e took one day to ready for our departure.

We got mountaineering supplies and portable rations at a sporting-goods store, and bought heavy fishermen’s knit sweaters and woolen socks at a department store. At a bookstore, we bought a 1:50,000-scale map of the area we were headed for and a tome on the local history. We also settled on some rugged spiked boots and padded thermal underwear.

“All these layers do absolutely nothing for my line of work,” she said.

“When you’re out in the snow, you won’t have time to think about that,” I said.

“You planning to stay until the heavy snows?”

“Can’t tell. But I do know it’ll already be starting by the end of October. Better to be prepared. No telling what to expect.”

We hauled our purchases back to the hotel and stuffed them into a large backpack, then we gathered together all the extra items we’d brought from Tokyo and left them with the Dolphin Hotel man. As a matter of fact, almost everything she’d brought in her bag was extra. A cosmetics set, five books and six cassettes, one paper bag full of stockings and underwear, T-shirts and shorts, a travel alarm clock, a sketchbook and set of twenty-four colored pencils, stationery and envelopes, bath towel, mini first-aid kit, hair dryer, cotton swabs.

“But why are you bringing your dress and high-heels with us?”

“What am I supposed to do if we go to a party?” she pleaded.

“What makes you think there’s going to be a party?”

There was no reasoning with her. She managed to fit her dress, neatly folded, and high heels into our backpack along with our pared-down effects. For cosmetics, she switched to a travel compact she picked up at a nearby shop.

The hotel owner accepted the luggage graciously. I settled the bill up through the following day and told him we’d be back in a week or two.

“Was my father of any help?” he asked worriedly.

I said that he’d helped enormously.

“I sometimes wish I could go off in search of something,” he declared, “but before getting even that far, I myself wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to search for. Now my father, he’s someone who’s been searching for something all his life. He’s still searching today. Ever since I was a little boy, my father’s told me about the white sheep that came to him in his dreams. So I always thought that’s what life is like. An ongoing search.”

The lobby of the Dolphin Hotel was hushed as ever. An elderly maid was going up and down the stairs with a mop.

“My father’s seventy-three now and still no sheep. I don’t know if the thing even exists. I can’t help thinking that it hasn’t been such a good life for him. I want to see my father happy now more than ever, but he just belittles me and won’t listen to a word I say. That’s because I have no purpose in life.”

“But you have the Dolphin Hotel,” my girlfriend said sweetly.

“Besides, your father’s stepped down from his sheep searching,” I added. “We’ve taken up the rest.”

The hotel owner smiled.

“If that’s so, there’s nothing more for me to say. We two ought to get on very happily.”

“I sure hope so,” I said.

Later, when we were alone, she asked me, “Do you really think those two deserve each other?”

“They’ve been together this long … They’ll be all right. At least, after a forty-two-year gap, the Sheep Professor’s role is finished. Now we have to track down the sheep.”

“I like those two.”

“I like them too.”

We finished our packing and had intercourse, then went out and saw a movie. In the movie there were a lot of men and women having intercourse too. Nothing wrong with watching others having intercourse, after all.