hen the call came in on his cell phone from Sara Kimoto, Tsukuru was killing time, sorting the documents that had piled up on his desk, discarding the ones he didn’t need, reorganizing the clutter that had accumulated in his desk drawer. It was a Thursday, five days since he’d last seen her.

“Can you talk?”

“Sure,” Tsukuru said. “I’m just taking it easy today for a change.”

“Good,” she said. “Are you free later? Even for a little while? I have a dinner at seven, but I can see you before then. If you could come to Ginza, I’d really appreciate it.”

Tsukuru glanced at his watch. “I can be there by five thirty. Just tell me where to meet you.”

She told him the name of a coffee shop near the Ginza-Yonchome intersection. Tsukuru knew the place.

He wrapped up work before five, left the office, and rode the Marunouchi line from Shinjuku to Ginza. Luckily he happened to be wearing the tie Sara had given him last time.

Sara was in the coffee shop when he arrived. She had already ordered coffee and was waiting for him. She beamed when she saw the tie. When she smiled, two charming little lines formed beside her lips. The waitress came over, and Tsukuru ordered coffee. The shop was crowded with people meeting up after work.

“Sorry to drag you out all this way,” Sara said.

“No, it’s good for me to get to Ginza every once in a while,” Tsukuru said. “I only wish we could go somewhere and have dinner together.”

Sara pursed her lips and sighed. “I wish we could, but I have to attend a business dinner tonight. There’s this VIP from France who’s here and I have to take him to an expensive kaiseki restaurant. I hate these kinds of dinners. I get all tense and can’t even taste what I’m eating.” She’d taken even more care with her appearance than usual, Tsukuru noticed. She wore a nicely tailored coffee-brown suit and a brooch on her collar with a tiny diamond sparkling in the center. Her skirt was short, and below this were stockings with a detailed pattern the same color as her suit.

Sara snapped open the maroon enamel handbag on her lap and extracted a large white envelope. Inside were several printouts, folded. She snapped her handbag smartly shut. A pleasant sound, the kind you might expect would turn the heads of the people around her.

“I looked into your four friends, where they are, and what they’re doing now. Like I promised.”

Tsukuru was taken aback. “But that was less than a week ago.”

“I’m very quick when it comes to work. As long as I know the gist of something, I don’t take long to get it done.”

“There’s no way I could have done that.”

“Everyone has their specialty. I could never build a railroad station.”

“Or do drafting, either.”

She smiled. “Not if I lived for two hundred years.”

“So, you know where the four of them are now?” Tsukuru asked.

“In a sense,” she said.

“In a sense,” Tsukuru repeated. The phrase had a strange ring to it. “What do you mean?”

She took a sip of coffee and returned the cup to the saucer. She paused, and checked her enameled nails. They looked beautiful, painted in the same maroon color as her handbag (perhaps a little lighter). He was willing to bet a month’s salary this wasn’t a coincidence.

“Let me tell things in order,” Sara said. “Otherwise it won’t come out right.”

Tsukuru nodded. “Of course. Whatever way works best for you.”

Sara quickly explained how she’d carried out the investigation. She started with various online search methods and social networks, including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and had tracked down information about the four people’s lives. Gathering information about Ao and Aka hadn’t been difficult. Actually, they openly shared information about themselves online—most of it related to their businesses.

“It’s sort of weird if you think about it,” Sara said. “We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we’re surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people.”

“Philosophical observations really suit the way you’re dressed today,” Tsukuru said.

“Thank you,” Sara said, and smiled.

When it came to Kuro, the investigation hadn’t been as easy. She had no business reasons for disclosing personal information to the world. Still, searching the website for the industrial arts department of the Aichi Prefectural Arts College, Sara had finally been able to trace her whereabouts.

The Aichi Prefectural Arts College? But Kuro was supposed to go into the English literature department of a private women’s college in Nagoya. Tsukuru didn’t mention this, though. He kept the question to himself.

“I couldn’t find out much about her,” Sara said, “so I called her parents’ home. I made up a story about being a former high school classmate. I said I was editing an alumni newsletter and needed her present address. Her mother was very nice and told me all kinds of things.”

