“It just feels strange. I never would have thought, back when you were a teenager, that you would open this kind of business someday.”
“Me either,” Aka said, and laughed. “I was sure I would stay in a university and become a professor. But once I got to college I realized I wasn’t cut out for academic life. It’s a stagnant, crushingly dull world, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life there. Then when I graduated, I found out that working for a company wasn’t for me, either. It was all trial and error, and eventually, I was able to find my own niche. But what about you? Are you satisfied with your job?”
“Not really. But I’m not particularly dissatisfied with it, either,” Tsukuru said.
“Because you can do work related to railroad stations?”
“That’s right. As you put it, I’m able to stay on the positive side.”
“Have you ever had doubts about your job?”
“Every day I just build things you can see. I have no time for doubts.”
Aka smiled. “That’s wonderful. And so very like you.”
Silence descended on them. Aka toyed with the gold lighter in his hand but didn’t light another cigarette. He probably had a set number of cigarettes he smoked every day.
“You came here because there was something you wanted to talk about, right?” Aka said.
“I’d like to ask about the past,” Tsukuru said.
“Sure. Let’s talk about the past.”
“It’s about Shiro.”
Aka’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and he stroked his beard. “I was kind of expecting that. After my secretary handed me your business card.”
Tsukuru didn’t reply.
“I feel sorry for Shiro,” Aka said quietly. “Her life wasn’t very happy. She was so beautiful, so musically talented, yet she died so horribly.”
Tsukuru felt uncomfortable at the way Aka summed up her life in just a couple of lines. But a time difference was at work here, he understood. Tsukuru had only recently learned of Shiro’s death, while Aka had lived with the knowledge for six years.
“Maybe there’s not much point in doing this now, but I wanted to clear up a misunderstanding,” Tsukuru said. “I don’t know what Shiro told you, but I never raped her. I never had a relationship like that with her of any kind.”
“The truth sometimes reminds me of a city buried in sand,” Aka said. “As time passes, the sand piles up even thicker, and occasionally it’s blown away and what’s below is revealed. In this case it’s definitely the latter. Whether the misunderstanding is cleared up or it isn’t, you aren’t the type of person to do something like that. I know that very well.”
“You know that?” Tsukuru repeated the words.
“Now I do, is what I mean.”
“Because the sand has blown away?”
Aka nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
“It’s like we’re discussing history.”
“In a way, we are.”
Tsukuru gazed at the face of his old friend seated across from him, but couldn’t read anything resembling an emotion in Aka’s expression.
You can hide memories, but you can’t erase the history that produced them. Tsukuru recalled Sara’s words, and said them aloud.
Aka nodded several times. “Exactly. You can hide memories, but you can’t erase history. That’s precisely what I want to say.”
“Anyway, back then, the four of you cut me off. Totally, and mercilessly,” Tsukuru said.
“It’s true, we did. That’s a historical fact. I’m not trying to justify it, but at the time we had no other choice. Shiro’s story was so real. She wasn’t acting. She was really hurt. An actual wound, with real pain, and real blood. There was no room for us to doubt her at the time. But after we cut you off, and the more that time passed, the more confused we got about the whole thing.”
“How do you mean?”