After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Tengo you are back from the cat town and are reading this letter that’s good
So wrote Fuka-Eri in her letter. But this apartment he had returned to was under 
surveillance. There could even be a hidden camera right here in the room. Anxious 
now that he had thought of this, Tengo scoured every corner of the apartment. But he 
found no hidden camera, no electronic bugs. This was, after all, an old, tiny, one-
room unit, and anything like that would be next to impossible to keep hidden. 
Tengo kept typing his manuscript until it grew dark. It took him much longer than 
he expected because he rewrote parts as he typed. He stopped for a moment to turn on 
the desk lamp and realized that the crow hadn’t come by today. He could tell when it 
came by from the sound, the large wings rubbing against the window. It left behind 
faint smudge marks on the glass, like a code waiting to be deciphered. 
At five thirty he made a simple dinner. He wasn’t that hungry, but he had barely 
eaten anything for lunch. 
Best to get something in my stomach
, he figured. He made a 
tomato and wakame salad and ate a slice of toast. At six fifteen he pulled on a black, 
high-neck sweater and an olive-green corduroy blazer and left the apartment. As he 
exited the front door he stopped and looked around again, but nothing caught his 
eye—no man hiding in the shadows of a telephone pole, no suspicious-looking car 
parked nearby. Even the crow wasn’t there. But this made Tengo all the more uneasy. 
All the seemingly benign things around him seemed to be watching him. Who knew if 

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the people around—the housewife with her shopping basket; the silent old man taking 
his dog for a walk; the high school students, tennis rackets slung over their shoulders, 
pedaling by, ignoring him—might be part of a cleverly disguised Sakigake 
surveillance team. 
I’m being paranoid
, Tengo told himself. 
I need to be careful, but it’s no good to 
get overly jumpy
. He hurried on toward the station, shooting an occasional glance 
behind him to make sure he wasn’t being followed. If he was being shadowed, Tengo 
was sure he would know it. His peripheral vision was better than most people’s, and 
he had excellent eyesight. After glancing back three times, he was certain that there 
was no one tailing him. 
He arrived at the bar at five minutes before seven. Komatsu was not there yet, and 
Tengo was the first customer of the evening. A lush arrangement of bright flowers 
was in a large vase on the counter and the smell of freshly cut greenery wafted toward 
him. Tengo sat in a booth in the back and ordered a draft beer. He took a paperback 
out of the pocket of his jacket and began reading. 
Komatsu came at seven fifteen. He had on a tweed jacket, a light cashmere 
sweater, a cashmere muffler, wool trousers, and suede shoes. His 
usual outfit
. High-
quality, tasteful clothes, nicely worn out. When he wore these, the clothes looked like 
he had been born in them. Maybe any new clothes he bought he then slept in and 
rolled around in. Maybe he washed them over and over and laid them out to dry in the 
shade. Only once they were broken in and faded would he wear them in front of 
others. At any rate, the clothes did make him look like a veteran editor. From the way 
he was dressed, that was the only possible thing he 
could
be. Komatsu sat down 
across from Tengo and also ordered a draft beer. 
“You seem the same as ever,” Komatsu commented. “How is the new novel 
coming?” 
“I’m getting there, slowly but surely.” 
“I’m glad to hear it. Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like 
caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves. It’s like I told you—taking on the rewrite of