“You come from the world outside that door. My daughter and I are from the world inside it. Whenever anyone from your side finds their way to our pawnshop, there is always a good reason for it. Our clients have choices that have become too burdensome to carry. We take these choices off their hands so that they may return to their world lighter. Content.”

Toshio’s explanation of how the pawnshop works introduces the parameters of the narrative world, particularly its magical elements. Toshio’s meeting with Izumi is a narrative device that introduces Izumi and delivers information to readers. In addition, the passage establishes the novel’s thematic explorations of Freedom of Choice and the Pursuit of Happiness. Toshio believes that taking his clients’ choices lets them be free and happy—a notion that Hana learns to question in subsequent chapters.

“I know that you do not want this life. You never have. It is the cruelest of duties, but it is also the most important one.”

Toshio has acted as Hana’s archetypal guide since she was a child. During their conversation after Izumi left, he identified and sympathized with her feelings. Hana is more apt to accept her family responsibilities because her father understands their burden. At the same time, he impressed on Hana the significance of these responsibilities. His words thematically reflect the conflict between duty and desire that Hana feels but compel her to embrace her duty over her personal desires.

“‘Does it matter? Have I not taught you anything? If you lose a bird, what kind of life your client leads is the least of your worries.’ He looked away, shaking his head. ‘Go. Take the cage to the vault.’”

Continuing their conversation, Toshio used an abrupt tone with Hana to express his frustration. He was teaching her the importance of keeping the birds—the clients’ traded choices—locked in the vault and got upset when Hana tried to question the significance of her duty and what it would mean for the clients if the birds went free. Toshio’s shortness shows that his priorities lie with his family legacy and his duty rather than notions of personal freedom, desire, and happiness.

“Raised in a world where detours were forbidden and one’s entire life was mapped, she could not imagine a more terrifying place. To be sent to the other world was called ‘exile,’ though Hana knew that it was just a kinder word for the truth.”

Hana’s regard for the world on the opposite side of the pawnshop door captures her fear of the unknown. She has never had the freedom to choose her life path and thus regards the unknown as dangerous and even synonymous with death. She was trained to fear freedom so that she wouldn’t put her own desires before her duty to her family and their business.

“There was a calmness in the way she spoke, a steadiness he did not expect from a person in her circumstances. Her large brown eyes mirrored her quiet composure, filled with something he had long desired for himself. An absolute certainty of purpose.”

Keishin envies Hana’s “calmness,” “steadiness,” and “quiet composure” because his life is defined by uncertainty. Just as Hana sees his world as mysterious, Keishin sees the mysterious possibilities of Hana’s world. The way he regards Hana is thus inspired by his longing for a clearer map of his own unplanned life—which Hana teaches him is more entrapping than liberating.

“‘I just wish that I had gotten there sooner. Maybe you’d—’ ‘Be more than just a figment of your imagination? Wishing for such things is useless. We can theorize all we want about bending space-time, but we cannot change the past.’”

Ramesh is Keishin’s archetypal guide throughout the novel. Since Ramesh is dead in the narrative present, Keishin can speak to him only in his mind, as he does in this passage. However, such imagined conversations offer Keishin perspective on his life in the present. Ramesh encourages him to stop obsessing over his regrets and move forward. His advice grants Keishin direction in his journey with Hana and thematically illustrates how the past might impede one’s pursuit of happiness in the present.

“Science was a lie. […] Bent rules and broken scientific laws clattered inside him, crashing into everything he had seen behind the ramen restaurant’s door. And now Hana was going to show him more.”

Figurative language enacts Keishin’s emotional experience as he orients to Hana’s magical world. Keishin feels as if the “rules” and “scientific laws” he has relied on have “bent” and “broken,” and are “clatter[ing]” and “crashing” inside of him because Hana’s world has dismantled his previous understanding of reality. The moment captures his simultaneous fear and excitement about venturing through Hana’s world—an experience that engages his curiosity and wonder in new ways. He’s losing one way of seeing but is awakening to a new way of living.

“Scars don’t make you any less than what you are. They are simply stories, just like this scroll. You may not see mine, but I have my fair share.”

