After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

If she was to believe what he had told her
. 
Aomame had no choice but to believe fundamentally in what he had said. He was 
no fanatic, and dying people do not lie. Most importantly, his words had genuine 
persuasive power. They carried the weight of a huge anchor. All ships carry anchors 
that match their size and weight. However despicable his deeds may have been, the 
man was truly reminiscent of a great ship. Aomame had no choice but to recognize 
that fact. 
Taking care that the driver did not see her, Aomame slipped the Heckler & Koch 
from her belt, set the safety catch, and put the gun in its pouch, relieving herself of 
500 grams of solid, lethal weight. 
“Wasn’t that thunder something?” the driver said. “And the rain was incredible.” 
“Thunder?” Aomame said. It seemed to have happened a long time ago, though it 
had been a mere thirty minutes earlier. Yes, come to think of it, there had been some 
thunder. “Yes, really, incredible thunder.” 
“The weather forecast said absolutely nothing about it. It was supposed to be 
beautiful all day.” 
She tried to make her mind work. 
I have to say something. But I can’t think of 
anything good to say. My brain seems to have fogged over
. “Weather forecasts are 
never right,” she said. 
The driver glanced at Aomame in the rearview mirror. Maybe there was something 
funny about the way she spoke. The driver said, “I hear the water in the streets 
overflowed and ran down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station onto the tracks. It 
was because the rain all fell in one small area. They stopped the Ginza Line and the 
Marunouchi Line. I heard it on the radio news.” 
The concentrated downpour brought the subway to a stop. Will this have any 
influence on my actions? I’ve got to make my brain work faster. I go to Shinjuku 
Station to get my travel bag and shoulder bag out of a coin locker. Then I call 
Tamaru for instructions. If I’m going to have to use the Marunouchi Line from 
Shinjuku, things could get very messy. I only have two hours to make my getaway. 
Once two hours have gone by, they’ll begin to wonder why Leader isn’t waking up. 
They’ll probably go into the bedroom and discover that he’s drawn his last breath. 
They’ll go into action immediately
. 
“Do you think the Marunouchi Line is still not running?” Aomame asked the 
driver. 
“I wonder. I really don’t know. Want me to turn on the news?” 

---

431
“Yes, please.” 
According to Leader, the Little People caused that downpour. They concentrated 
the intense rain on a small area in the Akasaka District and caused the subway to stop. 
Aomame shook her head. Maybe they did it on purpose. Things don’t always go 
according to plan. 
The driver tuned the radio to NHK. They were broadcasting a music program—
folk songs sung by Japanese singers popular in the late sixties. Having listened to 
such music on the radio as a girl, Aomame remembered it vaguely, but in no way 
fondly. If anything, the memories it called up for her were unpleasant ones, things she 
would rather not think about. She put up with it for a while, but there was no sign of 
news about the subway situation. 
“Sorry, that’s enough. Could you please turn off the radio?” Aomame said. “I’ll 
just go to Shinjuku Station and see what’s happening.” 
The driver turned off the radio. “That place will be jammed,” he said. 
As the driver had said, Shinjuku Station was horribly congested. Because the stalled 
Marunouchi Line connected with the National Railways here, the flow of passengers 
had been disrupted, and people were wandering in all directions. The evening rush 
hour had ended, but even so, pushing her way through the crowd was hard work for 
Aomame. 
At last she made her way to the coin locker and took out her shoulder bag and her 
black imitation-leather travel bag. The travel bag contained the cash she had taken 
from her safe-deposit box. She took the items out of her gym bag and divided them 
between the shoulder and travel bags: the envelope of cash she had received from 
Buzzcut, the vinyl pouch containing the pistol, the hard case with the ice pick. The 
now useless Nike gym bag she put into a nearby locker, inserted a hundred-yen coin, 
and turned the key. She had no intention of reclaiming it. It contained nothing that 
could be traced to her. 
Travel bag in hand, Aomame walked around looking for a pay phone in the station. 
Crowds had formed at every phone. People stood in long lines, waiting their turn to 
call home and say they would be late because the train had stopped. Aomame put her 
face into a light frown.