1Q84. Тысяча Невестьсот Восемьдесят Четыре. Книга 1. Апрель–июнь Мураками Харуки

CHAPTER 14

“Come here and hold me,” Fuka-Eri said. “The two of us have to go to the town of cats together one more time.”

“Hold you?” Tengo asked.

“You don’t want to hold me,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.

“No, that’s not it. It’s just that-I didn’t quite get what you were saying.”

“This will be a purification,” she informed him in uninflected tones. “Come here and hold me. You put on pajamas, too, and turn out the light.”

As instructed, Tengo turned out the bedroom ceiling light. He undressed, took out his pajamas, and put them on. When was the last time I washed these? he wondered as he slipped into his pajamas. Judging from the fact that he could not remember, it must have been quite some time ago. Fortunately, they did not smell of sweat. Tengo had never sweated very much, and he did not have a strong body odor. But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

He got into bed and gingerly wrapped his arms around Fuka-Eri, who laid her head on Tengo’s right arm. She lay very still, like a creature about to enter hibernation. Her body was warm, and so soft as to feel utterly defenseless. But she was not sweating.

The thunder increased in intensity, and now it was beginning to rain. As though crazed with anger, the raindrops slammed sideways against the window glass. The air was damp and sticky, and the world felt as if it might be oozing its way toward its dark finale. The time of Noah’s flood might have felt like this. If so, it must have been quite depressing in the violent thunderstorm to have the narrow ark filled with the rhinoceroses, the lions, the pythons, and so forth, all in pairs, all used to different modes of living, with limited communication skills, and the stink something special.

The word “pair” made Tengo think of Sonny and Cher, but Sonny and Cher might not be the most appropriate pair to put aboard Noah’s ark to represent humanity. Though they might not be entirely inappropriate, either. There must be some other couple who would be a more appropriate human sample.

Embracing Fuka-Eri in bed like this, with her wearing his own pajamas, Tengo had a strange feeling. He even felt as if he might be embracing a part of himself, as if he were holding someone with whom he shared flesh and body odor and whose mind was linked with his.

Tengo imagined the two of them having been chosen as a pair to board Noah’s ark instead of Sonny and Cher. But even they could hardly be said to be the most appropriate sample of humanity. The very fact of our embracing each other in bed like this is far from appropriate, no matter how you look at it. The thought kept Tengo from being able to relax. He decided instead to imagine Sonny and Cher becoming good friends with the python pair on the ark. It was an utterly pointless thing to imagine, but at least it enabled him to relax the tension in his body.

Lying in Tengo’s arms, Fuka-Eri said nothing. Nor did she move or open her mouth. Tengo didn’t say anything either. Even embracing Fuka-Eri in bed, he felt almost nothing that could be called sexual desire. To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him. He realized, too, that what Fuka-Eri was looking for was not his sexual desire. She was looking for something else from him, but what that something else was, he could not tell.

The purpose of doing so aside, the sheer act of holding a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl in his arms was by no means unpleasant. Her ear would touch his cheek now and then. Her warm breath grazed his neck. Her breasts were startlingly large and firm for a girl with such a slim body. He could feel them pressed against him in the area above his stomach. Her skin exuded a marvelous fragrance. It was the special smell of life that could only be exuded by flesh still in the process of formation, like the smell of dew-laden flowers in midsummer. He had often experienced that smell as an elementary school student on his way to early-morning radio exercises.

I hope I don’t have an erection, Tengo thought. If he did have an erection, she would know immediately, given their relative positions. If that happened, it would make things somewhat uncomfortable. With what words and in what context could he explain to a seventeen-year-old girl that erections simply happen sometimes, even when not directly driven by sexual desire? Fortunately, however, no erection had happened so far, nor did he have any sign of one. Let me stop thinking about smells. I have to concentrate my mind on things having as little to do with sex as possible.

He thought again of the socializing between Sonny and Cher and the two pythons. Would they have anything to talk about? And if so, what could it be? Finally, when his ability to imagine the ark in the storm gave out, he tried multiplying sets of three-digit numbers. He would often do that when he was having sex with his older girlfriend. This would enable him to delay the moment of ejaculation (the moment of ejaculation being something about which she was particularly demanding). Tengo did not know if it would also work to hold off an erection, but it was better than doing nothing. He had to do something.

“I don’t mind if it gets hard,” Fuka-Eri said, as if she had read his mind.

“You don’t mind?”

“There is nothing wrong with that.”

