Ikebukuro Station instead. At first, the sheer number and variety of people who cut across the park made his head spin, but before long, he got used to it. He made a few friends at school and work, and as time went on, he fell out of touch with most of them; however, he did manage to build closer friendships with a handful. He’d get together with one or two others at his apartment or theirs, and they’d stay up all night, drinking cheap booze and smoking cigarettes and talking about all sorts of things. Over four years, a few of his values slowly changed, and a few others grew more entrenched. In the fall of his freshman year, he had a girlfriend. They’d met through his part-time job; she was his age and still lived with her parents in Yokohama. Back then, he sold box lunches for the student co-op during lunch. He’d wanted to find a part-time job outside the school, but he was busy with classes, and the job at the student co-op was convenient, letting him turn his lunch break into at least a little cash. When second period ended at 12:10, he’d run to the cafeteria, pull a cart loaded with box lunches out of the storeroom, and drag it over to sell them. He had a coworker, and they managed to sell the full hundred or so in thirty minutes. In the fifteen minutes that were left before third period, the two would sit at a corner of a cafeteria table and wolf down their own lunches. He worked that job for three months. During that time, his coworker was the girl from Yokohama. She was the first woman he’d ever dated, and he learned all sorts of things from her. His days with her held joy and pain he’d never known before. She was the first person he ever slept with, too. He learned just how many emotions humans carried inside while they went about their days. Some of them could be controlled, but the vast majority could not, and neither jealousy nor love would behave the way he wanted them to. They went out for about a year and a half, and it ended when a guy he didn’t know told the girl he had feelings for her. “I still really love you a lot, Tohno, but you don’t like me all that much, you know. I can tell, and it just hurts,” she’d said, and she’d cried in his arms. He’d wanted to tell her, “That’s not true,” but he also felt responsible for making her feel that way. And so he’d let go. For the first time, he’d discovered how emotional pain could even transfer into the physical. One thing he still remembered vividly about her was the way she’d looked before they started going out, when they were sitting at the cafeteria table together after finishing their sales, wolfing down their own lunches. He always ate whatever the job gave him, but she’d bring small handmade lunches from home. Still in her work apron, she’d eaten her meals very carefully, right down to the last grain of rice. Her lunch was only half the size of his, and yet she was always the last one to finish. When he’d teased her about it, she’d sounded a little upset. “You should eat more slowly, Tohno. Savor it.” It wasn’t until much later that he realized she’d been talking about their time in the cafeteria together. The next woman he went out with was another work acquaintance. In his junior year, he worked as an assistant to a teacher at a cram school. Four days a week, when his own classes ended, he’d hustle down to Ikebukuro Station, take the Yamanote Line to Takadanobaba, then transfer to the Tozai Line and ride it to the cram school in Kagurazaka. It was a small school, with only a math and an English teacher. He was one of five assistants, and he worked specifically for the math teacher. He was a young, friendly man in his midthirties, married with children, had a big heart and a house in the city, and although he was extremely strict when it came to work, his abilities and charm were definitely enough to justify his popularity. That teacher was very efficient about drumming into his students the math that had been stunted and pared down to focus only on the university entrance exams. At the same time, he skillfully wove occasional glimpses of the charm and significance of the pure mathematics that lay beyond it into his classes. Being an assistant at those lectures actually deepened Takaki’s understanding of the mathematical analysis he was studying at the university. For some reason, the teacher took a liking to him as well, exempting him from the odd jobs the other student assistants did, such as keeping the register or grading assignments. Instead, he entrusted him with more of the critical tasks, such as drawing up a rough draft of the cram school textbook and conducting trend analyses for the entrance exam problems. He did everything he could to be worthy of that trust. The job was more than meaningless busy work, and the pay wasn’t bad, either. The girl was another assistant, a Waseda student. Of the women around him, she was by far the most beautiful. She had lovely long hair, startlingly large eyes, and although she wasn’t very tall, she had an outstanding figure. He thought she was beautiful in the way animals were, rather than girls. Like a vibrant deer, say, or a bird soaring high in the sky. Naturally, she was popular, and the students, teachers, and student assistants all made frequent excuses to speak to her. However, he found himself avoiding her from day one. (She was pleasant to look at but too intimidatingly beautiful to strike up a casual conversation with.) For that very reason, though, it wasn’t long before he noticed a certain tendency in her—something wrong, he might even say. No matter who spoke to her, the girl responded with a charming smile, but she never went out of her way to speak to anyone else unless she needed to. The people around her completely failed to notice this distant behavior. As a matter of fact, they seemed to think she was very sociable. “She’s gorgeous, but she isn’t full of herself. She’s unassuming and easy to get along with.” That was the general opinion of her. He thought it was strange, but he didn’t feel like going around correcting them, and he wasn’t particularly curious about the reasons behind her behavior or the misunderstanding. If she didn’t want to associate with people, she didn’t have to. He simply thought, It takes all kinds, I guess. Everyone was a little warped in one way or another; it was just a matter of how much. Plus, he didn’t want to get involved in anything troublesome. However, one day, he had to speak to her. It was a cold day in December, just before Christmas. On that day, the math teacher had gone home, citing urgent business, and he and the girl ended up staying at the cram school by themselves to do prep work on the textbook. They’d been there alone for nearly an hour when he realized that she looked rather odd. He’d been focused on drafting problems when he sensed that something wasn’t right and glanced up. Sitting across from him, she was looking down and trembling. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the paper in front of her, but they weren’t focused on anything. Her forehead was wet with sweat. Startled, he spoke to her, but she didn’t respond, so he got up and shook her shoulder. “Hey, Sakaguchi! What’s the matter? Are you okay?” “…dicine.” “Huh?” “Medicine. Need to take it; get me a drink,” she said in an oddly flat voice. He ducked out, bought some tea from the vending machine in the hall, opened the pull tab, and held it out to her. With shaking hands, she took a sheet of pills out of the bag by her feet and said, “Three.” He pushed three small yellow pills off the sheet, put them into her mouth, and held the tea so she could drink it. His fingertips touched her lustrous lips, and they were startlingly hot. They only dated for three months, but she left him with a deep wound he’d never manage to forget. He’d probably done the same to her. It was the first time he’d ever fallen for anyone so quickly and the first time he’d ever hated that same person so deeply. There were two months when they were desperate and single-minded about finding ways to get the other to love them more and one month where they thought only of how to deal an irremediable blow to the other. Unbelievable happiness and ecstasy were followed by days too terrible to share with anyone. They said lots of things to each other that they never should have. Still. It’s strange, isn’t it? he thought. Even after all that, his most vivid memory of her was from that December day before the two of them had started going out. On that winter day, a little while after she’d taken her medicine, her face had come back to life right before his eyes. The sight made him catch his breath, like he had witnessed something mysterious and sacred. Like a tuft of flowers no one had ever seen