I finally spotted Ken'ichi through the glass door, coming my way.

He stopped in front of my couch and held out an envelope. “Here's the money.”

I took the envelope in silence. I certainly couldn't thank him.

“Have you got some time now?”

“Yeah, I'm pretty much free.”

“Well then, I'll buy you some tea,” Ken'ichi said.

He sat down across from me.

As we were drinking our tea he smiled and said, “People and their rumors sure are frightening, aren't they? Hawaii, indeed! I wish I could go to Hawaii.”

“So what did you do with the five hundred thousand yen? Not that you have to tell me if you don't want to.”

“It's fine with me. We went on this terrifically lavish vacation in Atami. Went around to all the very best old Japanese inns, you know, and ate delicious foods every day, and drove around to various places. We stayed for two weeks. Look at my skin. Super sleek, no? Not a surprise, I guess, after so much luxury.”

“You went with your girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“I hear she's in high school,” I said, smiling. “Unbelievable.”

With that Ken'ichi exploded into laughter.

“What are you talking about! She's in a two-year college. It's amazing, the completely ridiculous rumors that people start! Maybe I ought to keep myself out of sight a little longer—I'd love to see just how overblown this thing gets!”

“Yeah, that's how it goes with rumors. You don't pay people back, so it just gets more and more extreme. But seriously—is there that much stuff to do at Atami? It seems like it'd get boring, even for lovers.”

“But having all that time is what's so nice. . . . Or rather, anything would have been okay as long as it was somewhere far away from everyday life. You see, my girlfriend's parents are ‘newly-divorceds,’ as it were, and the whole situation is really rough, so I wanted to take her away from all that, you know? Except that traveling overseas wears you down, and Atami has all those old spas, and I'd heard that you never get bored there—it seemed like the perfect place. It was great to make plans like that, but I had no money. Not a single yen.”

Ken'ichi burst out laughing again.

“I see,” I said.

“When people start getting depressed there's just no end to it—things just seem to get worse and worse. And I'd start getting drawn into it myself when I was with her, you know, so that I ended up becoming a little weird too. Of course, things did seem to be pretty horrendous in her house, so there wasn't much anyone could do. For instance, say we'd arranged to meet somewhere. And say I showed up about fifteen minutes late, just like I always do. Well, she'd already be all listless and droopy. And then she'd cry. I don't know, it's not like we even got together that much in the first place, but all of a sudden even I got this urge to go do something fun, you know? Of course I don't know how much fun it was for her, but I definitely had a good time.”