“There is nothing wrong with that,” Tengo said, echoing her words. Sounds like a grade school kid in sex education. “Now, boys, there is nothing shameful or bad about having an erection. But of course you must choose the proper time and occasion.”

“So, anyhow, has the purification begun?” Tengo asked in order to change the subject.

Fuka-Eri did not reply. Her small, beautiful ear seemed still to be trying to catch something in the rumbling of the thunder. Tengo could tell that much, and so he decided not to say any more. He also gave up trying to multiply three-digit numbers. If Fuka-Eri doesn’t mind, what’s the difference if I get hard? he thought. In any case, his penis showed no signs of movement. For now, it was just peacefully lying in the mud.

“I like your thingy,” his older girlfriend had said. “I like its shape and color and size.”

“I’m not so crazy about it,” Tengo said.

“Why not?” she asked, slipping her palm under Tengo’s flaccid penis as if handling a sleeping pet, testing its weight.

“I don’t know,” Tengo said. “Probably because I didn’t choose it for myself.”

“You’re so weird,” she said. “You’ve got a weird way of thinking.”

That had happened once upon a time. Before Noah’s flood, probably.

Fuka-Eri’s warm, silent breath grazed Tengo’s neck in a regular rhythm. Tengo could see her ear in the faint green light from the electric clock or in the occasional flash of lightning, which had finally started. The ear looked like a soft secret cave. If this girl were my lover, I would probably never tire of kissing her there, Tengo thought. While I was inside her, I would kiss that ear, give it little bites, run my tongue over it, blow my breath into it, inhale its fragrance. Not that I want to do that now. This was just a momentary fantasy based on pure hypothesis concerning what he would do if she were his lover. Morally, it was nothing for him to be ashamed of-probably.

But whether this involved a moral question or not, he should not have been thinking about it. Tengo’s penis began to wake from its tranquil sleep in the mud, as if it had been poked in its back by a finger. It gave a yawn and slowly raised its head, gradually growing harder until, like a yacht whose sails are filled by a strong northwest tailwind, it achieved a full, unreserved erection. As a result, his hardened penis could not help but press against Fuka-Eri’s hip. Tengo released a deep mental sigh. He had not had sex for more than a month following the disappearance of his girlfriend. Probably that was the cause. He should have continued multiplying three-digit figures.

“Don’t let it bother you,” Fuka-Eri said. “Getting hard is only natural.”

“Thank you,” Tengo said. “But maybe the Little People are watching from somewhere.”

“Just watching. They can’t do anything.”

“That’s good,” Tengo said, his voice unsettled. “But it does kind of bother me to think that I’m being watched.”

Again a lightning bolt cracked the sky in two, like the ripping of an old curtain, and the thunder gave the windowpane a violent shake as if they were seriously trying to shatter the glass. The glass might actually break before long, it seemed. The window had a sturdy aluminum frame, but it might not hold up if such ferocious shaking continued. Big, hard raindrops went on knocking against the glass like bullets slamming into a deer.

“The thunderbolts have hardly moved, it seems,” Tengo said. “Lightning storms don’t usually go on this long.”

Fuka-Eri looked up at the ceiling. “It won’t go anywhere for a while.”

“How long a while?”

Fuka-Eri did not answer him. Tengo went on holding Fuka-Eri apprehensively, his unanswered question and his useless erection both intact.

“We will go to the cat town again,” Fuka-Eri said. “So we have to sleep.”

“Do you think we can sleep with all this thunder going? And it’s barely past nine,” Tengo said anxiously.

Tengo arranged mathematical formulas in his head. It was a problem concerning long, complex mathematical formulas, but he already knew the answer. The assignment was to find how quickly and by how short a route he could arrive at the answer. He wasted no time setting his mind in motion, pushing his brain to the point of abuse. But this did nothing to relieve his erection. Its hardness only seemed to increase.

“We can sleep,” Fuka-Eri said.

And she was right. Even in the midst of the violent downpour, surrounded by thunder rattling the building, and beset by his jangled nerves and his stubborn erection, Tengo drifted into sleep before he knew it. He couldn’t believe such a thing was possible, and yet…

This is total chaos, Tengo thought just before he fell asleep. I’ve got to find the shortest route to the solution. Time is running out, and there’s so little space on the examination sheet they distributed. Tick-tock, tick-tock, the clock dutifully counted off time.

