She stood up from the sofa, and Tsukuru stood up too and shook her hand.
“Until tomorrow morning, then,” she said. “I imagine you’re jet-lagged, and with the sun staying out so late at night, people who aren’t used to it sometimes have trouble sleeping. It’d be a good idea to ask for a wake-up call.”
“I’ll do that,” Tsukuru said. Olga slung her bag over her shoulder and strode off through the lobby and out the entrance. She didn’t look back.
Tsukuru folded the paper she’d given him, put it in his wallet, and stuffed the map in his pocket. He left the hotel and wandered around the city.
At least now he knew Eri’s address. She was there, along with her husband and two small children. All that remained was whether she would see him. He might have flown halfway around the world to see her, but she might well refuse to meet him. It was entirely possible. According to Ao, it was Kuro who had first taken Shiro’s side regarding the rape, the one who’d pushed them to cut off Tsukuru. He couldn’t imagine what sort of feelings she had for him after Shiro’s murder and the breakup of the group. She might feel totally indifferent toward him. All he could do was go see her and find out.
It was after 8 p.m., but as Olga had said, the sun showed no signs of setting. Many stores were still open, and the streets, still as bright as day, were crowded with pedestrians. People filled the cafés, drinking beer and wine, and chatting. As he walked down the old streets lined with round paving stones, Tsukuru caught a whiff of fish being grilled. It reminded him of grilled mackerel in Japanese diners. Hungry, he followed the smell into a side street but couldn’t locate the source. As he searched the streets, the smell grew fainter, and then vanished.
It was too much trouble to search for somewhere to eat, so he went into a nearby pizzeria, sat down at an outdoor table, and ordered iced tea and a margherita pizza. He could hear Sara laughing at him. You flew all the way to Finland, and you ate a margherita pizza? She would definitely be amused by this. But the pizza turned out to be delicious, much better than he’d expected. They’d baked it in a real coal oven, and it was thin and crispy, with fragrant charcoal marks on the crust.
This casual pizzeria was nearly full of families and young couples. There was a group of students, too. Everyone was drinking either beer or wine, and many were puffing away on cigarettes. The only one Tsukuru could see sitting alone, drinking iced tea while he ate his pizza, was himself. Everyone else was talking loudly, boisterously, and the words he overheard were all (he imagined) Finnish. The restaurant seemed to cater to locals, not tourists. It finally struck him: he was far from Japan, in another country. No matter where he was, he almost always ate alone, so that didn’t particularly bother him. But here he wasn’t simply alone. He was alone in two senses of the word. He was also a foreigner, the people around him speaking a language he couldn’t understand.