From that Friday on, evenings became the time I went to the hospital.
There were mornings when I decided I would go, and mornings when I didn't decide. Even on the days I hadn't decided, my feet carried me through the ticket gates in the evening. Before I knew it, the woman at the reception desk had come to know my face. I wrote my name on the visitor form and reached for the handle of Room 408.
I drew the round stool to its usual place, took a paperback from my bag, and opened it to the page with the bookmark. Before I began reading, I laid the fingertips of my right hand gently on his left wrist, right over the pulse. Under my fingers, only the pulse went on, steady. Once I had made sure of it, I turned my eyes back to the book. The words went white and slipped away as soon as I read them. The green lamp on the monitor blinked at regular intervals. When an hour had passed, I closed the book and put the bookmark back in. "I'll come again," I said aloud, and went out into the corridor.
One evening, the interval of the blinking seemed to go off, just once. My fingers, about to slip in the bookmark, stopped above the page. The backs of my hands shook enough that I could see it myself. The next blink came as it always did. It was my counting that had slipped, I thought, once the shaking had stopped.
The long rains of June went on. Through the glass on the fourth floor, almost no sound reached me. The rain drew thin, slanting lines. The day at the north exit of the library when our fingers touched as we both reached for the two umbrella handles at once rose faintly, and sank again at once.
"They say voices reach even people who aren't conscious."
An older nurse told me that on a different day. From the next day on, I decided to bring the books I had at home, one at a time. Short story collections, poetry, gentle essays.
I read them aloud in the room. His eyelashes didn't move. Even so, my voice stayed faintly in the air of the room. On the street trees outside the window, a slightly deeper green was layering itself over the young green.
It was the hottest week at the end of July. In the corridor outside the room, his mother spoke to me.
"Ms. Sakurai, if it's convenient for you, perhaps we might have some tea."
Some of the tension had gone out of the shoulders of her thin summer cardigan. I lowered my eyes at once. We sat facing each other by the window of a small café beside the hospital and ordered iced tea. Mrs. Seto's fingertip stroked along the edge of the drops on the outside of her glass.
"Ms. Sakurai, may I ask you something rather personal?"
"Yes."
"When was it that you and he parted?"
I looked at the bottom of my straw. After a moment, I said,
"Around the end of February this year."
"I see," Mrs. Seto said, nodding.
"He never said a word at home about why the two of you parted. And I decided not to ask."
There her words broke off once. Mrs. Seto looked at the surface of her glass for a while. I could tell from a small movement of her shoulders that she had started to say something and swallowed it along with her breath. Her fingertip touched the straw and left it again at once.
"...This may be none of my business, but—"
"Not at all."
I kept my answer short. Mrs. Seto gave a small nod, and then,
"Looking back now, I feel he was a little strange from around the time you parted. Though perhaps strange isn't the word. How shall I put it—"
The fingers that had been stroking the glass stopped and came down to her lap. She changed the way they were laced together, and then it came down.
"Empty, perhaps."
The moment that word fell, my breath stopped once. My gaze dropped to the fold of the hand towel on my lap, and the fingers I had begun to reach toward the base of my straw would not move. I didn't repeat it. I only looked at the rim of the straw.
"He went to the university properly. He was eating, too. It's just that, deep in his eyes, he wasn't the Toru I knew. Perhaps it's only a parent imagining things."
I didn't answer.
"I sometimes think, Ms. Sakurai, if only you and he hadn't had to part."
I lowered my eyes. I didn't follow where that led.
A single piece of ice at the bottom of the glass gave way with a low sound. That was where the conversation ended. Outside the automatic doors, the cicadas of four in the afternoon hung in the air. I said goodbye to Mrs. Seto in front of the station.
When I got home, I turned on only the kitchen light. I stood with my hands on the edge of the sink. When I took them away, the marks of my fingers clouded faintly and were gone.
One night in mid-August, I visited the room near the end of visiting hours. I asked the nurse for permission in a few words and set the round stool in its usual place. I laid my right thumb on Toru's left wrist, right over the pulse. Under my finger, only the pulse went on, steady.
—Today was the day of the summer festival.
I thought it without saying it aloud. The riverbank wasn't in the direction the window faced. The light shouldn't have been able to reach here.
Across the night air, a low burst arrived, once. A faint trembling in the air. Then, a little later, another. I didn't go to the window. I kept my hand over Toru's and listened only to the sound.
Between the sounds rising at their regular intervals, last year's summer festival night came back. That night on the bench at the shrine, when I teased him about his habit of clicking his mechanical pencil twice with his finger—"I actually counted once." "About four times an hour." He frowned slightly, and then smiled as if he didn't know what to do.
—I still remember that habit, from that night.
—Four times an hour, it was.
I said it only in my heart. Toru's left hand didn't move. His fingers stayed still, loosely open.
All at once, I realized.
—This year, I still haven't had Uji kintoki shaved ice.
Last year, beside the stall, I held out half of what was on a single spoon to you. "Tonight, it isn't too soon anymore," I said aloud. You put your lips to it, properly. That coldness rose briefly at the back of my tongue now, and was gone. The faint bitterness of the matcha never came back at all.
—This year, there is no coldness of any kind.
The sounds came twice, three times, and then there was a long silence. One more low burst. With the pad of my finger still over the pulse, I thought the rest, again without saying it aloud.
—Just the sound would be enough.
—Please let me hear it once more.
A nurse's footsteps sounded once outside the door, then went away. Left alone in the room, I shifted Toru's fingers with mine and laced them together, holding his hand again. It was the way I had held it last year on the way home, partway up the slope, when I changed my grip to this shape myself and said aloud, "So we don't lose each other."
"Didn't you say we wouldn't lose each other?"
I said it aloud. In the silence of a room where no one would hear, my own voice fell lower than I had expected. Toru's fingers didn't move.
I waited for the warmth of our joined palms to pass over to his fingers. I waited for a while. No warmth came back. Only the warmth from my side remained, alone, within the shape of our clasped hands.
Before I stood, I stroked the back of his hand once more, very lightly.
"I'll come again," I said, after letting the silence sit a little longer than usual.
August passed, the cicadas grew faint, and the green of the street trees shifted one shade deeper. At the end of September, the edges of the leaves began to show a faintly dried color. He didn't change. His not opening his eyes had become something ordinary, like one more piece of furniture in the room. I did think I shouldn't let it become ordinary. But sitting in the same chair at the same hour, looking at his eyelashes from the same height, I could find no other place to rest my hands than to let it become ordinary.