He was naked when he awoke, and so was Fuka-Eri. Completely and totally naked. Her breasts were perfect hemispheres. Her nipples were not overly large, and they were soft, still quietly groping for the maturity that was to come. Her breasts themselves were large, however, and fully ripe. They seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vine’s new tendrils seeking sunlight. The next thing that Tengo became aware of was that Fuka-Eri had no pubic hair. Where there should have been pubic hair there was only smooth, bare white skin, its whiteness giving em to its utter defenselessness. She had her legs spread; he could see her vagina. Like the ear he had been staring at, it looked as if it had just been made only moments before. And perhaps it really had been made only moments before. A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought. Both appeared to be turned outward, trying to listen closely to something-something like a distant bell.

I was sleeping, Tengo realized. He had fallen asleep still erect. And even now he was firmly erect. Had the erection continued the whole time he was sleeping? Or was this a new erection, following the relaxation of the first (like Prime Minister So-and-So’s Second Cabinet)? How long was I sleeping? But what’s the difference? I’m still erect now, and it shows no sign of subsiding. Neither Sonny and Cher nor three-digit multiplication nor complex mathematics had managed to bring it down.

“I don’t mind,” Fuka-Eri said. She had her legs spread and was pressing her freshly made vagina against his belly. He could detect no hint of embarrassment on her part. “Getting hard is not a bad thing,” she said.

“I can’t move my body,” he said. It was true. He was trying to raise himself, but he couldn’t move a finger. He could feel his body-feel the weight of Fuka-Eri’s body on top of his-feel the hardness of his erection-but his body was as heavy and stiff as if it had been fastened down by something.

“You have no need to move it,” Fuka-Eri said.

“I do have a need to move it. It’s my body,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri said nothing in response to that.

Tengo could not even be sure whether what he was saying was vibrating in the air as vocal sounds. He had no clear sense that the muscles around his mouth were moving and forming the words he tried to speak. The things he wanted to say were more or less getting through to Fuka-Eri, it seemed, but their communication was as uncertain as a long-distance phone call with a bad connection. She, at least, could get by without hearing what she had no need to hear. But this was not possible for Tengo.

“Don’t worry,” Fuka-Eri said, moving her body lower down on his. The meaning of her movement was clear. Her eyes had taken on a certain gleam, the hue of which he had never seen before.

It seemed inconceivable that his adult penis could penetrate her small, newly made vagina. It was too big and too hard. The pain should have been enormous. Before he knew it, though, every bit of him was inside her. There had been no resistance whatever. The look on her face remained totally unchanged as she brought him inside. Her breathing became slightly agitated, and the rhythm with which her breasts rose and fell changed subtly for five or six seconds, but that was all. Everything else seemed like a normal, natural part of everyday life.

Having brought Tengo deep inside her, Fuka-Eri remained utterly still, as did Tengo, feeling himself deep inside of her. He remained incapable of moving his body, and she, eyes closed, perched on top of him like a lightning rod, stopped moving. He could see that her mouth was slightly open and her lips were making delicate, rippling movements as if groping in space to form some kind of words. Aside from this, she exhibited no movement at all. She seemed to be holding that posture as she waited for something to happen.

A deep sense of powerlessness came over Tengo. Even though something was about to happen, he had no idea what that something might be, and had no way of controlling it through his own will. His body felt nothing. He could not move. But his penis had feeling-or, rather than feeling, it had what might have been closer to a concept. In any case, it was telling him that he was inside Fuka-Eri and that he had the consummate erection. Shouldn’t he be wearing a condom? He began to worry. It could be a real problem if she got pregnant. His older girlfriend was extremely strict about birth control, and she had trained Tengo to be just as strict.

He tried as hard as he could to think of other things, but in fact he was unable to think about anything at all. He was in chaos. Inside that chaos, time seemed to have come to a stop. But time never stopped. That was a theoretical impossibility. Perhaps it had simply lost its uniformity. Taking the long view, time moved ahead at a fixed pace. There could be no mistake about that. But if you considered any one particular part of time, it could cease to be uniform. In these momentary periods of slackness, such things as order and probability lost all value.

“Tengo,” Fuka-Eri said. She had never called him by his first name before. She said it again: “Tengo” as if practicing the pronunciation of a foreign word. Why is she calling me by my name all of a sudden? Tengo wondered. Fuka-Eri then leaned forward slowly, bringing her face close to his. Her partially open lips now opened wide, and her soft, fragrant tongue entered his mouth, where it began a relentless search for unformed words, for a secret code engraved there. Tengo’s own tongue responded unconsciously to this movement and soon their tongues were like two young snakes in a spring meadow, newly wakened from their hibernation and hungrily intertwining, each led on by the other’s scent.

