After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 6 
Tengo 
WE HAVE VERY LONG ARMS 
The situation showed little development for a while. No one contacted Tengo. No 
messages arrived from Komatsu or Professor Ebisuno or Fuka-Eri. They all might 
have forgotten him and gone off to the moon. Tengo would have no problem with that 
if it were true, but things would never work out so conveniently for him. No, they had 
not gone to the moon. They just had a lot to do that kept them busy day after day, and 
they had neither the time nor the consideration to let Tengo know what they were up 
to. 
Tengo tried to read the newspaper every day, in keeping with Komatsu’s 
instructions, but—at least in the paper he read—nothing further about Fuka-Eri 
appeared. The newspaper industry actively sought out events that had already 
happened, but took a relatively passive attitude toward ongoing events. Thus, it 
probably carried the tacit message, “Nothing much is happening now.” Having no 
television himself, Tengo did not know how television news shows were handling the 
case. 
As for the weekly magazines, virtually all of them picked up the story. Not that 
Tengo actually read them. He just saw the magazine ads in the newspaper with their 
sensational headlines: “Truth about the enigmatic disappearance of the beautiful 
bestselling teenage author,” “
Air Chrysalis
author Fuka-Eri (17): Where did she 
disappear to?” “ ‘Hidden’ background of beautiful runaway teenage author.” Several 
of the ads even included Fuka-Eri’s photo, the one taken at the press conference. 
Tengo was, of course, not uninterested in what the articles might say, but he was not 
about to spend the money it would take to compile a complete set of weeklies. 
Komatsu would probably let him know if there was anything in them that he should 
be concerned about. The absence of contact meant that, for the moment, there had 
been no new developments. In other words, people had still not realized that 
Air 
Chrysalis
had (perhaps) been the product of a ghostwriter. 
Judging from the headlines, the media were focused on the identity of Fuka-Eri’s 
father as a once-famous radical activist, the fact that she had spent an isolated 
childhood in a commune in the hills of Yamanashi, and her present guardian, 
Professor Ebisuno (a formerly well-known intellectual). And even as the whereabouts 
of the beautiful, enigmatic teenage author remained a mystery, 
Air Chrysalis
continued to occupy the bestseller list. Such questions were enough to arouse people’s 
interest. 

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If it appeared that Fuka-Eri’s disappearance was going to drag on, however, it was 
probably just a matter of time until investigations would begin to probe into broader 
areas. Then things might get sticky. If anyone decided to look into Fuka-Eri’s 
schooling, for example, they might discover that she was dyslexic and, possibly for 
that reason, hardly went to school at all. Her grades in Japanese or her compositions 
(assuming she wrote any) might come out, and that might naturally lead to the 
question of how a dyslexic girl had managed to produce such sterling prose. It didn’t 
take a genius to imagine how, at that point, people might start wondering if she had 
had help. 
Such doubts would be brought to Komatsu first. He was the editor in charge of the 
story and had overseen everything regarding its publication. Komatsu would surely 
insist that he knew nothing about the matter. With a cool look on his face, he would 
maintain that his only role had been to pass the author’s manuscript on to the selection 
committee, that he had had nothing to do with the process of its creation. Komatsu 
was good at keeping a straight face when saying things he didn’t believe, though this 
was a skill mastered by all experienced editors to some degree. No sooner had he 
denied any knowledge of the deception than he would call Tengo and dramatically 
say something like, “Hey, Tengo, it’s starting: the heat is on,” as if he himself were 
enjoying the mess. 
And maybe he was. Tengo sometimes felt that Komatsu had a certain desire for 
self-destruction. Maybe deep down he was hoping to see the whole plan exposed, a 
big juicy scandal blow up, and all connected parties blasted into the sky. And yet, at 
the same time, Komatsu could be a hardheaded realist. He would be more likely to 
cast his desire aside than to sail over the edge toward destruction. 
Komatsu probably had it all figured out so that no matter what happened, he at 
least would survive. Just how he would manage it in this case, Tengo did not know, 
but Komatsu probably had his own clever ways of exploiting anything, be it a scandal 
or even total destruction. He was a shrewd player who was in no position to be 
criticizing Professor Ebisuno in that regard. But Tengo told himself with some 
confidence that Komatsu would be sure to contact him if clouds of suspicion began to 
appear on the horizon concerning the authorship of