Mari grinned. “But the best of all would be if you'd hurry up and get extraordinarily rich. Then as soon as my passionate love affair ends I can just slink on over to you. It'd be a really nice way of doing things, and since I know the sort of person you are I wouldn't have to worry about anything.”

Even then my brother must have had that certain something that makes a man popular with women. He didn't even blush when our lovely older cousin teased him like this. He wasn't the slightest bit uncomfortable.

“It's true, isn't it. No hassle involved—nice and easy,” he said.

“And I bet our parents would be thrilled, too.”

“It'd be fun if we could live in the same house as you,” I said.

Mari nodded, smiling slightly.

“But a lot of things are going to happen from now on,” my brother said.

He sounded almost like he was talking to himself. I still find it strange. Why was it that even then, when he was still just a boy, my brother had such a profound if sketchy understanding of so much of life? Why did you get the impression that he already knew all about that mode of living where you're always making plans, always moving ahead, moving ahead, never settling down for good in any one place?

The three of us walked on and on along the bank of the river. The roar of the water crashed through the air with such thunderous force that it somehow ended up seeming very quiet. Even so we were speaking quite loudly, and every little nothing we said seemed strangely pregnant with meaning.

I often remember that evening, the river flowing on into the distance.

And now a year had passed since my brother died.

It really did snow a lot that winter. Maybe that explains why I hardly ever went out at night, but just stayed holed up inside my room. I was in college, but it had been decided that I'd study abroad the next semester, and that meant I didn't have to take any makeup exams. Which is to say that my situation ought to have been very pleasant and carefree, but for no particular reason I'd gone and turned down every invitation I'd received to go skiing or to travel around spa-hopping. I guess maybe I'd gotten to like the feeling of being snowed in—maybe that explains it. All the plain old houses lining the plain old streets were dusted with white, so that it seemed like something out of science fiction. It was great. You felt like everything had come to a halt, like you were stuck in some sort of snowdrift where what had piled up wasn't snow but time.

It was snowing again that night. The snow kept streaming down outside, fast and thick, deepening. My parents had already gone to bed, and our cat was asleep—you couldn't hear a single living sound anywhere in the house. It was so quiet that I could even distinguish the low moan of the refrigerator out in the kitchen, and the rumble of cars driving along the main street.