I kept having a dream about an overnight train. It was always the same dream. The overnight train smelled of tobacco smoke and urinals and people were packed in like fish. The train was so crowded that there was no place to stand and the seats had old vomit clinging to them. Without any urgency, I got up from my seat and disembarked at a train station somewhere. It was so desolate that I couldn't see the light of a single house anywhere. There wasn't even a trace of a station employee. There were no clocks or timetables or anything else. It was that kind of dream.

Around that time, I began to feel that I was treating her poorly. In exactly what way, I don't remember anymore. Or it's possible I wasn't treating myself very well. Anyway, she didn't seem to care at all. Or maybe (to speak in extremes) she enjoyed it immensely. I don't understand why. After all, it's not like her desire for me was out of kindness. Even remembering that now feels strange. When it occurs to me out of the blue it brings a sad feeling, as though my hand were unexpectedly hitting an unseen wall.

[heavily inspired by Birnbaum; I wasn't thinking very clearly about this.]

We left the grove and walked to the ICU campus, where as always we sat in the lounge and nibbled on hot dogs. At 2pm, the lounge television time and time again flashed an image of Yukio Mishima. The speakers were broken so we couldn't really understand the news, but whatever it was it was fine by us. We finished our hot dogs and had another cup of coffee each. A lone student climbed on a chair and fiddled with the volume knob for a bit, gave up, climbed down, and disappeared.
"I really want you," I said.

[Ed. note: This was the day that Yukio Mishima infamously committed suicide by seppuku after barricading himself in a Japan Self-Defense Force headquarters building and issuing a list of demands. IIRC Murakami has stated a dislike for Mishima, which would be well in line with student opinion of him back in the day.]
[Ed. note 2: Man, I really blew this translation. See Birnbaum for how this really ought to go. I'll fix it in the morning.]

When I started awake, she was crying silently. Her thin shoulders shook in bouts under the blankets. I lit the burner on the stove and looked at the clock. It was 2 am, and a pure white moon floated in the center of the sky. I made black tea and we drank it together after she stopped crying. I didn't have any sugar, lemon, or milk, so we drank plain, hot, black tea. Once we finished, I lit two cigarettes and gave one to her. She inhaled the smoke and spat it out three times and then coughed violently for a while.
"So do you ever think of killing me?" she asked.
"You?"
"Uh-huh."
"What are you talking about?"
She rubbed an eyelid with her fingertip, holding her cigarette in her mouth. "That's not an answer."

Upon ascertaining the elevator door had closed behind me with a soft thud, I let my eyes fall shut. Collecting my fragmented senses, I turned down the corridor towards my door and walked nineteen steps. I walked precisely nineteen steps with my eyes closed, not one more or one fewer. Thanks to whiskey, my head felt dimly like a stripped screw and my mouth tasted like stale cigarettes.

No matter how drunk I am, I can close my eyes and, measuring my pace, walk a straight line of nineteen steps. It's a long-held gift born of self-training. Whenever I'm drunk, I hold my back firmly erect and my head high and inhale the smells of morning air and concrete hallway with all my might. Then, I close my eyes and walk nineteen straight steps through the whiskey fog.

Five... six... seven...

At the eighth step I pause, open my eyes, and take a deep breath. A faint sound. Like an ocean breeze flowing through a rusty wire screen. Now that I think of it, it's been a while since I've seen the ocean.
It was July 24, 6:30am. It was the ideal time of year for the beach and an ideal time of day. There wasn't yet anybody there to ruin the beach. The footprints of seagulls were scattered across the beach like old pine needles in the wind.

The beach, huh?

Once more, I began walking. Forget the beach, already. Those things have already vanished way into the past.

I open the door maybe a third of way and slip through and close it. The entrance was absolutely silent. More silent than necessary.

Then, I noticed the existence of red pumps in the entrance. They were pumps I'd seen before. Stuck between my mud-spattered tennis shoes and some cheap beach sandals they looked like an out-of-season Christmas present. Silence, like a fine dust, floated through the air.

She was slumped over the kitchen table, head on her arms, profile hidden by her straight, black hair. I could see the white nape of her neck, untouched by the sun.

[Ed. note: So it turns out it's hard to translate drunken hallway-walking. This is beautiful in the translation and I haven't begun to do it justice. I've also cheated from Birnbaum a lot. Oh well. Also, verb tense. Shh.]

She didn't move even slightly in the time it took me to take off my overcoat, undo my black necktie, and remove my wristwatch. Staring at her back called forth memories. They were from before I met her.

"Hey," I started, but it wasn't at all my voice that I heard. It was like a voice from some far-off place, making a special detour. I wasn't surprised by the lack of response.

She looked like she could be sleeping, or like she could be crying, or like she could be dead.

I sat down on the far side of the table and pressed my fingertips to my eyelids. The fresh light of the sun marked off the table. I was in the light; she was in shadow, a shadow without colors. A withered potted geranium sat atop the table. Outside the window, someone was spraying the street with water. There was the sound of an asphalt road being sprayed with water, and there was the smell of an asphalt road being sprayed with water.

"Care for some coffee?"
Nope, no answer.

After confirming the lack of response, I got up, ground coffee beans for two in the kitchen, and switched on my transistor radio.

The transistor radio played harmless pop songs quite appropriate for mornings, one after another. Listening to those songs, I began to feel that the world hadn't changed at all in the last ten years. Only the singers and the names of the songs were different. And I was ten years older.

After ascertaining that the kettle had come to a boil, I turned off the gas. I let the water cool for thirty seconds and poured the water over the coffee grounds. The coffee slowly absorbed all the water it could, and its scent suffused through the room. Outside, an army of cicadas had begun to sing.

"You've been here since last night?" I asked, holding the kettle. Her hair nodded infintesimally on the table. "You've been waiting all night?" She didn't answer.

Between the steam of the kettle and the strong sunlight, the room was getting stuffy. I closed the window over the sink and switched on the air conditioner before lining up a couple of coffee cups on the table.

"..."

"Really, you should."

A good thirty seconds after I set down the mugs, she slowly and smoothly raised her head from the table and stared distractedly into the withered plant. Strands of her fine hair clung to her wet cheek. A faint aura of dampness surrounded her.

"Please don't mind me," she said. "I didn't mean to do this crying thing."

She soundlessly blew her nose with a box of Kleenex I gave her and anxiously brushed her hair back into place.

"I really meant to leave before you came back. I didn't want to see your face."

"So you changed your mind?"

"Not at all. I utterly didn't want to be here." She paused. "But don't worry, I'll be leaving soon."

"Anyway, have some coffee."

While listening to the radio traffic report, I sliced open the seals on a pair of letters with scissors.