She hadn’t changed a bit ever since she was a child. All along she had been living in a universe of thought that was all her own, shared with no one else. Every time I thought about all this, an image of Tsugumi sitting with a wide smile on her face, holding the dog that looked just like Gongorō in her arms, flickered across the surface of my mind like a burst of warm sunlight. There wasn’t a trace of anything ugly in that scene, and it left me dazzled.
