After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

The poor Gilyaks!
Fuka-Eri had said. 
Tengo thought of Fuka-Eri’s face as she slept. She had fallen asleep wearing 
Tengo’s too-large pajamas, the sleeves and cuffs rolled up. He had lifted them from 
the washing machine, held them to his nose, and smelled them. 
I can’t let myself think about that!
Tengo told himself, but it was already too late. 
The semen surged out of him in multiple violent convulsions and into his 
girlfriend’s mouth. She took it in until he finished, then stepped out of bed and went 
to the bathroom. He heard her open the spigot, run the water, and rinse her mouth. 
Then, as if it had been nothing at all, she came back to the bed. 
“Sorry,” Tengo said. 
“I guess you couldn’t stop yourself,” she said, caressing his nose with her fingertip. 
“That’s okay, it’s no big deal. Did it feel 
that
good?” 
“Fantastic,” he said. “I think I can do it again in a few minutes.” 
“I can hardly wait,” she said, pressing her cheek against Tengo’s bare chest. She 
closed her eyes, keeping very still. Tengo could feel the soft breath from her nose 
against his nipple. 
“Can you guess what your chest reminds me of when I see it?” she asked Tengo. 
“No idea.” 
“A castle gate in a Kurosawa samurai movie.” 

---

246
“A castle gate,” Tengo said, caressing her back. 
“You know, like in 
Throne of Blood
or 
Hidden Fortress
. There’s always a big, 
sturdy castle gate in those old black-and-white movies of his, all covered with these 
huge iron rivets. That’s what I think of. Thick, solid …” 
“I don’t have any rivets, though.” 
“I hadn’t noticed,” she said. 
Fuka-Eri’s 
Air Chrysalis
placed on the bestseller lists the second week after it went on 
sale, rising to number one on the fiction list in the third week. Tengo traced the 
process of the book’s ascent through the newspapers they kept in the cram school’s 
teachers’ lounge. Two ads for the book also appeared in the papers, featuring a photo 
of the book’s cover and a smaller shot of Fuka-Eri wearing the familiar tight-fitting 
summer sweater that showed off her breasts so beautifully (taken, no doubt, at the 
time of the press conference). Long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. Dark, 
enigmatic eyes looking straight at the camera. Those eyes seemed to peer through the 
lens and focus directly on something the viewer kept hidden deep in his heart, of 
which he was normally unaware. They did so neutrally but gently. This seventeen-
year-old girl’s unwavering gaze was disconcerting. It was just a small black-and-
white photograph, but the mere sight of it almost certainly prompted many people to 
buy the book. 
Komatsu had sent two copies of the book to Tengo a few days after it went on sale, 
but Tengo opened only the package, not the vinyl around the books themselves. True, 
the text inside the book was something he himself had written, and this was the first 
time his writing had taken the shape of a book, but he had no desire to open it and 
read it—or even glance at its pages. The sight of it gave him no joy. The sentences 
and paragraphs may have been his, but the story they comprised belonged entirely to 
Fuka-Eri. Her mind had given birth to it. His minor role as a secret technician had 
ended long before, and the work’s fate from this point onward had nothing to do with 
him. Nor should it. He shoved the two volumes into the back of his bookcase, out of 
sight, still wrapped in vinyl. 
For a while after the one night Fuka-Eri slept in his apartment, Tengo’s life flowed 
along uneventfully. It rained a lot, but Tengo paid almost no attention to the weather, 
which ranked far down on his list of priorities. From Fuka-Eri herself, he heard 
nothing. The lack of contact probably meant that she had no particular problems for 
him to solve. 
In addition to writing his novel every day, Tengo wrote a number of short pieces 
for magazines—anonymous jobs that anyone could do. They were a welcome change 
of pace, though, and the pay was good for the minimal effort involved. Three times a 
week, as usual, Tengo taught math at the cram school. He burrowed more deeply than 
ever into the world of mathematics in order to forget his concerns—issues involving