The end-of-year exams were over, the grades posted, when Haida went home to Akita. “I should come back soon,” he told Tsukuru. “Winters in Akita are freezing cold, and two weeks home is about as much as I can stand,” he said. “Much easier to be in Tokyo. But I need to help get the snow off the roof, so I have to go there for a while.” But two weeks passed, then three, and Haida didn’t return to Tokyo. He never once got in touch.
Tsukuru didn’t worry too much in the beginning. He figured Haida was having a better time at home than he’d thought he might. Or maybe they’d had more snow than usual. Tsukuru himself went to Nagoya for three days in the middle of March. He didn’t want to visit, but he couldn’t stay away forever. No snow needed to be shoveled off the family roof in Nagoya, of course, but his mother had called him incessantly, wondering why, if school was out, he didn’t want to come home. “I have an important project I need to finish during the break,” Tsukuru lied. “But you should still be able to come home for a couple of days at least,” his mother insisted. One of his older sisters called too, underscoring how much his mother missed him. “You really should come home,” she said, “even for a little while.” “Okay, I get it,” he said. “I will.”
Back in Nagoya, except for walking the dog in the park in the evening, he never went out. He was afraid of running into one of his four former friends, especially after he’d been having erotic dreams about Shiro and Kuro, essentially raping them in his imagination. He wasn’t brave enough to meet them in the flesh, even if those dreams were beyond his control and there was no way they could possibly know what he’d been dreaming. Still, he was afraid they’d take one look at his face and know exactly what went on in his dreams, and then denounce him for his filthy, selfish illusions.
He refrained from masturbating as much as he could. Not because he felt guilty about the act itself, but because, as he touched himself, he couldn’t help but picture Shiro and Kuro. He’d try to think of something else, but the two of them always stole inside his imagination. The problem was, the more he refrained from masturbating, the more frequent his erotic dreams became, almost always featuring the two girls. So the result was the same. But at least these weren’t images he’d intentionally conjured. He knew he was just making excuses, but for him this explanation, basically just a rephrasing of events, held no small importance.
The contents of the dreams were nearly always the same. The setting and some of the details might change, but always the two girls were nude, entwined around him, caressing his whole body with their fingers and lips, stroking his penis, and then having sex with him. And in the end the one he always ejaculated in was Shiro. He might be having steamy sex with Kuro, but in the final moments, he’d suddenly realize he’d changed partners, and he’d come inside Shiro’s body. He’d started having these dreams in the summer of his sophomore year, after he’d been expelled from the group and lost any chance to see the two women again, after he’d made up his mind to never think of his four friends again. He had no memory, before then, of ever having a dream like this. Why he started having these dreams was a mystery, another unanswered question to stuff deep inside the “Pending” drawer in his unconscious.
Filled with desultory feelings of frustration, Tsukuru returned to Tokyo. There was still no word from Haida. He didn’t show up at either the pool or the library. Tsukuru called Haida’s dorm, and was told each time that Haida wasn’t there. He realized he didn’t know the address or phone number of Haida’s home in Akita. While all this went on, the spring holidays ended and a new school year began. Tsukuru was now a senior. On the trees, cherry blossoms bloomed, then scattered, but still no word came from his younger friend.