before, the only one of its kind in the world, and he was watching it bloom. He got the feeling he’d seen one of the world’s secret moments like this before, long ago. His thought then was terribly powerful: I mustn’t lose somebody like this ever again. The fact that she was dating the math teacher couldn’t have mattered less. He started job hunting late, in the summer of his senior year. It had taken him that long to feel like going out in public again after the breakup in March. Somehow, thanks in part to the enthusiastic pressure applied by his kindly adviser, he managed to land a job by autumn. He had no idea whether it was a job he actually wanted to do, or one he should be doing, but either way, he needed work. He wanted to see more of the world than he could as a researcher at the university. He’d stayed in the same place long enough. After the graduation ceremony, since he’d boxed up all his possessions, he came back to an empty apartment. From the little east-facing window in the kitchen, he could see the Sunshine high-rise, tinted by the evening sun, towering behind the old wooden buildings. From the south-facing window, through the gaps between the mixed-use buildings, he could see the skyscrapers of Shinjuku, small with distance. They were over two hundred meters tall, and they looked completely different depending on the time of day and the weather. Like mountain peaks in the sun’s first rays, they shone in the early morning sunlight; like a wharf in a rough ocean, on rainy days, the buildings’ shapes blended into the pale rain. He’d seen these kinds of views, filtered through a variety of emotions, for four years. At length, darkness began to fall outside the window, and the innumerable city lights were proudly driving it back. Pulling over the ashtray he’d set on top of a box, he took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. Sitting down cross-legged on the tatami flooring, exhaling smoke, he gazed at the swarm of lights that twinkled through the thick atmosphere. This is where I’m going to live, he thought. 3 The company where he’d found a job was a midsize software developer in Mitaka. His occupation was software engineer. He’d been assigned to the Mobile Solutions department; his main clients were communications service providers and device manufacturers, and he was part of a small team that developed software for cell phones and other portable information devices. Something he learned only after he’d taken the job was that being a programmer really suited him. It was a job that required focus and perseverance in isolation, but the work he put in was never wasted effort. When the code he’d written didn’t work as intended, the cause always lay in him, without exception. The act of thinking and reflecting, thinking and rethinking, to create thousands of lines of code that he knew would work gave him a joy he’d never felt before. His job kept him busy, he almost invariably got home late at night, and he was lucky to get five days off a month, but no matter how many hours he spent sitting in front of a computer, he never got tired of it. In a tidy, mostly white office, in a cubicle partitioned off for his exclusive use, he spent day after day typing away on a keyboard. He wasn’t sure whether it was common in this line of work or just particular to the company where he’d landed a job, but the employees almost never interacted with one another for reasons other than work. None of the teams was in the habit of going out for drinks after work; everyone ate convenience store lunches at their own desks, and they didn’t even exchange the standard greetings when someone went out on business or home for the day. Meeting times were kept to a minimum, and necessary discussions were held almost entirely via in-house e-mail. As a rule, the only sound in the spacious office was the muted clicking of keyboards. Although there had to be over a hundred people on the floor, he barely felt their presence. At first, the stark difference between this and his college relationships bewildered him, but back then, his interactions with people had consisted of endless chatter that went nowhere, and everyone had drunk a lot of alcohol even though there was no real reason for it. It didn’t take him long to get used to the quiet environment. He’d never been a big talker anyway. When he finished work, he caught what was very nearly the last Chuo Line train from Mitaka Station, got off at Shinjuku, and walked back to his little one-room condo in Nakano-Sakaue. He took a taxi when he was completely exhausted, but as a rule, he walked. It took him about thirty minutes. He’d moved to that apartment after graduation. The rent would have been cheaper over in Mitaka, where his company was, but he’d felt a resistance to living too near his work. More than anything, he’d wanted to get closer to the distant view he’d seen from his apartment in Ikebukuro, to the skyscrapers of Nishi-Shinjuku. Maybe that explained why his favorite time of day was when he’d passed Ogikubo on the train, the skyscrapers of Nishi-Shinjuku had appeared beyond the window, and he was watching them gradually draw nearer. The last Tokyo-bound train was empty enough to have a few vacant seats, and he would take one, still wearing his suit and filled with the pleasant, well-earned fatigue of the day’s work. As he gazed at the skyscrapers, watching their small shapes slip in and out of view behind the mixed-use buildings, before long, they rose up in front of him as bold entities, in time with the clackety-clack vibrations of the train. The night sky over Tokyo was always oddly bright, and the buildings were black silhouettes against it. Even at this hour, beautiful yellow light shone from their windows, showing that people were at work. Aircraft warning lamps blinked red, steady as breathing. When he watched them, he could feel as if he was still bound for something distant and beautiful, even now. At times like that, something would tremble in the depths of his heart. Then morning came again, and off to the company he went. He’d buy a can of coffee from the vending machine in the building’s entrance, punch his timecard, take his seat, and turn on his computer. While the operating system booted up, he’d drink his coffee and look over the day’s work schedule. Using his mouse to start up several of the necessary programs, he positioned his fingers over his keyboard’s home keys. Thinking up a few algorithms that would get him to his destination, he weighed them, then typed in the application programming interfaces, assembling procedures. He moved the mouse cursor and the caret in the editor as if they were extensions of himself. His thoughts ran to the operating system that lay beyond the APIs, the middleware beyond the operating system, and to what lay beyond that: the workings of the hardware—a mass of silicon—and the fantastical behavior of the electrons. The more proficient he grew at programming, the more reverence he came to hold for computers themselves. He’d had some vague knowledge of the quantum theory that lay behind all semiconductor technology, but when he began to interact with and operate a computer on a daily basis as a professional, the more familiar it became to him—and the more he was compelled to think about the unbelievable complexity of the tool he was using and the work of the people who’d made it possible. It struck him as almost mystical. There was the theory of relativity, which had been created to describe the universe, and quantum theory, which described nanoscale behavior. When he thought that these two might someday be united by an impending grand theory or by superstring theory—the very act of using a computer seemed like connecting with some secret of the world. And although he had no clear reason for thinking so, he felt as if that secret held a hidden passage that would lead to the dreams and emotions that had passed him by long ago, to the places he’d loved and the music he’d listened to after school—and to the promise he’d made and failed to keep to a girl who’d been special to him. He threw himself deeply into his work with a kind of urgency, as if he was trying to retake something precious. Like a lone performer in deep dialogue with his instrument, he kept typing quietly on his keyboard. Once he’d joined the working world, a few years passed in the blink of an eye. At first, he felt like he was in a period of growth, the type he hadn’t encountered in a long time. As his programming skills improved, it reminded him of the pride he’d felt in middle school, when his body was maturing into the body of an adult, acquiring muscle day by day—the nostalgic sensation of his young, frail body being remodeled into something