After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

I should go out and follow her. Tengo isn’t back yet, and I have the time to find out 
where she’s going. It couldn’t hurt to find out where she’s moving to
. But somehow 
Ushikawa couldn’t stand up from the floor. His body was numb. That sharp gaze she 
had sent through the viewfinder had robbed him of the strength he needed to take 
action. 
It’s okay
, Ushikawa told himself as he sat there on the floor. 
Aomame is the one I 
have to locate. Eriko Fukada is a fascinating girl, but she’s not my main priority here. 
She’s just a supporting actress. If she’s leaving, why not just let her go?
Once on the main street, Fuka-Eri hurried off toward the station. She didn’t look 
back. Through the gap in the sun-bleached curtains, Ushikawa watched as she went. 
Once the green shoulder bag, swinging back and forth, disappeared from view, he 
practically crawled away from the camera and leaned against the wall again, waiting 
for his strength to return. He took out a Seven Stars, lit it, and inhaled the smoke 
deeply. But the cigarette was tasteless. 
His strength didn’t return. His arms and legs still felt numb. He suddenly realized a 
strange space had formed inside him, a kind of pure hollow. This space signified a 
simple lack, a nothingness. Ushikawa sat there in the midst of this unknown void, 
unable to rise. He felt a dull pain in his chest—not exactly pain, but more like the 
difference in air pressure at the point where the material and the immaterial meet. 
He sat for a long time at the bottom of that void, leaning against the wall, smoking 
tasteless cigarettes. 
When that girl left, she left behind this void. No, maybe not. 
Maybe she just showed me something that was already there, inside me
. 

---

698
Ushikawa knew that Eriko Fukada had literally shaken him to his core. Her 
unwavering, pointed gaze shook him not only physically, but to the center of his 
being, like someone who had fallen passionately in love. He had never felt this way 
before in his life. 
No, that can’t be right
, he thought. 
Why should I be in love with that girl? We have 
to be the most ill-matched pair one could possibly imagine
. He didn’t need to check 
himself out in the mirror to confirm this. But it wasn’t just about looks. 
In every 
possible aspect
, he decided, 
no one is further removed from her than me
. Sexually, he 
wasn’t attracted to her. As far as sexual desire was concerned, a couple of times a 
month Ushikawa called a prostitute he knew, and that was enough. Call her up, have 
her over to a hotel room, and have sex—like going to the barber. 
It had to be something on a more spiritual level
, Ushikawa concluded. It was hard 
to accept, but Ushikawa and that lovely girl had—while staring at each other through 
opposite ends of the camouflaged telephoto lens—reached a kind of understanding 
that emanated from the deepest, darkest recesses of their beings. It had happened in an 
instant, yet they had laid bare their very souls. And then she had gone off, leaving 
Ushikawa behind, alone in this void. 
The girl knew I was secretly observing her through this telephoto lens, and she 
must have known, too, that I followed her to the supermarket near the station. She 
never looked back even once then, but she definitely knew I was there
. But he hadn’t 
seen any criticism in her eyes. Ushikawa felt that somehow, in some far-off, deep 
place, she had understood him. 
The girl had shown up, then left. 
We came from different directions, our paths