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What Chekhov was getting at is this: necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That's what you call dramaturgy. Logic, morals, or meaning don't have anything to do with it. It's all a question of relationality. Chekhov understood dramaturgy very well.

"I think you're trying to make up for lost time."

She thinks about it for a while. "You may be right," she says. "But how do you know that?"

"Because I'm doing the same thing."

"Making up for lost time?"

"Yes," I say. "A lot of things were stolen from my childhood. Lots of important things. And now I have to get them back."

"In order to keep on living."

I nod. "I have to. People need a place they can go back to. There's still time to make it, I think. For me, and for you."

"You can't use that strength as a protective wall around you. There's always going to be something stronger that can overcome your fortress. At least in principle."

"Strength itself becomes your morality."

Miss Saeki smiles. "You catch on quickly."

"The strength I'm looking for isn't the kind where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things—unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings."

"That's got to be the most difficult strength of all to make your own."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it's true, all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. … So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself."

Listening to Fournier's flowing, dignified cello, Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the line it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird . . . People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I've lived, the more I've lost what's inside me—and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I'll become. Something's wrong with this picture. Life isn't supposed to turn out like this! Isn't it possible to shift direction, to change where I'm headed?

it has a persistent, inward-moving spirit that's filled with a pliant, youthful sort of curiosity.

If a pistol appears in a story it's got to be fired. Necessity is an independent conveyor from logic morals or meaning. It's function lies entirely on the role it plays. What doesn't play a role shouldn't exist. What plays a role does need to exist

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

the boy named crow is gone

"Mr. Hoshino?"

"What's up?"

"I have a question I'd like to ask."

"Fire away."

"Can nothingness increase?"

Hoshino puzzled this one over for a while. "That's a tough one," he admitted. "If something returns to nothing it becomes zero, but even if you add zero to zero, it's still zero."