25 August

25 August is the day Naoko comes from the hospital in Osaka to the sanatorium, where her visit briefly makes recovery seem possible before ending in her disappearance and death. Its sharp reversal—from a lively reunion and talk of a shared future to a search through the woods—gives the date its defining place in Watanabe’s story of bereavement and memory.

The Visit After Hospital Treatment

Naoko’s mother had called on 24 August to ask whether Naoko could visit the sanatorium. Naoko wanted to collect the belongings she had left there, speak at length with Watanabe, and perhaps spend a night in their flat. He agreed, eager to see her. The following day, Naoko and her mother arrived by taxi, and the three of them packed Naoko’s things and chatted together.

Watanabe had expected the hospital’s tests and intensive therapy to leave Naoko exhausted and unwell. Instead, she looked healthier than he had anticipated: she smiled, joked, and spoke more normally than when he had last seen her. She had visited a hairdresser and showed off her new hairstyle. Her apparent improvement eased Watanabe’s fears enough that he was not troubled when her mother left later that afternoon.

A Future Briefly Imagined

Naoko said she intended to let the hospital doctors cure her once and for all, and Watanabe agreed that this seemed best. They went for a walk and talked mainly about what lay ahead. Naoko said she wanted the two of them to leave the sanatorium and live together somewhere. The proposal brings intimacy and hope into the scene, but the narration places that imagined future beside the knowledge of what followed: the visit became their last.

That evening, Naoko asked Watanabe to hold her, explaining that they would not see each other again for a while. Though he initially objected that the weather was too hot, he held her with a bath towel between them so their sweaty bodies would not stick together. When she calmed, he dried her, helped her into her nightdress, and put her to bed. Her peaceful appearance led him to believe he could sleep without worry, making the morning’s discovery all the more abrupt.

The Morning Search

At six the next morning, Naoko was gone. Her nightdress remained where she had dropped it, but her clothes, trainers, and the torch Watanabe kept by his pillow were missing. The torch told him she had left in darkness. A note on her desk asked that her clothes be given to Reiko. The sanatorium residents and staff split up to search the grounds, looking through the dormitories and the surrounding woods; it took five hours to find her. She had taken a rope with her.

The sequence turns an ordinary overnight visit into a crisis without warning. The details that had made the previous evening feel reassuring—Naoko’s good spirits, her talk of treatment, and Watanabe’s confidence as he fell asleep—cannot explain or undo what happened. Her absence first appears through the missing clothes and torch; the note and the search reveal the finality of the loss.

The Date in the Story of Grief

The significance of 25 August extends beyond the immediate discovery. Watanabe later understands that accepting death as part of life does not make the loss of someone loved bearable. He distinguishes the insight he had drawn from Kizuki’s death from what he learns after Naoko’s death: no truth, sincerity, strength, or kindness can cure the sorrow. The only available course is to endure it and learn from it, without imagining that this learning will protect anyone from the next loss.

That understanding is embodied in Watanabe’s response after returning to Tokyo. Overcome by a sense of defilement, he shuts himself in his room for days, his attention fixed on the dead rather than the living. In his mind, Naoko’s death renews his connection to Kizuki and pulls another part of him toward the world of the dead. The hope voiced on 25 August therefore survives not as a fulfilled plan but as a painful counterpoint: Naoko’s wish to live with Watanabe remains inseparable from the life they did not get to share.