After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

What’s going on? This man came here searching for me. He’s probably a 
member of Sakigake. No doubt at all he’s a skilled pursuer. I mean, he was able to 
follow the trail all the way from the Azabu mansion to here. For all that, there he is 
now, defenseless, exposed, staring vacantly at the night sky
. 
Aomame stealthily rose to her feet, slid open the glass door a crack, slipped inside, 
and sat down in front of the phone. With trembling hands she began dialing Tamaru’s 
number. She had to report this to him—that she could see Bobblehead from where she 
was, on top of a slide in a playground across the street. Tamaru would decide what to 
do, and would no doubt deftly handle the situation. But after punching in the first four 
numbers she stopped, the receiver clutched in her hand, and bit her lip. 
It’s too soon
, Aomame thought. 
There are still too many things we don’t know 
about this man. If Tamaru simply sees him as a risk factor and
takes care of him, 
all 
those
things we don’t know about him 
will remain unknown. Come to think of it, the 
man is doing exactly what Tengo did the other day. The same slide, the same pose, the 
same part of the sky, as if he’s retracing Tengo’s movements. He must be seeing the 
two moons as well
. Aomame understood this. 
Maybe this man and Tengo are linked 
in some way. And maybe this man hasn’t noticed yet that I’m hiding out in an 
apartment in this building, which is why he’s sitting there, defenseless, his back to me
. 
The more she thought about it, the more persuasive she found this theory. 
If that’s 

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712
true, then following the man might lead me right to Tengo. Instead of searching me 
out, this guy can serve as my guide
. The thought made her heart contract even more, 
and then start to pound. She laid down the phone. 
I’ll tell Tamaru about it later
, she decided. 
There’s something I have to do first. 
Something risky, because it involves the pursued following the pursuer. And this man 
is no doubt a pro. But even so I can’t let this golden opportunity slip by. This may be 
my last chance. And from the way he looks, he seems to be in a bit of a daze, at least 
for the moment
. 
She hurried into the bedroom, opened the dresser drawer, and took out the Heckler 
& Koch semiautomatic. She flicked off the safety, racked a round into the chamber, 
and reset it. She stuffed the pistol into the back of her jeans and went out to the 
balcony again. Bobblehead was still there, staring at the sky. His misshapen head was 
perfectly still. He seemed totally captivated by what he was seeing in the sky. 
Aomame knew how he felt. 
That was most definitely a captivating sight
. 
Aomame went back inside and put on a down jacket and a baseball cap. And a pair 
of nonprescription glasses with a simple black frame, enough to give her face a 
different appearance. She wound a gray muffler around her neck and put her wallet 
and apartment key in her pocket. She ran down the stairs and went out of the building. 
The soles of her sneakers were silent as she stepped out on the asphalt. It had been so 
long since she had felt hard, steady ground beneath her feet, and the feeling 
encouraged her. 
As she walked down the road she checked that Bobblehead was still in the same 
place. The temperature had dropped significantly after the sun had set, but there was 
still no wind. She actually found the cold pleasant. Her breath white, Aomame walked 
as silently as she could past the entrance to the park. Bobblehead showed no sign that 
he had noticed her. His gaze was fixed straight up from the slide, on the sky. From 
where she was, Aomame couldn’t see them, but she knew that at the end of his gaze 
there were two moons—one large, one small. No doubt they were snuggled up close 
to each other in the freezing, cloudless sky. 
She passed by the park, and when she got to the next corner, she turned and 
retraced her steps. She hid in the shadows and watched the man on the slide. The 
pistol against her back was as hard and cold as death, and the feeling soothed her. 
She waited five minutes. Bobblehead slowly got to his feet, brushed off his coat, 
and gazed up one more time at the sky. Then, as if he had made up his mind, he 
clambered down the steps of the slide. He left the park and walked off in the direction 
of the station. Shadowing him wasn’t particularly hard. There were few people on a 
residential street on a Sunday night, and even keeping her distance, she wouldn’t lose 
him. He also had not the slightest suspicion that someone was observing him. He 
never looked back, kept walking at a set pace, the pace people keep when they’re 
preoccupied.