new. Gradually, his work earned the confidence of those around him, and his income rose proportionately. He bought a new suit for work once every season. He spent his days off alone, cleaning his apartment or reading, and about once every six months, he’d meet up with old friends and go drinking. He no longer made new friends or lost old ones. Every day, he’d leave home at half past eight, then return after one in the morning. The routine repeated without end. No matter the season or the weather, the skyscrapers of Nishi-Shinjuku were breathtakingly beautiful from the train. As a matter of fact, the older he got, the brighter that view seemed to shine. Every so often, that beauty seemed to be confronting him with something. However, he didn’t know what that something was. “Mr. Tohno.” One Sunday afternoon in the middle of the rainy season, during the first sunbreak in quite a while, someone called his name on a platform at Shinjuku Station. She was a bespectacled young woman in a beige broad-brimmed sun hat. At first glance, he had no idea who she was, but her intellectual atmosphere seemed somehow familiar. As he hesitated, not sure what to say, she said, “You work for XX Systems, don’t you?” and that was when he finally remembered. “Yes, um, you’re with Yoshimura’s department…” “It’s Mizuno. Oh good; I’m glad you remember me.” “I’m sorry; last time we met, you were wearing a suit, so…” “Ah yes, I’m wearing a hat today, too. I knew you right away, Mr. Tohno. You look like a student when you’re out of your suit, you know.” A student? She probably didn’t mean anything by it, he thought. Without really intending to, they started toward the stairs, side by side. The woman looked like she was still in college as well. The pastel pink on her toenails shone in a subdued way from the toes of her brown wedge sandals. What did she say her name was…? Uh, Ms. Mizuno. When he’d visited a client company the previous month for a product delivery, she’d been the subordinate of the client’s point of contact, and he’d met her twice. They hadn’t done much more than exchange business cards, but she’d struck him as a very dedicated person. That impression and her clear voice had stayed with him. Yes, he was pretty sure her name had been Risa Mizuno. He remembered thinking that the look of the characters on her business card had very neatly matched his impression of the woman herself. They descended the stairs from the platform, and as he absently turned right into the station corridor, he asked her, “You use the East Gate, too, Ms. Mizuno?” “Um, yes, or any of them.” “What do you mean?” “Oh, I don’t actually have any plans. The weather’s nice, though, now that the rain’s let up, so I was thinking I’d do some shopping,” she said, smiling. It was contagious, and he smiled back. “Same here. If you’d like, then, do you want to go get something to drink somewhere?” At that, Mizuno broke into a smile that made his heart skip a beat. “Yes,” she said. At a cramped underground café near the East Gate, they had coffee, talked for a couple of hours, exchanged contact information, then went their separate ways. Once he was alone, as he walked between the shelves at a bookstore, he noticed that his throat was tired in a mild, tingling way. Come to think of it, it had been quite a while since he’d spoken with someone for so long with no clear objective. It was rather incredible that they’d talked for two hours without getting bored on what was practically their first meeting, he realized. Maybe being finished with their work project had made it easier for them to relax around each other. They’d shared gossip from their respective companies, the places where they lived, their student days—nothing special, but they’d been a good match, conversationally. The whole thing had been very pleasant. For the first time in ages, the depths of his chest felt warm. A week after that, he texted her an invitation to dinner. He finished up his overtime early; they met up in Kichijouji and dined together, and it was past ten in the evening when they parted. The next week, she invited him to a restaurant, and the week after, on his invitation, they met up on a weekend for a movie and a meal. In that way, courteously, slowly and carefully, they built their relationship. Risa Mizuno was the type of woman who grew more appealing as you got to know her. At first glance, her glasses and long black hair made her seem plain, but when he looked closer, her features were startlingly symmetrical. The way she dressed as if she was trying to cover up, her reticence, and the embarrassment in her gestures all made it seem as if she didn’t want to be viewed as “pretty.” She was two years younger than he was, and her personality was sincere and genuine. She never shouted, and she spoke with a slow, pleasant rhythm. Being with her helped him relax. Her condo was in Nishi-Kokubunji, and her company was on the Chuo Line as well, so their dates always took place along that line. He could sense her affection clearly when their shoulders brushed on the train every so often, in her gestures when they shared a meal, and in her gait when they walked side by side. Already, they both knew that if one of them took that next step, the other probably wouldn’t refuse. Still, he wasn’t able to decide if he should. In the past…, he thought as he watched her walk away toward the opposite platform at Kichijouji Station. I’ve always fallen too fast, I think. Then I burn through it in no time, and I lose her. He didn’t want to do that again. At the end of that summer, in his apartment one rainy evening, he saw a news clip about the successful launch of an H-IIA rocket. It was an extremely humid day, and he’d shut the windows all the way and turned the air conditioner on low. Even then, a clammy humidity had crept into the room along with the sound of rain striking the ground and cars gliding over the wet road. The TV showed an H-IIA rocket rising from the familiar Tanegashima Space Center, spitting out enormous flames. The screen cut to footage of the H-IIA climbing through the clouds, shot with a super-telephoto lens, then to footage from a camera mounted on the rocket’s main body, looking down over the auxiliary boosters. Through gaps in the clouds far below, he could see all of Tanegashima receding. He had a clear view of the town of Nakatane, where he’d spent his high school years, and its coastline. For a moment, a shiver ran through him. He didn’t really know what he should feel, seeing a view like that. Tanegashima wasn’t his hometown anymore. His parents had transferred to Nagano for work quite a while back and would probably settle there permanently. To him, the island was just a place he’d passed through. His beer was getting lukewarm; he drained it in one gulp, feeling the bitter liquid travel down his throat and settle in his stomach. The young female newscaster was blandly explaining that the satellite that had just been launched would handle communications for mobile devices. So that launch wasn’t entirely unrelated to my work. Still, he thought, life’s taken me very far away. He’d seen his first launch at seventeen. A girl in a school uniform had been standing next to him. They’d been in different classes, but they’d been friends—or rather, she’d gotten attached to him. Her name was Kanae Sumida; she’d been a cute, lively girl with a deep tan from surfing. The intervening decade had gently smoothed out the spikes and dips of emotion, but still, thinking about Sumida made his heart hurt just a little, even now. Her height and the scent of her sweat, her voice and smile and tearful face—all the little traces of her came back to him in vivid force, along with the colors and sounds and smells of the island where he’d spent his adolescence. The emotion resembled regret, but he knew what he’d done then was all he was able to do. He’d seen it all in sharp relief back then: the reason Sumida had been drawn to him, the moment she’d tried to tell him she loved him, his own feelings when he hadn’t let her say it, the moment of exaltation when he’d seen the launch, and her resignation afterward. But despite that clarity, he hadn’t been able to act. When he’d left for Tokyo to go to the university, he’d shared his plane’s departure time with only one person: Sumida. He’d left on a bright, windy day in March. In the parking lot of the small airport, which looked rather like a ferry terminal, the two of them had exchanged a few final words. The conversation had tended to trail off, and Sumida had cried all the way through it. But when they said good-bye, she’d smiled. Back then, Sumida had already been far stronger, and far more mature, than he was. Had he been able to return her smile? He couldn’t