I did have some savings, though not much, and my boyfriend put an incredibly large sum of money into the bank for me each month—after all, he said, I'd quit my job for him—so living was easy. At first I was hesitant to accept this, thinking that it would seem too much like being his mistress, but then it's always been my policy to take what people offer me. In the end I decided to take the money and be glad. All of which is to say, maybe I slept so much simply because I had so much free time. I've no idea how many young women like this there are in the world, but I kind of wonder if those oddly vague people you see in department stores during the day, women who don't quite seem to be students or people who work on their own, might not be the same. I know very well that I used to be like that myself, that I used to walk around with the same utterly unfocused look in my eyes.

I was walking down the street like that one cloudless afternoon when I happened to run into a friend of mine.

“Hey, how've you been?” I said, running up to him.

He was one of my friends from college, a nice guy, extremely bright. Shiori had dated him for a while, though not for very long. They'd even lived together for a few months.

“Oh, pretty good,” he said, smiling.

“What are you up to? Are you out on business?”

He was wearing a black shirt and cotton pants, the sort of clothes that looked like they were definitely meant for off the job. The only thing that suggested he was working was the single envelope he carried in his otherwise empty hand.

“Yeah, I'm just delivering this now. What about you? Looks like you're still as unoccupied as ever. . . .”

My friend often let the ends of his words trail off into nothing, in a way that sounded really gentle. He was grinning, there under the blue sky.

“That's right. I'm not doing a thing,” I said.

“Living the life of luxury.”

“Exactly. Hey, you're going to the subway, right? I'll come with you as far as the corner.”

We started walking.

The blue sky was carved up to fit the shapes of the buildings lining the street, and it shone with a peculiar clarity. For some time now I'd been feeling like I was in some other country. Every once in a while the city streets at noon and the sunlight that washes over them make my memories and all sorts of things get muddled, especially in the very middle of summer. I could almost feel the skin on my arms burning, little by little.

“God it's hot.”

“It is hot, isn't it?”

“I hear . . . I hear Shiori died,” said my friend. “I heard just recently.”