It was the Friday I finished printing the handout for my seminar presentation. That afternoon, in the print room, I had put together my share for next week's reading group. A little before nine at night, I said to a classmate from my seminar, "Go on ahead. Get home safe," and sent them out of the library ahead of me.
The sound of the automatic doors faded, and the building went quiet. Half the fluorescent lights began to go off, and long shadows lined up between the rows. At this hour, with no one around, the smell of the books themselves rose from the floor before I knew it. The faintly dry smell of old paper. My own footsteps sounded more clearly than I'd expected on the linoleum beside the reading desks.
My feet stopped in front of the folklore studies section. Second shelf from the top, seventh book from the left. The cloth-bound spine sat in its place, as always. The shelf where his hand and mine had first touched. There was no sign of anyone at the far end of the aisle, or on the other side of the shelves.
That night just after the long holiday, I had stood on tiptoe here and reached for the seventh book on the second shelf. The moment I thought I had barely reached the edge of the cloth, the side of a long finger, on a right hand reaching in from beside me, brushed lightly against mine. Right beside the coolness of the cloth, there was the faintest warmth. Startled, I pulled my hand back. Just a little behind me, I sensed someone stopping. That person's right hand slowly drew the book off the shelf and held it out to me, the cover turned my way. I took the offered book in both hands. Every time I came here, I had shut the faint warmth that lingered on my fingertips inside my palm. Tonight, I didn't close it.
—My grandmother's book. The one I lent him, and never got back.
Apart from my feet, which had stopped and would not move in front of the shelf, these words came out clearly this time, of my own will.
—I'll ask for it back.
I didn't say it aloud.
—And with that, I'll end it.
The words end it landed more quietly inside me than I'd expected. The feeling of finally writing a date, with my own hand, on time I had let drag on.
For nearly half a year, I had thought it was only courteous not to contact him first. But if it was a matter of getting a book back, that would give me a reason to take the step myself. One reason was all I needed.
I left by the north exit. The air at nine o'clock on a night at the end of May carried the damp of the days before the rainy season. I stopped under the light at the entrance of my apartment building. I took out my phone and looked at the screen for a while. His name, some number of places down from the top of my contacts. I checked the date of our last call and confirmed it was nearly half a year ago.
My finger paused once over the call button.
—I'm only asking for the book back.
I told myself that, and pressed it. On the other end of the phone at my ear, the ringing went on longer than I'd expected. Three, four, five. Somewhere deep in my ear, my own heartbeat kept count ahead of the rings. On the sixth, my finger moved toward the button to hang up, and at that very moment, the call connected.
"...Hello?"
I took a breath and put on my usual voice.
"Hello. This is... Toru's, phone."
It was a calm voice, an older woman's. It wasn't his voice. My heart felt as if it stopped, once. I shifted my grip on the phone.
"Um, my name is... Shiori Sakurai. I know Toru from... university."
"...Oh."
There was a short pause. Then her voice wavered, just slightly.
"I'm Toru's... mother."
"It's, um... about my son."
A tremor crept into the end of her voice. I didn't miss it.
"Would it be all right if I... talked with you?"
"Yes."
The voice I answered with came out closer to my usual pitch than I'd expected. My fingertips were gripping the back of the phone hard. It was a call I had made myself, to get a book back. The damp night air before the rainy season settled onto the nape of my neck.