Fuka-Eri then stretched out her right hand and grasped Tengo’s left hand. She took it powerfully, as if to envelope his hand in hers. Her small fingernails dug into his palm. Then, bringing their intense kiss to an end, she righted herself. “Close your eyes.”

Tengo did as he was told. Inside his closed eyes he found a deep, gloomy space-so deep that it appeared to extend to the center of the earth. Then a light evocative of dusk broke into this space, the kind of sweet, nostalgic dusk that comes at the end of a long, long day. He could see, suspended in the light, numberless fine-grained cross-section-like particles-dust, perhaps, or pollen, or something else entirely. Eventually the depths began to contract, the light began to grow brighter, and the surrounding objects came into view.

The next thing he knew he was ten years old and in an elementary school classroom. This was real time and a real place. The light was real, and so was his ten-year-old self. He was really breathing the air of the room, smelling its varnished woodwork and the chalk dust permeating its erasers. Only he and the girl were in the room. There was no sign of other children. She was quick to seize the opportunity and she did so boldly. Or perhaps she had been waiting for this to happen. In any case, standing there, she stretched out her right hand and grasped Tengo’s left hand, her eyes looking straight into his.

His mouth felt parched. It all happened so suddenly, he had no idea what he should do or say. He simply stood there, letting his hand be squeezed by the girl. Eventually, deep in his loins, he felt a faint but deep throbbing. This was nothing he had ever experienced before, a throbbing like the distant roar of the sea. At the same time actual sounds reached his ears-the shouts of children resounding through the open window, a soccer ball being kicked, a bat connecting with a softball, the high-pitched complaints of a girl in one of the younger classes, the uncertain notes of a recorder ensemble practicing “The Last Rose of Summer.” After-school activities.

He wanted to return the girl’s grasp with equal force, but the strength would not come into his hand. Part of it was that the girl’s grip was too strong. But Tengo realized, too, that he could not make his body move. Why should that be? He couldn’t move a finger, as if he were totally paralyzed.

Time seems to have stopped, Tengo thought. He breathed quietly, listening to his own inhalations and exhalations. The sea went on roaring. Suddenly he realized that all actual sounds had ceased. The throbbing in his loins had transformed into something different, something more limited, and soon he felt a particular kind of tingling. The tingling in turn became a fine, dust-like substance that mixed with his hot, red blood, coursing through his veins to all parts of his body, by the power of his hardworking heart. A dense, little, cloud-like thing formed in his chest, changing the rhythm of his breathing and stiffening the beating of his heart.

I’m sure I’ll be able to understand the meaning and purpose of this incident sometime in the future, Tengo thought. What I have to do now, in order to make that happen, is to record this moment in my mind as clearly and accurately as possible. Now Tengo again was nothing more than a ten-year-old boy who happened to be good at math. A new door stood before him, but he did not know what awaited him on the other side. He felt powerless and ignorant, emotionally confused, and not a little afraid. This much he knew. And the girl, for her part, had no hope of being understood at that moment. All she wanted was to make sure that her feelings were delivered to Tengo, stuffed into a small, sturdy box, wrapped in a spotless sheet of paper, and tied with a narrow cord. She was placing such a package in his hands.

You don’t have to open the package right now, the girl was telling him wordlessly. Open it when the time comes. All you have to do is take it now.

She already knows all kinds of things, Tengo thought. They were things that he did not know yet. She was the leader in this new arena. There were new rules here, new goals and new dynamics. Tengo knew nothing. But she knows.

At length she released the grip of her right hand on Tengo’s left hand, and, without saying anything or looking back, she hurried from the big classroom. Tengo stood there all alone. Children’s voices resounded through the open window.

In the next second, Tengo realized that he was ejaculating. The violent spasm went on for several seconds, releasing a great deal of semen in a powerful surge. Where is my semen going? Tengo’s garbled mind wondered. Ejaculating like this after school in a grade school classroom was not an appropriate thing to do. He could be in trouble if someone saw him. But this was not a grade school classroom anymore. Now he realized that he was inside Fuka-Eri, ejaculating toward her uterus. This was not something that he wanted to be doing. But he could not stop himself. Everything was happening beyond his control.

“Don’t worry,” Fuka-Eri said a short time afterward in her usual flat voice. “I will not get pregnant. I haven’t started my periods yet.”

Tengo opened his eyes and looked at Fuka-Eri. She was still mounted on him, looking down. Her perfect breasts were there in front of him, moving with each calm, regular breath.

