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was not to go out with someone all dressed up, but to spend time alone in her room
dressed in a jersey top and bottom.
After Tamaki died, Aomame quit the sports drink company, left the dormitory she
had been living in, and moved into a one-bedroom rental condo in the lively,
freewheeling Jiyugaoka neighborhood, away from the center of the city. Though
hardly spacious, the place looked huge to her. She kept her furnishings to a
minimum—except for her extensive collection of kitchen utensils. She had few
possessions. She enjoyed reading books, but as soon as she was through with them,
she would sell them to a used bookstore. She enjoyed listening to music, but was not a
collector of records. She hated to see her belongings pile up. She felt guilty whenever
she bought something.
I don’t really need this
, she would tell herself. Seeing the nicer
clothing and shoes in her closet would give her a pain in the chest and constrict her
breathing. Such sights suggestive of freedom and opulence would, paradoxically,
remind Aomame of her restrictive childhood.
What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you
managed to escape from one cage, weren’t you just in another, larger one?
Whenever Aomame sent a designated man into the other world, the dowager of
Azabu would provide her with remuneration. A wad of bills, tightly wrapped in blank
paper, would be deposited in a post-office box. Aomame would receive the key from
Tamaru, retrieve the contents of the box, and later return the key. Without breaking
the seal on the pack of bills to count the money, she would throw the package into her
bank’s safe-deposit box, which now contained two hard bricks of cash.
Aomame was unable to use up her monthly salary from the sports club, and she
even had a bit of savings in the bank. She had no use whatever for the dowager’s
money, which she tried to explain to her the first time she received the remuneration.
“This is a mere external form,” the dowager said softly but firmly. “Think of it as a
kind of set procedure—a requirement. You are at least required to receive it. If you
don’t need the money, then you don’t have to use it. If you hate the idea of taking it, I
don’t mind if you donate it anonymously to some charity. You are free to do anything
you like with it. But if you ask me, the best thing for you to do would be to keep it
untouched for a while, stored away somewhere.”
“I just don’t like the idea of money changing hands for something like this,”
Aomame said.
“I understand how you feel, but remember this: thanks to the fact that these terrible
men have been so good as to remove themselves from our presence, there has been no
need for divorce proceedings or custody battles, and no need for the women to live in
fear that their husbands might show up and beat them beyond recognition. Life
insurance and survivors’ annuities have been paid. Think of the money you get as the
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