After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

Even if I give myself over to the madness—or prejudice—here and now, even 
if doing so destroys me, even if this world vanishes in its entirety, what do I have to 
lose?
“I see,” Aomame said to the dowager. She paused, biting her lip. And then she 
said, “I would like to help in any way I can.” 
The dowager reached out and grasped Aomame’s hands. From that moment 
onward, Aomame and the dowager shared their secrets, shared their mission, and 
shared that 
something
that resembled madness. It may well have been sheer madness 
itself, though Aomame was unable to locate the dividing line. The men that she and 
the dowager together dispatched to a faraway world were ones for whom there were 
no grounds, from any point of view, for granting them mercy. 
“Not much time has gone by since you moved that man in the Shibuya hotel to 
another world,” the dowager said softly. The way she talked about “moving” him to 
another world, she could as well have been talking about a piece of furniture. 
“In another four days, it will be exactly two months.” 
“Still less than two months, is it?” the dowager went on. “I really shouldn’t be 
asking you to do another job so soon. I would prefer to put at least six months 
between them. If we space them too closely, it will increase your psychological 
burden. This is not—how should I put it?—an 
ordinary
task. In addition to which, 
someone might start suspecting that the number of heart attack deaths among men 
connected with my safe house was a bit too high.” 
Aomame smiled slightly and said, “Yes, there are so many distrustful people 
around.” 
The dowager also smiled. She said, “As you know, I am a very, very careful 
person. I don’t believe in coincidence or forecasts or good luck. I search for the least 
drastic possibilities in dealing with these men, and only when it becomes clear that no 
such possibilities exist do I choose the ultimate solution. And when, as a last resort, I 
take such a step, I eliminate all conceivable risks. I examine all the elements with 
painstaking attention to detail, make unstinting preparations, and only after I am 
convinced that it will work do I come to you. Which is why, so far, we have not had a 
single problem. We haven’t, have we?” 
“No, you’re absolutely right,” Aomame said, and she meant it. She would prepare 
her equipment, make her way to the designated place, and find the situation arranged 
exactly as planned. She would plunge her needle—once—into the one precise spot on 
the back of the man’s neck. Finally, after making sure that the man had “moved to 
another place,” she would leave. Up to now, everything had worked smoothly and 
systematically. 
“About this next case, though,” the dowager continued, “sorry to say, I am 
probably going to have to ask you to do something far more challenging. Our 
timetable has not fully matured yet, and there are many uncertainties. I may not be 

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able to give you the kind of well-prepared situation we have provided so far. In other 
words, things will be somewhat different this time.” 
“Different how?” 
“Well, the man is not someone in an ordinary position,” the dowager said. “By 
which I mean, first of all, that he has extremely tight security.” 
“Is he a politician or something?” 
The dowager shook her head. “No, he is not a politician. I’ll tell you more about 
that later. I’ve tried to find a solution that would save us from having to send you in, 
but none of them seems likely to work. No ordinary approach can meet this challenge. 
I am sorry, but I have not been able to come up with anything other than asking you to 
do it.” 
“Is it an urgent matter?” Aomame asked. 
“No, it is not especially urgent. Neither is there a fixed deadline by which it must 
be accomplished. But the longer we put it off, the more people there are who could be 
hurt. And the opportunity that has been given to us is limited in nature. There is no 
way of telling when the next one would come our way.” 
It was dark out. The sunroom was enveloped in silence. Aomame wondered if the 
moon was up. But she could not see it from where she was sitting. 
“I intend to explain the situation to you in all possible detail. Before I do that, 
however, I have someone I would like you to meet. Shall we go now to see her?” 
“Is she living in your safe house?” 
The dowager inhaled slowly and made a small sound in the back of her throat. Her 
eyes took on a special gleam that Aomame had not seen before. 
“She was sent here six weeks ago by our consultation office. For the first four 
weeks, she didn’t say a word. She was in some sort of dazed state and had simply lost 
the ability to speak. We knew only her name and age. She had been taken into 
protective custody when she was found sleeping in a train station in terrible condition, 
and after being passed around from one office to another she ended up with us. I’ve 
spent hours talking to her bit by bit. It took a long time for me to convince her that 
this is a safe place and she doesn’t have to be afraid. Now she can talk to some extent. 
She speaks in a confused, fragmented way, but, putting the pieces together, I’ve been 
able to form a general idea of what happened to her. It’s almost too terrible to talk 
about, truly heartbreaking.” 
“Another case of a violent husband?” 
“Not at all,” the dowager said drily. “She’s only ten years old.” 
The dowager and Aomame cut through the garden and, unlocking a small gate, 
entered the adjoining yard. The safe house was a small, wood-frame apartment 
building. It had been used in the old days as a residence for some of the many 
servants who had worked for the dowager’s family. A two-story structure, the house 
itself had a certain old-fashioned charm, but it was too age worn to rent out. As a 
temporary refuge for women who had nowhere else to go, however, it was perfectly 
adequate. An old oak tree spread out its branches as if to protect the building, and the 
front door contained a lovely panel of ornamental glass. There were ten apartments 
altogether, all full at times but nearly empty at other times. Usually five or six women 

