After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Let’s suppose for the moment
, he thought, 
that this was Aomame
. 
She came here to see Tengo, but Tengo was out somewhere. The lights in his place 
were off. She came to see him, but there was no answer when she knocked, so she 
gave up and left. Maybe she was the one who had been ringing the doorbell. But 
something about this didn’t make sense. Aomame was being pursued, and should be 
trying to stay out of sight. Why wouldn’t she have called Tengo ahead of time to 
make sure he would be at home? That way she wouldn’t unnecessarily expose herself 
to danger. 
Ushikawa mulled this over as he sat in front of the camera, but he couldn’t come 
up with a working hypothesis that made any sense. The woman’s actions—disguising 
herself in this non-disguise, leaving the place where she was hiding—didn’t fit what 
Ushikawa knew about her. She was more cautious and careful than that. The whole 
thing left him befuddled. 
Anyhow, he decided he would go to the photo shop near the station tomorrow and 
develop the film he had taken. This mystery woman should be in the photos. 
He kept watch with his camera until past ten, but after the woman left no one else 
came in or out of the building. The entrance was silent and deserted, like a stage 
abandoned after a poorly attended performance. Ushikawa was puzzled about Tengo. 
As far as he knew, he rarely stayed out this late, and he had classes to teach 
tomorrow. Maybe he had already come home while Ushikawa was out, and had long 
since gone to bed? 

---

736
After ten Ushikawa realized how exhausted he was. He could barely keep his eyes 
open. This was unusual, since he normally kept late hours. Usually he could stay up 
as late as he needed. But tonight, sleep was bearing down on him from above, like the 
stone lid of an ancient coffin. 
Maybe I looked at those two moons for too long
, he thought, 
absorbed too much of 
their light
. Their vague afterimage remained in his eyes. Their dark silhouettes 
numbed the soft part of his brain, like a bee stinging and numbing a caterpillar, then 
laying eggs on the surface of its body. The bee larvae use the paralyzed caterpillar as 
a convenient source of food and devour it as soon as they’re born. Ushikawa frowned 
and shook this ominous image from his mind. 
Fine
, he decided. 
I can’t wait here forever for Tengo to get back. When he gets 
back is entirely up to him, and he’ll just go to sleep as soon as he does. He doesn’t 
have anywhere else to come back to besides this apartment. Most likely
. 
Ushikawa listlessly tugged off his trousers and sweater and, stripped to his long-
sleeved shirt and long johns, slipped into his sleeping bag. He curled up and soon fell 
asleep. It was a deep sleep, almost coma-like. As he was falling asleep he thought he 
heard a knock at the door. But by then his consciousness had shifted over to another 
world and he couldn’t distinguish one thing from another. When he tried, his body 
creaked. So he kept his eyes shut, didn’t try to figure out what the sound could mean, 
and once more sank down into the soft muddy oblivion of sleep. 
It was about thirty minutes after Ushikawa fell into this deep sleep that Tengo 
came back home after meeting Komatsu. He brushed his teeth, hung up his jacket—
which reeked of cigarette smoke—changed into pajamas, and went to sleep. Until a 
phone call came at two a.m. telling him that his father was dead. 
When Ushikawa awoke, it was past eight a.m., Monday morning, and Tengo was 
already on the express train to Tateyama, fast asleep to make up for the hours he had 
missed. Ushikawa sat behind his camera, waiting to catch Tengo on his way to the 
cram school, but of course he never made an appearance. At one p.m. Ushikawa gave 
up. He went to a nearby public phone and called the cram school to see if Tengo was 
teaching his regular classes today. 
“Mr. Kawana had a family emergency, so his classes are canceled for today,” the 
woman on the phone said. Ushikawa thanked her and hung up. 
Family emergency? The only family Tengo had was his father. His father must 
have died. If that was the case, then Tengo would be leaving Tokyo again.