The seventh man: what does the seventh man spend hours looking at as an adult? how has the seventh man changed at the end of the story?

In The Seventh Man, by Haruki Murakami, the narrator tells that, as an adult, he spends hours looking at K's pictures.

The seventh man says that, every time he gets back from work, he sits in front of his desk, where he keeps his old friend’s pictures, and spends hours studying one painting. He says that, in each painting, he finds another "of those soft landscapes of childhood" that had shut out of his memory for so long.

At the end of the story, the seventh man goes back to his hometown where his friend K had died and visits the beach. He then feels like the darkness in him had vanished; he feels reconciled with his past, he realizes that all the nightmares and fears he had had since the moment his friend died were gone. He realized he had felt guilt about K's death all those years and he was afraid that K wouldn't forgive him, but by being there on the beach he realized K wasn't mad at him at all. They were good friends a K would never think he would’ve done something mean to him. So, he felt relaxed and got into the water, faced his fears and released all those ugly memories he had. He felt free again. He felt like he could start all over again, he could finally start living again and he felt grateful for that.  

the answer is culture