Over the single month of March, I had twice stepped toward him on my own, and both times I had drawn that step back.
The first time was at the shrine.
Would you like to go again this Saturday?
Sure. Let's go.
Saturday was clear. We met at the same pillar at the nearest station. Along the sides of the approach, where on the night of the summer festival the pale blue of the hydrangeas had thrown back the lights, the branch tips that day still kept their winter outlines. Not a single leaf had come out. We passed under the torii gate and stood side by side before the bell rope in front of the worship hall.
"That day, we talked about the legend, didn't we."
"Yeah, we did."
"Do you remember what it was about?"
"Hmm... something about fate, something about two hearts, I think it was that kind of thing."
I dropped my gaze to the toes of my shoes on the gravel. He remembered only the outline.
"Back then, Toru, you took it to mean the two sides of your own heart."
"Did I? I don't really remember."
"It's all right."
He put his palms together and bowed his head lightly. He offered a bow that was only a form, sincerely, and left it as only a form. On the way back along the approach, our strides fell half a step apart. Just before we passed under the torii gate, he stopped and pointed at a maple beside the path.
"Oh, new buds."
My voice started to rise, partway up my throat, to its usual pitch. It had come right to the opening of the breath—to laughing, Oh, you're right, and pointing back. His profile was already turned toward the gravel a step ahead. He wasn't looking at me. The voice that had started to rise lost its way just short of the opening and went flat again.
"Pretty, isn't it."
"Yes."
The second time was the evening of a rainy day. Eight days after the shrine. The sun was about to set, the rain was coming down steadily, and under the eaves past the library's automatic doors, a tall figure was giving an umbrella a light shake.
"Oh, Sakurai. You're done for the day?"
"Yes. You too?"
We shared the eaves.
"It was raining that day too, wasn't it. Back at the very start of spring. You didn't have an umbrella, Toru."
"Oh, yeah. I remember."
"Do you remember what color that umbrella was?"
He thought for a moment.
"It was dark gray, maybe?"
I pressed just one step further.
"Um, the book I lent you at the end of the year. My grandmother's."
"Oh. Yeah, I remember. It's at my place. I'd been meaning to give it back."
He put it in the past progressive: had been meaning to. Not I mean to.
"It's all right, whenever you feel like it."
I didn't actually think so, but my mouth said, "It's all right."
"Well, I go this way. See you."
"Yes, see you."
The top of the black umbrella passed out of the ring of light under the eaves and went off toward the rainy street.
—Not "maybe."
I didn't go on. I gave the dark gray umbrella a single shake and opened it. The center of my head fit squarely beneath it. I no longer had to choose between letting someone else take the wet side and not letting them.
Once April came, the air grew a degree milder. At the tips of the branches across campus, a pale green was beginning to light. One day, in a corner of the seminar room, I was left alone with a senior a year ahead of me who had gone on to grad school.
"Sakurai, you've seemed a little down lately, haven't you?"
"Oh, no. I'm fine."
"How are things with your boyfriend?"
I ran my thumb once along the rim of my teacup.
"We broke up. It just happened naturally. We both cooled off."
After saying it, I remembered that I had set down the same words in February too. The second time, my mouth moved more smoothly than the first, and by just as much as it was smoother, it was farther from the core.
"I see. That happens, doesn't it. Especially when you're young."
She nodded briefly and asked nothing more.
"I'm sorry to have worried you," I added.
—Something inside him, at a certain moment, suddenly drained out, all of it.
I stopped it just short of my mouth. If I had said it aloud, I would probably have been the one to fall apart first.
It isn't a lie, I repeated inside. It fell into order, and yet, by just as much as it fell into order, the core of it was cold.
Over Golden Week I went home for a few days. At the front door, my mother said, "Oh, you've gotten a little thin." I laughed and answered, "I've been busy," and with that the conversation closed. The kind of silence that holds you up by not asking—I had known it since I was a child.
I lit incense at the Buddhist altar in the living room. My grandmother's photograph looked out at me with her usual modest smile.
"Grandma, you know, I..."
The words after that wouldn't come. A single thread of incense smoke rose straight up, wavered just short of the ceiling, and was gone.
On the low shelf beside the altar sat a small paulownia box about the size of two fists. The four corners of the lid had taken on the color of time, and a faint layer of dust lay over the grain. My mother had put it there when she sorted through my grandmother's belongings, and it had stayed in the same spot ever since. I didn't know what was inside. My mother had never explained it in particular, and I had never asked.
—What could be in there?
I wondered vaguely, and wondered no further. Pulling my eyes away took somewhat more effort than I'd expected.
In the kitchen, my mother was cutting spring greens. Between the sounds of the knife, she said only, "Dinner's almost ready." Neither of us looked for any more words than that.
May came. On the main road from the station to my place, the young leaves of the street trees glowed a translucent green under the streetlights. I waited for the light at a crosswalk. On the opposite sidewalk, a young couple drew just slightly closer to each other. I was looking at the green of the signal.
I got back to my apartment and switched on the entryway light. In the hallway, only one set of footsteps sounded. My own. I boiled water, made tea, and wrapped both hands around the cup. Apart from the small hum of the vent fan and the occasional sound from the refrigerator, there was nothing.
—Too quiet, I thought. Too quiet compared to what, I couldn't have said.
Twice I had tried, and twice it hadn't come back.
—I don't have to go anymore.
On a night at the end of May, on the sofa, my finger stopped on his name on the screen. Our last exchange was still just as it had been: Thank you for yesterday and You too, from the day after the rainy eaves.
I set my thumb on the input field. I typed Next week and deleted it. I typed How have you been?, looked at it for a while, and deleted it. Finally I typed I'd like to hear your voice. I read it over three times, then deleted it one character at a time from the end. I didn't touch the send button. I didn't have the courage to touch the send button.
Once a month, since I was a child, I had kept a habit of a seasonal namagashi sweet and a bowl of matcha that I whisked myself. One Sunday in May, the day came around. I took my usual teapot from the back of the cupboard. The usual motion of checking the rim of the lid with the pad of my finger. Between lifting the lid and setting it back, a longer pause opened than usual. My fingertips stayed resting on the lid I had set back, and for a while, they didn't move.
My research could still go on. There were still books I wanted to read. Right then, that was what I was most grateful for. The moment of standing on tiptoe in front of a library shelf in the morning was when I could be most like myself. In the instant when my fingertips might or might not reach the spine of a book, while I left my weight to my lifted heels, I was nothing else at all.
It was the same when I tilted my head over some trouble a younger member of the seminar had. While I tilted my head to someone's words, the blank space inside me fit cleanly to the shape of their words.
On a night near the end of May, I turned off the light and looked up at the ceiling in the dark. There was my research. There was my mother. There were books. There was the library tomorrow. Nothing was missing, and yet somewhere there was a place where the air was thin. A place that would sink, softly, if pressed with a finger. When I tried to pin it down, it was no longer there.
Every day, without meaning to, I was still searching for something I no longer needed, and when I couldn't find it, I came back. That small round trip happened several times a day. I was aware that it happened, and yet I didn't know how to stop it. The harder I tried to stop it, the more steps I took with nowhere to go.
I turned over and closed my eyes.
—Tomorrow, too, morning will come.
It was only when I thought that that sleep finally came.