“I’ve always thought of myself as a victim,” Tsukuru said. “Forced, for no reason, to suffer cruelly. Deeply wounded emotionally, my life thrown off course. Truthfully, sometimes I hated the four of you, wondering why I was the only one who had to go through that awful experience. But maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe I wasn’t simply a victim, but had hurt those around me, too, without realizing it. And wounded myself again in the counterattack.”

Eri gazed at him without a word.

“And maybe I murdered Yuzu,” Tsukuru said honestly. “Maybe the one who knocked on her door that night was me.”

“In a certain sense,” Eri said.

Tsukuru nodded.

“I murdered Yuzu too,” Eri said. “In a sense.” She looked off to one side. “Maybe I was the one who knocked on her door that night.”

Tsukuru looked at her nicely tanned profile. He’d always liked her slightly upturned nose.

“Each of us has to live with that burden,” Eri said.

The wind had died down for the moment and now the white curtain at the window hung still. The boat had stopped rattling against the pier. The only thing he could hear was the calls of birds, singing a melody he’d never heard before.

Eri listened to the birds for a while, picked up the barrette, pinned her hair back again, and gently pressed her fingertips against her forehead. “What do you think about the work Aka is doing?” she asked. Like a weight had been removed, the flow of time grew a fraction lighter.

“I don’t know,” Tsukuru said. “The world he lives in is so far removed from mine, it’s hard for me to say whether it’s good or bad.”

“I certainly don’t like what he’s doing. But that doesn’t mean I can cut him off. He used to be one of my very best friends, and even now I still consider him a good friend. Though I haven’t seen him in seven or eight years.”

She put her hand to her hair again. “Every year Aka donates a large sum of money to that Catholic facility that supported the school where we volunteered. The people there are really grateful for what he does. The school’s barely managing financially. But nobody knows he’s donating. He insists on remaining anonymous. I’m probably the only person besides the people who run the school who knows he’s donating so much. I found out about it just by chance. You know, Tsukuru, he’s not a bad person. I want you to understand that. He just pretends to be bad, that’s all. I don’t know why. He probably has to.”

Tsukuru nodded.