Summary

In Chapter Six, Mikami called his wife to tell her that he was not able to make it back to their house for lunch. Their phone call was short. As he walked back to the station, Mikami thought on his wife’s suffering since Ayumi’s disappearance. He reflected on the silent phone calls he and Minako received about two months after their daughter went missing. After these calls, Minako stopped leaving the house. Mikami normally went home for lunch, bringing his wife food. He compared his wife’s stubbornness with that of his daughter, who “locked herself in her room in the days that led up to her running away” (40).

Mikami continued to think of the silent calls: the first two answered by Minako with Mikami answering the third and last. The couple took the silent calls to mean that Ayumi was...