The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Content Warning: This section contains mentions of child death and death by suicide.

The protagonist asks Mrs. Soeda about Mr. Koyasu’s ghost, and she admits that she did not want to tell the protagonist, believing that Mr. Koyasu would do so when he was ready. She believes Mr. Koyasu comes back to help the library and that he is a different, more open, person now than he was before his death. She believes he chose to appear to the protagonist because Mr. Koyasu sees something in him.

Mrs. Soeda tells the protagonist that Mr. Koyasu was the eldest son of a wealthy local family who ran a sake brewery. Mr. Koyasu did not want to take over the business and joined a literary magazine as a writer in Tokyo. He only returned to the town after his father gave him an ultimatum. When his father suffered a stroke, he took over the business. Mr. Koyasu hated his life until he fell in love with a girl from Tokyo.

They married, but she did not want to give up her life and job, forcing them to commute to one another on weekends for years, until she became pregnant and moved to the town.