Midorikawa grudgingly shook his head. “Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you’re lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent’s preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it’s supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn. A simple toothache, or stiff shoulders, and you can’t play the piano well. It’s true. I’ve actually experienced it. A single cavity, one aching shoulder, and the beautiful vision and sound I hoped to convey goes out the window. The human body’s that fragile. It’s a complex system that can be damaged by something very trivial, and in most cases once it’s damaged, it can’t easily be restored. A cavity or stiff shoulder you can get over, but there are a lot of things you can’t get past. If talent’s the foundation you rely on, and yet it’s so unreliable that you have no idea what’s going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have?”

“Talent might be ephemeral,” Haida replied, “and there aren’t many people who can sustain it their whole lives. But talent makes a huge spiritual leap possible. It’s an almost universal, independent phenomenon that transcends the individual.”

Midorikawa pondered that for a while before replying. “Mozart and Schubert died young, but their music lives on forever. Is that what you mean?”

“That would be one example.”

“That kind of talent is always the exception. Most people like that have to pay a price for their genius—through accepting foreshortened lives and untimely deaths. They strike a bargain, putting their lives on the line. Whether that bargain’s with God or the devil, I wouldn’t know.” Midorikawa sighed and was silent for a while. “Changing the subject a little,” he went on, “but actually—I’m dying. I have only a month left.”

It was Haida’s turn now to be silent. No words came to him.

“I’m not battling a disease or anything,” Midorikawa said. “I’m in good health. And I’m not contemplating suicide. If that’s what you were thinking, you can rest easy.”

“Then how do you know you only have a month left?”

“Someone told me that. You have only two months left to live, he said. That was a month ago.”

“Who would ever say something like that?”

“It wasn’t a doctor, or a fortune-teller. Just an ordinary person. Though at that point he was dying, too.” Young Haida turned this over in his mind, but a logical foothold eluded him. “Then did you … come here looking for a place to die?”

“You could say that.”