“I’m sure you were very good at drawing her out,” Tsukuru said.

“Maybe so,” Sara said modestly.

The waitress came over and was about to top off her coffee, but Sara held up a hand to refuse. After the waitress left, she spoke again.

“Gathering information about Shiro was both difficult and easy. I couldn’t find any personal information about her at all, but a newspaper article told me all I needed to know.”

“A newspaper article?” Tsukuru asked.

Sara bit her lip. “This is a very delicate area. So, like I said before, let me tell it in the right order.”

“Sorry,” Tsukuru said.

“The first thing I’d like to know is this: If you know where these four friends are now, do you want to see them again? Even if you find out that some of what I’m going to tell you is unpleasant? Facts you might wish you hadn’t found out about?”

Tsukuru nodded. “I can’t guess what those might be, but I do plan to see the four of them. I’ve made up my mind.”

Sara gazed at his face for some time before speaking. “Kuro—Eri Kurono—is living in Finland now. She rarely returns to Japan.”

“Finland?”

“She lives in Helsinki with her Finnish husband and two little daughters. So if you want to see her, you’ll have to travel there.”

Tsukuru pictured a rough map of Europe in his mind. “I’ve never really traveled before, and I have some vacation time saved up. And it might be nice to check out the railroads in northern Europe.”

Sara smiled. “I wrote down the address and phone number of her apartment in Helsinki. Why she married a Finnish man, and how she came to live in Helsinki, you can look into yourself. Or you can ask her.”

“Thank you. Her address and phone number are more than enough.”

“If you feel like traveling to Finland, I can help with the arrangements.”

“Because you’re a pro.”

“Not to mention capable and skilled.”

“Of course.”

Sara unfolded the next printout. “Ao—Yoshio Oumi—is a salesman at a Lexus dealership in Nagoya City. He’s done very well, apparently, and has won their last few top sales awards. He’s still young, but he’s already head of their sales department.”

“Lexus,” Tsukuru said, murmuring the name to himself.

Tsukuru tried to imagine Ao in a business suit in a brightly lit showroom, explaining to a customer the feel of the leather and the quality of the surface coating of a high-end sedan. But he just couldn’t picture it. What he saw instead was Ao in a rugby jersey, sweaty, gulping cold barley tea directly from a teapot, scarfing down enough food for two people.

“Are you surprised?”

“It just feels a little strange,” Tsukuru said. “But now that I think about it, Ao might be a really good salesman. He’s a stand-up guy, and though he isn’t the most eloquent person, people trust him. He isn’t the type to resort to cheap tricks, and if he worked at it for a while, I can imagine him doing very well.”

“I understand Lexus is an outstanding type of car, very reliable.”

“If he’s that great a salesman, he might convince me to buy a Lexus too, as soon as I meet with him.”

Sara laughed. “Could be.”

Tsukuru remembered his father, and how he never rode in anything but a full-size Mercedes-Benz. Every three years, like clockwork, he would exchange it for a newer Mercedes of the same class. Or rather, without him doing anything, the dealer would show up every three years to replace his car with a brand-new, fully loaded model. His cars were always polished and shiny, without a single scratch or blemish. His father never drove the cars himself, but always had a driver. The windows were tinted dark gray, so the interior wasn’t visible. The wheel covers were as shiny as newly minted silver coins, the doors made a solid, bank-vault-like clunk as they closed, and the interior was like a locked room. Sinking into the backseat, you felt far away from the noise and confusion of the outside world. Tsukuru had never liked riding in his father’s car. It was just too quiet. He much preferred a crowded station and trains, teeming with passengers.

“Ao has worked for Toyota dealers ever since he graduated from college, and because of his outstanding sales record in 2005, when the company moved to launch Lexus dealerships in Japan he was handpicked to move over to that division. Farewell Corolla, hello Lexus.” Sara again checked out the manicure on her left hand. “So it won’t be very hard for you to see Ao again. Just visit the Lexus showroom and he’ll be there.”

“I see,” Tsukuru said.

Sara turned to the next page.

