Suddenly the ringing of the phone came spiraling into my sleep, and I was jolted back into consciousness. That's him calling, I thought, then sat up in bed and glanced over at the clock. Not even ten minutes had passed since I'd fallen asleep. Somehow I never even noticed when calls came from other people, I just went on sleeping. If things as minor as this came under the heading of ESP, I guess I'd have fairly impressive super-natural powers.

“Terako?” he said when I lifted the receiver.

“Yes, it's me.”

“Perhaps you were sleeping?” he asked, sounding vaguely pleased. I smiled to myself unthinkingly.

“I was just about to get up.”

“I'll bet. So, you want to go for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“Okay. How about seven-thirty, the usual place?”

“All right.”

The room was still filled with light, still steeped in silence when I hung up the phone. All the shadows cast on the floor were dark and clearly outlined; I was in a time cut off from the rest of the world. I kept staring at the shadows for a while, but I didn't feel like doing anything, so in the end I got back into bed. This time I thought about Shiori a little before I slept.

The guy I'd met earlier, Shiori's last boyfriend, had asked me whether she'd died “because of her job.” And though I'd told him I didn't know, it had occurred to me then that in a certain distant sense it was probably true.

Shiori had been completely absorbed in her work, it had possessed her. That's why she'd moved out of my apartment. And I really do believe that in some sense she had found her calling in that job, that it was work only she could do. She'd gotten a part-time job in a bar on an introduction from some friend. Apparently she was noticed by a customer who worked as a scout for an organization that ran this sort of secret club—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it specialized in a peculiar form of prostitution. All she had to do was lie beside her customers in bed. I was surprised myself the first time I heard it.

The apartment she used for her work was just downstairs from the one her patron-employer rented for her, and the “work” apartment was where the huge, very sleepable double bed was located. I actually saw the place once. Being there was more like being in a foreign country than in a hotel or something. It had a real bedroom, a place meant for sleeping, the kind of room I'd only seen in movies. Several times a week Shiori lay there alongside her customers until morning.

“What? You mean you don't have sex?” I asked.