Hana and Keishin have contrasting points of view on what makes a person happy and what can set a person free. While Hana has been taught that an individual’s regrets scar them and make them ugly and shameful, Keishin argues otherwise in this scene. His perspective challenges Hana and foreshadows how his character later becomes a guide for her as she begins to question the beliefs she grew up with.

“I haven’t seen my mother since she kissed me on the cheek and tucked me in bed the night before she left us. And yet today I found myself walking around Tokyo at dawn hoping that I would run into her and finally be able to ask her why she didn’t love me enough to stay.”

Keishin uses a confessional, vulnerable tone as he opens up to Hana about his familial past and childhood trauma. His admission not only illustrates his openness as a character but also foreshadows his encounter with Izumi in the Tokyo ramen shop at the novel’s end. Keishin’s fractured relationship with his mother is a key conflict throughout the novel and a wound that motivates his thematic pursuit of happiness and personal growth journey.

“All our clients, even if they do not know it, come looking for help. You are the first one to ever offer it. You jump into the unknown without thinking twice and do not hesitate to take my word when I tell you that the way to find my grandmother is through a dream. You are a good man, Kei.”

Hana expresses her admiration for Keishin because his character disrupts how she has learned to see people. She has always understood herself and her family as endowed with a divine responsibility to help the people from Keishin’s world—all of whom are needy and burdened by life. In this moment, she realizes that just as life can be unpredictable and surprising, so can people.

“‘What’s wrong with failing?’ Keishin tilted his head. ‘Or wanting to make things better? Just because things have been done a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how they should always be.’”

Keishin’s reflections on failure, success, and change challenge Hana’s outlook on life. She’s wedded to her world’s rules and thus fears the unknown; failure is a part of the unknown. Keishin prompts her to rethink her point of view. His words foreshadow her decision at the novel’s end to close the pawnshop, stop taking souls from clients, and thus change her world.

“‘Marriage is different in my world. It is a duty just like everything else in our lives. All you need to know about your future spouse is their name.’ She ran a finger over her right hand, tracing the invisible path paper cranes flew over in the rain. ‘We have no use for dates.’”

Hana’s words and body language in this scene with Keishin convey her longing. Just as Hana isn’t free to choose a life outside the pawnshop, she isn’t free to choose whom she loves or marries. Lacking the freedom to choose her path in life, she’s trapped by duty. She runs her “finger over her right hand,” tracing the place where Haruto’s name is inked because she longs to defy the mapped fate on her skin.

“Was it a good or bad thing? Hana touched her lips, remembering the moist heat of Keishin’s mouth. His question was simple. Answering it was not. If she was going to find her parents and bring them home, it was not an answer she could ever say out loud.

Hana’s contemplative inner monologue thematically captures the conflict between duty and desire she’s experiencing. Keishin represents desire—as evoked by Hana’s recollection of “the moist heat of [his] mouth”—and her parents represent duty. She doesn’t answer Keishin’s question about the kiss because she chooses to prioritize her family responsibilities over her personal longings.

“I would not ask for your help if there was another way. But there isn’t. I am trusting you with this secret because you are not like Hana. She is too much like her mother.”

Toshio’s conversation with Haruto provides insight into how he sees his daughter and wife. While Toshio’s character is bound to his duties, Hana and Chiyo are more driven by personal desires and curiosities. Toshio wanted to believe that Haruto was like him and thus would keep his secret from Hana. Toshio is a loving father, but his words reflect his deep-seated fears of freedom and choice.

“This, Keishin thought, was what happiness looked like: an exhausted woman sitting in a puddle of amniotic goo and smashed jelly donuts, a crumpled Chinese take-out menu at her side. Liz’s eyes saw only her daughter, and no one and nothing else mattered beyond the bundle in her arms.”

Keishin’s recollection of Liz giving birth in the elevator thematically contributes to his pursuit of happiness. Keishin saw the image of Liz and her baby as the definition of pure contentment because the moment was defined by both pain and joy, both disorder and beauty. His reflections on contentment also relate to his fraught maternal relationship.

“Toshio laid Hana in Chiyo’s arms. Chiyo nuzzled her cheek and hair. She kissed Hana’s forehead and handed her back to Toshio. She caressed Toshio’s cheek.”

