After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 5 
Aomame 
THE VEGETARIAN CAT 
MEETS UP WITH THE RAT
Once she had managed to comprehend the sheer fact that Ayumi had died, Aomame 
went through a brief period involving a certain process of mental adjustment. 
Eventually, when the first phase of the process ended, she began to cry. She cried 
quietly, even silently, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders quivering, as if she 
wanted to be sure that no one else in the world could tell that she was crying. 
The window curtains were shut tight, but still, someone might be watching. That 
night Aomame spread the newspaper on the kitchen table, and, in its presence, she 
cried without interruption. Now and then a sob escaped her, but the rest of the time 
she cried soundlessly. Her tears ran down her hands and onto the paper. 
Aomame did not cry easily in this world. Whenever she felt like crying, she would 
instead become angry—at someone else or at herself—which meant that it was rare 
for her to shed tears. Once they started pouring out of her, though, she couldn’t stop 
them. She hadn’t had such a long cry since Tamaki Otsuka killed herself. How many 
years ago had that been? She could not remember. In any case, it had been a 
long
time 
before, and she had cried forever. It went on for days. She ate nothing the whole time, 
and stayed shut up indoors. Now and then she would replenish the water that she had 
cried out in tears, and then she would collapse and doze. That was all. The rest of the 
time she went on weeping. That was the last time she did anything like this. 
Ayumi was no longer in this world. She was now a cold corpse that was probably 
being sent for forensic dissection. When that ended, they would sew her back 
together, probably give her a simple funeral, send her to the crematorium, and burn 
her. She would turn into smoke, rise up into the sky, and mix with the clouds. Then 
she would come down to the earth again as rain, and nurture some nameless patch of 
grass with no story to tell. But Aomame would never see Ayumi alive again. This 
seemed warped and misguided, in opposition to the flow of nature, and horribly 
unfair. 
Ayumi was the only person for whom Aomame had been able to feel anything like 
friendship since Tamaki Otsuka left the world. Unfortunately, however, there had 
been limits to her friendship. Ayumi was an active-duty police officer, and Aomame a 
serial murderer. True, she was a murderer motivated by conviction and conscience, 
but a murderer is, in the end, a murderer, a criminal in the eyes of the law. 
For this reason, Aomame had to make an effort to harden her heart and not respond 
when Ayumi sought to deepen their ties. Ayumi must have realized this to some 
extent—that Aomame had some kind of personal secret or secrets that caused her 

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deliberately to put a certain distance between them. Ayumi had excellent intuition. At 
least half of her easy openness was an act, behind which lurked a soft and sensitive 
vulnerability. Aomame knew this to be true. Her own defensiveness had probably 
saddened Ayumi, making her feel rejected and distanced. The thought was like a 
needle stabbing Aomame in the chest. 
And so Ayumi had been murdered. She had probably met a man in the city, had 
drinks with him, and gone to the hotel. Then, in the dark, sealed room, their elaborate 
sex game had begun. Handcuffs, a gag, a blindfold. Aomame could picture the scene. 
The man tightened the sash of his bathrobe around the woman’s neck, and as he 
watched her writhe in agony, his excitement mounted until he ejaculated. But the man 
tightened the sash with too much force. What was supposed to have ended at the point 
of crisis did not end. 
Ayumi must have feared that such a thing might happen. She needed intense sexual 
activity at regular intervals. Her flesh needed it—and so, perhaps, did her mind. Like 
Aomame, she did not want a regular lover. But Ayumi tended to wade in deeper than 
Aomame. She preferred wilder, riskier sex, and perhaps, unconsciously, she wanted to 
be hurt. Aomame was different. She was more cautious, and she refused to be hurt by 
anyone. She would fiercely resist if a man tried such a thing; but Ayumi tended to 
respond to a man’s desire, whatever it might be, and she looked forward to finding out 
what he would give her in return. It was a dangerous tendency. These sexual partners 
of hers were, ultimately, passing strangers. It was impossible to find out what desires 
they possessed, what tendencies they were hiding, until the critical moment. Ayumi 
herself recognized the danger, of course, which was why she needed a stable partner 
like Aomame—someone to put on the brakes and watch over her with care. 
In her own way, Aomame, too, needed Ayumi, who possessed abilities that she 
herself happened to lack—an open, cheerful personality that put people at ease, a 
friendly manner, a natural curiosity, a positive attitude, a talent for interesting 
conversation, large breasts that attracted attention. All Aomame had to do was stay 
next to Ayumi with a mysterious smile on her face. The men would want to find out 
what lay behind that smile. In that sense, Aomame and Ayumi were an ideal team—
an invincible sex machine.