Tsukuru stayed at home that day, too. He lay next to the phone, reading a book, or at least trying to. In the afternoon he called his friends’ homes again. He didn’t feel like it, but he couldn’t just sit around with this baffling, disconcerting feeling, praying for the phone to ring.
The result was the same. The family members who answered the phone told Tsukuru—curtly, or apologetically, or in an overly neutral tone of voice—that his friends weren’t at home. Tsukuru thanked them, politely but briefly, and hung up. This time he didn’t leave a message. Probably they were as tired of pretending to be out as he was tired of trying to contact them. He assumed that eventually the family members who were screening his calls might give up. If he kept on calling, there had to be a reaction.
And eventually there was. Just past eight that night, a call came from Ao.
“I’m sorry, but I have to ask you not to call any of us anymore,” Ao said abruptly and without preface. No “Hey!” or “How’ve you been?” or “It’s been a while.” I’m sorry was his only concession to social niceties.
Tsukuru took a breath, and silently repeated Ao’s words, quickly assessing them. He tried to read the emotions behind them, but the words were like the formal recitation of an announcement. There had been no room for feelings.
“If everybody’s telling me not to call them, then of course I won’t,” Tsukuru replied. The words slipped out, almost automatically. He had tried to speak normally, calmly, but his voice sounded like a stranger’s. The voice of someone living in a distant town, someone he had never met (and probably never would).
“Then don’t,” Ao said.
“I don’t plan on doing anything people don’t want me to do,” Tsukuru said.
Ao let out a sound, neither a sigh nor a groan of agreement.
“But if possible, I do want to know the reason for this,” Tsukuru said.
“That’s not something I can tell you,” Ao replied.
“Then who can?”
A thick stone wall rose. There was silence on the other end. Tsukuru could faintly hear Ao breathing through his nostrils. He pictured Ao’s flat, fleshy nose.
“Think about it, and you’ll figure it out,” Ao said, finally.
Tsukuru was speechless. What was he talking about? Think about it? Think about what? If I think any harder about anything, I won’t know who I am anymore.
“It’s too bad it turned out like this,” Ao said.
“All of you feel this way?”
“Yeah. Everyone feels it’s too bad.”
“Tell me—what happened?” Tsukuru asked.
“You’d better ask yourself that,” Ao said. Tsukuru detected a quaver of sadness and anger in his voice, but it was just for an instant. Before Tsukuru could think of how to respond, Ao had hung up.
“That’s all he told you?” Sara asked.
“It was a short conversation, minimalist. That’s the very best I can reproduce it.”
The two of them were face-to-face across a small table in the bar.
“After that, did you ever talk with him, or any of the other three about it?”
Tsukuru shook his head. “No, I haven’t talked to any of them since then.”
Sara’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at him, as if she were inspecting a scene that violated the laws of physics. “None of them?”
“I never saw any of them again. And we’ve never spoken.”
“But didn’t you want to know why they suddenly kicked you out of the group?”
“I don’t know how to put it, but at the time nothing seemed to matter. The door was slammed in my face, and they wouldn’t let me back inside. And they wouldn’t tell me why. But if that’s what all of them wanted, I figured there was nothing I could do about it.”