remember. It was 2:20 AM. He needed to get to sleep; tomorrow was a workday. The news was over, and a home shopping program had started while he wasn’t paying attention. He turned off the TV, brushed his teeth, set the air conditioner to shut down in an hour, turned out the lights, and got into bed. His phone was charging by his pillow, and a little light on it blinked, alerting him to a new text. When he opened the phone, the white light of the display illuminated the room dimly. The text was from Mizuno, an invitation to dinner. He went to lie back in bed, closing his eyes for a little while. Various patterns rose behind his eyelids. The optic nerves register the pressure of the eyelids on the eyeballs as light, which means humans can never see true darkness… Who had he learned that from? Back then, I used to write texts I never sent, he remembered, out of nowhere. At first, they’d been intended for a certain girl. He didn’t know her e-mail address, and somewhere along the way, they’d stopped corresponding by letter. Even after he no longer wrote letters to her, when he felt an emotion he couldn’t completely contain, he’d written texts as if he was telling her about it, then deleted them without sending. For him, it had been a period of preparation, a run-up to setting off into the world alone. However, gradually, he’d stopped addressing the texts to anyone. They’d become vague soliloquies, and finally the habit itself had disappeared. When he realized that, he’d thought, I must be ready now. He wouldn’t write letters to her anymore. He was sure no more letters would arrive from her. He vividly remembered the raw anxiety he’d felt as he thought about it. On a fundamental level, those feelings were far too closely connected with his current self, and he was appalled at the idea that he ultimately might not have changed at all. He’d been ignorant then—and arrogant and cruel. No, he thought, opening his eyes. At least now I have someone who’s clearly special to me. I’m probably in love with Mizuno, he thought. Next time they met, he’d tell her so. Making that resolution, he responded to her text. This time, he’d face his feelings with Mizuno. Just as Sumida had done for him, on that last day. That day, at the island’s airport, they’d been wearing casual clothes instead of their uniforms. The brisk wind had rustled Sumida’s hair, the power lines, and the leaves of the Phoenix palms. She was crying, but she’d smiled at him. “I was in love with you for a very long time, Tohno. Thank you for everything,” she’d said. 4 The project team he was assigned to in his third year at work proved to be a turning point in his career. The project itself had been in progress before he joined the company. Over a long period of time, it had strayed farther and farther off course, and the company had finally decided to drastically cut back its original goals and end it. The work was technically the cleanup after a defeat; the general manager who’d told him about his transfer had ordered him to organize the bloated, labyrinthine tangle of programs and attempt to salvage a viable product, in order to keep the damage to a minimum. Essentially, his abilities had been recognized and were now being exploited. At first, he did his job according to the team leader’s instructions. However, he promptly realized that working that way led to an unnecessary accumulation of subroutines, and it was actively making the situation worse. He pointed this out to the team leader, but the man wouldn’t listen, so he was left with no options but to work extra overtime hours for a month. For the duration of that month, he did his job as the leader ordered—and at the same time did the job using the methods he thought were best. The results were clear: Unless they did it his way, the problems wouldn’t be resolved. He went back to the leader with those results, but not only was he reprimanded harshly, he was ordered not to do anything without permission again. Bewildered, he looked over the other team members’ work, but they were simply doing as the leader told them. If this went on, the project would never end. It had been built on mistaken premises, and unless its foundation was corrected, any progress they made would only compound the errors in increasingly complicated ways. On top of that, the project had gone on far too long without having those initial conditions reviewed. As the company said, it needed to think about the best way to shut it down. After hesitating for a while, he spoke about it with the general manager who’d ordered his transfer. The manager listened to him for a long time but ultimately asked him to uphold the team leader’s position while simultaneously and skillfully bringing the project to a close. That’s not possible, he thought. For more than three months after that, the utterly futile work continued. He could see that the team leader wanted to make the project succeed, but that didn’t mean he could just shut up and continue to do work that only made things worse. He continued to work independently, the only member of the team to do so, even though it got him in trouble with the leader time and time again. The one saving grace was that the general manager appeared to tacitly approve of his actions. But day by day, the other staff members were creating chaos that went above and beyond the results of his work. The number of cigarettes he went through increased—and so did the amount of beer he drank after he got home. One day, he just couldn’t take it anymore, and he begged the general manager to take him off the team or talk the leader around. If that couldn’t be done, he said he’d leave the company. In the end, the team leader was transferred the very next week. The new leader who replaced him was in charge of another project as well, and he didn’t hide his dislike of the man responsible for his increased workload. But he was capable of rational decisions, and that was what mattered. At any rate, the finish line was finally approaching now. Work got busier and busier, and Takaki grew more and more isolated at the office, but he did his job for all he was worth. At this point, there was nothing else he could do. He’d done everything he could. As all of that was going on, the time he spent with Risa Mizuno grew even more precious to him. Once every week or two, he went to her condo in Nishi-Kokubunji after work. They’d meet at nine thirty in the evening, and sometimes he bought a small bouquet of flowers for her. The florist near his company was only open until eight, so he’d duck out of the office at seven, buy flowers, put them in a coin locker at the train station, then hurry back to the company and work until eight thirty. This kind of surreptitious maneuver was fun. Then he’d board the crowded Chuo Line, taking care not to let the bouquet get crushed, and make his way to the station where Mizuno was waiting. Sometimes they’d spend Saturday nights together at one of their apartments. He stayed at Mizuno’s place more frequently, but she sometimes spent the night at his. There were two toothbrushes in each of their apartments now; he kept several pairs of underwear at her place, and before he knew it, he had more cooking utensils and spices. The sort of magazines he’d never read before gradually accumulated at his place, too, and it made him feel warm inside. Mizuno always made dinner for them. He worked on his laptop while he waited for the food, with the sound of kitchen knives and the ventilation fan in his ears, savoring the smell of boiling noodles or baking fish. As he typed away, he felt truly peaceful. The sounds of cooking and the clicking of his keyboard filled the small apartment gently. It was the most soothing time and place he’d ever known. He remembers many things about Mizuno. Meals, for example. Mizuno always ate in a beautiful way. She flaked mackerel flesh off the bones very neatly; when she cut meat apart, the movements of her fingertips were smooth; she ate pasta skillfully, with a fork and spoon, bringing it to her lips with an enchanting elegance. Then there were her pale-pink fingernails, encircling a coffee cup. The dampness of her cheeks, the coldness of her fingertips, the scent of her hair, the sweetness of her skin, her sweat-damp palms, the smell of his tobacco on her lips, her sad sighs. In her apartment beside the railway line, when they’d turned out the lights and slipped into bed, he often looked up at the sky through the window. In winter, the stars were very clear. Outside, it was probably freezing, and the air in the room was cold enough that their breath showed palely, but the weight of her head on his naked shoulder was warm and pleasant. At those times, the clackety-clack of the Chuo Line sounded