Tengo wanted to ask her if this was what “going to the town of cats” meant. What kind of a place was the town of cats? He tried to put the question into actual words, but the muscles of his mouth would not budge.

“This was necessary,” Fuka-Eri said, as if reading Tengo’s mind. It was a concise answer and no answer at all, as usual.

Tengo closed his eyes again. He had gone there, ejaculated, and come back here again. It had been a real ejaculation discharging real semen. If Fuka-Eri said it was necessary, it had surely been necessary. Tengo’s flesh was still paralyzed and had no feeling. And the lassitude that follows ejaculation enveloped his body like a thin membrane.

Fuka-Eri maintained her position for a long time, effectively squeezing out the last drop of semen from Tengo, like an insect sucking nectar from a flower. She literally left not a drop behind. Then, sliding off of Tengo’s penis, without a word, she left the bed and went into the bathroom. Tengo realized now that the thunder had stopped. The violent rain had also cleared before he knew it. The thunderclouds, which had stayed so stubbornly fixed above them, had now vanished without a trace. The silence was almost unreal. All he could hear was the faint sound of Fuka-Eri showering in the bathroom. Tengo stared at the ceiling, waiting for the feeling to come back to his flesh. Even after ejaculating, he was still erect, though at least the hardness had abated somewhat.

Part of his mind was still in the grade school classroom. The touch of the girl’s fingers remained as a vivid impression in his left hand. He could not lift the hand to look at it, but the palm of that hand probably still had red fingernail marks in it. His heartbeat retained traces of his arousal. The dense cloud had faded from his chest, but its imaginary space near his heart still cried out with its pleasant dull ache.

Aomame, Tengo thought.

I have to see Aomame, Tengo thought. I have to find her. Why has it taken me so long to realize something so obvious? She handed me that precious package. Why did I toss it aside and leave it unopened all this time? He thought of shaking his head, but that was something he could not yet do. His body had still not recovered from its paralysis.

Fuka-Eri came back to the bedroom a short time later. Wrapped in a bath towel, she sat on the edge of the bed for a while.

“The Little People are not stirring anymore,” she said, like a cool, capable scout reporting on conditions at the front. Then she used her fingertip to draw a little circle in the air-a perfect, beautiful circle such as an Italian Renaissance painter might draw on a church wall: no beginning, no end. The circle hung in the air for a while. “All done.”

Having said this, the girl stood and undid her bath towel. Completely naked, she stayed there for a while, as if allowing her damp body to dry naturally in the still air. It was a lovely sight: the smooth breasts, the lower abdomen free of pubic hair.

She bent over and picked up the pajamas where they had fallen on the floor, putting them on directly next to her skin without underwear, buttoning the top and tying the bottom’s cord. Tengo watched all this in the darkened room, as if studying an insect undergoing metamorphosis. Tengo’s pajamas were too big for her, but she looked comfortable in them. Fuka-Eri slipped into bed, found her narrow space, and rested her head on Tengo’s shoulder. He could feel the shape of her little ear against his naked shoulder and her warm breath against the base of his neck. All the while, his paralysis began to fade, just as the tide ebbs when the time comes.

The air was still damp but no longer unpleasantly sticky. Outside, the insects were beginning to chirp. By now Tengo’s erection had subsided and his penis was beginning to sink into the peaceful mud again. Things seemed to have run their course, bringing the cycle to an end. A perfect circle had been drawn in the air. The animals had left the ark and scattered across the earth they craved, all the pairs returning to the places where they belonged.

“You’d better sleep,” she said. “Very deeply”

Sleep very deeply, Tengo thought. Sleep, and then wake up. What kind of world will be there tomorrow?

“No one knows the answer to that,” Fuka-Eri said, reading his mind.

CHAPTER 15

Aomame took a spare blanket from the closet and laid it over the man’s big body. Then she placed a finger on the back of his neck again and confirmed that his pulse had completely stopped. This man they called “Leader” had already moved on to another world. What kind of world that was, she could not be sure, but it was definitely not 1Q84. In this world, he had now become what would be called “the deceased.” The man had crossed the divide that separates life and death, and he had done so without making the slightest sound, with just a momentary shiver, as if he had felt a chill. Nor had he shed a drop of blood. Now he had been released from all suffering, lying silent and dead, facedown on the blue yoga mat. As always, her work had been swift and precise.