“Compared to Ao, Aka—Kei Akamatsu—has had a pretty stormy life. He graduated at the top of his class in economics from Nagoya University and worked for a major bank. One of the so-called megabanks. But for some reason, he quit after three years and went to work at a fairly well-known finance company, a firm financed out of Nagoya. One of those consumer-finance companies with a bit of an unsavory reputation. A pretty unexpected change in direction for him, but he didn’t stay there long, either—it was only two and a half years before he quit. This time he got funding from somewhere and started his own company, one that provides a combination of personal development seminars and a company training center. He calls it a ‘creative business seminar.’ The business has been amazingly successful—so much so that now he has a large staff, and an office in a high-rise in downtown Nagoya. If you want to learn more about it, it’s easy to find online. The company’s name is BEYOND. Sounds a little New Agey, don’t you think?”

“ ‘Creative business seminar.’ ”

“The name’s new, but it’s really not much different from a personal development seminar,” Sara said. “Basically a quick, impromptu brainwashing course to educate your typical corporate warriors. They use a training manual instead of sacred scriptures, with promotion and a high salary as their equivalent of enlightenment and paradise. A new religion for a pragmatic age. No transcendent elements like in a religion, though, and everything is theorized and digitalized. Very transparent and easy to grasp. And quite a few people get positive encouragement from this. But the fact remains that it’s nothing more than an infusion of the hypnotic into a system of thought that suits their goal, a conglomeration of only those theories and statistics that line up with their ultimate objectives. The company has an excellent reputation, though, and quite a lot of local businesses have contracts with them. Their website shows that they run a variety of new programs guaranteed to get people’s attention, from boot-camp-like group training for new employees and a reeducation summer session for mid-level employees that’s held at an upscale resort hotel, to high-class power lunches for top-level executives. The way these seminars are packaged, at least, makes them look really attractive. They focus on teaching business etiquette and correct communication skills for young employees. Personally it’s the last thing I’d like to do, but I can understand how companies would find it appealing. Does this give you a general idea now of what sort of business we’re talking about?”

“I think so,” Tsukuru said. “But to launch a business like that you need a fair amount of capital. Where could Aka have possibly gotten it? His father’s a university professor and kind of a straight arrow. As far as I know he isn’t that well off, and I can’t imagine he’d be willing to invest in something that risky.”

“I don’t know. It’s a mystery,” Sara said. “That being said, when you knew him in high school, was this Akamatsu the sort of person you could imagine becoming a kind of guru?”

Tsukuru shook his head. “No, he was more the calm, objective, academic type. He was quick, superintelligent, and had a way with words. Most of the time, though, he tried to not show any of that. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but he was more comfortable in the background, scheming on his own. I can’t picture him standing up in front of people and trying to inspire and encourage them.”

“People change,” Sara said.

“True enough,” Tsukuru said. “People do change.

And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither of us knew anything substantial about the other.”

Sara gazed at Tsukuru for a time before she spoke. “Anyway, both of them are working in Nagoya City. They’ve basically never taken a step outside the city since the day they were born. Their schools were in Nagoya, their jobs are in Nagoya. Reminds me of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Is Nagoya really that nice a place?”

Tsukuru couldn’t answer, but he had a strange feeling. If circumstances had been different he might have spent his life entirely within the confines of Nagoya too, and never questioned it.

Sara was silent. She folded up the printouts, put them back in the envelope, placed it on the end of the table, and took a drink of water. When she spoke again, her tone was more formal.

“Now, about the last person, Shiro—Yuzuki Shirane—unfortunately, she does not have a present address.”

“Does not have a present address,” Tsukuru murmured.

That’s an odd way of putting it, Tsukuru thought. If she’d said she didn’t know her present address, that he could fathom. But saying she doesn’t have a present address sounded strange. He considered the implications. Had Shiro gone missing? She wasn’t homeless, was she?

“Sadly, she’s no longer in this world,” Sara said.

“No longer in this world?”

For some reason an image flashed before his eyes of Shiro in a space shuttle, wandering in outer space.

“She passed away six years ago,” Sara said. “That’s why she has no present address. She does have a gravestone, in a suburb of Nagoya. It’s very difficult for me to have to tell you this.”

