After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

dohta.
“
You
, finally, are the one who caused this to happen,” they are telling her. 
The girl returns to her loneliness. She stops going to school. Making friends with 
someone can only expose that person to danger. That is what it means to live beneath 
two moons. That is what she has learned. 
The girl eventually makes up her mind and begins fashioning her own air chrysalis. 
She is able to do this. The Little People said that they had come to her world down a 
passageway from the place they belong. If that is the case, she herself should be able 
to go to that place down a passageway in the opposite direction. If she goes there, she 
can learn the secrets regarding why she is here and what the meaning of “
maza
” and 
“
dohta
” could be. She might also succeed in saving the lost Toru. The girl begins 
making a passageway. All she has to do is pluck threads from the air and weave a 
chrysalis. This will take time, but if she does take the time, she can do it. 
Sometimes, however, she becomes unsure and confusion overtakes her. 
Am I really 
a
maza
? Couldn’t I have switched places somewhere with my
dohta
?
The more she 
thinks about it, the less certain she becomes. 
How can I prove that I am the real me?
The story ends symbolically when the girl is opening the door of her passageway. It 
says nothing about what will happen beyond the door—probably because it has not 
happened yet. 
Dohta, Aomame thought. 
Leader used that word before he died. He said that his 
own daughter had run away, leaving her
dohta 
behind, in order to establish a force 
opposed to the Little People. It might have actually happened. And I am not the only 
one to see two moons
. 
Still, Aomame felt she could understand why this novella had gained such a wide 
readership. Although it was a story about the fantastical experiences of a girl placed in 
unusual circumstances, it also had something that called forth people’s natural 
sympathies. It probably aroused some subconscious something, which was why 
readers were pulled in and kept turning pages. 
Tengo undoubtedly had contributed much to the book’s literary qualities, its vivid, 
precise descriptions, but she could not confine her admiration to that fact alone. She 
had to focus on the parts of the story where the Little People enter the action. For 

---

477
Aomame, this was a highly 
practical
story—a virtual instruction manual—upon 
which hinged the life and death of actual people. She needed to gain concrete 
knowledge from it, to add whatever solidity and detail she could to her understanding 
of the world into which she had strayed. 
Air Chrysalis
was not just a wild fantasy dreamed up by a seventeen-year-old girl. 
The names may have been changed, but Aomame firmly believed that the majority of 
things depicted in it were unmistakable reality as experienced firsthand by the girl 
herself. Fuka-Eri had recorded those events from her own life as accurately as 
possible in order to reveal those hidden secrets to the world at large, to inform large 
numbers of people of the existence and the deeds of the Little People. 
The 
dohta
that the girl had left behind must have become a passageway for the 
Little People and guided them to Leader, the girl’s father, who was then transformed 
by them into a Receiver. They then drove the Akebono members, who were of no use 
to them, into a suicidal bloodbath, and transformed the remaining Sakigake group into 
a smart, militant, and xenophobic religious organization, which was probably the 
most comfortable and convenient environment for the Little People. 
Aomame wondered if Fuka-Eri’s