After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

nonessential
. Meat and fish rarely 
found their way to the dining table. Her school lunches provided Aomame with the 
nutrients she needed for development. The other children would complain how 
tasteless the lunches were, and would leave much of theirs uneaten, but she almost 
wished she could have what they wasted. 
She wore only hand-me-downs. The believers would hold periodic gatherings to 
exchange their unneeded articles of clothing, as a result of which her parents never 
once bought her anything new, the only exceptions being things like the gym clothes 
required by the school. She could not recall ever having worn clothing or shoes that 
fit her perfectly, and the items she did have were an assemblage of clashing colors 
and patterns. If the family could not afford any other lifestyle, she would have just 
resigned herself to the fact, but Aomame’s family was by no means poor. Her father 
was an engineer with a normal income and savings. They chose their exceedingly 
frugal lifestyle entirely as a matter of belief. 
Because the life she led was so very different from those of the children around 
her, for a long time Aomame could not make friends with anyone. She had neither the 
clothing nor the money that would have enabled her to go out with a friend. She was 
never given an allowance, so that even if she had been invited to someone’s birthday 
party (which, for better or worse, never happened), she would not have been able to 
bring along a little gift. 
Because of all this, Aomame hated her parents and deeply despised both the world 
to which they belonged and the ideology of that world. What she longed for was an 
ordinary life
like everybody else’s. Not luxury: just a totally normal little life, nothing 
more. She wanted to hurry up and become an adult so she could leave her parents and 
live alone—eating what and as much as she wanted, using the money in her purse any 
way she liked, wearing new clothes of her own choosing, wearing shoes that fit her 
feet, going where she wanted to go, making lots of friends and exchanging beautifully 
wrapped presents with them. 
Once she became an adult, however, Aomame discovered that she was most 
comfortable living a life of self-denial and moderation. What she wanted most of all 

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was not to go out with someone all dressed up, but to spend time alone in her room 
dressed in a jersey top and bottom. 
After Tamaki died, Aomame quit the sports drink company, left the dormitory she 
had been living in, and moved into a one-bedroom rental condo in the lively, 
freewheeling Jiyugaoka neighborhood, away from the center of the city. Though 
hardly spacious, the place looked huge to her. She kept her furnishings to a 
minimum—except for her extensive collection of kitchen utensils. She had few 
possessions. She enjoyed reading books, but as soon as she was through with them, 
she would sell them to a used bookstore. She enjoyed listening to music, but was not a 
collector of records. She hated to see her belongings pile up. She felt guilty whenever 
she bought something. 
I don’t really need this
, she would tell herself. Seeing the nicer 
clothing and shoes in her closet would give her a pain in the chest and constrict her 
breathing. Such sights suggestive of freedom and opulence would, paradoxically, 
remind Aomame of her restrictive childhood. 
What did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you 
managed to escape from one cage, weren’t you just in another, larger one? 
Whenever Aomame sent a designated man into the other world, the dowager of 
Azabu would provide her with remuneration. A wad of bills, tightly wrapped in blank 
paper, would be deposited in a post-office box. Aomame would receive the key from 
Tamaru, retrieve the contents of the box, and later return the key. Without breaking 
the seal on the pack of bills to count the money, she would throw the package into her 
bank’s safe-deposit box, which now contained two hard bricks of cash. 
Aomame was unable to use up her monthly salary from the sports club, and she 
even had a bit of savings in the bank. She had no use whatever for the dowager’s 
money, which she tried to explain to her the first time she received the remuneration. 
“This is a mere external form,” the dowager said softly but firmly. “Think of it as a 
kind of set procedure—a requirement. You are at least required to receive it. If you 
don’t need the money, then you don’t have to use it. If you hate the idea of taking it, I 
don’t mind if you donate it anonymously to some charity. You are free to do anything 
you like with it. But if you ask me, the best thing for you to do would be to keep it 
untouched for a while, stored away somewhere.” 
“I just don’t like the idea of money changing hands for something like this,” 
Aomame said. 
“I understand how you feel, but remember this: thanks to the fact that these terrible 
men have been so good as to remove themselves from our presence, there has been no 
need for divorce proceedings or custody battles, and no need for the women to live in 
fear that their husbands might show up and beat them beyond recognition. Life 
insurance and survivors’ annuities have been paid. Think of the money you get as the