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shoes—a “uniform” meant to show the world he didn’t care about these things. Tengo imagined a half-dozen three-button tweed jackets of a subtly different color, cloth, and pattern that hung, carefully brushed, in Komatsu’s closet. Perhaps Komatsu had to attach number tags to distinguish one jacket from another.
    Komatsu’s fine, wiry hair was beginning to show a touch of gray in front. Tangled on the sides, it was long enough to cover his ears, and it always stayed that length, about a week overdue for a haircut. Tengo wondered how such a thing was possible. At times Komatsu’s eyes would take on a sharp glow, like stars glittering in the winter night sky. And if something caused him to clam up, he would maintain his silence like a rock on the far side of the moon. All expression would disappear from his face, and his body seemed to go cold.
    Tengo first met Komatsu five years earlier when he was short-listed for the new writers’ prize competition of Komatsu’s magazine. Komatsu called and said he wanted to get together for a chat. They agreed to meet in a cafe in Shinjuku (the same one in which they were now sitting). Komatsu told Tengo there was no way his work would take the prize (and in fact it did not). Komatsu himself, however, had enjoyed the story. “I’m not looking for thanks, but I almost never say this to anyone,” he said. (This was in fact true, as Tengo came to learn.) “So I’d like you to let me read your next story before you show it to anyone else.” Tengo promised to do that.
    Komatsu also wanted to learn about Tengo as a person—his experience growing up, what he was doing now. Tengo explained himself as honestly as he could. He was born in the city of Ichikawa in nearby Chiba Prefecture. His mother died of an illness shortly after he was born, or at least that was what his father told him. He had no siblings. His father never remarried but raised Tengo by himself, collecting NHK television subscription fees door to door to make a living. Now, however, his father had Alzheimer’s disease and was living in a nursing home on the southern tip of Chiba’s Boso Peninsula. Tengo himself had graduated from Tsukuba University’s oddly named “School 1 College of Natural Studies Mathematics Major” and was writing fiction while teaching mathematics at a private cram school in Yoyogi. At the time of his graduation he could have taken a position at a prefectural high school near home, but instead chose the relatively free schedule of the Tokyo cram school. He lived alone in a small apartment in the Koenji District west of downtown Tokyo, which gave him an easy half-hour commute to school.
    Tengo did not know for certain whether he wanted to be a professional novelist, nor was he sure he had the talent to write fiction. What he did know was that he could not help spending a large part of every day writing fiction. To him, writing was like breathing.
    Komatsu said practically nothing as he listened to Tengo’s story. He seemed to like Tengo, though it was not clear why. Tengo was a big man (he had been a key member of his judo team in middle school, high school, and college), and he had the eyes of an early-waking farmer. He wore his hair short, seemed always to have a tan, and had cauliflower ears. He looked neither like a youthful devotee of literature nor like a teacher of mathematics, which was also something that Komatsu seemed to like about him.
    Whenever Tengo finished a story, he would take it to Komatsu. Komatsu would read it and offer his comments. Tengo would rewrite it following his advice and bring it to Komatsu again, who would provide new instructions, like a coach raising the bar a little at a time. “Your case might take some time,” he said. “But we’re in no hurry. Just make up your mind to write every single day. And don’t throw anything out. It might come in handy later.” Tengo agreed to follow Komatsu’s advice.
    For his part, Komatsu would occasionally send