Edvard stuck his wallet in his pocket, took down the keys from where they hung on the wall, and said something to his daughters in Finnish. The girls beamed and leaped up from the bench. Tsukuru caught the words “ice cream.” Edvard had probably promised to buy the girls an ice cream when they went shopping.
Kuro and Tsukuru stood on the porch and watched as Edvard and the girls climbed into the Renault van. Edvard opened the double doors in back, gave a short whistle, and the dog ecstatically barreled toward the van and leaped inside. Edvard looked out from the driver’s side, waved, and the white van disappeared beyond the trees. Kuro and Tsukuru stood there, watching the spot where the van had last been.
“You drove that Golf here?” Kuro asked. She pointed to the little navy-blue car parked off a ways.
“I did. From Helsinki.”
“Why did you come all the way to Helsinki?”
“I came to see you.”
Kuro’s eyes narrowed, and she stared at him, as if trying to decipher a difficult diagram.
“You came all the way to Finland to see me? Just to see me?”
“That’s the size of it.”
“After sixteen years, without a word?” she asked, seemingly astonished.
“Actually it was my girlfriend who told me to come. She said it’s about time I saw you again.”
The familiar curve came to Kuro’s lips. She sounded half joking now. “I see. Your girlfriend told you it was about time you came to see me. So you jumped on a plane in Narita and flew all the way to Finland. Without contacting me, and with no guarantee that I’d actually be here.”
Tsukuru was silent. The boat went on slapping against the dock, though there wasn’t much wind, and just a scattering of waves on the lake.
“I thought if I got in touch before I came, you might not see me.”
“How could you say that?” Kuro said in surprise. “Come on, we’re friends.”
“We used to be. But I don’t know anymore.”
She gazed through the trees at the lake and let out a soundless sigh. “It’ll be two hours before they come back from town. Let’s use the time to talk.”
They went inside and sat down across from each other at the table. She removed the barrette and her hair spilled onto her forehead. Now she looked more like the Kuro he remembered.
“There’s one thing I’d like you to do,” Kuro said. “Don’t call me Kuro anymore. I’d prefer you call me Eri. And don’t refer to Yuzuki as Shiro. If possible, I don’t want you to call us by those names anymore.”
“Those names are finished?”
She nodded.
“But you don’t mind still calling me Tsukuru?”
“You’re always Tsukuru,” Eri said, and laughed quietly. “So I don’t mind. The Tsukuru who makes things. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki.”
“In May I went to Nagoya and saw Ao and Aka, one right after the other,” Tsukuru said. “Is it okay if I keep on using those names?”
“That’s fine. But I just want you to use Yuzu’s and my real names.”
“I saw them separately, and we talked. Not for very long, though.”
“Are they both okay?”
“It seemed like it,” Tsukuru said. “And their work seems to be going well, too.”
“So in good old Nagoya, Ao’s busy selling Lexuses, one after another, while Aka’s training corporate warriors.”
“That about sums it up.”
“And what about you? You’ve managed to get by?”
“Yes, I’ve managed,” Tsukuru said. “I work for a railroad company in Tokyo and build stations.”
“You know, I happened to hear about that not so long ago. That Tsukuru Tazaki was busy building stations in Tokyo,” Eri said. “And that he had a very clever girlfriend.”
“For the time being.”
“So you’re still single?”
“I am.”
“You always did things at your own pace.”
Tsukuru was silent.
“What did you talk about when you met the two of them in Nagoya?” Eri asked.
“We talked about what happened between us,” Tsukuru said. “About what happened sixteen years ago, and what’s happened in the sixteen years since.”
“Was meeting them also, maybe—something your girlfriend told you to do?”