“Mari, did you walk here like that?” I asked.

She shook her head and then pointed to the floor. Her coat and a sweater and everything down to her stockings lay scattered around the room.

Mari remained silent and abstracted, almost as if she was in shock.

“Listen, Mari, let's go to my house,” I said. “I'll ask my parents to give your mom a call, and then you can just stay in the guest room, you can stay there all by yourself, you don't even have to open the door.”

She made no reply. The room was too dark, I couldn't see the expression on her face. But the feeling I got from her was so bitterly cold that it compelled me to hurry. I pushed her arms into the coat, bundled up the rest of her clothes, and led her from the apartment. I hailed a taxi, and we headed for home. Mari turned to look back several times on the way. I had no idea what she was looking at, but I watched her gazing steadily with those cold eyes at the scenery dropping away behind us.

My mother's persuasion and Mari's stubborn insistence that she didn't want to go back home for a while convinced her parents to let her stay. It was arranged that she would stay with us for a while, living in the guest room.

I took care of everything involved in giving up the apartment—that room, of whose existence only my brother and Mari and I had been aware—by myself. There wasn't very much in the way of furniture and decorations and so on, but I found ways to dispose of what there was, and made sure to cancel the lease. It was pretty rough having to do all this in secret, but then there was the deposit: I made up my mind to keep whatever came back as a fee for the work I'd done. Of course they'd rented the place for such a short time and the lease had been canceled so suddenly, and then on top of that my brother had made holes in one of the walls to put up shelves, so in the end I didn't get very much at all.

Yoshihiro was dead, and Mari had settled down in our house, so there was no reason why our parents shouldn't know about the apartment. But if they found out, Mari would be forced to remember the coldness of that room once more, and I hated the idea of letting that happen.

Maybe I was trying to make amends for having thought it wouldn't matter if she died.

I arrived home just in time for dinner.

Mari sat between my mother and father, as if she were their daughter.

“You sure took your time,” she said, smiling. “Shall we begin?”

My father, unable to wait, had already started eating. The room was filled with steam, and it was hot, and my mother came and set a pot down on the table, holding it firmly between pot holders, laughing.