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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
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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
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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.
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