After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Strange
, Aomame thought. 
The thunder is so 
close, but the lightning doesn’t flash. And no rain is falling
. 
“Have I managed to make myself clear thus far?” 
“I’m listening,” she said, having already moved the needle away from the spot on 
his neck. Now she had it pointed cautiously toward empty space. She had to 
concentrate all her attention on what he was saying. 
Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must 
be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow. Karl Jung 
said this about ‘the Shadow’ in one of his books: ‘It is as evil as we are positive … the 
more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow 
develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive.… The fact is that if one 
tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and becomes 
the devil. For it is just as sinful from the standpoint of nature and of truth to be above 
oneself as to be below oneself.’ 
“We do not know if the so-called Little People are good or evil. This is, in a sense, 
something that surpasses our understanding and our definitions. We have lived with 
them since long, long ago—from a time before good and evil even existed, when 
people’s minds were still benighted. But the important thing is that, whether they are 
good or evil, light or shadow, whenever they begin to exert their power, a 
compensatory force comes into being. In my case, when I became an ‘agent’ of the 
so-called Little People, my daughter became something like an agent for those forces 
opposed to the Little People. In this way, the balance was maintained.” 
“Your daughter?” 
“Yes, the first one to usher in the so-called Little People was my daughter. She was 
ten years old at the time. Now she is seventeen. The Little People emerged from the 
darkness at some point, coming here through her, and they made me their agent. My 
daughter became a Perceiver and I became a Receiver. Apparently we were suited to 
such roles by nature. In any case, 
they
found 
us
. We did not find them.” 
“And so you raped your own daughter.” 
“I had congress with her,” he said. “That expression is closer to the truth. And the 
one I had congress with was, strictly speaking, my daughter as a concept. ‘To have 
congress with’ is an ambiguous term. The essential point was for us to become one—
as Perceiver and Receiver.” 
Aomame shook her head. “I can’t understand what you are saying. Did you have 
sex with your daughter or didn’t you?” 
“The answer to that question is, finally, both yes and no.” 
“Is this true of little Tsubasa as well?” 
“Yes, in principle.” 
“But Tsubasa’s uterus was destroyed—not ‘in principle’ but in reality.” 

---

408
The man shook his head. “What you saw was the outward manifestation of a 
concept, not an actual substance.” 
Aomame was unable to follow the swift flow of the conversation. She paused to 
bring her breathing under control. Then she asked, “Are you saying that a concept 
took on human shape and ran away on its own two feet?” 
“To put it simply.” 
“The Tsubasa I laid eyes on was not actual substance?” 
“Which is why she was retrieved.” 
“Retrieved,” Aomame said. 
“She was retrieved and is now being healed. She is receiving the treatment she 
needs.” 
“I don’t believe you,” Aomame declared. 
“I can’t blame you,” the man said without emotion. 
Aomame was at a loss to say anything for a time. Then she asked another question. 
“By violating your daughter, conceptually and ambiguously, you became an agent of 
the Little People. But simultaneously, your daughter compensated by leaving you and 
becoming, as it were, an opponent of the Little People. Is this what you are 
asserting?” 
“That is correct. And in order to do so, she had to leave her own