December twenty-fourth. I left home an hour earlier than the time we had agreed on. The roadside trees had shed every leaf, and only their bare winter outlines stood. In my bag, I had made one empty space for the bundle of letter sheets.
I knocked lightly on the door of his room. His mother was already standing beside the bed. She wore a white stole over her gray coat. Seeing me, she gave a small nod.
"Ms. Sakurai, thank you for coming."
"Thank you for today."
Toru lay there with his usual face. Only the slight rise at the edge of the quilt told of his breathing. A gray medical wheelchair had been drawn up beside the bed. Two nurses. The younger one gave a light bow.
"May we begin the transfer?"
With practiced hands, the nurses raised Toru's body. One supported him behind both shoulders, the other beneath both knees. His head tilted slightly, and an elbow steadied it again. A thin hand slipped out from the edge of the blanket.
He settled into the wheelchair. His mother laid a navy-blue blanket over his knees and wound the dark navy scarf around his neck. Her hand stopped once on the scarf, and her palm sank shallowly into the knitted stitches. She started to say something, and didn't.
With both hands I took the bundle of letter sheets from the side table and, without looking at it, put it away in my bag. It fit exactly into the space I had made.
"We'll be going now."
I went around behind the wheelchair, rested both hands on the handles, and bowed my head.
"Take care. Take your time, all right?"
A nurse opened the door for us. The tires sounded low against the linoleum floor. Above the backrest, I could see only the upper half of his head.
The corridor was white. At the corners I eased the inner wheel; at the steps I lifted the back wheels.
In the elevator, I backed the wheelchair in. The back of Toru's head came just to the height of my chest. The head of the man I had looked up at when he stood now stopped in front of my chest.
On the first floor, the doors opened. I pushed straight on toward the automatic doors.
The low winter sun of Christmas Eve came slanting in. It was a whiteness of a different quality from the whiteness indoors. The light just reached Toru's cheek, and within it the navy of the scarf looked a little deeper. I pushed the wheelchair out.