After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Not bad. So this guy is heading somewhere. It was worth tailing him after all
. 
Tengo quickly cut through a residential street. It was a Saturday night, with a cold 
wind blowing, so everyone else was inside, in front of the TV, enjoying a hot drink. 
The street was practically deserted. Ushikawa followed behind Tengo, making sure to 
keep enough distance between them. Tengo was an easy type of person to shadow. He 
was tall and big-boned, and wouldn’t get lost in a crowd. He just forged on ahead and 
didn’t get sidetracked. He was always looking slightly down, thinking. He was 
essentially a straightforward, honest man, not the type to hide anything. 
Totally 
different from me
, Ushikawa thought. 
Ushikawa’s wife had also liked to hide things. No—it wasn’t that she liked to hide 
things, she couldn’t help it. Ask her what time it was, and she probably wouldn’t tell 
you the correct time. Ushikawa wasn’t like this. He only hid things when it was 
necessary, only when it pertained to work. If someone asked him the time and there 
was no reason for him to be dishonest, he would tell them, and be nice about it. Not 
like his wife. She even lied about her age, shaving four years off. When they 
submitted the documents for their marriage license he found out how old she really 
was, but pretended not to notice. Ushikawa couldn’t fathom why she had to lie about 
something that was going to come out anyway. Who cared if his wife happened to be 
seven years older? 
As they got even farther from the station, there were fewer people on the street. 
Eventually Tengo turned into a little park, a nothing little playground in one corner of 
a residential district. The park was deserted. 
Of course it is
, Ushikawa thought. 
Who 
feels like spending time in a playground on a cold, windy December night?
Tengo 
passed under the cold light of a mercury-vapor lamp and headed straight toward the 
slide. He stepped onto it and climbed to the top. 
Ushikawa hid behind a phone booth and kept an eye on Tengo. A 
slide
? Ushikawa 
frowned. Why does a grown man have to climb to the top of a slide on a freezing cold 
night like this? This wasn’t near Tengo’s apartment. There must be some reason he 
would go out of his way to come here. It wasn’t exactly the most appealing 
playground. It was cramped and shabby. In addition to the slide there were two 
swings, a small jungle gym, and a sandbox. A single mercury-vapor lamp that looked 
like it had illuminated the end of the world more than a few times, a single crude, 
leafless zelkova tree. A locked-up public toilet was the perfect canvas for graffiti. 
There was not a thing in this park to warm people’s hearts, or to stimulate the 
imagination. Perhaps on a bracing May afternoon there might be something. But on a 
windy December night? Forget it. 

---

705
Was Tengo meeting up with somebody here? Waiting for somebody to show? 
Ushikawa didn’t think so. Tengo didn’t give any signs to indicate that he was looking 
for someone. When he entered the park, he ignored all the other equipment. The only 
thing on his mind seemed to be the slide. 
Tengo came here to climb up that slide
. 
Maybe he had always liked to sit on top of slides when he needed to think. Maybe 
the top of a slide in a park at night was the perfect place to think about the plot of the 
novel he was writing, or mathematical formulas. Maybe the darker it was, the colder 
the wind blew, the shabbier the park, the better he could think. What or how novelists 
(or mathematicians) thought was way beyond anything Ushikawa could imagine. His 
practical mind told him that he had to stay put, patiently keeping an eye on Tengo. 
His watch showed exactly eight p.m. 
Tengo sat down on top of the slide, as if folding his large frame. He looked up at 
the sky. He moved his head back and forth, then settled on a single spot, and gazed 
upward, his head still. 
Ushikawa recalled a sentimental old pop song by Kyu Sakamoto. It began: