After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

losing something
, are you not?” 
Tengo wondered if this man could be dropping hints about Kyoko Yasuda. Perhaps 
he knew that they had been meeting here once a week, and that recently something 
had caused her to leave him. 
“You seem to know a great deal about my private life,” Tengo said. 
“No, not at all,” Ushikawa insisted. “I’m just talking about life in general. Really. I 
know very little about your private life.” 
Tengo remained silent. 
“Please, Mr. Kawana,” Ushikawa said with a sigh, “be so good as to accept our 
grant. Frankly speaking, you are in a rather precarious position. We can back you up 
in a pinch. We can throw you a life preserver. If things go on like this, you might find 
yourself in an inextricable situation.” 
“An inextricable situation,” Tengo said. 
“Exactly.” 
“Can you tell me specifically what kind of ‘situation’ you mean?” 
Ushikawa paused momentarily. Then he said, “Believe me, Mr. Kawana, there are 
things it is better not to know. Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep. 
Green tea is no match for these things. They might take restful sleep away from you 
forever. What I, uh, want to say to you is this. Think about it this way: it’s as if you 
opened a special spigot and let a special something out before you knew what was 
happening, and it’s having an effect on the people around you—a rather less-than-
desirable effect.” 
“Do the Little People have anything to do with this?” 
It was a shot in the dark, but it shut Ushikawa up for a while. His was a heavy 
silence, like a black stone sunk to the bottom of a deep body of water. 
“I want to know the truth, Mr. Ushikawa. Let’s stop throwing riddles at each other 
and talk more concretely. What has happened to her?” 
“ ‘Her’? I don’t know what you mean.” 
Tengo sighed. This was too delicate a matter to discuss on the phone. 
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kawana, but I’m just a messenger sent by my client. For now, my 
job is to speak of fundamental matters as indirectly as possible,” Ushikawa said 
circumspectly. “I’m sorry if I seem to be deliberately tantalizing you, but I’m only 
allowed to talk about this in the vaguest terms. And, to tell you the truth, my own 
knowledge of the matter is quite limited. In any case, though, I really don’t know 
anything about ‘her,’ whoever she might be. You’ll have to be a little more specific.” 
“All right, then, who are the Little People?” 
“Again, Mr. Kawana, I don’t know anything at all about these ‘Little People’—or 
at least nothing more than that they appear in the book 
Air Chrysalis
. I will tell you 
this, however: judging from the drift of your remarks, it seems to me that you have let 
something out of the bag before you yourself knew what it was all about. That can be 
awfully dangerous under certain circumstances. My client knows very well just how 
dangerous it is and what kind of danger it poses, and they have a degree of 
understanding regarding how to deal with the danger, which is precisely why we have 

---

341
tried to extend a helping hand to you. To put it quite bluntly, we have very long 
arms—long and strong.” 
“Who is this ‘client’ you keep mentioning? Someone connected with Sakigake?” 
“Unfortunately, I have not been granted the authority to divulge any names,” 
Ushikawa said with what sounded like genuine regret. “I can say, however, without 
going into detail, that they have their own very special power. Formidable power. We 
can stand behind you. Please understand—this is our final offer. You are free to take 
it or leave it. Once you make up your mind, however, there is no going back. So 
please think about it very carefully. And let me say this: if you are not on their side, 
regrettably, under certain circumstances, their long arms could, when extended, have 
certain undesirable—though unintended—effects on you.” 
“What kind of ‘undesirable effects’?” 
Ushikawa did not immediately reply to Tengo’s question. Instead, Tengo heard 
what sounded like the faint sucking of saliva at both sides of Ushikawa’s mouth. 
“I don’t know the exact answer to that,” Ushikawa said. “They haven’t told me 
anything specific, which is why I am speaking in generalities.” 
“So, what is it that I supposedly let out of the bag?” Tengo asked. 
“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” Ushikawa said. “At the risk of repeating 
myself, I am nothing but a hired negotiator. By the time the full reservoir of 
information reaches me, it’s squeezed down to a few droplets. All I’m doing is 
passing on to you exactly what my client has told me to with the limited authority I 
have been granted. You may wonder why the client doesn’t just contact you directly, 
which would speed things up, and why they have to use this strange man as an 
intermediary, but I don’t know any better than you do.” 
Ushikawa cleared his throat and waited for another question, but when there was 
none, he continued, “Now, Mr. Kawana, you were asking what it is that you let out of 
the bag, right?” 
Tengo said yes, that was right. 
“Well, Mr. Kawana, I’m not sure why exactly, but I can’t help wondering if it 
might be something for which a third party couldn’t offer a simple solution. I suspect 
it’s something you would need to go out on your own and work up a sweat to find out. 
And it could very well be that after you’ve gone through all that and reached a point 
where you’ve figured out the answer, it’s too late. To me, it seems obvious that you 
have a, uh, very special talent—a superior and beautiful talent, a talent that ordinary 
people do not possess. Which is precisely why your recent accomplishment carries an 
authority that cannot be easily overlooked. And my client appears to value that talent 
of yours very highly. That is why we are offering you this grant. Unfortunately, 
however, sheer talent is not enough. And depending upon how you look at it, 
possessing an outstanding talent that is not sufficient may be more dangerous than 
possessing nothing at all. That is my impression, however vague, of the recent 
matter.” 
“So what you are saying, then, is that your client has sufficient knowledge and 
ability to tell about such things.” 
“Hmm, I really can’t say about that, don’t you think? I mean, nobody can ever 
declare whether such qualities are ‘sufficient.’ ” 
“Why do they need me?” 

---

342
“If I may use the analogy of epidemic, you people may be playing the role of—
pardon me—the main carriers of a disease.” 
“ ‘You people?’ ” Tengo said. “Are you talking about Eriko Fukada and me?” 
Ushikawa did not answer the question. “Uh, if I may use a classical analogy here, 
you people might have opened Pandora’s box and let loose all kinds of things in the 
world. This seems to be what my client thinks you’ve done, judging from my own 
impressions. The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out 
to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make 
up for what the other lacked.” 
“But that’s not a crime in any legal sense.” 
“That is true. It is not, of course, a, uh, crime in any legal sense, or in any this-
worldly sense. If I may be allowed to quote from George Orwell’s great classic, 
however—or, rather, from his novel as a great source of quotations—it is very close 
to what he called a ‘thought crime.’ By an odd coincidence, this year just happens to 
be 1984. Shall we call it a stroke of fate? But I seem to have been talking a bit too 
much tonight, Mr. Kawana. And most of what I have been saying is nothing but my 
own clumsy guesswork, pure speculation, without any firm evidence to support it. 
Because you asked, I have given you my general impressions, that is all.” 
Ushikawa fell silent, and Tengo started thinking.