She placed the cork on the needle and returned the ice pick to the hard case. This went into the gym bag. She took the Heckler & Koch from the vinyl pouch and slipped it under the waistband of her sweatpants, safety released and bullet in the chamber. The hard metal against her backbone reassured her. Stepping over to the window, she pulled the thick curtain closed and made the room dark again.

She picked up the gym bag and headed for the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned for one last look at the large man lying in the dark room. He appeared only to be sound asleep, as he had when she first saw him. Aomame herself was the only person in the world who knew that he was no longer alive. No, the Little People probably knew, which was why they had stopped the thunder. They knew it would be useless to go on sending such warnings. The life of their chosen agent had come to an end.

Aomame opened the door and stepped into the bright room, averting her eyes from the glare. She closed the door soundlessly. Buzzcut was sitting on the sofa, drinking coffee. On the table was a coffeepot and a large room service tray holding a stack of sandwiches. The sandwiches were half gone. Two unused coffee cups stood nearby. Ponytail was sitting in a rococo chair beside the door, his back straight, as he had been earlier. It seemed as though both men had spent the whole time in the same position, saying nothing. Such was the reserved atmosphere that pervaded the room.

When Aomame came in, Buzzcut set his coffee cup onto its saucer and quietly stood up.

“I’m through,” Aomame said. “He’s asleep now. It took quite a while. I think it was hard on his muscles. You should let him get some sleep.”

“He’s sleeping?”

“Very soundly,” Aomame said.

Buzzcut looked Aomame straight in the face. He peered deep into her eyes. Then he slowly moved his gaze down to her toes and back again, as if to inspect for possible irregularities.

“Is that normal?”

“Many people react that way, falling into a deep sleep after they have been released from extreme muscular stress. It is not unusual.”

Buzzcut walked over to the bedroom door, quietly turned the knob, and opened the door just enough to peer inside. Aomame rested her right hand on the waist of her sweatpants so that she could take the pistol out as soon as anything happened. The man spent some ten seconds observing the situation in the bedroom, then finally drew his face back and closed the door.

“How long do you think he will sleep?” he asked Aomame. “We can’t just leave him lying on the floor like that forever.”

“He should wake up in two hours or so. It would be best to leave him in that position until then.”

Buzzcut checked his watch and gave Aomame a slight nod.

“I see. We’ll leave him like that for a while,” Buzzcut said. “Would you like to take a shower?”

“I don’t need to shower, but let me change my clothes again.”

“Of course. Please use the powder room.”

Aomame would have preferred not to change her clothes and to get out of there as quickly as possible, but she had to be sure not to arouse their suspicions. She had changed clothes when she arrived, so she must change her clothes on her way out. She went into the bathroom and took off her sweat suit and her sweat-soaked underwear, dried her body with a bath towel, and put on fresh underwear and her original cotton pants and blouse. She shoved the pistol under her belt so that it would not be visible from the outside. She tested various movements of her body to make sure that they would not appear unnatural. She washed her face with soap and water and brushed her hair. Facing the large mirror over the sink, she twisted her face into every scowl she could think of in order to relax any facial muscles that had stiffened from tension. After continuing that for a while, she returned her face to normal. After such prolonged frowning, it took her some moments to recall what her normal face even looked like, but after several attempts she was able to settle on a reasonable facsimile. She glared into the mirror, studying her face in detail. No problem, she thought. This is my normal face. I can even smile if I have to. My hands are not shaking, either. My gaze is steady. I’m the usual cool Aomame.

Buzzcut, though, had stared hard at her when she first came out of the bedroom. He might have noticed the streaks left by her tears. There must have been something left after all that crying. The thought made Aomame uneasy. He must have found it odd that she would have had to shed tears while stretching a client’s muscles. It might have led him to suspect that something strange had occurred. He might have opened the bedroom door, gone in to check on Leader, and discovered that his heart had stopped…

Aomame reached around to check the grip of her pistol. I have to calm down, she told herself. I can’t be afraid. Fear will show on my face and raise suspicions.

Resigning herself to the worst, Aomame cautiously stepped out of the bathroom with the gym bag in her left hand, right hand ready to reach for the gun, but there was no sign of anything unusual in the room. Buzzcut stood in the center, his arms folded, eyes narrowed in thought. Ponytail was still in the chair by the door, coolly observing the room. He had the calm eyes of a bomber’s tail gunner, accustomed to sitting there all alone, looking at the blue sky, eyes taking on the sky’s tint.

“You must be worn out,” Buzzcut said. “How about a cup of coffee? We have sandwiches, too.”