Tsukuru didn’t know what to say. The strength drained out of him, like water leaking from a small hole in a bag. The hum around him faded, Sara’s voice the only thing that—barely—reached him. It was a far-off, meaningless echo, as if he were hearing it from the bottom of a pool. He roused himself, sat up straight, and raised his head above the water. He was finally able to hear again, and the words started to regain meaning. Sara was speaking to him.

“… I didn’t write down the details of how she passed away. I think it’s better if you find that out on your own. Even if it takes time.”

Tsukuru nodded automatically.

Six years ago? Six years ago she was thirty. Still only thirty. Tsukuru tried to picture her at that age, but couldn’t. What he imagined was Shiro at sixteen or seventeen. A terrible sadness washed over him. What the hell was this? He couldn’t even grow old with her?

Sara leaned across the table and gently laid her hand, small and warm, on his. Tsukuru was happy at this intimate touch, and grateful, yet it felt like something happening simultaneously, far away, to someone else.

“I’m very sorry it turned out this way,” Sara said. “But you had to hear this someday.”

“I know,” Tsukuru said. Of course he knew this. But it would take a while for his mind to catch up to reality. It was nobody’s fault.

“I have to get going,” Sara said, glancing at her watch. She handed him the envelope. “I printed out all the information about your four friends. Only the bare minimum is written down here. It’s more important that you meet them in person. You’ll learn more that way.”

“I really appreciate it,” Tsukuru said. It took a while for him to locate the appropriate words, and to voice them. “I should be able to let you know pretty soon how things turn out.”

“I’ll wait to hear from you. In the meanwhile, if there’s anything I can do, be sure to let me know.”

Tsukuru thanked her again.

They left the café and said goodbye. Tsukuru stood on the street, watching as Sara, in her milky coffee-brown summer suit, waved and disappeared into the crowd. He wished he could be with her longer, spend more time with her, have a good, leisurely talk. But she had her own life, most of which occurred offstage, in a place he didn’t yet know about, doing things that had nothing to do with him.

Sara’s envelope was tucked in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It contained a neatly folded document that listed a concise summary of his four friends’ lives. One of them no longer existed here. She was no more than a handful of white ash. Her thoughts, her opinions, her feelings, her hopes and dreams—all of them had vanished without a trace. All that remained were memories of her. Her long, straight black hair, her shapely fingers on the keyboard, her smooth, white, graceful (yet strangely eloquent) calves, her playing of Franz Liszt’s “Le mal du pays.” Her wet pubic hair, her hard nipples. No—that wasn’t even a memory. That was a—Tsukuru decided not to go there.

Where to now? Tsukuru wondered as he leaned back against a streetlight. His watch showed it was just before seven. Some light remained in the sky, but the shop windows along the street were sparkling more by the minute, enticing those who wandered by. It was still early, and he had nothing in particular he needed to do. He didn’t want to go home just yet. He didn’t want to be alone in a quiet place. Tsukuru could go anywhere he liked. Almost anywhere. But he couldn’t think of any place to go.

At a time like this it would be nice if I could drink more, he thought. At this point most men would find a bar and get drunk. But his body couldn’t handle more than a fixed amount of alcohol. Liquor didn’t give him deadened senses, or a pleasant forgetfulness, just a splitting headache the next morning.

So, where should I go?

There really was only one choice.

He walked along the main street to Tokyo Station, passed through the Yaesu entrance, and sat down on a bench on the Yamanote line platform. He spent over an hour watching as, almost every minute, another line of green train cars pulled up to the platform, disembarking hordes of people and hurriedly swallowing up countless more. His mind was a blank as he watched, absorbed in the scene. The view didn’t soothe the pain in his heart, but the endless repetition enthralled him as always and, at the very least, numbed his sense of time.

Unceasing crowds of people arrived out of nowhere, automatically formed lines, boarded the trains in order, and were carried off somewhere. Tsukuru was moved by how many people actually existed in the world. And he was likewise moved by the sheer number of green train cars. It was surely a miracle, he thought—how so many people, in so many railroad cars, are systematically transported, as if it were nothing. How all those people have places to go, places to return to.

As the rush-hour surge finally receded, Tsukuru Tazaki slowly got to his feet, boarded one of the cars, and went home. The pain was still there, but now he knew there was something he had to do.