Tsukuru's colourful friends have mysteriously gone, leaving him feeling detached and unresolved. John Crace journeys to the bottom of his existential funk in only 700 words

From the July of his sophomore year in college, Tsukuru Tazaki spent six months trying to die. Disappointed at his failure, he then spent the next 15 years trying not to live. This he did exceedingly well. Especially on the page.

The reason for his extreme existential ennui was that his four closest friends Aka, Ao, Shiro and Kuro, from whom he had been inseparable for 10 years, had announced they didn't want to speak to him ever again.

Rather than ask them why, he had decided the fault lay in his name. Aka meant Red, Ao meant Blue, Shiro meant Black and Kuro meant White. His name had no colour; it just meant Making a Mountain out of a Molehill. "I am colorless," he thought. "So colorless I don't even have a 'U' in the word."

By the time he had reached his late 30s, Tsukuru had visited nearly every railway station in Japan and had designed a notice board on a suburban platform outside Tokyo. More impressively, he had finally met a woman who didn't think it was about time he grew up a bit and stopped taking Camus so personally.

"I think I quite like you," he told Sara, as he entered her vagina that was unnecessarily described in terms of excessive moistness.

"I quite like you, too," she replied. "Though I can't help feeling you are rather detached and have unresolved personal issues."

"As the great teacher Donald Rumsfeld once said, 'There are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.'"

"Truly that is very deep, grasshopper."

"Did I tell you about another friend I had called Haida?"

"It's not going to involve a dream, is it?"

"I'm afraid so. I had this friend called Haida whom I met while swimming. He was exceedingly deep as well. We often listened to a Liszt piano piece that Shiro used to play, while discussing the mysteries of the world. I once dreamed that I was having sex with Shiro and Kuro and that I awoke to find Haida sucking me off."

"Was that last bit also a dream?"

"Who knows? He disappeared without saying a word and I never saw him again, either."

"Did it never occur to you to get in touch with all these people who left you?

"No. In any case how could I do so?"

"It just so happens I've Googled the lot of them. Here are their addresses. You'll struggle to meet Shiro as she was strangled three years ago."

Tsukuru took the bullet train to Nagoya, reflecting on the perfection of the coffee he was drinking. Ao was working in a Lexus showroom. "How come you never told me why you stopped talking to me?" Tsukuru enquired. "Because you never asked," Ao replied. "It was because Shiro said you raped her."

"I didn't."

"I know."

Tsukuru travelled across the city to meet Aka. "I didn't rape Shiro," he said. "I know that," Aka said. "Water under the bridge. No one likes me either, now I'm a successful corporate trainer."

It was a while before Tsukuru could travel to Finland to see Kuro and in the meantime he saw Sara holding hands with another man. He wondered if he should say something but decided against it.

"I didn't rape her," Tsukuru told Kuro.

"I never thought you did. I only sided with Shiro because I thought she was a bit unstable."

"Perhaps, though, in a way, I did rape her. In the same way, maybe I did even murder her."

"Perhaps we all did."

"That's staggeringly insightful. I am now feeling completely resolved and on a new spiritual level."

On his return to Japan, Tsukuru felt he had a bit more color about him. He phoned Sara.

"I am ready to commit to a long-term loving relationship with you. Can you tell me if you are seeing another man?"

Sara paused. "I will call you in three days and let you know."

Digested read, digested: The red and the unread.