“Thanks, but I’ll have to pass on that. I can’t eat right after work. My appetite starts to come back after an hour or so.”

Buzzcut nodded. Then he pulled a thick envelope from his inner jacket pocket. After checking its weight, he handed it to Aomame.

The man said, “I believe you will find here something more than the agreed-upon fee. As I said earlier, we strongly urge you to keep this matter a secret.”

“Hush money?” Aomame said jokingly.

“For the extra effort we have put you through,” the man said, without cracking a smile.

“I have a policy of strict confidentiality, whatever the fee. That is part of my work. No word of this will leak out under any circumstances,” Aomame said. She put the unopened envelope into her gym bag. “Do you need a receipt?”

Buzzcut shook his head. “That will not be necessary. This is just between us. There is no need for you to report this as income.”

Aomame nodded silently.

“It must have taken a great deal of strength,” Buzzcut said, as if probing for information.

“More than usual,” she said.

“Because he is no ordinary person.”

“So it would seem.”

“He is utterly irreplaceable,” he said. “He has suffered terrible physical pain for a very long time. He has taken all of our suffering and pain upon himself, as it were. We can only hope that he can have some small degree of relief.”

“I can’t say for sure because I don’t know the basic cause of his pain,” Aomame said, choosing her words carefully, “but I do think that his pain may have been reduced somewhat.”

Buzzcut nodded. “As far as I can tell, you seem quite drained.”

“Perhaps I am,” Aomame said.

While Aomame and Buzzcut were speaking, Ponytail remained seated by the door, wordlessly observing the room. His face was immobile; only his eyes moved. His expression never changed. She had no idea whether he was even hearing their conversation. Isolated, taciturn, attentive, he kept watch for any sign of enemy fighter planes among the clouds. At first they would be no bigger than poppy seeds.

After some hesitation, Aomame asked Buzzcut, “This may be none of my business, but drinking coffee, eating ham sandwiches: are these not violations of your religion?”

Buzzcut turned to look at the coffeepot and the tray of sandwiches on the table. Then the faintest possible smile crossed his lips.

“Our religion doesn’t have such strict precepts. Alcohol and tobacco are generally forbidden, and there are some prohibitions regarding sexual matters, but we are relatively free where food is concerned. Most of the time we eat only the simplest foods, but coffee and ham sandwiches are not especially forbidden.”

Aomame just nodded, offering no opinion on the matter.

“The religion brings many people together, so some degree of discipline is necessary, of course, but if you focus too much on formalities, you can lose sight of your original purpose. Things like precepts and doctrines are, ultimately, just expedients. The important thing is not the frame itself but what is inside the frame.”

“And your Leader provides the content to fill the frame.”

“Exactly. He can hear the voices that we cannot hear. He is a special person.” Buzzcut looked into Aomame’s eyes again. Then he said, “Thank you for all your efforts today. And luckily the rain seems to have stopped.”

“The thunder was terrible,” Aomame said.

“Yes, very,” Buzzcut said, though he himself did not seem particularly interested in the thunder and rain.

Aomame gave him a little bow and headed for the door, gym bag in hand.

“Wait a moment,” Buzzcut called from behind. His voice had a sharp edge.

Aomame came to a stop in the center of the room and turned around. Her heart made a sharp, dry sound. Her right hand casually moved to her hip.

“The yoga mat,” the young man said. “You’re forgetting your yoga mat. It’s still on the bedroom floor.”

Aomame smiled. “He is lying on top of it, sound asleep. We can’t just shove him aside and pull it out. I’ll give it to you if you like. It’s not expensive, and it’s had a lot of use. If you don’t need it, throw it away.”

Buzzcut thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. “Thank you again. I’m sure you’re very tired.”

As Aomame neared the door, Ponytail stood and opened it for her. Then he bowed slightly. That one never said a word, Aomame thought. She returned his bow and started to slip past him.

In that moment, however, a violent urge penetrated Aomame’s skin, like an intense electric current. Ponytail’s hand shot out as if to grab her right arm. It should have been a swift, precise movement-like grabbing a fly in thin air. Aomame had a vivid sense of its happening right there. Every muscle in her body stiffened up. Her skin crawled, and her heart skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat, and icy insects crawled up and down her spine. A blazing hot white light poured into her mind: If this man grabs my right arm, I won’t be able to reach for the pistol. And if that happens, I have no hope of winning. He feels it. He feels that I’ve done something. His intuition recognizes that something happened in this hotel room. He doesn’t know what, but it is something that should not have happened. His instincts are telling him, “You have to stop this woman,” ordering him to wrestle me to the floor, drop his whole weight on me, and dislocate my shoulders. But he has only instinct, no proof. If his feeling turns out to be wrong, he’ll be in big trouble. He was intensely conflicted, and now he’s given up. Buzzcut is the one who makes the decisions and gives the orders. Ponytail is not qualified. He struggled to suppress the impulse of his right hand and let the tension go out of his shoulder. Aomame had a vivid sense of the stages through which Ponytail’s mind had passed in that second or two.

