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man-made ocean. The glitter of neon had diminished somewhat now that midnight
had passed.
I’m fond of this girl Ayumi, no doubt about it. I want to be as good to her as I can.
After Tamaki died, I made up my mind to live without deep ties to anyone. I never
once felt that I wanted a new friend. But for some reason I feel my heart opening to
Ayumi. I can even confess my true feelings to her with a certain degree of honesty.
She is totally different from you, of course
, Aomame said to the Tamaki inside.
You
are special. I grew up with you. No one else can compare
.
Aomame leaned her head back and looked up at the sky for a time. Even as her
eyes took in the sky, her mind wandered through distant memories. The time she
spent with Tamaki,
the talking they did, and the touching.… Soon, she began to sense
that the night sky she saw above her was somehow different from the sky she was
used to seeing. The strangeness of it was subtle but undeniable.
Some time had to pass before she was able to grasp what the difference was. And
even after she had grasped it, she had to work hard to accept it. What her vision had
seized upon, her mind could not easily confirm.
There were two moons in the sky—a small moon and a large one. They were
floating there side by side. The large one was the usual moon that she had always
seen. It was nearly full, and yellow. But there was another moon right next to it. It had
an unfamiliar shape.
It was somewhat lopsided, and greenish, as though thinly
covered with moss. This was what her vision had seized upon.
Aomame stared at the two moons with narrowed eyes. Then she closed her eyes,
let a moment pass, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes again, expecting to find
that everything had returned to normal and there was only one moon. But nothing had
changed. The light was
not playing tricks on her, nor had her eyesight gone strange.
There could be no doubt that two moons were clearly floating in the sky side by
side—a yellow one and a green one.
She thought of waking Ayumi to ask if there really were two moons up there, but
she decided against it. Ayumi might say, “Of
course
there are two moons in the sky.
They increased in number last year.” Or then again, she might say, “What are you
talking about? There’s only one moon up there. Something must be wrong with your
eyes.” Neither response would solve the problem now facing her. Both would only
deepen it.
Aomame raised her hands to cover
the lower half of her face, and she continued
staring at the two moons.
Something is happening, for sure
, she thought. Her
heartbeat sped up.
Something’s wrong with the world, or something’s wrong with me:
one or the other. The bottle and the cap don’t fit: is the problem with the bottle or the
cap?
She went back inside, locked the balcony door, and drew the curtain. She took a
bottle of brandy from the cabinet and poured herself a glassful. Ayumi was
sleeping
nicely in bed, her breathing deep and even. Aomame kept watch over her and took a
sip of brandy now and then. Planting her elbows on the kitchen table, she struggled
not to think about what lay beyond the curtain.
Maybe the world really is ending
, she thought.
“And the kingdom is coming,” Aomame muttered to herself.
“I can hardly wait,” somebody said somewhere.