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There were four rooms. I went into the one where I had seen her silhouette earlier, since it seemed like the best place to start, and opened the drawer where she had always kept her underwear. And just as I expected, my seal and passbook were both there, under the underwear. Looking through the passbook, I saw that my father had left me twenty million yen. She didn’t appear to have touched it yet. Taking the money was one thing, but I don’t know how she expected me to get along without my official seal. I really needed it. I left the apartment, taking the seal and passbook with me. I locked the door, thinking as I did that it was kind of unusual—a thief locking the door behind her. I had left a slip of paper in the bottom of the drawer on which I had written, in small characters, “Lupin the Third Strikes Again!” though I doubted my amusing manga allusion would make her smile. I finished things off by taping the key back where it had been, then caught a train and went home.
    The next day I canceled my contract with the phone company and got a cell phone. Then I completed the paperwork necessary for me to move out of my apartment. It would have been a pain if my mother realized the things were gone and came to get the money. I must have used a whole life’s worth of energy going through it all. In one sleepless night, I disposed of everything. I packed all my dad’s clothes into a single cardboard box. I put his books, his letters, and all the other things he had left behind into storage. None of the things my mother had left mattered—that was why she had left them, after all—so I threw everything away. I also tossed as many of my own things as possible and put the rest into storage with my dad’s things. Ultimately, I was able to fit everything into just two suitcases. Two days later, I went to the bank and opened a new account for myself with ten million yen, then had them print up a check for the remaining ten million, which I mailed to my mother. When I got the receipt for sending it by registered mail, an image of the mailbox in that building drifted up before my mind’s eye. It occurred to me—and I felt how true it was—that the moment this check slipped into that mailbox, I would really be alone.
    I stayed in a business hotel for a while, but then Chizuru suggested that I come stay in her place. She started out as the friend of a friend. I knew she liked me, and I liked her, and at that point in my life I was just looking for a way to buy time until the sense of rootlessness that pervaded my days abated. And so I decided to take advantage of her kind offer.
    Living with Chizuru was great, right from the start.
    Chizuru saw ghosts, or sometimes sensed their presence. She was the sort of person who would get teary-eyed when something sad happened to a friend, even though she didn’t particularly feel like crying. And when my shoulders were stiff or I had gastritis or something, she could make it better just by putting her hand where it hurt. Chizuru’s explained that when she was a child something terrible had happened to her—she had tumbled down a long flight of stairs—and she’d had these powers ever since then. Her eyes were very clear, and she was always staring someplace a little off to one side of whoever she was with, her gaze full of light. She was a strong person. Nothing scared her.
    What’s more, her apartment was just the sort of place my troubled heart needed then. It was on the seventh floor of a building that was falling to pieces, right next to the highway, and when you looked down out of the window you saw a bunch of alleys squashed together and a row of slumlike buildings. It was always very loud, many of the tenants were behind on their rent, and the apartment one floor above—a two-room place just like hers—was inhabited by a family of eight that made a stunning amount of noise. Her building reminded me of the slums in Kulong, Hong Kong, which I had seen once on TV.
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