That evening he didn’t take a single photo. Leaning against the wall, he smoked Seven Stars, and opened another can of peaches and ate it. At nine he went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, tugged off his clothes, slipped into the sleeping bag, and, shivering, tried to sleep. The night was cold, but his shivering wasn’t just brought on by the cold alone. The chill seemed to be arising from inside his body. Where in the world did I come from? he asked himself in the dark. And where the hell am I going?

The pain of her gaze still stabbed at him. Maybe it would never go away. Or was it always there, he wondered, and I just didn’t notice it?

The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese and crackers washed down by instant coffee, he pulled himself together and sat back down in front of the camera. As he did the day before, he observed the people coming and going and took a few photos. Tengo and Fuka-Eri, though, were not among them. Instead it was more hunched-over people, carried by force of habit into the new day. The weather was fine, the wind strong. People’s white breath swirled away in the air.

I’m not going to think of anything superfluous, Ushikawa decided. Be thick-skinned, have a hard shell around my heart, take one day at a time, go by the book. I’m just a machine. A capable, patient, unfeeling machine. A machine that draws in new time through one end, then spits out old time from the other end. It exists in order to exist. He needed to revert back again to that pure, unsullied cycle—that perpetual motion that would one day come to an end. He pumped up his willpower and put a cap on his emotions, trying to rid his mind of the image of Fuka-Eri. The pain in his chest from her sharp gaze felt better now, little more than an occasional dull ache. Good. Can’t ask for more. I’m a simple system again, he told himself, a simple system with complex details.

Before noon he went to the discount store near the station and bought a small electric space heater. He then went to the same noodle place he had been to before, opened his newspaper, and ate an order of hot tempura soba. Before going back to his apartment he stood at the entrance and gazed above the electric pole at the spot Fuka-Eri had been so focused on yesterday, but he found nothing to draw his attention. All that was there were a transformer and thick black electric lines entwined like snakes. What could she have been looking at? Or was she looking for something?

Back in his room, he switched on the space heater. An orange light flickered into life and he felt an intimate warmth on his skin. It was not enough to fully heat the place, but it was much better than nothing. Ushikawa leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and took a short nap in a tiny spot of sunlight. A dreamless sleep, a pure blank in time.

He was pulled out of this happy, deep sleep by the sound of a knock. Someone was knocking on his door. He bolted awake and gazed around him, unsure for a moment of his surroundings. He spotted the Minolta single-lens reflex camera on a tripod and remembered he was in a room in an apartment in Koenji. Someone was pounding with his fist on the door. As he hurriedly scraped together his consciousness, Ushikawa thought it was odd that someone would knock on the door. There was a doorbell—all you had to do was push the button. It was simple enough. Still this person insisted on knocking—pounding it for all he was worth, actually. Ushikawa frowned and checked his watch. One forty-five. One forty-five p.m., obviously. It was still light outside.

He didn’t answer the door. Nobody knew he was here, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors. It must be a salesman, or someone selling newspaper subscriptions. Whoever it was might need him, but he certainly didn’t need them. Leaning against the wall, he glared at the door and maintained his silence. The person would surely give up after a time and go away.

But he didn’t. He would pause, then start knocking once more. A barrage of knocks, nothing for ten or fifteen seconds, then a new round. These were firm knocks, nothing hesitant about them, each knock almost unnaturally the same as the next. From start to finish they were demanding a response from Ushikawa. He grew uneasy. Was the person on the other side of the door maybe—Eriko Fukada? Coming to complain to him about his despicable behavior, secretly photographing people? His heart started to pound. He licked his lips with his thick tongue. But the banging against this steel door could only be that of a grown man’s fist, not that of a girl’s.

Or had she informed somebody else of what Ushikawa was up to, and that person was outside the door? Somebody from the rental agency, or maybe the police? That couldn’t be good. But the rental agent would have a master key and could let himself in, and the police would announce themselves. And neither one would bang on the door like this. They would simply ring the bell.

“Mr. Kozu,” a man called out. “Mr. Kozu!”

Ushikawa remembered that Kozu was the name of the previous resident of the apartment. His name remained on the mailbox. Ushikawa preferred it that way. The man outside must think Mr. Kozu still lived here.

“Mr. Kozu,” the man intoned. “I know you’re in there. I can sense you’re holed up inside, trying to stay perfectly quiet.”

A middle-aged man’s voice, not all that loud, but slightly hoarse. At the core his voice had a hardness to it, the hardness of a brick fired in a kiln and carefully allowed to dry. Perhaps because of this, his voice echoed throughout the building.

“Mr. Kozu, I’m from NHK. I’ve come to collect your monthly subscription fee. So I would appreciate it if you’d open the door.”

Ushikawa wasn’t planning to pay any NHK subscription fee. It might be faster, he thought, to just let the man in and show him the place. Tell him, look, no TV, right? But if he saw Ushikawa, with his odd features, shut up alone in an apartment in the middle of the day without a stick of furniture, he couldn’t help but be suspicious.

“Mr. Kozu, people who have TVs have to pay the subscription fee. That’s the law. Some people say they never watch NHK, so they’re not going to pay. But that argument doesn’t hold water. Whether you watch NHK or not, if you have a TV you have to pay.”

So it’s just a fee collector. Let him get it out of his system. Don’t respond, and he’ll go away. But how could he be so sure there’s someone in this apartment? After he came back an hour or so ago, Ushikawa hadn’t been out again. He hardly made a sound, and he always kept the curtains closed.

“Mr. Kozu, I know very well that you are in there,” the man said, as if reading Ushikawa’s thoughts. “You must think it strange that I know that. But I do know it—that you’re in there. You don’t want to pay the NHK fee, so you’re trying to not make a sound. I’m perfectly aware of this.”

The homogeneous knocks started up again. There would be a slight pause, like a wind instrument player pausing to take a breath, then once more the pounding would start, the rhythm unchanged.

“I get it, Mr. Kozu. You have decided to ignore me. Fine. I’ll leave today. I have other things to do. But I’ll be back. Mark my words. If I say I’ll be back, you can count on it. I’m not your average fee collector. I never give up until I get what is coming to me. I never waver from that. It’s like the phases of the moon, or life and death. There is no escape.”

A long silence followed. Just when Ushikawa thought he might be gone, the collector spoke up again.

“I’ll be back soon, Mr. Kozu. Look forward to it. When you’re least expecting it, there will be a knock on the door. Bang bang! And that will be me.”

No more knocks now. Ushikawa listened intently. He thought he heard footsteps fading down the corridor. He quickly went over to his camera and fixed his gaze on the entrance to the apartment. The fee collector should finish his business in the building soon and be leaving. He had to check and see what sort of man he was. NHK collectors wear uniforms, so he should be able to spot him right away. But maybe he wasn’t really from NHK. Maybe he was pretending to be one to try to get Ushikawa to open the door. Either way, he had to be someone Ushikawa had never seen before. The remote for the shutter in his right hand, he waited expectantly for a likely-looking person to appear.