The summer program was called the Mountain Institute and it was held every July in a town called Kamikochi that had nine hundred residents and one bus stop and a hotel that had been built in 1962 and never renovated.
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Ren Takahashi was sent there because his parents had read about it in a magazine and because his mother believed that a boy who spent too much time indoors needed to be outdoors. He was fifteen. He did not want to be outdoors. He wanted to be in his room with the door closed.
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He arrived on a Tuesday in the second week of July with a suitcase that was too large for a two-week program and a paperback that he had already read twice.
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He was assigned to Group Four.
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The girl in Group Four was named Saki Mori and she talked the entire first day.
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She talked during the orientation. She talked during the walk to the river. She talked during lunch, with her mouth full, about a documentary she had watched about deep-sea fish. She talked during the afternoon session about watershed ecology, which she did not care about, and she talked during the walk back.
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Ren did not talk at all.
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On the second day she sat next to him at breakfast and asked him what book he was reading and he told her and she said she had read it and that the ending was bad. He disagreed. She asked why. He told her. She argued with him for twenty minutes and then stood up and left with her tray and did not say goodbye.
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On the third day she sat next to him again and did not argue about anything and did not talk as much and at the end of breakfast she said, "You're not boring. You're just quiet."
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On the fourth day they were paired for a project.
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The project was a survey of the river's invertebrate population. They were given a net and a clipboard and a laminated identification card and told to spend the afternoon collecting samples at four sites along the river and recording what they found.
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They walked to the first site in silence. They collected samples in silence. They argued about whether a particular mayfly was one species or another for ten minutes and then agreed it was impossible to tell and recorded it as "unknown."
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At the second site, Saki said, "What do you want to do when you're older?"
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"Architecture," Ren said.
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"Buildings?"
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"Buildings."
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"Why."
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He thought about it. "Because they last."
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She was quiet for a while. Then she said, "I want to make films."
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"Documentaries?"
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"I don't know yet. Something that moves."
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They collected samples at the third site and the fourth site and walked back to the institute and did not say anything else.
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The last night of the program was the seventh of July.
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The program had a bonfire and a talent show and a dance. Ren did not go to the bonfire. He went to a low stone wall above the town that the older students had told him about and he sat on it and looked at the sky.
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There were more stars than he had ever seen.
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He heard footsteps on the gravel.
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Saki sat down beside him on the wall. She did not ask if she could. She did not say hello. She just sat down and looked at the sky.
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They did not speak for a long time.
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"The dance is boring," she said eventually.
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"I know."
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"You didn't go."
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"No."
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"Neither did I."
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The river made noise in the valley below. Someone at the bonfire was playing a guitar badly.
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"Do you want to write to me," she said.
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Ren looked at her.
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"Yes," he said.
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She took a pen out of her pocket and wrote her address on the back of his hand. The ink was blue and the pen was cheap and it smeared when he closed his fingers.
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Then she stood up and walked back down the gravel path and did not look back.
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Ren sat on the wall for another hour.
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When he got back to the institute he wrote her address in the back of his paperback so he would not lose it.35Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡT7kpM55VPp
and then Add to home screen.