“When they ate human flesh, they would roast it in the sun on pieces of aluminum from the airplane.”

My sister stopped eating and glared at me. “Why do you have to talk about such awful things at the dinner table? Do you say things like that when you’re eating with girls you’re trying to seduce?”

Like a guest invited to dinner by a feuding married couple, Noboru Watanabe tried to come between us by asking me, “Have you ever thought of marrying?”

“Never had the chance,” I said as I was about to put a chunk of fried potato in my mouth. “I had to raise my little sister without any help, and then came the long years of war …”

“War? What war?”

“It’s just another one of his stupid jokes,” said my sister, shaking the bottle of salad dressing.

“Just another one of my stupid jokes,” I added. “But the part about not having had the chance is true. I’ve always been a narrow-minded guy, and I never used to wash my socks, so I was never able to find a nice girl who wanted to spend her life with me. Unlike you.”

“Was there something wrong with your socks?” asked Noboru Watanabe.

“That’s a joke, too,” my sister explained wearily. “I wash his socks, at least, every day.”

Noboru Watanabe nodded and laughed for one and a half seconds. I was determined to make him laugh for three seconds next time.

“But she’s been spending her life with you, hasn’t she?” he said, gesturing toward my sister.

“Well, after all, she’s my sister.”

“And we’ve stayed together because you do anything you please and I don’t say a thing. But that’s not a real life. In a real, grown-up, adult life, people confront each other honestly. I’m not saying the past five years with you haven’t been fun. It’s been a free and easy time for me. But lately, I’ve come to see that it’s not a real life. It hasn’t got—oh, I don’t know—the feel of what real life is all about. All you think about is yourself, and if somebody tries to have a serious conversation with you, you make fun of them.”

“Deep down, I’m really a shy person.”

“No, you’re just plain arrogant.”

“I’m shy and arrogant,” I explained to Noboru Watanabe as I poured myself more wine. “I have this shy, arrogant way of returning trains to the depot after an accident.”

“I think I see what you mean,” he said, nodding. “But do you know what I think? I think that after you’re alone—I mean, after she and I get married—that you are going to start wanting to get married, too.”

“You may be right,” I said.