When the time came I got my boyfriend to take us in his car.

We picked up Mari and headed for the airport.

It was a beautiful, slightly chilly autumn day. The kind of afternoon when invisible rays of sun stream down through the glass into the airport lobby. The plane arrived a little late, and there was an announcement saying that it had landed, and then finally, little by little, the passengers began to emerge.

Mari's long hair was tugged back into a ponytail, and she had the band wound extremely tightly. She acted so jittery you got the feeling she must be just as taut inside. She looked like her heart must be close to bursting.

“Mari . . . what's wrong?” I asked.

“I wish I knew,” she said.

A blue sweater and a tight beige skirt. The white of the lobby's floor set the colors off marvelously. She stood by herself, like the star of some movie, her pretty, tidily arranged face turned so that I saw it in profile, and she was staring so fixedly at the monitor that she almost seemed to be ripping into it with her eyes. Looking at her, you had the feeling that she existed in some way more real than any of the other people in the crowds waiting for the plane—that she more thoroughly filled the space she occupied. My brother didn't come out. Little scenes began playing themselves out all around us. People coming back together. And then the line of emerging passengers dribbled away into nothing. I took my boyfriend's hand in mine. “He sure is taking his time,” I said. But to tell the truth I wasn't looking at the monitor or even at the line—I was watching Mari. I was staring at her, at that figure standing there, so lovely it seemed she might shatter everything. Then my brother finally emerged, pushing a big trunk, looking like he'd matured a whole lot, and Mari started moving toward him through the crowds, walking fast, strangely fast, as if she were walking through a dream. Yoshihiro's face looked a little more tired than it had the day we'd come to see him off. Little by little she drew closer to him.

“Hey!” Yoshihiro spotted us all and waved.

Then he looked straight at Mari. “Mari. It's been a while.”

She smiled faintly. “Welcome back, Yoshihiro,” she said.

Her voice merged with the hustle and bustle of the lobby. It sounded very low when it reached my ears, and more adult than I'd ever known it.

“Are they going out or something?” asked my boyfriend.

He didn't know anything about the two of them, and I figured that since things seemed to be heading in that direction anyway, I might as well just say they were. So I nodded. Mari was telling my brother that there were all kinds of things she'd been wanting to talk over with him. I went on watching her as she spoke. My brother nodded. Then he put his hand around her shoulder.