 She returns to America occasionally where she catches up with old friends and learns of Azuma's rise to success.One year she returns and discovers that he has disappeared and no one has heard anything of him.In 1998 while teaching at Stanford University, Mizumura is approached by a young man, Yusuke Kato, who tells her that he met Azuma a few years before he disappeared in Karuizawa, Nagano where he mentioned he knew the novelist Minae Mizumura.