After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Aomame knows
. 
He was standing at the sink, sharpening a cleaver that really didn’t need to be 
sharpened. 
She knows I’ve been to the slide in that playground a number of times. She 
must have seen me, sitting there, staring up at the sky. Otherwise it makes no sense
. 
He pictured what he looked like on top of the slide, lit up by the mercury-vapor lamp. 
He had had no sense of being observed. Where had she been watching him from? 
It doesn’t matter
, Tengo thought. 
No big deal. No matter where she saw me from, 
she recognized me
. The thought filled him with joy. 
Just as I’ve been thinking of her, 
she’s been thinking of me
. Tengo could hardly believe it—that in this frantic, 
labyrinth-like world, two people’s hearts—a boy’s and a girl’s—could be connected, 
unchanged, even though they hadn’t seen each other for twenty years. 
But why didn’t Aomame call out to me then, when she saw me? Things would be so 
much simpler if she had. And how did she know where I live? How did she—or that 
man—find out my phone number?
He didn’t like to get calls, and had an unlisted 
number. You couldn’t get it even if you called the operator. 
There was a lot that remained unknown and mysterious, and the lines that 
constructed this story were complicated. Which lines connected to which others, and 
what sort of cause-and-effect relationship existed, was beyond him. Still, ever since 
Fuka-Eri showed up in his life, he felt he had been living in a place where questions 
outnumbered answers. But he had a faint sense that this chaos was, ever so slowly, 
heading toward a denouement. 
At seven this evening, though, at least some questions will be cleared up
, Tengo 
thought. 
We’ll meet on top of the slide. Not as a helpless ten-year-old boy and girl, 
but as an independent, grown-up man and woman. As a math teacher in a cram 
school and a sports club instructor. What will we talk about then? I have no idea. But 
we will talk—we need to fill in the blanks between us, exchange information about 
each other. And—to borrow the phrasing of the man who called—we might then
move 
on somewhere. 
So I need to make sure to bring what’s important to me, what I don’t 
want to leave behind—and pack it away so that I can have both hands free
. 
I have no regrets about leaving here. I lived here for seven years, taught three days 
a week at the cram school, but never once felt it was home. Like a floating island 
bobbing along in the flow, it was just a temporary place to rest, and nothing more. My 
girlfriend is no longer here. Fuka-Eri, too, who shared the place briefly—gone
. 
Tengo had no idea where these two women were now, or what they were doing. They 
had simply, and quietly, vanished from his life. If he left the cram school, someone 
else would surely take over. The world would keep on turning, even without him. If 
Aomame wanted to 
move on somewhere
with him, there was nothing to keep him 
from going. 
What could be the important thing he should take with him? Fifty thousand yen in 
cash and a plastic debit card—that was the extent of the assets he had at hand. There 
was also one million yen in a savings account. No—there was more. His share of the 
royalties from 
Air Chrysalis
was in the account as well. He had been meaning to 
return it to Komatsu but hadn’t gotten around to it. Then there was the printout of the 

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775
novel he had begun. He couldn’t leave that behind. It had no real value to anyone else, 
but to Tengo it was precious. He put the manuscript in a paper bag, then stuffed it into 
the hard, russet nylon shoulder bag he used when he went to the cram school. The bag 
was really heavy now. He crammed floppy disks into the pocket of his leather jacket. 
He couldn’t very well take his word processor along with him, but he did add his 
notebooks and fountain pen to his luggage.