“No, that’s okay,” Tengo said. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

“Tengo, can you get here today?”

“I think so.” His classes at the cram school began again today, Monday, but for something like this, he would be able to get out of them.

“I’ll take the first express train. I should be there before ten.”

“I would appreciate it if you would. There are all sorts of formalities that have to be taken care of.”

“Formalities,” Tengo said. “Is there anything in particular I should bring with me?”

“Are you Mr. Kawana’s only relative?”

“I’m pretty sure I am.”

“Then bring your registered seal. You might need it. And do you have a certificate of registration for the seal?”

“I think I have a spare copy.”

“Bring that, too, just in case. I don’t think there’s anything else you especially need. Your father arranged everything beforehand.”

“Arranged everything?”

“Um, while he was still conscious, he gave detailed instructions for everything—the money for his funeral, the clothes he would wear in the coffin, where his ashes would be interred. He was very thorough when it came to preparations. Very practical, I guess you could say.”

“That’s the kind of person he was,” Tengo said, rubbing his temple.

“I finish my rotation at seven a.m. and then am going home to sleep. But Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura will be on duty in the morning and they can explain the details to you.”

“Thank you for all you’ve done,” Tengo said.

“You’re quite welcome,” Kumi Adachi replied. And then, as if suddenly remembering, her tone turned formal. “My deepest sympathy for your loss.”

“Thank you,” Tengo said.

He knew he couldn’t go back to sleep, so he boiled water and made coffee. That woke him up a bit. Feeling hungry, he threw together a sandwich of tomatoes and cheese that were in the fridge. Like eating in the dark, he could feel the texture but very little of the flavor. He then took out the train schedule and checked the time for the next express to Tateyama. He had only returned two days earlier from the cat town, on Saturday afternoon, and now here he was, setting off again. This time, though, he would probably only stay a night or two.

At four a.m. he washed his face in the bathroom and shaved. He used a brush to tame his cowlicks but, as always, was only partly successful. Let it be, he thought, it will fall into place before long.

His father’s passing didn’t particularly shock Tengo. He had spent two solid weeks beside his unconscious father. He already felt that his father had accepted his impending death. The doctors weren’t able to determine what had put him into a coma, but Tengo knew. His father had simply decided to die, or else had abandoned the will to live any longer. To borrow Kumi’s phrase, as a “single leaf on a tree,” he turned off the light of consciousness, closed the door on any senses, and waited for the change of seasons.

From Chikura Station he took a taxi and arrived at the seaside sanatorium at ten thirty. Like the previous day, Sunday, it was a calm early-winter day. Warm sunlight streamed down on the withered lawn, as if rewarding it, and a calico cat that Tengo had never seen before was sunning itself, leisurely grooming its tail. Nurse Tamura and Nurse Omura came to the entrance to greet him. Quietly, they each expressed their condolences, and Tengo thanked them.

His father’s body was being kept in an inconspicuous little room in an inconspicuous corner of the sanatorium. Nurse Tamura led Tengo there. His father was lying faceup on a gurney, covered in a white cloth. In the square, windowless room, the white fluorescent light overhead made the white walls even brighter. On top of a waist-high cabinet was a glass vase with three white chrysanthemums, probably placed there that very morning. On the wall was a round clock. It was an old, dusty clock, but it told the time correctly. Its role, perhaps, was to be a witness of some kind. Besides this, there were no furniture or decorations. Countless bodies of elderly people must have passed through here—entering without a word, exiting without a word. A straightforward but solemn atmosphere lay over the room like an unspoken fact.

His father’s face didn’t look much different from when he was alive. Even up close, it didn’t seem like he was dead. His color wasn’t bad, and perhaps because someone had been kind enough to shave him, his chin and upper lip were strangely smooth. There didn’t seem to be all that much difference from when he was alive, deeply asleep, except that now the feeding tubes and catheters were unnecessary. Leave the body like this, though, and in a few days decay would set in, and then there would be a big difference between life and death. But the body would be cremated before that happened.

The doctor with whom Tengo had spoken many times before came in, expressed his sympathy, then explained what had led up to his father’s passing. He was very kind, very thorough in his explanation, but it really all came down to one conclusion: the cause of death was unknown. None of their tests had ever determined what was wrong with him. The closest the doctor could say was that Tengo’s father died of old age—but he was still only in his mid-sixties, too young for such a diagnosis.

“As the attending physician I’m the one who fills out the death certificate,” the doctor said hesitantly. “I’m thinking of writing that the cause of death was ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma,’ if that is all right with you?”

“But actually the cause of death was not ‘heart failure brought on by an extended coma.’ Is that what you’re saying?”

The doctor looked a bit embarrassed. “True, until the very end we found nothing wrong with his heart.”

“But you couldn’t find anything wrong with any of his other organs.”

“That’s right,” the doctor said reluctantly.

“But the form requires a clear cause of death?”

“Correct.”

“This isn’t my field, but right now his heart is stopped, right?”

“Of course. His heart has stopped.”

“Which is a kind of organ failure, isn’t it?”

The doctor considered this. “If the heart beating is considered normal, then yes, it is a sort of organ failure, as you say.”

“So please write it that way. ‘Heart failure brought on by an extended coma,’ was it? I have no objection.”

The doctor seemed relieved. “I can have the death certificate ready in thirty minutes,” he said. Tengo thanked him. The doctor left, leaving only bespectacled Nurse Tamura behind.

“Shall I leave you alone with your father?” Nurse Tamura asked Tengo. Since she had to ask—it was standard procedure—the question sounded a bit matter-of-fact.

“No, there’s no need. Thanks,” Tengo said. Even if he were left alone with his father, there was nothing in particular he wanted to say to him. It was the same as when he was alive. Now that he was dead, there weren’t suddenly all sorts of topics Tengo wanted to discuss.

“Would you like to go somewhere else, then, to discuss the arrangements? You don’t mind?” Nurse Tamura asked.

“I don’t mind,” Tengo replied.

Before Nurse Tamura left, she faced the corpse and brought her hands together in prayer. Tengo did the same. People naturally pay their respects to the dead. The person had, after all, just accomplished the personal, profound feat of dying. Then the two of them left the windowless little room and went to the cafeteria. There was no one else there. Bright sunlight shone in through the large window facing the garden. Tengo stepped into that light and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no sign of the dead there. This was the world of the living—no matter how uncertain and imperfect a world it might be.

Nurse Tamura poured hot roasted hojicha tea into a teacup and passed it to him. They sat down across from each other and drank their tea in silence for a while.