“Tsukuru, there’s one thing I want you to remember. You aren’t colorless. Those were just names. I know we often teased you about it, but it was just a stupid joke. Tsukuru Tazaki is a wonderful, colorful person. A person who builds fantastic stations. A healthy thirty-six-year-old citizen, a voter, a taxpayer—someone who could fly all the way to Finland just to see me. You don’t lack anything. Be confident and be bold. That’s all you need. Never let fear and stupid pride make you lose someone who’s precious to you.”

He put the car into drive and stepped on the gas. He stuck a hand out the open window and waved. Eri waved back. She kept on waving, her hand held high.

Finally she disappeared in the trees. All he saw in the rearview mirror now was the deep green of a Finnish summer. The wind seemed to have picked up again, and small waves rippled on the surface of the lake. A tall young man in a kayak appeared on the water, slowly and silently slipping through the water like some gigantic whirligig.

I’ll probably never be back here again, Tsukuru thought. And never see Eri again. We each have our paths to follow, in our places. Like Ao said, There’s no going back. Sorrow surged then, silently, like water inside him. A formless, transparent sorrow. A sorrow he could touch, yet something that was also far away, out of reach. Pain struck him, as if gouging out his chest, and he could barely breathe.

When he reached the paved road, he steered the car to the side, switched off the engine, leaned against the steering wheel, and closed his eyes. His heart was racing and he took slow, deep breaths. And as he inhaled, he suddenly noticed a cold, hard object near the center of his body—like a hard core of earth that remains frozen all year long. This was the source of the pain in his chest, and the difficulty breathing. He had never known, until this moment, that such a thing existed inside him.

Yet it was this pain, and this sense of being choked, that he needed. It was exactly what he had to acknowledge, what he had to confront. From now on, he had to make that cold core melt, bit by bit. It might take time, but it was what he had to do. But his own body heat wasn’t enough to melt that frozen soil. He needed someone else’s warmth.

First he had to get back to Tokyo. That was the first step. He turned the key and started the engine again.

On the road to Helsinki, Tsukuru prayed that Eri wouldn’t be caught by any bad elves of the forest. All he could do at this point was pray.

Chapter 18