Aomame stepped out into the carpeted hallway and headed for the elevator without looking back, walking coolly down the perfectly straight corridor. Ponytail, it seemed, had stuck his head out the door and was following her movements with his eyes. She continued to feel his sharp, knifelike gaze piercing her back. Every muscle in her body was tingling, but she refused to look back. She must not look back. Only when she turned the corner did she feel the tension go out of her. But still she could not relax. There was no telling what could happen next. She pushed the elevator’s “down” button and reached around to hold the pistol grip until the elevator came (which took an eternity), ready to draw the gun if Ponytail changed his mind and came after her. She would have to shoot him without hesitation before he put his powerful hands on her. Or shoot herself without hesitation. She could not decide which. Perhaps she would not be able to decide.

But no one came after her. The hotel corridor was hushed. The elevator door opened with a ring, and Aomame got on. She pressed the button for the lobby and waited for the door to close. Biting her lip, she glared at the floor number display. Then she exited the elevator, walked across the broad lobby, and stepped into a cab waiting for passengers at the front door. The rain had cleared up completely, but the cab had water dripping from its entire chassis, as if it had made its way here underwater. Aomame told the driver to take her to the west exit of Shinjuku Station. As they pulled away from the hotel, she exhaled every bit of air she was holding inside. Then she closed her eyes and emptied her mind. She didn’t want to think about anything for a while.

A strong wave of nausea hit her. It felt as if the entire contents of her stomach were surging up toward her throat, but she managed to force them back down. She pressed the button to open her window halfway, sending the damp night air deep into her lungs. Then she leaned back and took several deep breaths. Her mouth produced an ominous smell, as though something inside her were beginning to rot.

It suddenly occurred to her to search in her pants pocket, where she found two sticks of chewing gum. Her hands trembled slightly as she tore off the wrappers. She put the sticks in her mouth and began chewing slowly. Spearmint. The pleasantly familiar aroma helped to quiet her nerves. As she moved her jaw, the bad smell in her mouth began to dissipate. It’s not as if I actually have something rotting inside me. Fear is doing funny things to me, that’s all.

Anyhow, it’s all over now, Aomame thought. I don’t have to kill anyone anymore. And what I did was right, she told herself. He deserved to be killed for what he did. It was a simple case of just punishment. And as it happened (strictly by chance), the man himself had a strong desire to be killed. I gave him the peaceful death he was hoping for. I did nothing wrong. All I did was break the law.

Try as she might, however, Aomame was unable to convince herself that this was true. Only moments before, she had killed a far-from-ordinary human being with her own hands. She retained a vivid memory of how it felt when the needle sank soundlessly into the back of the man’s neck. That far-from-ordinary feeling was still there, in her hands, upsetting her to no small degree. She opened her palms and stared at them. Something was different, utterly different. But she was unable to discover what had changed, and how.

If she was to believe what he had told her, she had just killed a prophet, one entrusted with the voice of a god. But the master of that voice was no god. It was probably the Little People. A prophet is simultaneously a king, and a king is destined to be killed. She was, in other words, an assassin sent by destiny. By violently exterminating a being who was both prophet and king, she had preserved the balance of good and evil in the world, as a result of which she must die. But when she performed the deed, she struck a bargain. By killing the man and, in effect, throwing her own life away, she would save Tengo’s life. That was the content of the bargain. If she was to believe what he had told her.

Aomame had no choice but to believe fundamentally in what he had said. He was no fanatic, and dying people do not lie. Most importantly, his words had genuine persuasive power. They carried the weight of a huge anchor. All ships carry anchors that match their size and weight. However despicable his deeds may have been, the man was truly reminiscent of a great ship. Aomame had no choice but to recognize that fact.

Taking care that the driver did not see her, Aomame slipped the Heckler & Koch from her belt, set the safety catch, and put the gun in its pouch, relieving herself of 500 grams of solid, lethal weight.

“Wasn’t that thunder something?” the driver said. “And the rain was incredible.”