After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Oh, no, what am I doing?
she thought. 
Talking about love to this man I’m about to 
kill!
As a breeze sends ripples over the surface of a quiet pond, a faint smile spread 
across the man’s face, conveying a natural and even friendly emotion. 
“Do you think that love is all a person needs?” he asked. 
“I do.” 
“Now, this ‘love’ of yours—does it have a particular individual as its object?” 
“It does,” Aomame said. “It is directed toward a specific man.” 
“Powerless, puny flesh and an absolute love free of shadows …,” he murmured. 
Then, after a brief pause, he added, “You don’t seem to have any need for religion.” 
“Maybe I don’t have any need.” 
“Because your attitude is itself the very essence of religion, as it were.” 
“You said before that religion offers not so much truth as beautiful hypotheses. 
Where does that leave the religion that you head?” 
“To tell you the truth, I don’t consider what I do to be a religious activity,” the man 
said. “What I am doing is listening to the voices and transmitting them to people. I am 
the only one who can hear the voices. That I can hear them is an unmistakable truth, 
but I can’t prove that their messages 
are
the truth. All I can do is to embody their 
accompanying traces of heavenly grace.” 
Lightly biting her lip, Aomame set down her towel. She wanted to ask what kinds 
of grace he was talking about, but she stopped herself. This could go on forever. She 
still had an important task she had to complete. 
“Can you lie facedown again? I’m going to work on loosening up your neck 
muscles,” Aomame said. 
The man stretched out his huge frame again on the yoga mat and presented the 
back of his thick neck to Aomame. 
“In any case, you have a 
magic touch
,” he said, using the English expression. 
“
Magic touch?
” 
“Fingers that give off extraordinary power. An acute sense for locating those 
special points on the body. A special capacity that is granted to very few individuals. 
This is not something you can learn through study and practice. I have something—a 

---

388
very different kind of something—that came to me in the same way. But as with all 
forms of heavenly grace, people have to pay a price for the gifts they are given.” 
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Aomame said. “I simply developed my 
techniques through study and a lot of practice. They were not ‘granted’ to me by 
anybody.” 
“I’m not going to get involved in a debate with you. Just remember this: the gods 
give, and the gods take away. Even if you are not aware of having been granted what 
you possess, the gods remember what they gave you. They don’t forget a thing. You 
should use the abilities you have been granted with the utmost care.” 
Aomame looked at her ten fingers. Then she placed them on the back of the man’s 
neck, concentrating all her awareness into her fingertips. The gods give, and the gods 
take away. 
“I’ll be through soon. This is the finishing touch,” she announced drily to the 
man’s back. 
She seemed to hear thunder in the distance. She raised her face and looked out the 
window. There was nothing to see but the dark sky. Again the sound came, 
reverberating hollowly in the quiet room. 
“It is going to rain any time now,” the man declared in a voice without feeling. 
Hands on the back of the man’s thick neck, Aomame searched for the special spot. 
This required unusual powers of concentration. She closed her eyes, held her breath, 
and listened for the flow of his blood there. Her fingertips strained to read detailed 
information from the elasticity of his skin and the conduction of his body heat. There 
was only one special spot, and it was exceptionally small. On some people, it was 
easy to find, but much more difficult on others. This man they called “Leader” was 
clearly the latter type. This was like trying to find a single coin in a pitch-dark room 
entirely by feel, while taking care not to make any sound. At last, however, she found 
it. She placed her fingertip on it and engraved the feel and its precise position into her 
mind as though marking a map, a special ability that had been imparted to her. 
“Please stay in that exact position,” Aomame said to the man as he lay there prone. 
She reached out for the gym bag lying next to them and from it took out the hard case 
holding the little ice pick. 
“One spot is left on the back of your neck where the flow is still blocked,” 
Aomame said calmly, “and I can’t seem to resolve it with only the strength of my 
fingers. If I can remove the blockage in this one place, it should give you great relief 
from your pain. I want to place one simple acupuncture needle there. Don’t worry, 
I’ve done this any number of times. Do you mind?” 
The man released a deep breath. “I am leaving it entirely up to you. I will accept 
anything from you that will erase the pain I am feeling.” 
She took the ice pick from the case and slipped the cork from its tip. The point had 
its usual deadly sharpness. She held the ice pick in her left hand and used the index 
finger of her right hand to locate the point she had found earlier. This was the spot, 
without the slightest doubt. She placed the point against the spot and took a deep 
breath. Now all she needed to do was bring her right hand down on the handle like a 

---

389
hammer and drive the needle’s exceedingly fine point deep into the spot. Then it 
would all be over. 
But