“What happened to her after the miscarriage?” Tsukuru asked.
“She took a leave of absence from college. In her condition, there was no way she could be around other people. She told them she had health issues, and stayed holed up at home and never went out. Before long, she developed a severe eating disorder. She vomited up almost everything she ate, and gave herself enemas to get rid of the rest. If she’d gone on that way, I don’t think she would have survived. I made her see a counselor, and somehow she was able to get over the eating disorder. It took about a half a year. At one point it was so awful that she was down to under ninety pounds, and she looked like a ghost. But she pulled out of it and reached the point, barely, where she could cling to life. I went to see her almost every day, talking with her, encouraging her, doing whatever I could to keep her going. After a year away from college, she managed to return to school.”
“Why do you think she developed an eating disorder?”
“It’s quite simple. She wanted to stop having periods,” Eri said. “Extreme weight loss stops you from having periods. That’s what she was hoping for. She didn’t want to ever get pregnant again, and probably didn’t want to be a woman anymore. She wanted, if possible, to have her womb removed.”
“Sounds pretty serious,” Tsukuru said.
“It was, very serious. That’s why the only thing I could do was cut you off. I felt really bad for you, and believe me, I knew how cruelly I was treating you. For me it was especially hard not to be able to see you again. It’s true. I felt like I was being ripped apart. Like I said before, I really liked you.”
Eri paused, gazing at her hands on the table as if gathering her feelings, and then she went on.
“But I had to help Yuzu recover. That had to be my highest priority. She had life-threatening issues she was dealing with, and she needed my help. So the only thing I could do was make you swim alone through the cold night sea. I knew you could do it. You were strong enough to make it.”
The two of them were silent for a time. The leaves on the trees outside rippled in the wind.
Tsukuru broke the silence. “So Yuzu recovered and graduated from college. What happened after that?”
“She was still seeing a counselor once a week but was able to pretty much lead a normal life. At least she didn’t look like a ghost anymore. But by then she was no longer the Yuzu we used to know.”
Eri took a breath, choosing her words.
“She had changed,” Eri finally said. “It’s like everything had drained out of her heart, like any interest in the outside world had disappeared. She no longer cared much about music. It was painful to see. She still enjoyed teaching music to children, though—that passion never left her. Even when her condition was at its worst, when she was so weak she could barely stand up, she managed to drag herself once a week to the church school where she taught piano to kids. She kept on doing that volunteer work alone. I think the desire to continue that project was what helped her recover. If she hadn’t had that work, she might never have made it.”
Eri turned around and gazed out the window at the sky above the trees. She faced forward again and looked directly at Tsukuru. The sky was still covered with a thin layer of clouds.
“By this time, though, Yuzu didn’t have that sense of unconditional friendship toward me that she’d had when we were younger. She said she was grateful to me, for everything I’d done for her. And I think she really was. But at the same time, she’d lost any interest in me. Like I said, Yuzu had lost interest in almost everything. And I was part of this almost everything. It was painful to admit. We’d been best friends for so long, and I really cared about her. But that’s the way it was. By then I wasn’t indispensable to her anymore.”