The first time he met Sara, he felt an anonymous finger reach out and push down forcefully on that trigger on his back. The day they met they talked for a long time, though he couldn’t recall much of what they said. What he did recall was the special feeling on his back, and the indefinably thrilling sensation it brought to his mind and body. One part of him relaxed, another part tightened up. That sort of feeling. But what did it mean? Tsukuru thought about this for days, but he was not, by nature, adept at abstract thinking. So Tsukuru emailed Sara and invited her to dinner. He was determined to find out the meaning of that feeling, of that sensation.
Just as he appreciated Sara’s appearance, he also enjoyed the way she dressed. Her clothes were always simple and subdued, but they were lovely and fit her perfectly. Tsukuru could easily imagine, though, that what appeared to be simple outfits had taken much time to choose, and also hadn’t come cheap. Her accessories and makeup, too, were low-key yet refined. Tsukuru himself wasn’t particular about clothes, but he’d always loved seeing a well-dressed woman. Just like he enjoyed listening to beautiful music.
His two older sisters loved clothes, and when they were young, before they went out on a date, they had grabbed Tsukuru first to get his opinion of their outfit. He wasn’t sure why, but they were very serious about it. What do you think? they’d ask. Do these go well together? And he would give his honest opinion, from a male perspective. His sisters respected his opinion, which made him happy, and before long, this became a habit.
As he sipped his weak highball, Tsukuru mentally undressed Sara. Unhooking the back of her dress, quietly unzipping her. He’d only slept with her once, but it had been wonderful, and fulfilling. Dressed or undressed, she looked five years younger than she was, with pure white skin and beautifully rounded, modestly sized breasts. Leisurely foreplay, caressing her, had been amazing, and after he came, he had felt at peace as he held her close. But that wasn’t all there was to it. He was well aware that there was something more. Making love was a joining, a connection between one person and another. You receive something, and you also have to give.
“What were your high school days like?” Tsukuru asked.
Sara shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that. It was pretty boring. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but right now, I want to hear about you. What happened to your group of five friends?”
Tsukuru picked up a handful of nuts and tossed a few in his mouth.
“We had several unspoken rules among us, one of them being As much as we possibly can, we do things together, all five of us. We tried to avoid having just two of us, for instance, going off somewhere. Otherwise, we were worried that the group might fall apart. We had to be a centripetal unit. I’m not sure how to put it—we were trying our best to maintain the group as an orderly, harmonious community.”
“An orderly, harmonious community?” Genuine surprise showed in her voice.
Tsukuru blushed a little. “We were in high school, and had all kinds of weird ideas.”
Sara looked intently at Tsukuru, cocking her head a degree or two. “I don’t find it weird. But what was the purpose of that community?”
“The original purpose, like I said, was to help out at an after-school program. This was where we all met and we all felt strongly about it—it remained an important collective goal. But as time passed, simply being a community ourselves became one of our goals, too.”
“You mean maintaining the group itself, and keeping it going, became one of your aims.”
“I guess so.”
Sara narrowed her eyes in a tight line. “Just like the universe.”
“I don’t know much about the universe,” Tsukuru said. “But for us it was very important. We had to protect the special chemistry that had developed among us. Like protecting a lit match, keeping it from blowing out in the wind.”
“Chemistry?”
“The power that happened to arise at that point. Something that could never be reproduced.”
“Like the Big Bang?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Tsukuru said.
Sara took a sip of her mojito and examined the mint leaf from several angles.
“I went to private girls’ schools,” she said, “so I really don’t understand those kind of co-ed groups at public schools. I can’t picture what they’re like. In order for the five of you to maintain that community, so it wouldn’t fall apart, you tried to be as abstinent as you could. Is that how it worked?”
“Abstinent? I’m not sure that’s the right word. It wasn’t something that dramatic. It’s true, though, we were careful to keep relations with the opposite sex out of the group.”
“But you never put that into words,” Sara said.
Tsukuru nodded. “We didn’t verbalize it. It wasn’t like we had rules or anything.”
“What about you? You were with them all the time, so weren’t you attracted at all to Shiro or Kuro? From what you told me, they sound pretty appealing.”
“Both of the girls were appealing in their own way. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t attracted to them. But I tried as much as possible not to think of them that way.”
“As much as possible?”
“As much as possible,” Tsukuru said. He felt his cheeks reddening again. “When I couldn’t help thinking of them, I always tried to think of them as a pair.”
“The two of them as a pair?”
Tsukuru paused, searching for the right words. “I can’t really explain it. I thought of them like they were a fictitious being. Like a formless, abstract being.”
“Hmm.” Sara appeared impressed. She thought about it. She seemed to want to say something, but then thought better of it. After a while she spoke.
“So after you graduated from high school you went to college in Tokyo, and left Nagoya. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” Tsukuru said. “I’ve lived in Tokyo ever since.”
“What about the other four?”
“They went to colleges in the Nagoya area. Aka studied in the economics department of Nagoya University, the department where his father taught. Kuro attended a private women’s college famous for its English department. Ao got into business school at a private college that had a well-known rugby team, on the strength of his athletic abilities. Shiro finally was persuaded to give up on being a veterinarian and instead she studied piano in a music school. All four schools were close enough for them to commute from home. I was the only one who went to Tokyo, in my case to an engineering college.”
“Why did you want to go to Tokyo?”
“It’s simple, really. There was a professor at my university who was an expert on railroad station construction. Constructing stations is a specialized field—they have a different structure from other buildings—so even if I went to an ordinary engineering school and studied construction and engineering, it wouldn’t have been of much practical use. I needed to study with a specialist.”
“Having set, specific goals makes life easier,” Sara said.
Tsukuru agreed.
“So the other four stayed in Nagoya because they didn’t want that beautiful community to break up?”
“When we were seniors in high school, we talked about where we were going to go to college. Except for me, they all planned to stay in Nagoya and go to college there. They didn’t come out and say it exactly, but it was obvious they were doing that because they wanted to keep the group together.”
With his GPA, Aka could have easily gotten into a top school like Tokyo University, and his parents and teachers urged him to try. And Ao’s athletic skills could have won him a place in a well-known university too. Kuro’s personality was well suited to the more sophisticated, intellectually stimulating life she might have found in a cosmopolitan environment, and she should have gone on to one of the private universities in Tokyo. Nagoya, of course, is a large city, but culturally it was much more provincial. In the end, all four of them decided to stay in Nagoya, settling for much less prestigious schools than they could have attended. Shiro was the only one who never would have left Nagoya, even if the group hadn’t existed. She wasn’t the type to venture out on her own in search of a more stimulating environment.