like an unfamiliar language, echoing from a far distant country. He felt as if he was in a place completely unlike any other he’d ever known. And maybe, he thought, this is the place I’ve always wanted to find. His days with Mizuno made him realize just how thirsty he’d been—and how lonely. And that was why the breakup brought with it the anxiety of peering into bottomless darkness. Over three years, they’d invested substantial emotion in this and built their relationship with a kind of desperation. But eventually, somewhere along the way, their roads diverged. The thought of walking alone again from now on was a burden that left him weary. He didn’t think anything had happened, really. There had been no “last straw.” But feelings can still ebb without ever finding harmony—and maybe that slow drifting apart was why. Late at night, as he listened to the sound of cars outside the window, his eyes wide in the darkness, he thought for dear life. Scraping his ideas together as they threatened to come undone, he tried to glean even a tiny fragment of a lesson from them. Well, there’s no way around it. It’s just not possible to stay with anyone forever. People have to get used to loss. That’s how I’ve gotten by so far. Around the time he and Mizuno broke up, he quit his job at the company as well. He didn’t really know whether those two events were related, though. Probably not. He’d taken out work-related stress on Mizuno lots of times, and she had done the same, but he thought those conflicts had been superficial. He felt as if something much harder to put into words, a sort of incompleteness, had been a constant presence hanging over him… But was that why? He didn’t know. When he tried to recall them later, his memories of the final two years before he quit working at the company felt vague, as if he’d spent the entire time half asleep. Somewhere along the way, the divisions between the seasons began to blur, while things that had happened today felt as if they’d happened yesterday, and sometimes he could practically see the things he’d be doing tomorrow, like video footage. His job was as busy as ever, but the work was routine now. He had a rough outline of what needed to be done in order to end the project, and he’d managed to work out the time it would take almost mechanically, as spent working hours. It was like being part of a line of cars that moved forward at an unvarying speed, obeying traffic signs. He could use the steering wheel and the gas pedal almost without thinking. He didn’t even need to talk to anyone. At some point, programming, new technologies, and computers themselves had ceased to shine as brightly for him. Well, that’s probably just how it goes, he thought. The starry sky had been an incredible source of wonder to him in his boyhood, but now it was merely something he saw if he looked up. Meanwhile, the company’s opinion of him had grown better and better. With every evaluation, he was given a raise, and he received bigger bonuses than any of his contemporaries. He lived well within his means—not that he had any time to spend the money anyway—so before he knew it, the figure in his bankbook had grown beyond anything he’d ever seen. As he sat in an office where the only sound was the quiet clicking of keyboards, waiting for the code he’d entered to build, with a cup of lukewarm coffee raised to his lips, he thought, Weird. There’s nothing I want to buy, and yet the money just keeps coming in. When he jokingly told Mizuno about it, she’d laughed, but afterward, she’d looked just a little sad. The depths of his chest constricted slightly, as if something had physically squeezed the innermost part of his heart. The melancholy came from something he couldn’t explain. It was the beginning of autumn; a cool wind blew in through the screens, and the floor he was sitting on felt pleasantly cool. He was wearing a deep-blue dress shirt, although he’d removed his tie, while Mizuno wore a long skirt with large pockets and a dark-brown sweater. When he looked at the gentle swell of her bosom beneath that sweater, he grew just a little sadder. It was the first time in quite a while that he’d stopped at Mizuno’s apartment on his way home from work. The last time I was here, the air conditioner was still on, so…, he thought. That was almost two months ago. They’d both been busy with work, and their schedules hadn’t matched up, but he didn’t think meeting her was out of the question. Earlier, they probably would have gotten together more frequently. They’d stopped making room for each other. “Say, Takaki? When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?” Mizuno asked after he’d griped about his company for a bit. He thought for a little while. “I don’t think I knew.” “Nothing at all?” “Yeah. Just getting through each day took everything I had.” He laughed as he said it. “Same here,” Mizuno said, smiling back at him. There was a plate with a heap of Asian pears on it, and she took one and brought it to her lips with a light, pleasant crunch. “Really?” “Mm-hmm. I always had trouble in school when they asked us what we wanted to be. When I found my current job, I was pretty relieved. I’d never have to think about my dreams for the future again.” “Yeah,” he agreed, reaching out to take the pear she’d peeled for him. What he wanted to be. He’d always been desperate to find a place for himself. He still didn’t feel as if he was really himself yet. He was chasing something, but he wasn’t caught up. He wasn’t going after “his true self” or anything like that; he was just still only partway there… But partway to where? Mizuno’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me a second,” she said, taking her phone out into the hall. Watching her go out of the corner of his eye, he put a cigarette between his lips, then lit it. Her cheerful voice reached him faintly from the hallway, and suddenly, he was so violently jealous of whatever stranger she was talking to that even he was startled. He got a clear image of a man whose face he didn’t know running his fingers over the white skin under Mizuno’s sweater, and in that moment he hated them both. The phone call only lasted about five minutes, but by the time Mizuno came back, saying, “It was from a junior employee,” he felt as if he’d been scorned. He knew it wasn’t her fault, though. Obviously. “Yeah,” he responded, grinding his cigarette out in an ashtray with enough force to hopefully crush his own feelings. What the hell is going on? He was appalled with himself. The next morning, for the first time in a long while, they sat at the dining room table, having breakfast together. When he glanced out the window, gray clouds covered the sky. The morning was slightly chilly. Their Sunday breakfasts were very precious, symbolic times for them. Their day off was still ahead, untouched, and they could spend all that time any way they wanted. Just like their futures. The breakfasts Mizuno made were always delicious, and during those times, they were always happy… Until now. Mizuno cut up her French toast, put scrambled eggs on top of a piece, and took a bite. As he watched her, he was struck by the thought that this might be the last breakfast they had here. There was no particular reason for it; the thought had just occurred to him, vaguely. It wasn’t as if he wanted it to be that way. He wanted to have breakfast with her next week, too, and the week after that. But he was right—that was their last breakfast together. He decided to turn in his resignation at the company around the time it became clear that the project would be wrapped up in three more months. Once he’d made up his mind, he realized he’d actually been thinking of leaving for a very long time already. He told his team leader that he’d bring the current project to a close, then spend about a month conducting the necessary transfers of control and tying up loose ends, but if possible, he wanted to leave by February of next year. With some sympathy, the team leader asked him to talk it over with the general manager. When he told the general manager he was planning to resign, the man was kind enough to try to stop him in earnest. If the salary was the problem, they could attempt to rectify that to a certain extent—more importantly, there was no point in coming this far just to quit. Now was the time to be patient. The current project might be rough, but once it was over, his evaluation would be even higher, and the work was bound to get more interesting. Maybe so. But this is my life, you know, he thought, although he didn’t say it. He explained that he had no complaints about his pay, and the work wasn’t too hard. He wasn’t lying. He simply wanted to quit. But that wasn’t enough to convince the