After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Air Chrysalis
, so in effect it’s out of print. There will be no 
paperback edition, either. The book already sold a lot of copies and made the 
company plenty of money, so they won’t suffer a loss. In a large company like this 
you have to have meetings about it, the president has to sign off on it—but when I 
dangled before them the prospect of a scandal connected with a ghostwriter, the 
higher-ups were terrified and in the end did what I wanted. It looks like I’ll be given 
the silent treatment from now on, but it’s okay. I’m used to it.” 
“Did Professor Ebisuno accept what they said about Fuka-Eri’s parents being 
dead?” 
“I think so,” Komatsu said. “But I imagine it will take some time for it to really 
sink in, for him to fully accept it. As far as I could tell, those guys were serious. They 
would make a few concessions, but I think they’re hoping to avoid any more trouble. 
Which is why they resorted to kidnapping—they wanted to make absolutely sure we 
got the message. And they didn’t need to tell me about how they secretly incinerated 
the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Fukada. Even though it would be hard to prove, 
desecration of bodies is a major crime. But still they brought it up. They laid their 
cards on the table. That’s why I think most of what Buzzcut told me was the truth. 
Maybe not every detail, but the overall picture, at least.” 
Tengo went over what Komatsu had told him. “Fuka-Eri’s father was 
the one who 
heard the voice
. A prophet, in other words. But when his daughter published 
Air 
Chrysalis
and it became a bestseller, the voice stopped speaking to him, and as a 
result the father died a natural death.” 
“Or rather he put an end to his own existence 
naturally,
” Komatsu said. 
“And so it’s critical for Sakigake to gain a new prophet. If the voice stops 
speaking, then the religion’s whole reason for existence is lost. So they don’t have the 
time to worry about the likes of us. In a nutshell, that’s the story, right?” 
“I think so.” 
“
Air Chrysalis
contains information of critical importance to them. When it was 
published and became widely read, the voice went silent. But what critical 
information could the book be pointing toward?” 
“During those last four days of my confinement I thought a lot about that,” 
Komatsu said. “
Air Chrysalis
is a pretty short novel. In the story the world is filled 
with Little People. The ten-year-old girl who is the protagonist lives in an isolated 
community. The Little People secretly come out at night and create an air chrysalis. 
The girl’s alter ego is inside the chrysalis and a mother-daughter relationship is 
formed—the 
maza
and the 
dohta
. There are two moons in that world, a large one and 
a small one, probably symbolizing the 
maza
and the 
dohta
. In the novel the 
protagonist—based on Fuka-Eri herself, I think—rejects being a 
maza
and runs away 
from the community. The 
dohta
is left behind. The novel doesn’t tell us what 
happened to the 
dohta
after that.” 
Tengo stared for a time at the ice melting in his glass. 

---

692
“I wonder if the 
one who hears the voice
needs the 
dohta
as an intermediary,” 
Tengo said. “It’s through her that he can hear the voice for the first time, or perhaps 
through her that the voice is translated into comprehensible language. Both of them 
have to be there for the message of the voice to take its proper form. To borrow Fuka-
Eri’s terms, there’s a Receiver and a Perceiver. But first of all the air chrysalis has to 
be created, because the