Summary

Chapter 14, “A Stiff Upper Lip” (251), begins with a short biography of Yuriko Zen. Natsuko notes that Yuriko was interviewed in Half a Dream under a pseudonym and that Aizawa told her which interview was Yuriko’s. Yuriko was born in Tokyo in 1980. Her parents had a fraught marriage and her father eventually left. When her father visited her, he sexually abused her. When she was 25, Yuriko found out her father was dying and her mother admitted that her biological father was a sperm donor. Natsuko thought about how Yuriko had stared at her when she had said she was considering donor conception.

At the end of March, Natsuko met Aizawa for dinner and drinks. Aizawa told Natsuko that regardless of where his relationship with Yuriko went, they were not having children. Natsuko told Aizawa about how she felt incapable of having sex and...