The problem is that you never give me anything. Or, to put it more precisely, you have nothing inside you that you can give me. You are good and kind and handsome, but living with you is like living with a chunk of air.
-- Komura's wife (UFO in Kushiro )

Importance: This dig at Komura that his wife smuggles into the note she leaves when she departs for her home functions as an opening salvo of sorts on the themes of isolation and closed-off emotion that populate the pages of the collection. Though he does not admit it until later in the story, Komura is haunted by the assertion that he is a "chunk of air," and is only further perturbed when Shimao suggests he has given away the last piece of himself. It speaks to the ways in which grief and loss open voids, and bring people far away from themselves and their loved ones.

No...
-- Shimao (UFO in Kushiro)