Chapter 1: Sunset, Part 2 - First Meeting with Rinko

The two of them had arrived at the hotel in Kamakura yesterday evening.

After three o'clock on Friday, Kuki left the company in Kudan and met Rinko at Tokyo Station. They took the Yokosuka Line and got off in Kamakura.

The hotel sat on a small hill by Shichirigahama. In summer, this stretch of coast was crowded with young people, but once September arrived the traffic thinned out, and it took less than twenty minutes by taxi to get there.

Kuki had chosen this hotel for his rendezvous with Rinko because it was less than an hour from Tokyo and had the feel of a short escape from the city.

From the room, you could see the sea and enjoy the quiet of old Kamakura.

Besides, the hotel had only just opened, so there were still very few regular guests, and it was not easy for anyone to spot them.

Of course, even if Kuki thought that way, there was no guarantee no one would see the two of them together.

Modern Bookroom, where Kuki worked, was a publisher and had a relatively open attitude toward men and women, but being seen at a hotel with a woman other than his wife would still have a negative impact.

If possible, he wanted to avoid that kind of trouble. He did not want people pointing and whispering behind his back. In fact, up to that point, Kuki had always been careful about that, handling women with great caution.

But after meeting Rinko, Kuki lost the patience to avoid drawing attention.

The reason was simple: once he had met the woman he liked most, he felt it was unavoidable to take some risks in order to see her.

What made him even more unrestrained was the fact that, a year earlier, after being stripped of his department head post and demoted to the research office, he had been thrown into a cushy backwater job.

In truth, the personnel transfer a year ago had hit Kuki too hard.

Like anyone else, he had expected to rise steadily within the company's main stream.

When he was fifty-three a year ago, everyone around him said he was a likely candidate for the next board position, and he believed it too.

But what happened was so sudden: not only was he passed over for promotion, he was relieved of his position as head of the publishing department and sent to the research office, which anyone could see was little more than a dead-end post.

Behind that personnel reshuffle was, of course, his failure to read the situation clearly after the company president changed two years earlier and a group of so-called presidential favorites began to gain power inside the company. But once the transfer was settled, there was no point in dwelling on the reasons.

More important was Kuki's understanding that he had missed his chance to become a board director. In two more years he would be fifty-five, and it would be impossible for him to ever reach the board.

Even if his position changed again, it would only mean being moved to an even less prominent post or being sent out to a subsidiary.

Once he accepted that, his life opened up in a different way.

From now on, he could live calmly and freely.

No matter how hard a man struggled, a lifetime was still only a lifetime.

Once that way of thinking changed, things he had once considered important no longer seemed so important, while things he had never thought of as especially precious suddenly became valuable.

After losing his department head title, he still held the formal post of editorial board member, but in reality he had almost no real work.

Since his job in the research office involved gathering all kinds of materials and sometimes organizing features such as special issues for related magazines, that was technically his main duty, but nothing came with a clear deadline.

Once he was in such a free and idle position, Kuki realized that he had never truly been consumed by love for anyone.

Of course, he had liked his wife and other women he had been involved with, and he had had affairs, but they had all come to nothing. He had never known that definite feeling of his whole body and soul burning at once.

If things went on like that, the greatest regret of his life would be left behind.

Matsubara Rinko happened to appear before Kuki at just that moment.

Romantic encounters were always accidental, and Kuki met Rinko through nothing more than chance.

Three months after he had been transferred to the research office at the end of last year, his friend Ikegawa, who worked at the newspaper company's culture center, asked him to give a lecture titled "How to Write." There were nearly thirty students, and Ikegawa wanted him to talk about writing.

Kuki was not a practicing writer himself; he only edited and published books at the publishing house, so he felt he was not suited to the task and refused.

But Ikegawa said there was no need to take it so seriously, that he only had to talk about the various kinds of writing he had read in the past and the experience of compiling them into books. Besides, the line Ikegawa added, "You're not exactly busy these days, are you?" made Kuki take interest.

It was clear Ikegawa had come to see him not only for the lecture, but also to encourage him, since he had been demoted to a dead-end post.

Kuki and Ikegawa had been university classmates. After graduating from the literature department, Ikegawa joined the newspaper company and Kuki went to work at a publishing house. Their workplaces were different, but they often met for drinks.

Six years ago Kuki had been promoted to publishing division head, and Ikegawa, unwilling to lose out, had become culture director. But three years ago he was suddenly sent out to a culture center in Tokyo.

Kuki did not know whether Ikegawa liked the transfer, but from the way he said, "Looks like it's my turn to be sent out too," it was clear he still had some attachment to the head office.

In any case, because Ikegawa had already experienced being pushed out of the main stream, he could understand Kuki's feelings and offer comfort at the right time.

Kuki could feel that sincerity and readily agreed.

That night he went to the culture center, gave a ninety-minute lecture, then had dinner with Ikegawa. A young woman was also at the table that night, and Ikegawa introduced her as a calligraphy instructor at the culture center. She was Rinko.

If he had not accepted Ikegawa's invitation then, and if Ikegawa had not invited Rinko to dinner, the two of them would never have met, and this unusual relationship would not exist now.

Whenever Kuki thought about how he had met Rinko, he always marveled at how mysterious love was and felt as though it had been arranged by fate.

From the moment Ikegawa introduced him to Rinko, an inexplicable excitement had stirred in Kuki's heart.

To be honest, Kuki had had relations with other women before. That went without saying when he was young, and even after he became middle-aged he had still had a few intimate relationships.

One of them had said she liked Kuki's absent-mindedness; another had said she was drawn to his boyishness, which seemed out of place for his age.

Kuki did not think he was especially absent-minded or childlike, and figured those were just unusual compliments.

But strangely enough, after that, whenever he approached other women, he became aware of that side of himself to some extent.

Even so, the way he approached Rinko really did have a childishly single-minded quality, which even he found baffling.

After being introduced by Ikegawa and meeting her only once, he called her on the phone a week later using the business card he had been given.

He had paid attention to women before, but this was the first time he had acted so actively and so directly. He was surprised by his own behavior, but the runaway desire inside him could not be held back.