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“A castle gate,” Tengo said, caressing her back.
“You know, like in
Throne of Blood
or
Hidden Fortress
. There’s always a big,
sturdy castle gate in those old black-and-white movies of his, all covered with these
huge iron rivets. That’s what I think of. Thick, solid …”
“I don’t have any rivets, though.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.
Fuka-Eri’s
Air Chrysalis
placed on the bestseller lists the second week after it went on
sale, rising to number one on the fiction list in the third week. Tengo traced the
process of the book’s ascent through the newspapers they kept in the cram school’s
teachers’ lounge. Two ads for the book also appeared in the papers, featuring a photo
of the book’s cover and a smaller shot of Fuka-Eri wearing the familiar tight-fitting
summer sweater that showed off her breasts so beautifully (taken, no doubt, at the
time of the press conference). Long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. Dark,
enigmatic eyes looking straight at the camera. Those eyes seemed to peer through the
lens and focus directly on something the viewer kept hidden deep in his heart, of
which he was normally unaware. They did so neutrally but gently. This seventeen-
year-old girl’s unwavering gaze was disconcerting. It was just a small black-and-
white photograph, but the mere sight of it almost certainly prompted many people to
buy the book.
Komatsu had sent two copies of the book to Tengo a few days after it went on sale,
but Tengo opened only the package, not the vinyl around the books themselves. True,
the text inside the book was something he himself had written, and this was the first
time his writing had taken the shape of a book, but he had no desire to open it and
read it—or even glance at its pages. The sight of it gave him no joy. The sentences
and paragraphs may have been his, but the story they comprised belonged entirely to
Fuka-Eri. Her mind had given birth to it. His minor role as a secret technician had
ended long before, and the work’s fate from this point onward had nothing to do with
him. Nor should it. He shoved the two volumes into the back of his bookcase, out of
sight, still wrapped in vinyl.
For a while after the one night Fuka-Eri slept in his apartment, Tengo’s life flowed
along uneventfully. It rained a lot, but Tengo paid almost no attention to the weather,
which ranked far down on his list of priorities. From Fuka-Eri herself, he heard
nothing. The lack of contact probably meant that she had no particular problems for
him to solve.
In addition to writing his novel every day, Tengo wrote a number of short pieces
for magazines—anonymous jobs that anyone could do. They were a welcome change
of pace, though, and the pay was good for the minimal effort involved. Three times a
week, as usual, Tengo taught math at the cram school. He burrowed more deeply than
ever into the world of mathematics in order to forget his concerns—issues involving
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