“I felt alone, but not especially lonely. I guess I just took that for granted.”
He was young, and there was so much about the world he still didn’t know. And Tokyo was a brand-new place for him, so very different from the environment he’d grown up in, and those differences were greater than he’d ever anticipated. The scale of the city was overwhelming, the diversity of life there extraordinary. There were too many choices of things to do, the way people talked struck him as odd, and the pace of life was too fast. He couldn’t strike a good balance between himself and the world around him. But there was still a place for him to return. He knew this. Get on the bullet train at the Tokyo station and in an hour and a half he’d arrive at an orderly, harmonious, intimate place. Where time flowed by peacefully, where friends he could confide in eagerly awaited him.
“What about now?” Sara asked. “Do you feel like you’re maintaining a good balance between yourself and the world around you?”
“I’ve been with this company for fourteen years. The job’s fine, and I enjoy the work. I get along with my colleagues. And I’ve been in relationships with a few women. Nothing ever came of it, but there were lots of reasons for that. It wasn’t entirely my fault.”
“And you’re alone, but not lonely.”
It was still early, and they were the only customers in the bar. Music from a jazz trio played softly in the background.
“I suppose,” Tsukuru said after some hesitation.
“But you can’t go back now? To that orderly, harmonious, intimate place?”
He thought about this, though there was no need to. “That place doesn’t exist anymore,” he said quietly.
It was in the summer of his sophomore year in college when that place vanished forever.
This drastic change took place during summer vacation of his sophomore year, between the first and second semesters. Afterward, Tsukuru Tazaki’s life was changed forever, as if a sheer ridge had divided the original vegetation into two distinct biomes.
As always, when vacation rolled around he packed his belongings (though he did not have very many to begin with) and rode the bullet train back home. After a short visit with his family in Nagoya, he called up his four friends, but he couldn’t get in touch with any of them. All four of them were out, he was told. He figured they must have gone out together somewhere. He left a message with each of their families, went downtown to a movie theater in the shopping district, and killed time watching a movie he didn’t particularly want to see. Back at home, he ate dinner with his family, then phoned each of his friends again. No one had returned.
The next morning he called them again, with the same result: they were all still out. He left another message with each family member who answered the phone. Please have them call me when they get back, he said, and they promised to pass the message along. But something in their voices bothered him. He hadn’t noticed it the first time he called, but now he sensed something subtly different, as if, for some reason, they were trying to keep him at arm’s length. As if they wanted to hang up on him as soon as possible. Shiro’s older sister, in particular, was curt and abrupt. Tsukuru had always gotten along very well with her—she was two years older than Shiro, and though not as stunning as Shiro, still a beautiful woman. They often joked around when he called—or if not a joke, at least they exchanged a friendly greeting. But now she hurriedly said goodbye, as if she could barely wait to end the conversation. After he had called all four homes, Tsukuru was left feeling like an outcast, as if he were carrying some virulent pathogen that the others were desperately trying to avoid.