After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Why did this happen?
he wondered, finding it odd. 
And what could it possibly mean?
After about ten minutes, he finally took the materials out of the envelopes, which 
had been sealed with several layers of adhesive tape. The inside was stuffed with a 
jumble of printouts, photocopies, and original documents. Ushikawa didn’t know how 
Bat had accomplished it, but he had certainly come up with a lot of material in such a 
short time. As always, the man did an impressive job. Still, faced with that bundle of 
documents, Ushikawa was hit by a deep sense of impotence. No matter how much he 
might rustle around in it, would he ever arrive anywhere? Or would he spend a small 
fortune just to wind up with a stack of wastepaper? The sense of powerlessness he 
experienced was so deep that he could stare as much as he wanted into the well and 
never get a glimpse of its bottom. Everything Ushikawa could see was covered in a 
gloomy twilight, like an intimation of death. 
Perhaps this was due to something that 
woman left behind
, he thought. 
Or perhaps due to something she took away with her
. 
Somehow, though, Ushikawa recovered his strength. He patiently went through the 
stack of materials until evening, copying the information he felt was important into a 
notebook, organizing it under different categories. By concentrating on this, he was 
able to dispel the mysterious listlessness that had grabbed hold of him. And by the 
time it grew dark and he switched on his desk lamp, Ushikawa was thinking that the 
information had been worth every yen he had paid for it. 

---

583
He began by reading through the material from the sports club. Aomame was a highly 
skilled trainer, popular with the members. Along with teaching general classes, she 
was also a personal trainer. Looking through the copies of the daily schedule he could 
figure out when, where, and how she trained these private clients. Sometimes she 
trained them individually at the club, sometimes she went to their homes. Among the 
names of her clients was a well-known entertainer, and a politician. The dowager of 
the Willow House, Shizue Ogata, was her oldest client. 
Her connection with Shizue Ogata began not long after Aomame started working 
at the club four years earlier, and continued until just before she disappeared. This 
was exactly the same period during which the two-story apartment building at the 
Willow House became a safe house for victims of domestic violence. Maybe it was a 
coincidence, but maybe not. At any rate, according to the records, their relationship 
appeared to have deepened over time. 
Perhaps a personal bond had grown between Aomame and the old dowager. 
Ushikawa’s intuition sensed this. At first it started out as the relationship between a 
sports club instructor and a client, but at a certain point, the nature of this relationship 
changed. As Ushikawa went through the businesslike descriptions in chronological 
order, he tried to pinpoint that moment. Something happened that transformed their 
relationship beyond that of mere instructor and client. They formed a close personal 
relationship that transcended the difference in age and status. This may even have led 
to some secret emotional understanding between the two, a secret understanding that 
eventually led Aomame down the path to murder Leader at the Hotel Okura. 
Ushikawa’s sense of smell told him so. 
But what 
was
that path? And what secret understanding did they have? 
That was as far as Ushikawa’s conjectures could take him. 
Most likely, domestic violence was one factor in it. At first glance this seemed to 
be a critical theme for the older woman. According to the records, the first time 
Shizue Ogata came in contact with Aomame was at a self-defense class. It wasn’t 
very common for a woman in her seventies to take a self-defense class. Something 
connected with violence must have brought the old lady and Aomame together. 
Or maybe Aomame herself had been the victim of domestic violence. And Leader 
had committed domestic violence. Perhaps they found out about this and decided to 
punish him. But these were all simply hypotheses, and these hypotheses didn’t square 
with the image Ushikawa had of Leader. Certainly people, no matter who they are, 
have something hidden deep down inside, and Leader was a deeper person than most. 
He was, after all, the driving force behind a major religious organization. Wise and 
intelligent, he also had depths no one else could access. But say he really had 
committed domestic violence? Would these acts have been so significant to these 
women that, when they learned of them, they planned out a meticulous 
assassination—one of them giving up her identity, the other risking her social 
standing? 
One thing was for sure: the murder of Leader was not carried out on a whim. 
Behind it stood an unwavering will, a clear-cut, unclouded motivation, and an 
elaborate system—a system that had been meticulously crafted using a great deal of 
time and money. 

---

584
The problem was that there was no concrete proof to back up his conjectures. What 
Ushikawa had before him was nothing more than circumstantial evidence based on 
theories. Something that Occam’s razor could easily prune away. At this stage he 
couldn’t report anything to Sakigake. Still, he knew he was on to something. There 
was a certain smell to it, a distinctive texture. All the elements pointed in a single 
direction. Something to do with domestic violence made the dowager direct Aomame 
to kill Leader and then hide her away. Indirectly, all the information Bat had provided 
him supported this conclusion. 
Plowing through the materials dealing with the Witnesses took a long time. There 
were an enormous number of documents, most of them useless to Ushikawa. The 
majority of the materials were reports on what Aomame’s family had contributed to 
the activities of the Witnesses. As far as these documents were concerned, Aomame’s 
family were earnest, devout followers. They had spent the better part of their lives 
propagating the religion’s message. Her parents presently resided in Ichikawa, in 
Chiba Prefecture. In thirty-five years they had moved twice, both times within 
Ichikawa. Her father, Takayuki Aomame (58), worked in an engineering firm, while 
her mother, Yasuko (56), wasn’t employed. The couple’s eldest son, Keiichi Aomame 
(34), had worked in a small printing company in Tokyo after graduating from a 
prefectural high school in Ichikawa, but after three years he quit the company and 
began working at the Witnesses’ headquarters in Odawara. There he also worked in 
printing, making pamphlets for the religion, and was now a supervisor. Five years 
earlier he had married a woman who was also a member of the Witnesses. They had 
two children and rented an apartment in Odawara. 
The record for the eldest daughter, Masami Aomame, ended when she was eleven. 
That was when she abandoned the faith. And the Witnesses seemed to have no 
interest at all in anyone who had left the faith. To the Witnesses, it was the same as if 
Masami Aomame had died at age eleven. After this, there wasn’t a single detail about 
what sort of life she led—not even whether or not she was alive.