manager. I’m not surprised, he thought. He wasn’t even able to explain it to himself all that well. However, even though it caused a little trouble, it was decided that he’d leave the company at the end of January. Autumn deepened, and while the air grew clearer and colder by the day, he threw himself into finishing his final job. Now that the project had a clear end date, he was even busier than before, and he had almost no days off. He spent most of the brief time that he was home sleeping like the dead, but it still wasn’t enough. His body felt sluggish and a little feverish, and on the train during his morning commute, he was always horribly nauseated. However, living that way did keep him from thinking about useless things. He even found a kind of peace in it. He’d braced himself for life at the company to get uncomfortable after he’d turned in his resignation, but it actually went the other way. The team leader thanked him awkwardly, and the general manager even worried about his next job. “I can give you a solid recommendation,” the manager told him. He refused politely, saying he planned to just take it easy for a while. A typhoon brought cold winds to the Kanto region, and after the storm had passed, he started wearing his winter suit. One cold morning, he took his coat out of storage—it still smelled faintly of mothballs—and on another day, he wore the muffler Mizuno had given him, gradually wrapping himself in winter. He barely spoke to anyone, but that wasn’t a painful thing. He and Mizuno exchanged texts every so often, once or twice a week. It took quite a long time for her to respond now, but he thought she was probably busy. Besides, that was mutual. Before he knew it, it had been three months since their breakfast together that day, and he hadn’t seen Mizuno at all. When the day’s work ended, and he boarded the last Chuo Line train and collapsed limply into a seat, he always breathed a deep sigh. A very, very deep one. The late-night train for Tokyo was empty, and it always smelled faintly of alcohol and fatigue. Listening to the familiar sounds of the train, he gazed at the lights of the skyscrapers approaching from beyond the streets of Nakano, and he started to feel as if he were looking down at himself from high in the sky. With vivid clarity, he could visualize the thin line of lights crawling slowly over the ground, heading toward enormous buildings that looked like gravestones. A strong wind blew, making the lights of faraway towns twinkle like stars. I’m part of that thin line of lights, crawling over the surface of this vast planet. When the train reached Shinjuku Station, and he stepped out onto the platform, he had to look back at the seat he’d occupied. He couldn’t shake the feeling that his body, shrouded in a suit and heavy fatigue, might still be there. I’m still not used to Tokyo, even now, he thought. Not to the benches on the station platforms, or to the endless rows of automatic ticket gates, or to the tenant-lined corridors of the underground shopping complex. One day in December, the project that had gone on for nearly two years came to an end. He felt almost nothing about the fact that it was over; he was surprised. His fatigue was one day deeper than it had been the day before; that was all. He took a break that was just long enough for a cup of coffee, then began getting ready to leave his job. Ultimately, he ended up taking the last train home that day as well. When he got off at Shinjuku Station, passed through the automatic ticket gate, and saw the line at the underground taxi stand by the West Gate, he realized, It’s a Friday night. Not only that, but it was Christmas. His ears began to pick up the faint, untraceable sound of jingle bells in the muffled hum of the station. He gave up on getting a taxi and began to walk home instead, heading through the underground street that ran toward Nishi-Shinjuku and emerging in the skyscraper district. This place was always quiet late at night. He walked along, staying close to the foundations of the buildings. This was the route he always took when he walked from Shinjuku. Abruptly, his phone vibrated in his coat pocket. He stopped, waited for the space of a breath, then took it out. It was from Mizuno. He couldn’t answer. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to pick up. It just hurt too much—but what was hurting, he didn’t know. He was powerless, simply staring at the RISA MIZUNO that showed on the phone’s tiny LCD screen. The phone vibrated a few times, then fell silent, as if it had died. All of a sudden, something hot welled up in his chest, and he tipped his head back. Half of his vision was taken up by the building’s black wall, disappearing into the sky. There were lights in a few of the windows in that wall; far beyond them were the red aircraft warning lamps, blinking as steady as breathing, and above those was the starless urban sky. He saw countless small fragments drifting slowly down from it. It’s snow. Just one thing, he thought. He longed for someone to say it. I only want to hear one thing. Why won’t anybody say it to me? He knew it was a selfish wish, but he couldn’t help himself. It felt as if seeing the snow had opened a door in the very depths of his heart. Once he was aware of it, he could see plain as day what he’d wanted all this time. The words the girl had said to him on that day, long ago: “Takaki, I’m sure you’re going to be just fine.” 5 As she was organizing her belongings, getting ready to move, Akari Shinohara found the old letter. It was in a cardboard box, deep in the back of the closet. The packing tape that sealed the lid said only Old Stuff (she must have written that herself, of course, several years earlier), and her curiosity was piqued, so she opened it. The box held miscellaneous things from her elementary and middle school years: her yearbook, school trip guidebooks, a few monthly magazines for elementary schoolers, cassette tapes with unknown contents, a faded red school backpack, and the leather bag she’d used in middle school. As she picked up each of these nostalgic items one by one and studied them, she had a feeling she might find that letter. When she discovered an empty cookie tin at the very bottom of the box, she remembered. Oh right. On the night of my middle school graduation ceremony, I put that letter in here. She’d carried it around in her bag for a long time, unable to bring herself to take it out, but on graduation, as if shaking loose of it, she’d put it away to free herself from it. When she opened the tin, there was the letter, shut between the pages of a thin notebook she’d treasured in middle school. It was the first love letter she’d ever written. She’d meant to give the letter to a boy she’d liked, fifteen years ago, on their first date. The snow was so deep and quiet that day, she remembered. I’d just turned thirteen, and I lived three hours by train from the boy I liked. On that day, he was going to take several trains to come to see me. Because of the snow, the trains were running behind schedule, and he got there four hours late. While I waited for him, sitting in front of the stove in the little wooden station building, I wrote this letter. Holding the letter brought back the unease and loneliness she’d felt then. Her love for the boy, and her desire to see him, rose again so vividly that it was impossible to believe it had been fifteen years since then. The emotions were as intense and bright as if she was feeling them now, and their afterglow was so dazzling that it bewildered her. I really did love him, she thought. On that first date, he and I shared our first kiss. To me, it felt like the world before that kiss and the one after it were completely different things. That’s why I wasn’t able to give him the letter. Even now, she remembered those things as if they’d happened only yesterday— And it really does feel just like yesterday. Only the little jeweled ring on the fourth finger of her left hand showed that fifteen years had passed. That evening, she dreamed about it. The two of them, still children, were standing under a cherry tree, looking up, on a quiet night of falling snow. The next day, fine powdery snow was falling at Iwafune Station. But the clouds were so thin that blue sky showed through in places, and the snow would probably stop before it could pick up. It had been quite a long time since they’d gotten snow in December at all. Over the past few years, they’d had hardly any snows as heavy as the one that had fallen on that day. “You could stay until New Year’s, you know,” her mother told her. “I have a lot to do,” she answered. “I have to get ready.” “You’re right. Cook something tasty for him,” her father said. “I