Eri shook her head. “All I’m saying is that maybe that was one latent reason. I’m no psychoanalyst. At any rate, Yuzu insisted to the bitter end that you stole her virginity at your place in Tokyo. For her, this was the definitive version of the truth, and she never wavered. Even now I don’t understand where that delusion came from, and why she clung to that distorted version of reality. I don’t think anybody can ever explain it. But I do think that sometimes a certain kind of dream can be even stronger than reality. That’s the dream she had. Maybe that’s what it was. Please understand, I did feel awful for you.”

“Was Yuzu ever attracted to me?”

“No, she wasn’t,” Eri said tersely. “Yuzu was never interested in anyone of the opposite sex.”

Tsukuru frowned. “She was a lesbian?”

Eri shook her head again. “No, that’s not it. She didn’t have those tendencies at all. I’m positive. It’s just that Yuzu always had a strong aversion to anything sexual. A fear of sex, you might say. I don’t know where those feelings came from. The two of us were very open with each other about almost everything, but we hardly ever talked about sex. I was up-front about sexual things myself, but whenever sex came up, Yuzu quickly changed the subject.”

“What happened to her after the miscarriage?” Tsukuru asked.

“She took a leave of absence from college. In her condition, there was no way she could be around other people. She told them she had health issues, and stayed holed up at home and never went out. Before long, she developed a severe eating disorder. She vomited up almost everything she ate, and gave herself enemas to get rid of the rest. If she’d gone on that way, I don’t think she would have survived. I made her see a counselor, and somehow she was able to get over the eating disorder. It took about a half a year. At one point it was so awful that she was down to under ninety pounds, and she looked like a ghost. But she pulled out of it and reached the point, barely, where she could cling to life. I went to see her almost every day, talking with her, encouraging her, doing whatever I could to keep her going. After a year away from college, she managed to return to school.”

“Why do you think she developed an eating disorder?”

“It’s quite simple. She wanted to stop having periods,” Eri said. “Extreme weight loss stops you from having periods. That’s what she was hoping for. She didn’t want to ever get pregnant again, and probably didn’t want to be a woman anymore. She wanted, if possible, to have her womb removed.”

“Sounds pretty serious,” Tsukuru said.