The night glittered brilliantly then. The night seemed to be infinitely long. And I could see something stretching way off into the distance behind Yoshihiro, whose eyes sparkled with the same mischievous light as always. I caught sight of a vast landscape.

Something like a panorama.

I kind of wonder if that wasn't The Future, as my childish heart saw it. Back then my brother was something that definitely wouldn't die, he was both night and something that traveled through night—something like that.

Yes. And during the last part of his life he hardly spent any time at home, so he wasn't what he'd been for me when he was small. He became the equivalent of a stranger.

But when I'd been talking with Mari like this, or when it got unbearably hot in the summer and my whole family started complaining and we set all the air conditioners in the house on high, or when night had fallen and there was a typhoon raging outside—at times like that, I'd think of Yoshihiro, and I'd yearn to have him back with us. It was like that even while he was alive. It didn't matter whether he was nearby or far away. His image would drift up into your mind just when you least expected it, shocking you, making your chest pound. Making your heart ache.

Early in the morning the phone rang.

Our telephone is right next to the door to my room, so I wandered out, still half asleep, and lifted the receiver.

“Hello?” I said.

I heard a little gasp on the other end of the phone—a woman's startled exclamation. Maybe this was Sarah, just like Mari had said? I tried to fit the gasp I'd heard with the distant memories I had of Sarah's voice, but in the end I couldn't tell whether it was her or not. It seemed sort of like her, but at the same time I had the feeling it wasn't.

“Sarah?” I said.

There was a brief space of silence, a feeling that the line was about to go dead. A silence that was neither denial nor affirmation.

I'd only just been buffeted out of sleep, and still couldn't think very clearly. My legs seemed wobbly, and various half-formed thoughts were spiraling around in my head, whirlpool-like.

Suppose Sarah's in Japan now, and suppose there's some reason why she can't come and talk freely, out in the open, and that she feels it's too late now even to tell me who she is. Suppose she just wants to make sure that we're still here, that her old friends are still here.

But these were only speculations. The silence told me nothing.

“Sarah—wait,” I said.

From the depths of an ocean of sleepiness, in my barely adequate English. The line didn't go dead. And so I continued.

“This is Shibami, Yoshihiro's sister.

“We met a couple of times, and we've exchanged letters.

“I'm twenty-two now.

“I'm sure you've changed a lot too.

“Maybe there's nothing linking us anymore, but somewhere deep down inside I'm always thinking of you.