Using her fingers instead of a fork, she picked up a piece of pear and put it in her mouth. He averted his head, frightened by the sudden urge he had to throw his arms around her still form—so still in fact she appeared to be lost in thought—to suck on her index finger, sticky with sweet pear juice, and lick the last of the juice from her lips and tongue, and to pull her baggy tracksuit bottoms down right then and there.

—

“It’ll only take a minute,” he said, slipping his feet into his shoes. “You’ll come with me?”

“Where to?”

“We could just walk around, talk for a bit.”

“I’ll try and think of something that might interest you.”

“No, no, there’s no need…the thing is, I have a favor to ask.”

She looked unsure, but he’d already made up his mind. If he was to escape from this agonizing situation, the inexplicable compulsions that were gradually taking him over, he needed to get outside, out of this room. It was too dangerous for him to stay there a moment longer.

“We can talk here.”

“No, I want to walk for a bit. Besides, isn’t it stifling for you to be cooped up inside all day?”

Eventually, as though resigned to having lost this argument, she put on her slippers and followed him out. They walked down the alley without speaking to each other, and continued along the main road. When he spotted a sign for a chain café he asked her, “Do you like shaved ice?” She gave a half smile, looking for all the world like a girl on a date who doesn’t want to seem too easily pleased.

The two of them took a seat by the window. He looked across at her in silence as she mixed red bean into the shaved ice slush and licked it from the tip of her wooden spoon. As if there were a wire linking her tongue with his body, every time that little pink tip darted out he found himself flinching as though from an electric shock.

And he thought to himself that perhaps there was only one way out. That perhaps the only way out of this hell of desire would be to make those images into a reality.

“So, the favor…”

She fixed him with her glance, a dot of red bean on the tip of her tongue. In her single-lidded eyes, the simple line of which made her look almost Mongolian, her pupils, which were neither large nor small, shone with a faint light.

“I’d like you to model for me.”

She neither laughed nor became flustered. She kept her calm gaze fixed on him, as if intending to bore inside.

“You’ve been to some of my exhibitions, right?”

“Yes.”