From the lobby, I passed through the entrance to the stacks on the left. The air among the stacks had been cut off from the pale orange of the lobby and had sunk into a deep indigo dimness.
The aisle was a shade darker than the lobby. The fluorescent lights had been thinned out, left on only between the shelves. The sound of the tires all but vanished the moment they passed from linoleum onto carpet.
I went on toward the back and turned left just short of the far wall. Along the ends of the shelves ran a row of labels, their colors mismatched where the paper had been replaced. Japanese History, Local Records, Folklore Studies. I stopped the wheelchair in front of the third label.
The shelf stood about forty centimeters taller than I did. On tiptoe, my fingertips could just reach as high as the second shelf from the top. I crouched beside the wheelchair. In the faint light of the stacks, the navy of his scarf was already nearly black; only the white cloth of the omamori on his lap still kept its whiteness.
"This is the last place."
My voice sank deeper than I had expected into the faint darkness of the stacks. It sank, and for a while it did not move.
"Before we go on, there's one more thing I want to tell you."
Toru's eyelashes did not move. Even so, I lowered my voice and went on.
"You remembered it, didn't you. 'The evening of the cherry petal.'"
"An evening at the end of April. You were on your way to the library exit with your physics books in your arms, and I was standing on the second-floor landing."
"A single cherry petal was stuck to your shoulder. I picked it off with my fingers and set it on your palm."
"The petal was an excuse."
One of the fluorescent lights above the shelves gave a low hum, almost a groan. Then it was quiet again.
"The truth is, I wanted you to look at me, even just once. The excuse to pick something off just happened to have landed on your shoulder."
"That evening, I thought, 'I wonder if he'll notice me.'"
I broke off for a moment.
"You did notice. From that evening until the night of December twenty-third a year ago, you remembered it the whole time, didn't you."
"'The evening Sakurai picked it off with her fingers and handed it to me.'"
You even remembered what I said back to you that night.
"'The cherry petal came first.'"
I closed my eyes.
"That evening, you still hadn't really seen my face."
"You remembered only the shape of my fingers, didn't you."
I opened my eyes. I let my gaze rest for a moment on the faint darkness at the far end of the aisle, then brought it back to Toru's face.
"This is where our fingers touched for the first time. You took the book down and handed it to me. I took it with both hands and bowed my head."
The warmth of your fingers, reaching me through the cold of the cloth. That overlap of less than a second was the end of my spring.
Toru's eyelashes did not move.
"That day, we didn't say a single word."
Even without a single word, I went home remembering the faint warmth that lay just beside the coldness of your fingers. On the way home, my own surname, Sakurai, sounded, for that night only, a little like someone else's name.
I stood and looked up at the shelf. Second from the top, a cloth-bound spine of grayish blue. Oral Traditions of Eastern Japan. The book I had pulled out alone after that night, tracing it with my finger down to the last line of its notes. Today I would pull it out once more. This time, I was not alone.
I slowly lifted my heels. It was the same posture as when I had stood on tiptoe here that day.
I stretched my arm up high and hooked my fingers over the cloth spine. The rough feel of old cloth, the same weight as some months before. As I slowly drew it out, for the first instant the book seemed about to carry the weight of three of my fingers away toward the other side. Exactly the weight that fingers reaching in from the other side of the shelf had pulled on that day. On the other side, where no one was, it felt as if someone were holding up the weight of three of my fingers right now.
The book beside it tipped slightly, then righted itself under its own weight.
Holding the book in both hands, I came down off my toes and crouched beside the wheelchair once more.
I gently drew Toru's right hand out from under the blanket. Cold. There was no strength in his fingers; they stayed loose within my palm. I supported it from beneath with my left hand. It was the same hand that, on that day in the first part, had touched the pad of my finger for the briefest instant in front of this shelf.
I brought the book close to his fingertips and let them touch the old cloth cover. I didn't press them to it; I only let them touch. His fingers did not move.
On the grayish-blue cloth, the pad of his index finger rested at a slant. Beside it I laid my own finger, a single layer of silk's width apart. The texture of the cloth met the pads of both our fingers at the same angle, and the cold of his finger came to me through the cloth, a little late.
That day, the overlap of our two fingertips had probably lasted less than a second. Today it was longer.
The faint smell of old paper and glue and the dust that had gathered at the back of the shelf slowly descended from the tip of my nose to the back of my throat.
Slowly, I drew Toru's hand away from the book. I took the book back into both hands and returned his hand beneath the blanket. My fingers watched those last few centimeters to the very end, until his wrist disappeared under the edge of the blanket.
Once more I stretched up on tiptoe, returned the book to its place, and lightly evened the top of its spine with my index finger. I set my feet flat again. From the outside, the slight bulge of the book on the second shelf from the top could no longer be seen.
I went around behind the wheelchair. I put my hands on the handles—and left them there, not moving.
I leaned forward and, over the backrest, crossed my arms in front of his shoulders. I brought my cheek against his hair. The navy of the scarf touched my cheek, and from beneath it came the faint warmth of his neck. The body in my arms was lighter than I had thought.
I brought my mouth close to his ear.
"I won't love you anymore. So, just for now—"
There I broke off. The rest I only shaped with my lips.
"Let me love you with everything I have."
Only my breath took shape beside his ear, and, never becoming a voice, it slowly fell into the faint darkness of the stacks. The backs of my eyelids grew hot, once. I blinked once and sent it back up.
I unwound my arms and straightened up from the backrest. Only the weight of the arms I had wrapped around him still lingered about my shoulders.
I rested my hands on the handles and, without thinking, tilted my head toward Toru's profile. I thought his eyelashes had moved, just slightly. I held my breath and looked again. They had not moved. There was no breeze in the aisle of the stacks, and no reason for them to move. It was my imagination, I told myself.
But once, deep in my throat, I thought, "It touched him." The moment I thought it, I stopped myself half a step in. Deep in my ears, a single heartbeat sounded loud, and then all was quiet.
I slowly turned the wheelchair toward the entrance to the stacks. I turned my back on the shelf. I remembered the sight of him from behind that day, as he shifted the bag in his arms and walked away from the shelf.
I began to walk toward the exit.