In fact, we hardly thought about them at all. They were like the weather, something that was just out there, that barely registered on our attention meter.

It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical

I couldn't explain well to anyone else came across to her with an exactness that took me by surprise. ...Still, this was on the order of a minor miracle - running across someone you express your feelings to so clearly, so completely. Most people go their entire lives without meeting a person like that. It would have been a mistake to label this "love." It was more like total empathy.

Shozaburo Takitani was now alone in the world. This was no great shock to him, however, nor did it make him feel particularly sad or miserable. He did, of course, experience some sense of absence, but he felt that, eventually, life had to turn out more or less like this. Everyone ended up alone sooner or later.

If her life were a movie, it would be one of those low-budget environmental documentaries guaranteed to put you to sleep.