I had no special interest in my afternoon classes, so together we left school, ambled down the hill to a billiards parlor on the baror, and shot four games. After lunch, Kizuki suggested we cut classes and go play pool or something. I would have traded places with her if I could have, but finally what had happened had happened, and there was nothing I could do about it. That may not be the best way to put it, but I more or less understood how she felt. Naoko might have been angry with me because I, and not she, had been the last one to see Kizuki alive. I could never understand why such a smart and capable talker did not turn his talents to the broader world around him but remained satisfied to concentrate on our little trio. In addition, he had a rare talent for finding the interesting parts of someone’s generally uninteresting comments so that, when speaking to him, you felt that you were an exceptionally interesting person with an exceptionally interesting life.Īnd yet he was not the least bit sociable.
It probably looked harder than it was: he knew how to monitor and adjust the air around him on a second-by-second basis. If one or the other stayed quiet too long, he would steer his conversation in that direction and get the person to talk. He would distribute his remarks and jokes fairly to Naoko and to me, taking care to see that neither of us felt left out. True, he had a sarcastic side that often impressed people as arrogant, but in fact he was a considerate and fair-minded person. He was good at occupying that central position. We were like a TV talk show with me the guest, Kizuki the talented host, and Naoko his assistant. Introducing a fourth person into the mix would always make things a little awkward.
Kizuki and Naoko and I: odd, but that was the most comfortable combination. After a while, Kizuki gave up trying to arrange dates for me, and instead the three of us would do things together.
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