Kirie’s departure from Junpei’s life is a quiet separation whose force becomes clear only through what follows: unanswered calls, a published story that cannot reach its inspiration, and Junpei’s growing recognition that his feeling for her cannot be exchanged for anything else. The relationship ends without a final conversation, but its absence changes how he understands attachment and the meaning of his private countdown.

The Silence Begins

After finishing the story she had, in a sense, inspired him to write, Junpei called Kirie because he thought she would want to read it. The call failed with a recorded message saying it could not be completed as dialed. He tried again repeatedly, then again later, explaining the failure to himself as a possible technical problem with her phone. The practical obstacle offered a temporary alternative to the more painful possibility that she was no longer reachable.

Junpei stayed close to home waiting to hear from her, but no word came. A month became two, then three; winter arrived and a new year began. His story, “The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day,” appeared in the February issue of a literary magazine. A newspaper advertisement carried both his name and the title, and he hoped Kirie might see it, buy the magazine, read the story, and call to tell him what she thought. Instead, the advertisement reached no answer. Silence accumulated where he had imagined a response.

The Cost of Her Absence

Kirie’s disappearance hurt Junpei far more than he had expected. He experienced her absence as a void that shook him, and repeatedly found himself wishing she were there. He missed not only her company but the particulars of their closeness: her smile, the words shaped by her lips, and the touch of her skin when they held each other. Favorite music and new books by authors he liked no longer offered comfort; they seemed distant from him. The loss altered his relation to ordinary pleasures as well as to Kirie herself.

In that absence, Junpei considered whether Kirie might have been woman number two in his private reckoning of the three women who would have real meaning in his life. The question did not yet settle into certainty. It instead gave his grief a structure: he was trying to decide what the relationship had meant while discovering that its importance could not be reduced to a count.

A Voice on the Radio

After noon on a day in early spring, Junpei heard Kirie’s voice on an FM broadcast while riding in a taxi caught in traffic. At first he could only think that the speaker sounded like her. Then the familiar intonation, relaxed delivery, and distinctive pauses made the recognition increasingly certain. The encounter brought her voice back into reach without restoring contact between them.

In the interview, Kirie described what happened to her when she went to a high place: she had to change herself to survive there, and, alone with the wind, felt enveloped and understood by it. Junpei stopped the taxi and walked the rest of the way to his destination. Looking up at tall buildings and the clouds moving past, he realized that no one could come between Kirie and the wind. The recognition brought on a violent jealousy, though he could not identify the wind as a plausible rival. Her words disclosed a kind of solitude and concentration in which she needed no one else, sharpening the distance between the life she described and Junpei’s wish to reach her.

The Relationship Ends

Junpei waited several more months for Kirie to contact him. He wanted to see her and talk about many things, including the kidney-shaped stone, but her calls never came and his calls continued to fail. When summer arrived, he gave up what little hope remained and accepted that she had no intention of seeing him again. Their relationship ended calmly, without a quarrel or a scene of farewell. Its ending resembled the quiet conclusions of Junpei’s earlier relationships, in which the calls gradually stopped and the separation seemed to happen naturally.

That familiar pattern did not mean that Kirie was interchangeable with the women who had come before. During the following six months, Junpei wrote a large number of short stories with intense concentration. At his desk, polishing his style, he often imagined Kirie alone somewhere high above him, without a lifeline, entering the concentrated state she had described as being alone with the wind. Recalling her words, he understood that he felt something special for her, unlike anything he had felt for another woman. He could not name the emotion with certainty, but experienced it as deep, clearly outlined, substantial, and impossible to trade for anything else. Even if he never saw her again, he believed the feeling would remain; her absence would continue to be felt deep in his body.

Counting, and Letting Go of the Count

As the year ended, Junpei decided to count Kirie as number two: one of the women who had real meaning for him. The language of the countdown still gave the decision a number, but it no longer carried the fear that only one woman remained. Junpei realized that the number itself was not important and that the countdown had no meaning. What mattered was deciding in his heart to accept another person completely, a decision he understood as something that must happen for the first and last time.

Kirie’s departure therefore brings neither reconciliation nor a final explanation. Junpei receives no reply, and the relationship remains closed to him in practical terms. Its consequence is inward: the silence makes him recognize the weight of a feeling that persists without contact, and the decision to count Kirie as significant marks a change in his understanding of love. The story grants him no return to the relationship; it leaves him with the harder knowledge that accepting another person completely cannot be replaced by keeping score.