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for Shige. It had been stiflingly hot in Tokyo this summer, and what with travelling with friends, a camping trip with the ski club from school and a long visit with Ryoko’s parents, he hadn’t been home much. Aoyama, for his part, had had several presentations for TV commercials just before and after the o-bon holidays, so it was late August before they had a chance to travel together, as they did almost every year, to the little hotel near Lake Yamanaka. Back when he was with the agency, Aoyama had once used this hotel as a setting for photo-shoots featuring an imported whisky, and he’d liked the privacy and the quiet atmosphere of the place so much that he’d started making regular yearly visits.
        He’d gone there with Ryoko alone at first. Later Shige had accompanied them as a babe in arms, as a toddler and as a little boy. And for the past seven years, during each of which Shige seemed to have grown at least a head taller, the two of them had continued the trips on their own.
        The hotel was in a densely wooded area, about fifteen minutes by car from the lake. It wasn’t particularly luxurious, the food was nothing to get excited about and regulars weren’t given any special treatment. But the building, made of stone and wood and stucco, blended seamlessly into the surrounding woods; the two tennis courts were well maintained; and each of the rooms – of which there were fewer than twenty – was spacious and pleasant. Best of all was the privacy, and the fact that there was none of the forced interaction with other guests that you found in so many highland resorts and bed-and-breakfasts. Aoyama had countless memories of his days and nights here with Ryoko. They’d travelled a lot together in the period just before and after their marriage, but this was the only place they’d made a point of returning to every year. The car they’d taken the first time was a Bluebird 3S borrowed from a friend, and the late-summer drive down the Chuo Expressway to Lake Yamanaka was something they both enjoyed so much that it led to the purchase of their own first car, a used Audi they got with a thirty-month loan. From the used Audi they’d graduated to a new one, and then a Mercedes 190, although since Ryoko’s death Aoyama had downgraded to plain domestic sedans.
        The summer following Ryoko’s death, Aoyama had decided, after some hesitation, to go ahead and spend a few days at the hotel with Shige. Shige was in third or fourth grade at the time. The manager of the hotel, a Schumann fanatic, was unaware that Ryoko had passed away. He came out to the driveway to greet them and opened the door of the passenger side only to find the seat empty. ‘Will the missus be joining you afterwards?’ he asked, and from the rear seat Shige, in an oddly sunny voice, said, ‘Mama died.’ The cries of cicadas and birds pierced the cool air, and Aoyama thought, She’ll never stand on the gravel of this parking lot again . How many times had she climbed out of the car at this very spot, in how many different colours and styles of shoes, and said, as she always did, ‘Up here you can really feel summer slipping away, can’t you?’ He had to face the fact that he would never hear her say those words again and never again see her slender feet tread this gravel. The death of someone close to you, he realised at that moment, was something you came to accept one concrete fact at a time. For four days, during which he and Shige played endless games of tennis, he worried whether an eight-year-old child was capable of such acceptance. They were both terrible at the game back then, which meant that they spent more time chasing balls than hitting them, but Shige never complained of boredom or asked if they could stop. Even he, at eight years old, seemed to realise there really wasn’t anything else they could do.
        Now Shige was fifteen.
        ‘I hope Gangsta gets along all right with Rie-san,’ he said from the