will,” she told him. Both Mom and Dad have gotten older, she thought. That was only natural, though; they’d almost reached retirement age. And now I’m getting married. As she waited for the train for Oyama, she felt strange standing on a station platform with both of her parents like this. It might have been the first time since the day they’d moved there. On that day, after leaving Tokyo and transferring between trains, she’d stepped down onto the platform at this station with her mother. She could still remember how lonely she’d felt then. Her father had gone on ahead, so he was waiting for them on the platform. Iwafune was where his parents lived, so she’d been there a few times before since she was small. There was really nothing there, but she thought it was a good, quiet place. Living there was another matter entirely, though. She’d been born in Utsunomiya, had spent her early childhood in Shizuoka, and had lived in Tokyo for the years between fourth and sixth grades. To her, the tiny platform at Iwafune Station had looked so desolate. She shouldn’t be living here. She’d been so homesick for Tokyo that she’d almost cried. “If anything happens, call us,” her mother said; she’d been saying it over and over since the night before. Her parents and this small town felt very dear to her. By now, this was her hometown, and she hated to leave it. She smiled, responding gently. “It’s all right. Don’t worry so much; we’ll see each other at the ceremony next month. It’s cold, so go on back home.” Just as she said the words, she heard the distant, approaching whistle of the Ryomo Line train. The Ryomo Line was empty in the afternoon, and she was the only passenger in her car. Unable to concentrate on the paperback she’d brought, she rested her chin on her hand and gazed out the window. The rice had been harvested, and featureless rural country spread out before her. She tried to imagine how the view would look with a thick blanket of snow. It would have been the middle of the night. There could only have been a handful of distant lights. The window frame must have had a thick coating of frost. It must have been so discouraging, she thought. What had he seen in that landscape, his stomach empty, racked with guilt at keeping somebody waiting, on a train that had finally stopped completely? Maybe… Maybe he was hoping I’d gone home. He was a kind boy, after all. But I didn’t mind waiting for him, no matter how many hours it took. I was desperate to see him. I never doubted him for a second. If I could say something to him, on that day, when he was stuck inside the train…, she thought, then I’d say… It’s all right. Your lover will wait as long as it takes. She knows you’ll really come to see her. Don’t be so tense; relax. Try to imagine the fun you’ll have together. You’ll never meet again afterward, but that time will seem like a miracle. Please keep it deep in your heart forever. Cherish it. When her thoughts had taken her that far, she smiled in spite of herself. What am I thinking? He’s been the only thing on my mind since yesterday. She thought it was probably because of the letter she’d found earlier. It was the day before she would officially enter her name in her fiancé’s family register, and her head was filled with thoughts of some other boy. Did that count as unfaithfulness? Still, she was sure the man she was going to marry wouldn’t mind that. His company was transferring him from Takasaki to Tokyo, and they’d decided to take the opportunity to get married. If I let myself start complaining about the little things he does that bother me, I’d never stop, but I do love him very much. I think that’s true for him as well. By now, my memories with that boy are a precious part of me, like how the food you eat becomes your flesh and blood. They’re part of my heart; I could never cut them away. Please let Takaki be doing well, Akari prayed, gazing out at the scenery as it flowed past the window. 6 Just living somewhere is enough to make the sadness collect there. That was what Takaki Tohno thought as he pressed the switch and looked around his apartment by the light of the fluorescent bulb. Somewhere along the way, this room had filled with sadness, just as fine dust accumulates into a film before anyone notices it. There was the one remaining toothbrush by the sink, for example. The white sheets he’d hung up to dry for someone else. The call history in his phone. He’d returned to his apartment on the last train, as usual, and these were the things he was thinking about as he took off his tie and hung his suit on its hanger. But from that angle, it had to be far more painful for Mizuno, he thought, taking a can of beer out of the fridge. He’d gone to her place in Nishi-Kokubunji far more often than she’d come to his apartment. He deeply regretted it. He hadn’t meant to do it. He was already chilled from the walk home, and the cold beer he was drinking stole even more of his body heat. It was the end of January. On his last day at work, just like always, he put on his coat and headed for the office. When he assumed his familiar seat at the desk he’d used for five years, he turned on his computer and drank his coffee while waiting for it to boot up, then went over that day’s work. His duties had been completely transferred already, but he’d accepted as many small, one-off jobs for other teams as he could finish before the day ended. Ironically, through those jobs, he’d made a few friends at the company. Everyone thought it was a shame he was leaving; they’d wanted to hold a going-away party for him that night, but he’d politely declined. “I really appreciate the thought, but I’d like to work the way I always do. I’ll have a lot of time on my hands for a while after this, so please ask again later on.” That evening, his former team leader stopped by his desk and mumbled toward the floor. “I’m sorry for, you know. Everything.” He was a little startled. “No, please, don’t worry about it,” he replied. They hadn’t spoken since the transfer the previous year. As he typed, he thought, I don’t ever have to come here again. It was a very strange feeling. I still love you, even now, Mizuno had written in her final text. I think I probably always will. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still kind and wonderful, Takaki. Someone I admire who’s just out of reach. Going out with you, I learned how easily people’s hearts can be controlled by others. Over the past three years, I loved you more every single day. Every word you said, every line of every text, delighted or saddened me. I got really jealous over silly little things, and I caused you a lot of trouble. I know this may not be the best way to put it, but I think I’ve gotten tired of it all. For about half a year, I’ve tried to tell you these things in various ways. I just couldn’t seem to get it across. You’re always kind enough to say you love me, and I believe that you do. However, I think the way we fall in love with people is slightly different. More and more, that difference has started to hurt a little. His last trip home took place late at night, as always. It was an especially cold night, and the windows of the train were thickly clouded with condensation. He gazed through them at the blurred lights of the skyscrapers. He felt no sense of liberation and no pangs of urgency about finding his next job. He didn’t really know what he should think. I just don’t know anything lately, he thought, smiling mirthlessly. Leaving the train, he passed through the same underground corridor as always, emerging into the Nishi-Shinjuku skyscraper district. The night air was painfully cold, and neither his muffler nor his coat was any protection against it. Most of the lights in the skyscrapers were out, and they looked like ancient, gigantic creatures that had been destroyed long ago. As he walked slowly through the valleys between their enormous hulks, he thought: I’m a selfish idiot. Over the past ten years, he’d hurt so many people—and for what? He’d also deceived himself into thinking it was inevitable, perpetually damaging himself as well. Why couldn’t he have been more genuinely considerate of people? Why hadn’t he been able to say anything different to them? The farther he walked, the more regrets he’d even nearly forgotten surfaced in his heart. He couldn’t stop it from happening. Mizuno’s words: “It’s starting to hurt a little.” A little. It was more than a little. His own words—“Sorry about that”—and that other voice: “Savor it.” The girl from the cram school: “Are we past saving?” Sumida’s voice: “Don’t be kind to me” and her final words: “Thank you.” A whisper over the telephone: “I’m sorry.” And then… Akari’s words: “I’m sure you’re going to be just fine.” If the world was the ocean, fathomless and silent, those voices were a flood suddenly breaking to the surface along with so many other sounds. The winter wind, coiling around the buildings. The motorcycles, trucks, and various cars on the road. The sound of banners flapping somewhere. The low hum of the city itself, in which all those noises mingled. The next thing he knew, the world was filled with sound. And then, violent sobbing—in his own voice. For what was probably the first time since it had happened at the station, fifteen years ago, he shed tears. They streamed down his face and didn’t stop. It was as if he’d had a large mass of ice hidden inside him, and it had begun to melt. There was nothing else he could do. And he thought: Why couldn’t I have brought one person, even just one person, a little closer to happiness? When he looked up the two-hundred-meter wall, high in the sky, his blurry eyes found a blinking red light. But he knew help would never arrive at such a convenient moment. 