“And that’s why you came back? Because he took your money after you’d taken it from me and spoke unkindly to you? Neither of you must have loved each other if it all came crashing down so easily.”
“I never loved him, Sedge.”
He didn’t believe her. It would complicate things more if he did. He asked again why she came back.
“I came back because . . . I couldn’t experience what I wanted to.”
“Which was what?”
“In the end I suppose it was an illusion.” She smiled as if to prepare him for a riddle that has no answer. “Before I say anything, you have to realize that I can’t explain it so you’ll understand. I wish I could, but . . .”
“Try me first before telling me I won’t understand,” he snapped
“Okay. But it won’t be easy for you.” She studied him for a moment before continuing. “I left to atone for my past.”
“Your past when?”
“My past before I met you.”
Her words were a poisonous effusion, washing away every thought he had. “You mean your first boyfriend who killed himself?”
She nodded. “Yes, I mean Tetsuya. Kōichi came into our shop the first time almost three years ago and we spoke for a while. A week later he texted me to invite me out for coffee. He said you weren’t to come. When I asked why not, he explained our connection to each other: Over the six months I dated Tetsuya, Kōichi had been his best friend. He knew all about me. Tetsuya had mentioned Kōichi to me only a few times that I could recall, and I’d never paid attention to it. But once he told me, I remembered who he was. He wanted to talk about what had happened between me and Tetsuya twenty-five years ago. Because I still felt guilty about it, I agreed.
“We met at an old kissaten near the train station, where the half-blind granny that ran it played enka tunes all day and the interior was dark with stained wood and years of tobacco smoke. It was the perfect place to meet secretly, where we could say anything and not worry about being overheard. In fact, we were the only ones there that day. And just about every other time we went there, too.”
She paused and Sedge said, “How many times did you meet there?”
“At the kissaten? Half a dozen, I guess. On the same days our shop was closed or when I had appointments in town. We started meeting in other places, too. Hotels, mostly, I’m sorry to say. Anyway, on about our third meeting there, after we’d reminisced about Tetsuya’s life and our lives with him, he said I was to blame for his suicide. That hit me hard, especially since everything we’d talked about before had celebrated his life. I knew it was true. Other people back then had circled around saying the same thing, but I knew what they were accusing me of. Kōichi convinced me that if I’d suffered for my wrongdoing when Tetsuya was alive, he’d still be with us.”
“Kōichi is a sonofabitch.”
“I know that now. But I believed he was saying all the things I’d needed to hear for twenty-five years. Somehow he cast a spell over me. Luckily, it didn’t last.”
“It didn’t last?” he said sarcastically.
“It could have been longer. And worse in the end.”
Sedge was sure she was right, but that she considered herself lucky after she’d nearly ruined his life angered him. “Why do you still think you were to blame? You only ended the relationship. That happens all the time. And you were only fifteen then. You were both children, basically.”
“Tetsuya found out I’d been seeing other guys when we were together. I cheated on him many times. And Kōichi was the one who told him.”
“Clearly he never should have. But even so, no one’s to blame for what Tetsuya did. Not even Kōichi.”
“I wasn’t just a jerky teenage girl, Sedge, but something more repulsive—the things I said and did even after he found out. I . . . I even suggested he kill himself once. Of course I said it out of anger or frustration and didn’t actually mean it.”
This was the first time she’d admitted this to Sedge. “Of course you didn’t mean it.”
“I’ve been living with the thought that he killed himself because of me, and I was so selfish and clueless about everything. I think that was why it took so little for me to accept Kōichi’s accusation. And he convinced me very quickly that he was the logical one, the only one, who still connected me to Tetsuya. From there, he had me in a vulnerable position.”
Sedge rubbed his temples with his fingers, trying to process what she was telling him. He couldn’t help but think of stories he’d heard about former cult members—people who had been manipulated for sex, or money, or other things—who were desperate to expiate sins they believed they were guilty of. He never would have believed that Nozomi, his own wife, whom he’d known for ten years, could sound like this.
“And that’s when you and he became lovers?”
She turned to look out the window again. A moment later she nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said, barely audible.
“Why did you decide to leave together? Why didn’t you simply continue seeing him on the side?” He was surprised to hear himself suggest it would have been better to cheat on him without leaving. It pained him to ask, but he had no choice.
“I didn’t want to keep deceiving you. And we thought it would be easier for me to suffer how I needed.”
Responding to the question in his face she said, “I don’t remember which came first, my asking for this or his suggesting it. But we both agreed on it. We had no specific plan at first, but I felt I was making a sacred commitment, I suppose. I don’t know how to explain it except to say I found it necessary. I thought I had to do it . . . to get my life back on track.”
“But it was always on track.”
“That’s what you never understood.”
Sedge watched Nozomi turn her cup in its saucer. Its grinding sound made him want to knock it to the floor.
“You mean you feel that way still? I thought you said he only tricked you.”
“What I mean is you never understood how I felt. That my guilt was taking me to a place I could never return from. I did feel that way, Sedge. And although I left to atone for my past, I did it with the wrong person. I have a lot of thinking to do now. But I guess that goes without saying.”
“Where did you expect you’d be able to atone for Tetsuya?”
“Far away, obviously. I thought the mountains would be best, but it turns out I’m not suited to them, especially in the winter. Then I thought an island, the remoter the better, would suffice, but I wasn’t suited to that life, either.”
He came back to what he’d said before. “What kind of suffering were you looking for?”
“I didn’t know in the beginning. I assumed we’d eventually figure it out, but we had to leave our lives behind first.”
