“Tsukuru, it’s true. She lives on in so many ways.” Eri’s voice, from the other side of the table, was husky, as if forced from her. “I can feel it. In all the echoes that surround us, in the light, in shapes, in every single …”

Eri covered her face with her hands. No other words came. Tsukuru wasn’t sure if she was crying or not. If she was, she did so silently.

While Ao and Tsukuru played soccer, Eri and Aka did their best to keep the other children from interrupting Yuzu’s piano lessons. They did whatever they could to occupy the kids—they read books, played games, went outside, and sang songs. Most of the time, though, these attempts failed. The children never tired of trying to disrupt the piano lessons. They found this much more interesting than anything else. Eri and Aka’s fruitless struggle to divert them was fun to watch.

Almost without thinking, Tsukuru stood up and went around to the opposite side of the table. Without a word he laid his hand on Eri’s shoulder. She still had her face in her hands. As he touched her, he felt her trembling, a trembling the eye couldn’t detect.

“Tsukuru?” Eri’s voice leaked out from between her fingers. “Could you do something for me?”

“Of course,” Tsukuru said.

“Could you hold me?”

Tsukuru asked her to stand up, then drew her to him. Her full breasts lay tightly against his chest, as if testimony to something. Her hands were warm where she held his back, her cheek soft and wet as it pressed against his neck.

“I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Japan again,” Eri murmured. Her warm, damp breath brushed his ear. “Everything I see would remind me of Yuzu. And of our—”

Tsukuru said nothing, only continued to hold her tightly against him.

Their embrace would be visible through the open window. Someone might pass by and see them. Edvard and his children might be back at any moment. But that didn’t matter. They didn’t care what others thought. He and Eri had to hold each other now, as much as they wanted. They had to let their skin touch, and drive away the long shadow cast by evil spirits. This was, no doubt, why he’d come here in the first place.

They held each other for a long time—how long he couldn’t say. The white curtain at the window went on flapping in the breeze that came from across the lake. Eri’s cheeks stayed wet, and Alfred Brendel went on playing the “Second Year: Italy” suite. “Petrarch’s Sonnet 47,” then “Petrarch’s Sonnet 104.” Tsukuru knew every note. He could have hummed it all if he’d wanted to. For the first time he understood how deeply he’d listened to this music, and how much it meant to him.