7 That night, she gently opened the envelope of the old letter she’d just found. The stationery she took out was brand-new, as if she’d written on it only yesterday. Her handwriting hadn’t changed much, either. She read a little, then carefully returned it to the envelope. Someday, when she was older, she’d read it again. She was sure it was still too early. Until then, she thought, she’d put it away for safekeeping. Dear Takaki, How are you? When we made our promise, we never dreamed it would snow so much today, did we? I hear the trains are running late, too. So I’m going to write this letter while I wait for you. I’ve got a stove in front of me, so it’s warm here. I always have stationery in my bag, too, so I can write letters whenever I like. I’m planning to give this one to you later on, so don’t get here too early. Please don’t hurry; take your time. We’ll be meeting for the first time in a really long while today. It’s actually been eleven months, if you can believe it. So to tell you the truth, I’m a little nervous. I keep wondering things like, “What if we don’t recognize each other?” Compared to Tokyo, though, this is such a small station, so we really couldn’t miss each other. But I’m trying to imagine what you look like in your school uniform or on the soccer team, and I don’t recognize you. Let’s see. What should I write? Oh, duh, I’ll start with thank-yous. I’ll write down everything I didn’t get to tell you. When I transferred to Tokyo in fourth grade, I was so, so glad you were there. I was happy we became friends. If it hadn’t been for you, I think school would have been so much worse. To be honest, I really didn’t want to transfer away from you. Not at all. I wanted us to go to the same middle school and to grow up together. I’d been wishing for it all along. I’m finally used to middle school here (so please don’t worry too much), but I still wish you were here several times a day. I’m also very sad that you’ll be moving much farther away soon. Even if we were in Tokyo and Tochigi, I always thought, “If it comes right down to it, Takaki’s here for me.” After all, if I got on a train, we’d be able to see each other easily. This time, though, you’re going beyond Kyushu, and that’s a little too far. From now on, I’ll have to learn how to get by on my own. I’m not all that confident that I actually can, but I’ll just have to do it. We both will, you and me. Isn’t that right? And if nothing else, I really do have to tell you this. It’s something I want to tell you out loud today, but just in case I don’t manage to say it, I’ll write it in this letter. I love you, Takaki. I don’t remember when it started. It just kinda happened, and before I knew it, I’d fallen for you. From the very first time I met you, you were a strong, kind boy. You always protected me. Takaki, I’m sure you’re going to be just fine. No matter what happens, I know you’ll grow into a kind and wonderful adult. No matter how far away you go, I’ll always love you; I mean it. Please, please remember that. One night, he had a dream. In his room in Setagaya, which was filled with boxes in preparation for the move, he was writing a letter. He was planning to give it to the girl he liked on their first date. It was the letter that would get blown away by the wind, the one that would never reach her. In the dream, he knew it would happen. But I have to write it, he thought. Even if nobody ever saw it. He knew that writing this letter was something he needed to do for himself. He turned the stationery over and wrote on the very last sheet. I still don’t really know what “becoming an adult” means, exactly. But if we happen to meet again someday, somewhere, far in the future, I want to be proud of who I am then. I want to promise you that. I always loved you, Akari. Please, please take care. Good-bye. 8 In April, the streets of Tokyo were tinted with cherry blossoms. He’d worked until dawn, so it was close to noon when he woke up. When he opened the curtain, the world outside was brimming over with sunlight. The skyscrapers were misty in the spring haze, and every one of their windows caught the sun and sparkled pleasantly. Here and there, in the spaces between the mixed-use buildings, he could see cherry trees in full bloom. Tokyo really does have a lot of cherry trees, he thought, not for the first time. It had been three months since he quit his job at the company. Last week, for the first time in a long while, he’d started working again. Using the connections he’d made while working for his former company, he was picking up small jobs independently, doing everything from design to programming. He didn’t know whether it would be possible for him to work as a freelance programmer long-term, but he’d begun to feel like starting something new. He hadn’t done any programming in quite a while, and he was so into it he surprised himself, noticing that the sensation of his fingers striking the keyboard was just fun. He had breakfast, chewing on a piece of lightly buttered toast and drinking a café au lait with plenty of milk. Over the past few days, he’d completed a significant amount of work, so as he washed the dishes, he decided that today would be a day off. He pulled on a thin jacket and went out, wandering through the streets with no destination in mind. It was a pleasant day, with a gentle wind that ruffled his hair every so often, and the air held the scent of afternoon. After leaving his company job, for the first time in years, he’d remembered that every time of day had its own smell in the city. Early morning had a unique scent that told of the rest of the day, while the scent of evening gently brought the day to an end. The starry night sky had its own scent, and so did cloudy skies. The smells were a mixture of people, the city, and the workings of nature. I really forgot so much, he thought. He walked slowly through residential neighborhoods, with their complicated tangles of narrow streets. When he got thirsty, he bought coffee from a vending machine and drank it in a park. He gazed absently after the grade school kids who’d come running through the gate of their school and passed him, and he watched the constant stream of traffic from up on a pedestrian bridge. Beyond the houses and mixed-use buildings, he caught glimpses of the skyscrapers of Shinjuku. The sky behind them was a clear pale blue, as if someone had dissolved blue paint in plenty of water, and a few white clouds were being swept along by the wind. He reached a railroad crossing. A large cherry tree stood beside it, and the surrounding asphalt was pure white with fallen blossoms. As he watched the petals drift slowly down, out of nowhere, he thought: That’s five centimeters per second. The crossing’s alarm began to sound, echoing around him, dyed with nostalgia by the spring air. From up ahead, a woman was walking toward him. The pleasant click of her white mules on the concrete joined the rhythm of the crossing alarm. In the center of the crossing, the two passed each other. In that moment, a faint light flickered in his heart. As they kept walking in their separate directions, he knew it in his soul. If I turn around now—she’ll turn around, too. He had no reason to believe so, but he did believe. When he was through the crossing, he turned slowly back and looked at her. She turned his way, too, just as slowly. Their eyes met. A powerful stirring ran through his heart and his memories—and in that moment, an Odakyu Line express train hid them from each other. Once this train passes, he thought, will she be there? It doesn’t matter either way. If it really was her, then that’s enough of a miracle already. He made up his mind. When this train passed, he’d start moving forward.