After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Air Chrysalis
. So far, Tengo had 
merely functioned as a convenient and effective tool for Komatsu, but now he was 
also Komatsu’s Achilles’ heel. If Tengo were to disclose all the facts, that would put 
Komatsu in a terrible position, so Komatsu could not afford to ignore him. All Tengo 
had to do was wait for Komatsu to call; as long as there was no call, the “heat” was 
not “on.” 
Tengo was more interested in what Professor Ebisuno might be doing at the 
moment. No doubt he was making things happen with the police, hounding them with 
the possibility that Sakigake was involved in Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, exploiting the 
event to pry open the religious organization’s hard shell. But were the police moving 
in that direction? Yes, they probably were. The media were already foaming at the 
mouth over the relationship of Fuka-Eri and Sakigake. If the police did nothing and 
important facts later emerged along that line, they would be attacked for having failed 
to investigate. In any case, however, their investigation would be carried out behind 
the scenes, which meant that no substantial new information was to be gleaned from 
either the weekly magazines or TV news. 

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333
Coming home from the cram school one day, Tengo found a thick envelope shoved 
into his mailbox in the apartment building’s front entrance. It bore Komatsu’s name 
as sender, the logo of his publisher, and six special-delivery postmarks. Back in his 
apartment, Tengo opened it to find copies of all the latest reviews of 
Air Chrysalis
and a letter from Komatsu. Deciphering Komatsu’s scrawl took a good bit of time. 
Tengo– 
There have been no major developments so far. They still haven’t found Fuka-Eri. 
The weekly magazines and TV reports are mainly concentrating on the question of 
her birth and childhood, and fortunately the damage has not spread to us. The book 
keeps selling more and more, which may or may not be a cause for celebration, it’s 
hard to say. The company’s very happy, though, and the boss gave me a certificate of 
commendation and a cash bonus. I’ve been working for this publisher for over twenty 
years, but this is the first time he’s ever had anything nice to say about me. It kind of 
makes me want to see the look on their faces if they found out the truth. 
I am enclosing copies of reviews and other articles regarding 
Air Chrysalis
. Have a 
look at them for your own enlightenment when you get a chance. I think some of 
them will be of special interest to you, and a few will make you laugh—if you’re in 
the mood for laughing, that is. 
I had an acquaintance of mine look into that New Japan Foundation for the 
Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts we talked about. It was set up a few years 
ago, received government approval, and is now actively operating. It has an office and 
submits its annual financial reports. It awards grants to a number of scholars and 
writers each year—or so they claim. My source can’t tell where they get their money, 
and he finds the whole thing just plain fishy. It could be a front established as a tax 
write-off. A detailed investigation might turn up some more information, but we don’t 
have that kind of time and effort to spare. As I said to you when we last talked, I’m 
not quite convinced that a place like that wants to give three million yen to an 
unknown writer like you. There’s something going on behind the scenes, and we can’t 
discount the possibility that Sakigake has something to do with it. If so, it means 
they’ve sniffed out your connection to 
Air Chrysalis
. In any case, it makes sense for 
you to have nothing to do with that organization. 
Tengo returned Komatsu’s letter to the envelope. Why would Komatsu have 
bothered to write him a letter? It could simply be that, as long as he was sending the 
reviews, he put a letter in with them, but that was not like Komatsu. If he had 
something to tell Tengo, he would have done it on the phone as usual. A letter like 
this could remain as evidence in the future. Cautious Komatsu could not have failed to 
think about that. Or possibly Komatsu was less worried about evidence remaining 
than the possibility of a wiretap. 
Tengo looked over at his phone. A wiretap? It had never occurred to him that 
anyone might be tapping his phone. Though, come to think of it, no one had called 
him in the past week. Maybe it was common knowledge that this phone was being 
tapped. He had not even heard from his older girlfriend, who liked talking on the 
phone. That was very unusual. 
Even more unusual was the fact that she had not come to his apartment last Friday. 
She always called if something came up to prevent her from visiting him—say, her 

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334
child was home from school with a cold, or her period had started all of a sudden. 
That Friday, however, she had not contacted him; she simply never showed up. Tengo 
had prepared a simple lunch for them in anticipation of her arrival, but ended up 
spending the day alone. Perhaps she was stuck dealing with some emergency, but it 
was not normal not to have had the slightest word from her. Meanwhile, he was not 
able to contact her from his end. 
Tengo stopped thinking about both his girlfriend and the telephone. He sat at the 
kitchen table to read the book reviews in order. They had been assembled 
chronologically, the title of the newspaper or magazine and date of publication written 
in ballpoint pen in the upper left-hand corner. Komatsu must have had his part-time 
female assistant do it; he would never have undertaken such drudgery himself. Most 
of the reviews were positive. Many of the reviewers praised the story’s depth and 
boldness and acknowledged the precision of the style, several of them finding it 
“incredible” that the work had been written by a seventeen-year-old girl.