After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

But does the man on the phone really know Aomame?
Tengo suddenly 
wondered. 
Couldn’t this be some kind of clever trap?
Once this thought took hold, he 
couldn’t shake off a sense of unease. If this really was a trap, then Sakigake had to be 
behind it. As the ghostwriter of 
Air Chrysalis
he was probably—no, make that 
definitely
—on their blacklist. Which is why that weird guy, Ushikawa, came to him 
with that suspicious story about a grant. On top of that, Tengo had let Fuka-Eri hide 
out in his apartment for three months. There were more than enough reasons for the 
cult to be upset with him. 
Be that as it may
, Tengo thought, inclining his head, 
why would they go to the 
trouble of using Aomame as bait to lure me into a trap? They already know where I 
am. It’s not like I’m running away and hiding. If they have some business with me, 
they should approach me directly. There’s no need to lure me out to that slide in the 
playground. Things would be different if the opposite were true—if they were using 
me as bait to get Aomame
. 
But why lure her out?
He couldn’t understand it. Was there, by chance, some connection between 
Aomame and Sakigake? Tengo’s deductive reasoning hit a dead end. The only thing 
he could do was to ask Aomame herself—assuming he could meet her. 

---

777
At any rate, as the man on the phone said, he would have to be cautious. Tengo 
scrupulously took a roundabout route and made sure no one was following him. Once 
certain of that, he hurried off in the direction of the playground. 
. . . 
He arrived at the playground at seven minutes to seven. It was dark out already, and 
the mercury-vapor lamp shone its even, artificial illumination into every nook and 
cranny of the tiny park. The afternoon had been lovely and warm, but now that the 
sun had set the temperature had dropped sharply, and a cold wind was blowing. The 
pleasant Indian summer weather they had had for a few days had vanished, and real 
winter, cold and severe, had settled in for the duration. The tips of the zelkova tree’s 
branches trembled, like the fingers of some ancient person shaking out a warning, 
with a desiccated, raspy sound. 
Lights were on in several of the windows in the buildings nearby, but the 
playground was deserted. Tengo’s heart under the leather jacket beat out a slow but 
heavy rhythm. He rubbed his hands together repeatedly, to see if they had normal 
sensation. 
Everything’s fine
, he told himself. 
I’m all set. Nothing to be afraid of
. He 
made up his mind and started climbing up the ladder of the slide. 
Once on top, he sat down as he had before. The bottom of the slide was cold and 
slightly damp. With his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the railing and looked 
up at the sky. There were clouds of all sizes—several large ones, several small ones. 
Tengo squinted and looked for the moons, but at the moment they weren’t visible, 
hidden behind the clouds. These weren’t dense, heavy clouds, but rather smooth white 
ones. Still, they were thick and substantial enough to hide the moons from his gaze. 
The clouds were gliding slowly from north to south. The wind didn’t seem too strong. 
Or maybe the clouds were actually higher up than they looked? At any rate, they 
weren’t in much of a hurry. 
Tengo glanced at his watch. The hands showed three past seven, ticking away the 
time ever more accurately. Still no Aomame. Tengo spent several minutes gazing at 
the hands of his watch as if they were something extraordinary. Then he shut his eyes. 
Like the clouds on the wind, he was in no hurry. If things took time, he didn’t mind. 
He stopped thinking and gave himself over to the flow of time. At this moment, 
time’s natural, even flow was the most important thing. 
With his eyes closed, he carefully listened to the sounds around him, as if 
searching for stations on a radio. He could hear the ceaseless hum of traffic on the 
expressway. It reminded him of the Pacific surf at the sanatorium in Chikura. A few 
seagull calls must have been mixed in as well. He could hear the intermittent beep as 
a large truck backed up, and a huge dog barking a short, sharp warning. Far away 
someone was shouting out a person’s name. He couldn’t tell where all these sounds 
were coming from. With his eyes closed for this long, each and every sound lost its 
sense of direction and distance. The freezing wind swirled up from time to time, but 
he didn’t feel the cold. 
Tengo had temporarily forgotten how to feel or react to all stimulations and 
sensations. 

---

778
He was suddenly aware of someone sitting beside him, holding his right hand. Like a 
small creature seeking warmth, a hand slipped inside the pocket of his leather jacket 
and clasped his large hand. By the time he became fully aware, it had already 
happened. Without any preface, the situation had jumped to the next stage. 
How 
strange
, Tengo thought, his eyes still closed. 
How did this happen?
At one point time 
was flowing along so slowly that he could barely stand it. Then suddenly it had leapt 
ahead, skipping whatever lay between. 
This person held his big hand even tighter, as if to make sure he was 
really there
. 
Long smooth fingers, with an underlying strength. 
Aomame
. But he didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t open his eyes. He just squeezed her 
hand in return. He remembered this hand. Never once in twenty years had he 
forgotten the feeling. Of course, it was no longer the tiny hand of a ten-year-old girl. 
Over the past twenty years her hand had touched many things. It had clasped untold 
numbers of objects in every possible shape. And the strength within it had grown. Yet 
Tengo knew right away: this was the very same hand. The way it squeezed his own 
hand and the feeling it was trying to convey were exactly the same. 
Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. 
Everything that had accumulated over the years—all he had seen, all the words he had 
spoken, all the values he had held—all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his 
heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter’s wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo 
observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet. 
Aomame kept silent as well. The two of them on top of the freezing slide, 
wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely 
boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of 
winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer 
to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or 
truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had no 
idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless 
room. They couldn’t get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn’t 
know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. 
Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness. 
How much time had passed? Five minutes, perhaps, or was it an hour? Or a whole 
day? Or maybe time had stood still. What did Tengo understand about time? He knew 
he could stay like this forever, the two of them silent on top of the slide, holding 
hands. He had felt that way at age ten, and now, twenty years on, he felt the same. 
He knew, too, that it would take time for him to acclimate himself to this new 
world that had come upon him. His entire way of thinking, his way of seeing things, 
the way he breathed, the way he moved his body—he would need to adjust and 
rethink every single element of life. And to do that, he needed to gather together all 
the time that existed in this world. No—maybe the whole world wouldn’t be enough. 
“Tengo,” Aomame whispered, a voice neither low or high—a voice holding out a 
promise. “Open your eyes.” 
Tengo opened his eyes. Time began to flow again in the world. 
“There’s the moon,” Aomame said. 

---

779