We weren't particularly nervous, but still we didn't talk much. He was extremely decorous, and his profile made a very peculiar impression on me, and every so often he'd start telling me about this or that or something else. I just nodded and listened. And as I nodded I had this vague sort of intuition that he was going to be someone who'd take on a great significance in my life. It was evening and yet it seemed like morning—maybe that's why I felt this way. It was as if we were sitting around some table still half asleep, hardly speaking, that's the kind of scene it was. I imagined all kinds of warm, pleasant things that might happen between us in the future, but for some reason everything ended up turning into an image of winter. A white room filled with steam, the two of us walking along wearing coats, a wintry grove of trees. Everything I saw was like that. And this made me terribly sad.

Somehow or other that seemingly eternal week passed. I arrived back at my apartment after the last day of work and took off my clothes, just letting them lie where they fell, then chucked the envelope that held my salary on the floor and stood there giggling. And then the phone rang.

“Hey. It's me, Mr. Iwanaga,” he said.

I felt a kind of nostalgia when I heard his voice.

“I haven't heard from you in a while,” I said.

“Were you asleep?”

“Nope. As a matter of fact I was just standing here looking down at the envelope with my salary in it and laughing. I'm so exhausted!”

“You mean you've been working? You really are odd.”

“Helps to pass the time,” I said.

It occurred to me that after I'd picked up the clothes that were scattered around the room I would just go ahead and sleep as long as I liked. My head was clear, my body was completely worn out. This time it wouldn't frighten me a bit even if I slept for an entire day.

“You sure sound lively. Like when we first met.”

His voice was bright. Even he'd gotten caught up in the mood.

“Now that you mention it, it's true, isn't it?” I said, scraping little flakes of worn-out nail polish off my fingernails. “By the way . . . your wife was in high school when you met her, wasn't she? And she had long hair?”

“How'd you know? Did you learn to read minds at your job or something?” He sounded suspicious. “But you're right. She was eighteen.”

“I thought so,” I said.

Suddenly my eyes filled with tears. Even I didn't really understand why I was crying. “Anyway . . .” he said. Then he started telling me where we should meet for that eel dinner we'd planned, and for the fireworks. As I listened to his voice and scribbled out a note to myself, my hand and the whole room and everything in it became a hot blur, vaguely bright, shining.