Eri stared for a while at an imaginary spot above the table, and then spoke.
“Yuzu wasn’t Snow White anymore. Or maybe she was too worn out to be Snow White. And I was a bit tired myself of being the Seven Dwarfs.”
Eri half unconsciously picked up her coffee cup, then returned it to the table.
“At any rate, by then our wonderful group—the group of four, minus you—couldn’t function the way it had in the past. Everyone had graduated from school and was busy with their own lives. It’s an obvious thing to say, but we weren’t high school kids anymore. And needless to say, cutting you off left behind emotional scars in all of us. Scars that weren’t superficial.”
Tsukuru was silent, listening intently to her words.
“You were gone, but you were always there,” Eri said.
Once more, a short silence.
“Eri, I want to know more about you,” Tsukuru said. “What brought you to where you are now—that’s what I’d first like to know.”
Eri narrowed her eyes and tilted her head slightly. “From my late teens until my early twenties, Yuzu had me totally under her sway. One day I looked around me and realized I was fading. I’d been hoping to get work as a writer. I always enjoyed writing. I wanted to write novels, poems, things of that nature. You knew about that, right?”
Tsukuru nodded. Eri had carried around a thick notebook, always jotting down ideas when the urge came over her.
“But in college I couldn’t manage that. Taking care of Yuzu constantly, it was all I could do to keep up with my schoolwork. I had two boyfriends in college but not much came of it—I was too busy spending time with Yuzu to go on dates very often. Nothing worked out for me. One day I just stopped and asked myself: What in the world are you doing with your life? I had no goals anymore and I was just spinning my wheels, watching my self-confidence disappear. I know things were hard for Yuzu, but you have to understand that they were hard for me, too.”
Eri’s eyes narrowed again, as if she were gazing at some distant scene.
“A friend from college asked me to go to a pottery class and I went along, kind of as a lark. And that’s where I discovered what I’d been searching for, after so long. Spinning the potter’s wheel, I felt like I could be totally honest with myself. Focusing on creating something helped me to forget everything else. From that day on, I’ve been totally absorbed in pottery. In college it was still just a hobby, but after that, I wanted to become a full-fledged potter. I graduated from college, worked part-time jobs for a year while I studied, then reentered school, this time in the industrial arts department. Goodbye novels, hello pottery. While I was working on my pottery, I met Edvard, who was in Japan as an exchange student. Eventually we got married and moved here. Life is a total surprise sometimes. If my friend hadn’t invited me to the pottery class, I’d be living a completely different life now.”
“You really seem to have a talent for it,” Tsukuru said, pointing to the pottery on the shelves. “I don’t know much about pottery, but I get a wonderful feeling when I look at your pieces, and hold them.”
Eri smiled. “I don’t know about talent. But my work sells pretty well here. It doesn’t bring in much money, but I’m really happy that other people need what I create.”
“I know what you mean,” Tsukuru said, “since I make things myself. Very different things from yours, though.”
“As different as stations and plates.”
“We need both in our lives.”
“Of course,” Eri said. She thought about something. The smile gradually faded from her lips. “I like it here. I imagine I’ll stay here for the rest of my life.”