Heaven: A Novel

The narrator spends most of the summer at home. His father is frequently away, which means that the narrator is usually with his stepmother. He enjoys how safe it feels to be far from Ninomiya and the other bullies. He fantasizes about the possibility of them forgetting about him by the time they return to school. One day, while watching television with his stepmother, the narrator sees a news report about a middle school student who was regularly bullied and eventually died by suicide. This stops the narrator from feeling better about his own situation. He blames his lazy eye as the source of all his problems. He believes it will continue to plague him for the rest of his life, and he spirals into thinking that Kojima is embarrassed to be seen with him because of it. To calm himself down, the narrator masturbates.

Toward the end of summer, he finds himself missing Kojima. Despite the intimacy of their last encounter, neither of them has reached out to the other all summer. He decides that he will go by her house and pretend to bump into her. However, when he gets there, he sees that she lives in a large three-story house with a gate.