“Yeah, it would be awesome if it were Yoshihiro, wouldn't it? We could have one house in Japan and one in Boston, and go back and forth between the two. God, that would be so much fun! Because I really love Japan, you know, and if Yoshihiro got to like Boston then it'd be like we each had two countries, that's how we'd think about it! And then our little baby would grow up listening to the languages of two separate countries! And we would all go on trips together. It would be so fantastic. . . .”

Sarah belonged to a time so long ago that I never thought of her anymore, and I hadn't the slightest idea where she was or what she was doing—she was no longer part of my life. And then in the course of a perfectly ordinary day, as I was going about perfectly ordinary tasks, this letter appeared. It had been lying wadded into a hard little ball in the depths of my desk, in the dark recesses of a drawer I opened. Perhaps all this began when I plucked that wad out of the shadows, wondering what on earth it could be, and uncrinkled it with my fingers. As if some ancient spell had been broken, and was slowly dissolving, drifting out into the open air. . . .

Dear Sarah,

It was spring when we went to see my brother off.

He and his girlfriends were waiting at the airport when we arrived—yes, he had lots of girlfriends back then—and they were all decked out like flowers. The sky was marvelously clear, and my brother was in such a great mood, he was so delighted at the prospect of traveling that the rest of us got carried away too, and we were all happy and laughing. Those were good times. And we were all so glad that you and my brother were in love. It's strange, but somehow my brother just does that to people—all of a sudden you find yourself seeing things the same way he does. But of course you know that!

The cherry trees were in bloom when my brother left. I remember seeing petals drifting down here and there, like tiny flecks of light.

My brother doesn't write very often, but I assume that means you're both doing well. I hope you're having a nice time. Come visit us again in Japan.

I look forward to our next meeting.

Shibami

Once, back when I was still a girl, my brother and I and our cousin Mari went for a walk together along a dusk-darkened road. Our relatives had gathered for a memorial service or something like that, and we'd gotten terribly bored and secretly slipped away. We were just out wandering, we had no destination in mind.

The road stretched along one of the mounded-up banks of a river near the house where my father had grown up. It was that time of the evening, when off in the distance the other bank of the river is just beginning to drop away into the darkness of night. Soon the halo of light that always hung over the town at night would be reflected in the river, and even now the clear air was gradually filling with indigo, the indigo air drifted up, so that you almost felt as if you were seeing the air itself. The sky gleamed ever so faintly with the last traces of daylight, and everything was blurred, difficult to distinguish. Everything was beautiful.