After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

CHAPTER 12 
Tengo 
THY KINGDOM COME 
The Professor turned to Fuka-Eri and said, “Sorry to bother you, Eri, but could you 
make us some tea?” 
The girl stood up and left the reception room. The door closed quietly behind her. 
The Professor waited, saying nothing, while Tengo, seated on the sofa, brought his 
breathing under control and regained a normal state of consciousness. The Professor 
removed his black-framed glasses and, after wiping them with a not-very-clean-
looking handkerchief, put them back on. Beyond the window, some kind of small, 
black thing shot across the sky. A bird, possibly. Or it might have been someone’s 
soul being blown to the far side of the world. 
“I’m sorry,” Tengo said. “I’m all right now. Just fine. Please go on with what you 
were saying.” 
The Professor nodded and began to speak. “There was nothing left of Akebono 
after that violent gun battle. That happened in 1981, three years ago—four years after 
Eri came here to live. But the Akebono problem has nothing to do with what I’m 
telling you now. 
“Eri was ten years old when she started living with us. She just showed up on our 
doorstep one day without warning, utterly changed from the Eri I had known until 
then. True, she had never been very talkative, and she would not open up to strangers, 
but she had always been fond of me and talked freely with me even as a toddler. 
When she first showed up here, though, she was in no condition to talk to anybody. 
She seemed to have lost the power to speak at all. The most she could do was nod or 
shake her head when we asked her questions.” 
The Professor was speaking more clearly and rapidly now. Tengo sensed that he 
was trying to move his story ahead while Fuka-Eri was out of the room. 
“We could see that Eri had had a terrible time finding her way to us up here in the 
mountains. She was carrying some cash and a sheet of paper with our address written 
on it, but she had grown up in those isolated surroundings and she couldn’t really 
speak. Even so, she had managed, with the memo in hand, to make all the necessary 
transfers and find her way to our doorstep. 
“We could see immediately that something awful had happened to her. Azami and 
the woman who helps me out here took care of her. After Eri had been with us a few 
days and calmed down somewhat, I called the Sakigake commune and asked to speak 
with Fukada, but I was told that he was ‘unable to come to the phone.’ I asked what 
the reason for that might be, but couldn’t get them to tell me. So then I asked to speak 

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to Mrs. Fukada and was told that she couldn’t come to the phone either. I couldn’t 
speak with either of them.” 
“Did you tell the person on the phone that you had Eri with you?” 
The Professor shook his head. “No, I had a feeling I’d better keep quiet about that 
as long as I couldn’t tell Fukada directly. Of course after that I tried to get in touch 
with him any number of times, using every means at my disposal, but nothing 
worked.” 
Tengo knit his brow. “You mean to say you haven’t been able to contact her 
parents even once in seven years?” 
The Professor nodded. “Not once. Seven years without a word.” 
“And her parents never once tried to find their daughter’s whereabouts in seven 
years?” 
“I know, it’s absolutely baffling. The Fukadas loved and treasured Eri more than 
anything. And if Eri was going to go to someone for help, this was the only possible 
place. Both Fukada and his wife had cut their ties with their families, and Eri grew up 
without knowing either set of grandparents. We’re the only people she could come to. 
Her parents had even told her this is where she should come if anything ever 
happened to them. In spite of that, I haven’t heard a word. It’s unthinkable.” 
Tengo asked, “Didn’t you say before that Sakigake was an open commune?” 
“I did indeed. Sakigake had functioned consistently as an open commune since its 
founding, but shortly before Eri escaped it had begun moving gradually toward a 
policy of confinement from the outside. I first became aware of this when I started 
hearing less frequently from Fukada. He had always been a faithful correspondent, 
sending me long letters about goings-on in the commune or his current thoughts and 
feelings. At some point they just stopped coming, and my letters were never 
answered. I tried calling, but they would never put him on the phone. And the few 
times they did, we had only the briefest, most limited conversations. Fukada’s 
remarks were brusque, as if he was aware that someone was listening to us.” 
The Professor clasped his hands on his knees. 
“I went out to Sakigake a few times myself. I needed to talk to Fukada about Eri, 
and since neither letters nor phone calls worked, the only thing left for me to do was 
to go directly to the place. But they wouldn’t let me into the compound. Far from it—
they chased me away from the gate. Nothing I said had any effect on them. By then 
they had built a high fence around the entire compound, and all outsiders were sent 
packing. 
“There was no way to tell from the outside what was happening in the commune. If 
it were Akebono, I could see the need for secrecy. They were aiming for armed 
revolution, and they had a lot to hide. But Sakigake was peacefully running an 
organic farm, and they had always adopted a consistently friendly posture toward the 
outside world, which was why the locals liked them. But the place had since become 
an absolute fortress. The attitude and even the facial expressions of the people inside 
had totally changed. The local people were just as stymied as I was by the change in 
Sakigake. I was worried sick that something terrible had happened to Fukada and his 
wife, but all I could do was take Eri under my wing. Since then, seven years have 
gone by, with the situation as murky as ever.” 
“You mean, you don’t even know if Fukada is alive?” Tengo asked. 

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“Not even that much,” the Professor said with a nod. “I have no way of knowing. 
I’d rather not think the worst, but I haven’t heard a word from Fukada in seven years. 
Under ordinary circumstances, that would be unthinkable. I can only imagine that 
something has happened to them.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe they’re being held 
in there against their will. Or possibly it’s even worse than that.” 
“ ‘Even worse’?” 
“I’m saying that not even the worst possibility can be excluded. Sakigake is no 
longer a peaceful farming community.” 
“Do you think the Sakigake group has started to move in a dangerous direction?” 
“I do. The locals tell me that the number of people going in and out of there is 
much larger than it used to be. Cars are constantly coming and going, most of them 
with Tokyo license plates, and a lot of them are big luxury sedans you don’t often see 
in the country. The number of people in the commune has also suddenly increased, it 
seems. So has the number of buildings and facilities, too, all fully equipped. They’re 
increasingly aggressive about buying up the surrounding land at low prices, and 
bringing in tractors and excavation equipment and concrete mixers and such. They 
still do farming, which is probably their most important source of income. The 
Sakigake brand of vegetables is better known than ever, and the commune is shipping 
them directly to restaurants that capitalize on their use of natural ingredients. They 
also have contractual agreements with high-quality supermarkets. Their profits must 
have been rising all the while, but in parallel with that, they have apparently also been 
making steady progress in