After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

pulled out
looked as if they might start moving at any 
moment. He kept on freeing these imaginary rats that were locked up in their blocks 
of wood.” 
“And you were the boy’s protector.” 
“Yes, but not because I wanted to be. I just ended up in that position. And once 
you were given a position, you had to live up to it, no matter what. That was the rule. 
Say, if one of the other boys took away his carving tools just to be nasty, I would go 
and beat him up. Even if the other kid was older or bigger or there was more than one 
of them, I had to beat him up. Of course, there were times when 
they
beat 
me
up. Lots 
of times. But it didn’t matter whether I won or lost those fights: I always got the tools 
back for him. That was the main thing. See what I mean?” 
“I think so,” Aomame said. “But finally you had to abandon him.” 
“Well, I had to go on living. I couldn’t stay with him forever, taking care of him. I 
didn’t have that luxury, obviously.” 
Aomame opened her right hand again and stared at it. 
“I’ve seen you holding a little carved rat now and then. Did he make that?” 
“Yes, he gave me a little one. I took it when I ran away. I keep it with me.” 
“You know, Tamaru, you’re not the kind of guy who usually talks about himself. 
Why now?” 
“One thing I wanted to tell you is that I often think of him,” Tamaru said. “Not that 
I want to see him again or anything. I really don’t. We wouldn’t have anything to talk 
about, for one thing. It’s just that I still have this vivid image of him ‘pulling rats out’ 
of blocks of wood with total concentration, and that has remained an important mental 
landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something—or tries to. People need 
things like that to go on living—mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even 
if they can’t explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with 
explanations for these things. That’s what I think.” 
“Are you saying that they’re like a basis for us to live?” 
“Maybe so.” 

---

454
“I have such mental landscapes, too.” 
“You’d better handle them with care.” 
“I will.” 
“I have one more thing to say, and that is that I will do everything I can to protect 
you. If there’s somebody I have to beat up, I’ll go out and beat them up. Win or lose, I 
won’t abandon you.” 
“Thank you.” 
A few tranquil seconds of silence followed. 
“Don’t leave that apartment for a while. Just think of it as a jungle one step outside 
your door. Okay?” 
“Got it,” Aomame said. 
The connection was cut. Hanging up, Aomame realized how tightly she had been 
gripping the receiver. 
What Tamaru wanted to convey to me was that I’m now an indispensable part of their 
family, that ties once formed will never be cut
, Aomame thought. 
We are bound by 
artificial blood, so to speak
. Aomame was grateful to Tamaru for having delivered 
that message. He must have realized what a painful time this was for Aomame. It was 
precisely because he thought of her as a member of the family that he had begun to 
share some of his secrets. 
To think that such a close connection could only be formed through violence was 
almost too much for Aomame to bear. 
We can only share these deep feelings because 
of my unique circumstances: I’ve broken the law, killed several people, and now 
someone is after me and may even kill me. Would it have been possible to form such a 
relationship if murder had not been involved? Could we have formed such bonds of 
trust if I were not an outlaw? I doubt it
. 
She watched the TV news, drinking tea. There were no more reports on the 
flooding of the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station. Once the water receded the next day 
and the trains were running normally again, it had become old news. The death of 
Sakigake’s Leader was still not public knowledge. Only a handful of people knew 
about that. Aomame imagined the large man’s corpse being consumed by the high-
temperature incinerator. Tamaru had said that not a single bone would be left. 
Unrelated to either grace or pain, everything would become smoke and blend into the 
early-autumn sky. Aomame could picture the smoke and the sky. 
There was a report on the disappearance of the seventeen-year-old girl who wrote 
the bestselling book