After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

legal 
heir
. He didn’t use any other terms. I remember this because I found it odd.” 
Tengo was silent. The lawyer collected himself and spoke up. 
“But you have to understand that Mr. Kawana knew you were the only legal heir. 
It’s just that when we spoke he didn’t use your name. Does that bother you?” 

---

727
“Not really,” Tengo said. “My father was always a bit odd.” 
The lawyer smiled, as if relieved, and gave a slight nod. He handed Tengo a new 
copy of their family register. “If you don’t mind, since it was this sort of illness, I 
would like you to check the family register so we can make sure there are no legal 
problems with the procedure. According to the record, you are Mr. Kawana’s sole 
child. Your mother passed away a year and a half after giving birth to you. Your 
father didn’t remarry, and raised you by himself. Your father’s parents and siblings 
are already deceased. So you are clearly Mr. Kawana’s sole legal heir.” 
After the lawyer stood up, expressed his condolences, and left, Tengo remained 
seated, gazing at the envelope on the table. His father was his real blood father, and 
his mother was 
really
dead. The lawyer had said so. So it must be true—or, at least, a 
fact, in a legal sense. But it felt like the more facts that were revealed, the more the 
truth receded. Why would that be? 
Tengo returned to his father’s room, sat down at the desk, and struggled to open 
the sealed envelope. The envelope might contain the key to unlocking some mystery. 
Opening it was difficult. There were no scissors or box cutters in the room, so he had 
to peel off the packing tape with his fingernails. When he finally managed to get the 
envelope open, the contents were in several other envelopes, all of them in turn tightly 
sealed. Just the sort of thing he expected from his father. 
One envelope contained 500,000 yen in cash—exactly fifty crisp new ten-
thousand-yen bills, wrapped in layers of thin paper. A piece of paper included with it 
said 
Emergency cash
. Definitely his father’s writing, small letters, nothing 
abbreviated. This money must be in case there were unanticipated expenses. His 
father had anticipated that his 
legal heir
wouldn’t have sufficient funds on hand. 
The thickest of the envelopes was stuffed full of newspaper clippings and various 
award certificates, all of them about Tengo. His certificate from when he won the 
math contest in elementary school, and the article about it in the local paper. A photo 
of Tengo next to his trophy. The artistic-looking award Tengo received for having the 
best grades in his class. He had the best grades in every subject. There were various 
other articles that showed what a child prodigy Tengo had been. A photo of Tengo in 
a judo gi in junior high, grinning, holding the second-place banner. Tengo was really 
surprised to see these. After his father had retired from NHK, he left the company 
housing he had been in, moved to another apartment in Ichikawa, and finally went to 
the sanatorium in Chikura. Probably because he had moved by himself so often, he 
had hardly any possessions. And father and son had basically been strangers to each 
other for years. Despite this, his father had lovingly carried around all these mementos 
of Tengo’s child-prodigy days. 
The next envelope contained various records from his father’s days as an NHK fee 
collector. A record of the times when he was the top producer of the year. Several 
simple certificates. A photo apparently taken with a colleague on a company trip. An 
old ID card. Records of payment to his retirement plan and health insurance.… 
Though his father worked like a dog for NHK for over thirty years, the amount of 
material left was surprisingly little—next to nothing when compared with Tengo’s 
achievements in elementary school. Society might see his father’s entire life as 
amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasn’t