After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

had to be superb
. Being an athlete was a 
way to be recognized by others, and having outstanding records in sports was just 
about the only way they could win their independence. This was the valuable ticket 
they needed to survive. They thought differently from average teenagers. They 
confronted the world differently. 
When he thought about it, Ushikawa realized his own situation somewhat 
resembled theirs. 
I’m from an affluent family and had no need to get a scholarship. I always had 
plenty of spending money. But in order to get into a top university, and pass the bar 
exam, I had to study like mad, just like Tengo and Aomame. I had no time to have fun 
like my classmates. I had to abstain from all worldly pleasures—not that I had much 
chance of obtaining them to begin with—and focus solely on my studies. I was always 
stuck between feelings of inferiority and superiority. I often used to think I was like 
Raskolnikov, except I never met Sonia
. 
Enough about me. Thinking about that won’t change anything. I have to get back 
to Tengo and Aomame
. 
Say Tengo and Aomame did happen to run across each other sometime in their 
twenties and started talking. They would have been so amazed at all the things they 
had in common. And there would be so many things they had to talk about. Maybe 
they found themselves attracted to each other, as a man and a woman. Ushikawa had a 
vivid mental image of this scene—a fateful meeting, the ultimate romantic moment. 
But had such a meeting actually taken place? Had a romance blossomed? 
Ushikawa didn’t know. But it would make sense if they had actually met. That would 
explain how they joined forces to attack Sakigake, each of them from a different 
angle—Tengo with his pen, Aomame no doubt with some special skill she had. 
Somehow, though, Ushikawa couldn’t warm to this hypothesis. On one level it all 
made sense, but he wasn’t convinced. 
If indeed Tengo and Aomame did have such a deep relationship, there would be 
evidence. This fateful meeting would have had fateful results, and this would not have 
passed unnoticed by Ushikawa’s observant eyes. Aomame might have been able to 
hide it, but not Tengo. 
In general, Ushikawa saw things logically. Without proof, he couldn’t go forward. 
However, he also trusted his natural intuition. When it came to a scenario where 
Tengo and Aomame had conspired together, his intuition shook its head no. It was 
just a little shake, but insistent nonetheless. Maybe the two of them weren’t even 
aware of each other’s existence. Maybe it 
just turned out
that they were both 
simultaneously involved with Sakigake. 
Even if it was hard to picture such a coincidence, Ushikawa’s intuition told him 
that this hypothesis felt more likely than the conspiracy theory. The two of them, 
driven by different motives, and approaching things from different angles, just 

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612
happened to simultaneously shake Sakigake to the core. Two story lines at work, with 
different starting points but running parallel to each other. 
The question was, would the Sakigake twosome accept such a convenient 
hypothesis? 
No way
, Ushikawa concluded. Instead, they would jump at the conspiracy 
theory, for they loved anything that hinted of sinister plots. Before he handed over 
any raw information, he needed solid proof. Otherwise they would be misled and it 
might wind up hurting him. 
As Ushikawa rode the train from Ichikawa to Tsudanuma, he pondered all this. 
Without realizing it, he must have been frowning, sighing, and glaring into space, 
because an elementary-school girl in the seat across from him was looking at him 
oddly. To cover his embarrassment, he relaxed his expression and rubbed his balding 
head. But this gesture only ended up making the little girl frightened, and just before 
Nishi-Funabashi Station, she leapt to her feet and rushed away. 
He spoke with Toshie Ota in her classroom after school. She looked to be in her mid-
fifties. Her appearance was the polar opposite of the refined vice principal back at the 
Ichikawa elementary school. Miss Ota was short and stocky and, from behind, had a 
weird sort of gait, like a crustacean. She wore tiny metal-framed glasses, but the space 
between her eyebrows was flat and broad and you could clearly see the downy hair 
growing there. She had on a wool suit of indeterminate age, though no doubt it was 
already out of fashion by the time it was manufactured, and it carried with it a faint 
odor of mothballs. The suit was pink, but an odd sort of pink, like some other color 
had been accidentally mixed in. They had probably been aiming for a classy, subdued 
sort of hue, but because they didn’t get it right, the pink of her suit sank deeply back 
into diffidence, concealment, and resignation. Thanks to this, the brand-new white 
blouse peeking out of the collar looked like some indiscreet person who had wandered 
into a wake. Her dry hair, with some white strands mixed in, was pinned back with a 
plastic clip, probably the nearest thing she had had on hand. Her limbs were on the 
beefy side, and she wore no rings on her stubby fingers. There were three thin 
wrinkles at her neckline, sharply etched, like notches on the road of life. Or maybe 
they were marks to commemorate when three wishes had come true—though 
Ushikawa had serious doubts that this had ever happened. 
The woman had been Tengo Kawana’s homeroom teacher from third grade until 
he graduated from elementary school. Teachers changed classes every two years, but 
in this case she had happened to be in charge of his class for all four. Aomame was in 
her class in only third and fourth grades. 
“I remember Mr. Kawana very well,” she said. 
In contrast to her gentle-looking exterior, her voice was strikingly clear and 
youthful. It was the kind of voice that would pierce the farthest reaches of a noisy 
classroom.