After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

This can’t be real. From where she is, she can’t see anything. 
The telephoto lens is camouflaged, the sound of the shutter dampened by the towel 
wrapped around it, so there’s no way she could hear it from where she is
. Still, there 
she stood at the entrance, staring right at where he was hiding. That emotionless gaze 
of hers was unwavering as it stared straight at Ushikawa, like starlight shining on a 
nameless, massive rock. 
For a long time—Ushikawa had no idea just how long—the two of them stared at 
each other. Suddenly Fuka-Eri twisted around and strode through the entrance, as if 
she had seen all that she needed to see. After she disappeared, Ushikawa let all the air 
out of his lungs, waited a moment, then breathed fresh air in deeply. The chilled air 
became countless thorns, stinging his lungs. 
People were coming back, just like last night, passing under the light at the 
entrance, one after another. Ushikawa, though, was no longer gazing through his 
viewfinder. His hand was no longer holding the shutter remote. The girl’s open, 
unreserved gaze had plucked the strength right out of him—as if a long steel needle 
had been stabbed right into his chest, so deep it felt like it was coming out the other 
side. 

---

670
The girl 
knew
that he was secretly watching her, that she was being photographed 
by a hidden camera. He couldn’t say how, but Fuka-Eri knew this. Maybe she 
understood it through some special tactile sense she possessed. 
He really needed a drink, to fill a glass of whiskey to the brim and drink it down in 
one gulp. He considered going out to buy a bottle. There was a liquor store right 
nearby. But he gave it up—drinking wouldn’t change anything. On the other side of 
the viewfinder, she had seen him. 
That beautiful girl saw me, my misshapen head and 
dirty spirit, hiding here, secretly snapping photos
. Nothing could change that fact. 
Ushikawa left his camera, leaned back against the wall, and looked up at the 
stained ceiling. Soon everything struck him as empty. He had never felt so utterly 
alone, never felt the dark to be this intense. He remembered his house back in 
Chuorinkan, his lawn and his dog, his wife and two daughters, the sunlight shining 
there. And he thought of the DNA he had given to his daughters, the DNA for a 
misshapen head and a twisted soul. 
Everything he had done seemed pointless. He had used up all the cards he’d been 
dealt—not that great a hand to begin with. He had taken that lousy hand and used it as 
best he could to make some clever bets. For a time things looked like they were going 
to work out, but now he had run out of cards. The light at the table was switched off, 
and all the players had filed out of the room. 
That evening he didn’t take a single photo. Leaning against the wall, he smoked 
Seven Stars, and opened another can of peaches and ate it. At nine he went to the 
bathroom, brushed his teeth, tugged off his clothes, slipped into the sleeping bag, and, 
shivering, tried to sleep. The night was cold, but his shivering wasn’t just brought on 
by the cold alone. The chill seemed to be arising from inside his body. 
Where in the 
world did I come from?
he asked himself in the dark. 
And where the hell am I going?
The pain of her gaze still stabbed at him. Maybe it would never go away. 
Or was it 
always there
, he wondered, 
and I just didn’t notice it?
The next morning, after a breakfast of cheese and crackers washed down by instant 
coffee, he pulled himself together and sat back down in front of the camera. As he did 
the day before, he observed the people coming and going and took a few photos. 
Tengo and Fuka-Eri, though, were not among them. Instead it was more hunched-over 
people, carried by force of habit into the new day. The weather was fine, the wind 
strong. People’s white breath swirled away in the air.