“Like I told you, I want to put it all out of my mind. I’ve managed to slowly close up the wound and, somehow, conquer the pain. It took a long time. Now that the wound is closed, why gouge it open again?”
“I understand, but maybe it only appears, from the outside, that the wound is closed.” Sara gazed into his eyes and spoke quietly. “Maybe inside the wound, under the scab, the blood is still silently flowing. Haven’t you ever thought that?”
Tsukuru pondered this, but he had no good reply.
“Can you tell me the full names of those four people? And the name of your high school, the year you graduated, the colleges they attended, and their addresses the last time you were in touch?”
“What are you planning to do with that information?”
“I want to find out as much as I can about where they are now, what they’re doing.”
Tsukuru’s breathing suddenly grew shallow. He picked up his glass and gulped down some water. “What for?”
“So you can meet them, talk with them. So they can explain to you why they abandoned you.”
“But what if I say I don’t want to?”
She turned her hands over on the table, palms up.
She continued to look at Tsukuru directly. Her eyes never broke their gaze.
“Can I be totally candid?” Sara asked.
“Of course.”
“It’s not easy to say this.”
“I want to know what you’re thinking, so please, say what’s on your mind.”
“The last time we met, I told you I didn’t want to go back to your place. You remember that? Do you know why I said it?”
Tsukuru shook his head.
“I think you’re a good person, and I really like you. Not just as a friend,” Sara said, and paused. “But I think you have—some kind of unresolved emotional issues.”
Tsukuru looked at her silently.
“This part is a little hard to talk about. It’s hard to express, is what I mean. If I put it into words, it sounds oversimplified. I can’t explain it reasonably, or logically. It’s more of an intuitive thing.”
“I trust your intuition,” Tsukuru said.
Sara bit her lip lightly and looked off, as if measuring a distance, and then spoke. “When we made love, it felt like you were somewhere else. Somewhere apart from the two of us in bed. You were very gentle, and it was wonderful, but still.…”
Tsukuru lifted the empty coffee cup again, wrapping it in both hands. He replaced it on the saucer, this time without making a sound.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “The whole time I was only thinking of you. I don’t remember being elsewhere. Truthfully, I don’t think there was any way I could have thought of anything but you.”
“Maybe. Maybe you were just thinking about me. If you say so, I believe you. But there was something else on your mind. At least I sensed a sort of distance between us. Maybe it’s something only a woman can pick up on. Anyway, what I want you to know is that I can’t continue a relationship like that for very long, even if I’m very fond of you. I’m more possessive, more straightforward than I might seem. If we’re going to have a serious relationship, I don’t want whatever it is to come between us. This unidentifiable something. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“That you don’t want to see me anymore?”
“No, that’s not it,” she said. “I’m fine seeing you and talking like this. I enjoy it a lot. But I don’t want to go back to your place.”
“You mean you can’t make love with me?”
“I can’t,” Sara said bluntly.
“Because I have some—emotional issues?”
“That’s right. You have some problems you’re carrying around, some things that might go much deeper than you realize. But I think they’re the kind of problems you can overcome, if you really make up your mind to do so. Just like you’d set about repairing a defect in a station. To do that, though, you need to collect the necessary data, draw up an accurate blueprint, create a detailed work schedule. Above all, you need to identify your priorities.”