Not long after my brother died, Mari ran away from home.

Her parents had been opposed to the relationship from the start, of course, and they'd made her stay home from work for a week without even asking her if she wanted to, using “appendicitis” as an excuse, and they'd even had the nerve to ask that once the week was up she just forget about Yoshihiro—but Mari's running away certainly wasn't in defiance of any of this. She said that she'd just gotten tired. I think this was probably the truth. Her poor parents weren't even a part of her world right then. I was frightened; it terrified me to think that I might be asked to do anything but cry and be with my family, a family now plunged in darkness—and so I didn't see Mari. Even when I heard that she'd run away from home I didn't feel any particular urgency . . . or perhaps I ought to say that I couldn't feel that way, that I didn't have that freedom.

A week had passed since Mari's disappearance when her mother called for the second time, sounding half crazy. For the first time I reacted, decided to see what I could do. I had a feeling I knew where she was.

Spring was drawing near, and that afternoon the sun was warm and the air was heavy with the scent of flowers. I didn't even wear a jacket.

I got on the train.

Mari and Yoshihiro had rented a small one-room apartment in the next neighborhod where they went for their rendezvous. I figured that if Mari was anywhere, she had to be there. But what will I do if I find her there, dead? This thought kept circling through my head. Silent spring scenery shook past outside the window, and the faces of the people sitting in their seats looked peaceful and vague. If I'm too late, if I just find her body, will I feel sorry? Pale light shot through the swaying interior of the train. No, as a matter of fact I probably won't, not particularly. This is what I thought at the time. And I honestly believed it.

I told the people in the maintenance room that I was Yoshihiro's sister and borrowed a key, then rode the slow elevator up to her floor. There was no response when I pressed the doorbell. So I slipped the key into the lock and went inside. The room was dark and unbelievably cold. The blinds were all shut, the air so chilly I felt the cold pushing up through the bottoms of my socks into my feet. I had never been so scared in my life. I walked forward one step at a time, imagining the corpse I was just about to see. Soon my eyes grew accustomed to the dark, and I discovered Mari lying on the floor, wrapped up in a blanket.

She was breathing, inhaling and exhaling slowly, deeply, the way people do when they're asleep. It was a healthy sound, not the sound of someone who's taken sleeping pills. I shook her awake, and she groaned and rubbed her eyes. I was shocked to find myself looking at her bare arms sticking out from the sleeves of a short-sleeve T-shirt. Looking under the blanket I saw that all she was wearing was that T-shirt and a pair of panties. She might as well have been taking an afternoon nap at some resort in the full heat of summer.