After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Impressive
, Tengo thought again. He 
ordered seafood linguine and decided to join Fuka-Eri in a glass of white wine. 
“You’re a teacher and a writer,” Fuka-Eri said. She seemed to be asking Tengo a 
question. Apparently, asking questions without question marks was another 
characteristic of her speech. 
“For now,” Tengo said. 
“You don’t look like either.” 
“Maybe not,” he said. He thought of smiling but couldn’t quite manage it. “I’m 
certified as an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but I’m not exactly a 
teacher. I write fiction, but I’ve never been published, so I’m not a writer yet, either.” 
“You’re nothing.” 
Tengo nodded. “Exactly. For the moment, I’m nothing.” 
“You like math.” 
Tengo mentally added a question mark to her comment and answered this new 
question: “I do like math. I’ve always liked it, and I still like it.” 
“What about it.” 
“What do I like about math? Hmm. When I’ve got figures in front of me, it relaxes 
me. Kind of like, everything fits where it belongs.” 
“The calculus part was good.” 
“You mean in my lecture?” 
Fuka-Eri nodded. 
“Do you like math?” 
She gave her head a quick shake. She did not like math. 
“But the part about calculus was good?” he asked. 
Fuka-Eri gave another little shrug. “You talked about it like you cared.” 
“Oh, really?” Tengo said. No one had ever told him this before. 
“Like you were talking about somebody important to you,” she said. 
“I can maybe get even more passionate when I lecture on sequences,” Tengo said. 
“Sequences were a personal favorite of mine in high school math.” 
“You like sequences,” Fuka-Eri asked, without a question mark. 
“To me, they’re like Bach’s 
Well-Tempered Clavier
. I never get tired of them. 
There’s always something new to discover.” 
“I know the 
Well-Tempered Clavier
.” 
“You like Bach?” 
Fuka-Eri nodded. “The Professor is always listening to it.” 
“The Professor? One of your teachers?” 
Fuka-Eri did not answer. She looked at Tengo with an expression that seemed to 
say, “It’s too soon to talk about that.” 

---

48
She took her coat off as if it had only now occurred to her to do so. She emerged 
from it like an insect sloughing off its skin. Without bothering to fold it, she set it on 
the chair next to hers. She wore a thin crew-neck sweater of pale green and white 
jeans, with no jewelry or makeup, but still she stood out. She had a slender build, in 
proportion to which her full breasts could not help but attract attention. They were 
beautifully shaped as well. Tengo had to caution himself not to look down there, but 
he couldn’t help it. His eyes moved to her chest as if toward the center of a great 
whirlpool. 
The two glasses of white wine arrived. Fuka-Eri took a sip of hers, and then, after 
thoughtfully studying the glass, she set it on the table. Tengo took a perfunctory sip. 
Now it was time to talk about important matters. 
Fuka-Eri brought her hand to her straight black hair and combed her fingers 
through it for a while. It was a lovely gesture, and her fingers were lovely, each 
seemingly moving according to its own will and purpose as if in tune with something 
occult. 
“What do I like about math?” Tengo asked himself aloud again in order to divert 
his attention from her fingers and her chest. “Math is like water. It has a lot of 
difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from 
high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. 
You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it 
takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your 
eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, 
the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.” 
Fuka-Eri thought about this for a while. “Why do you write fiction,” she asked in 
her expressionless way. 
Tengo converted her question into longer sentences: “In other words, if I like math 
so much, why do I go to all the trouble of writing fiction? Why not just keep doing 
math? Is that it?” 
She nodded. 
“Hmm. Real life is different from math. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over 
the shortest possible route. For me, math is—how should I put it?—math is all too 
natural. It’s like beautiful scenery. It’s