After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Not bad at all
, she had said. 
They are actually very nice. You should have more confidence
. That had made 
Aomame happy. She was just entering puberty, and her friend’s warm words calmed 
her. 
Maybe I’m not as ugly as my mother said I was
, she began to think. But even 
Tamaki had never called her 
beautiful
. 
Now, however, for the first time in her life, Aomame saw something beautiful in 
her face. She was able to sit in front of the mirror longer than ever before and 
examine her face more thoroughly. She wasn’t being narcissistic. She inspected her 
face from a number of angles, as if it were somebody else’s. Had she really become 
beautiful? Or was it her way of appreciating everything that had changed, not her face 
itself? Aomame couldn’t decide. 
Occasionally she would put on a big frown in the mirror. Her frowning face looked 
the same as it always had. The muscles in her face stretched in all directions, her 
features unraveled, each distinct from the other. All possible emotions in the world 
gushed out from her face. It was neither beautiful nor ugly. From one angle she 
looked demonic, from a different angle comic. And from yet another angle her face 
was a chaotic jumble. When she stopped frowning her facial muscles gradually 
relaxed, like ripples vanishing on the surface of water, and her usual features returned. 
And then Aomame discovered a new, slightly different version of herself. 
“You should smile more naturally,” Tamaki had often told her. “Your features are 
gentle when you smile, so it’s a shame that you don’t do so more often.” But 
Aomame could never smile easily, or casually, in front of people. When she forced it, 
she ended up with a tight sneer, which made others even more tense and 
uncomfortable. Tamaki was different: she had a natural, cheerful smile. People 
meeting her for the first time immediately felt friendly toward her. In the end, though, 
disappointment and despair drove Tamaki to take her own life, leaving Aomame—
who couldn’t manage a decent smile—behind. 
It was a quiet Sunday. The warm sunshine had led many people to the playground 
across the road. Parents stood around, their children playing in the sandbox or on the 
swings. Some kids were playing on the slide. Elderly people sat on the benches, 

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intently watching the children at play. Aomame went out on her balcony, sat on her 
garden chair, and half-heartedly watched through a gap in the screen. It was a 
peaceful scene. Time was marching on in the world. Nobody there was under threat of 
death, nobody there was on the trail of a killer. Nobody there had a fully loaded 9mm 
automatic pistol wrapped in tights in her dresser drawer. 
Will I ever be able to participate in that quiet, normal world again?
Aomame 
asked herself. 
Will there ever come a day when I can lead this
little one 
by the hand, 
go to the park, and let it play on the swings, on the slides? Lead my daily life without 
thinking about who I will kill next, or who will kill me? Is that possible in this 1Q84 
world? Or is it only possible in some other world? And most important of all—will 
Tengo be beside me?
Aomame stopped looking at the park and went back inside. She closed the sliding 
glass door and shut the curtains. She couldn’t hear the children’s voices now and a 
sadness tugged at her. She was cut off from everything, stuck in a place that was 
locked from the inside. 
I’ll stop watching the playground during the day. Tengo won’t 
come in the daytime
. What he was looking for was a clear view of the two moons. 
After she had a simple dinner and washed the dishes, Aomame dressed warmly and 
went out on the balcony once more. She lay the blanket on her lap and sank back in 
the chair. It was a windless night. The kind of clouds that watercolor artists like 
lingered faintly in the sky, a test of the artist’s delicate brushstrokes. The larger moon, 
which was not blocked by the clouds, was two-thirds full and shone bright, distinct 
light down on the earth below. At this time of evening, from where she sat Aomame 
couldn’t see the second, smaller moon. It was just behind a building, but Aomame 
knew