Chiyo’s intimate interaction with Hana on the day before the Shiikuin exiled her reveals her heart’s greatest desire and longing. The simple syntax captures the rawness of this moment. Chiyo “nuzzled” and “kissed” Hana because she was trying to be as close to her as possible before the Shiikuin took her away. In addition, this moment marks a turning point in Hana and Keishin’s journey because seeing this memory enables them to understand Chiyo’s fate.

“‘The birds we keep in our vault…those aren’t just choices.’ Hana’s voice shook. ‘They are pieces of our clients’ souls. Our clients think that they are trading an old regret for contentment, but they are wrong. My father tricks them. I trick them.’”

Hana’s tone and body language convey her shame over her family legacy. She feels guilty about what she and her father do to their clients because she understands the injustice of the work. She reveals the truth to Keishin in this scene because she’s determined to make him leave her world and save himself. Her words and shaky voice convey the emotions she feels as she attempts to push Keishin away.

“‘No one is promised tomorrow,’ Keishin said. ‘No contract, vow, or even magical tattoo can guarantee forever with someone, regardless of whether you share a world. But what we do have is what you and I have been fighting to deny almost from the second we met.’”

Keishin uses an imploring tone as he tries to communicate his feelings to Hana. While Hana is still burdened thematically by the conflict between duty and desire, Keishin wants her to forget about her prescribed fate and listen to her heart. He’s asking her to pursue her own desires and happiness because their connection is more real than her supposedly inevitable future.

“Hana kept quiet, unsure how to completely yet politely disagree. Borders were real, and the ones that were the most difficult to cross were not the invisible lines between towns, but the walls people built around themselves. Borders were necessary. They kept secrets safe.”

Hana’s private musings on “borders,” “invisible lines,” and “walls” reflect her fear of the unknown. She’s uncomfortable when life lacks clear parameters because she fears unpredictability, both in her future and in her relationships. Hana therefore has yet to remove the walls from around her heart and fully let love and life change her.

“Don’t say you think that you care about me. That night at the ryokan was a mistake. Whatever we feel about each other is an illusion no matter how real it feels. I told you when you first came to my world that nothing here is as it seems. Not the sky. Not this field. Not me.”

Hana uses a cold tone in talking to Keishin about the night they had sex. Her fear of letting Keishin in inspires her brittleness. She’s trying to convince herself (as much as him) that their feelings are just “an illusion” because it’s easier to detach from Keishin if their connection is false. The passage underscores Hana’s fear of pursuing her desires and happiness.

“‘I never meant to put you in any danger. Finding your mother was my duty, not yours. […] You should not have tried to find me, Hana. You should have just let me go.’ His voice filled with tears. ‘But you were always better at being a good and selfless daughter than a heartless thief who stole pieces of people’s souls.’”

Toshio addresses Hana using a harsh, critical tone when she first arrives at the subterranean field. He’s frustrated with her because he betrayed his own duties to pursue his desire to be with Chiyo but always taught Hana not to make the same decision. In the latter half of the passage, Toshio’s tone shifts as he becomes emotional and his “voice fill[s] with tears.” He sees Hana’s goodness but doesn’t know how to reconcile her true nature with the life he thinks she was fated to live.

“Izumi held her stomach, thinking of everything she would have to let go of to hold a baby in her arms. […] A friend in school had told her that there was one way to keep her dreams. All that was needed was a wire coat hanger.”

This scene of flashback reveals the choice that Izumi regrets, that she gave up at the pawnshop, and that Toshio later smashed. The revelation provides insight into Keishin’s past and foreshadows the relationships that he’ll make with Izumi and Hana at the novel’s end. In addition, Izumi’s regret parallels many of the other characters’ regrets: They wish that they had made different choices because they feel trapped by those they did make.

“You’ve spent your life observing the world from a distance. Always objective, always detached. Science was the cage you chose to live in when your mother abandoned you, a place where nothing could hurt you like she did. Within the confines of its laws, you felt safe.”

Keishin’s imagined conversation with Ramesh helps him see his past, present, and future anew. Ramesh is challenging Keishin to set himself free. While science has protected him from his heartbreak and longing for many years, Ramesh urges Keishin to pursue happiness outside this limiting context and thus to take a risk with Hana.