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lived there quietly. Lights shone in the windows of roughly half the rooms now. The 
place was oddly hushed except for the occasional sounds of small children’s voices. 
The building itself almost appeared to be holding its breath. It lacked the normal 
range of sounds associated with everyday life. Bun, the female German shepherd, was 
chained near the front gate. Whenever people approached, she would let out a low 
growl and then a few barks. The dog had been trained—how or by whom it was not 
clear—to bark fiercely whenever a man approached, though the person she trusted 
most was Tamaru. 
The dog stopped barking as soon as the dowager drew near. She wagged her tail 
and snorted happily. The dowager bent down and patted her on the head a few times. 
Aomame scratched her behind the ears. The dog seemed to remember Aomame. She 
was a smart dog. For some reason, she liked to eat raw spinach. The dowager opened 
the front door with a key. 
“One of the women here is looking after the girl,” the dowager said to Aomame. 
“I’ve asked her to live in the same apartment and try not to take her eyes off her. It’s 
still too soon to leave her alone.” 
The women of the safe house looked after each other on a daily basis and were 
implicitly encouraged to tell each other stories of what they had been through, to 
share their pain. Those who had been there for a while would give the newcomers tips 
on how to live in the house, passing along necessities. The women would generally 
take turns doing the cooking and cleaning, but there were of course some who wanted 
only to keep to themselves and not talk about their experiences, and their desire for 
privacy and silence was respected. The majority of women, however, wanted to talk 
and interact with other women who had been through similar trials. Aside from 
prohibitions against drinking, smoking, and the presence of unauthorized individuals, 
the house had few restrictions. 
The building had one phone and one television set, both of which were kept in the 
common room next to the front door. Here there was also an old living room set and a 
dining table. Most of the women apparently spent the better part of each day in this 
room. The television was rarely switched on, and even when it was, the volume was 
kept at a barely audible level. The women preferred to read books or newspapers, 
knit, or engage in hushed tête-à-têtes. Some spent the day drawing pictures. It was a 
strange space, its light dull and stagnant, as if in a transient place somewhere between 
the real world and the world after death. The light was always the same here, on 
sunny or cloudy days, in daytime or nighttime. Aomame always felt out of place in 
this room, like an insensitive intruder. It was like a club that demanded special 
qualifications for membership. The loneliness of these women was different in origin 
from the loneliness that Aomame felt. 
The three women in the common room stood up when the dowager walked in. 
Aomame could see at a glance that they had profound respect for the dowager. The 
dowager urged them to be seated. 
“Please don’t stop what you’re doing. We just wanted to have a little talk with 
Tsubasa.” 
“Tsubasa is in her room,” said a woman whom Aomame judged to be probably 
around the same age as herself. She had long, straight hair. 

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“Saeko is with her. Tsubasa still can’t come down, it seems,” said a somewhat 
older woman. 
“No, it will probably take a little more time,” the dowager said with a smile. 
Each of the three women nodded silently. They knew very well what “take more 
time” meant. 
Aomame and the dowager climbed the stairs and entered one of the apartments. The 
dowager told the small, rather unimposing woman inside that she needed some time 
with Tsubasa. Saeko, as the woman was called, gave her a wan smile and left them 
with ten-year-old Tsubasa, closing the door behind her as she headed downstairs. 
Aomame, the dowager, and Tsubasa took seats around a small table. The window was 
covered by a thick curtain. 
“This lady is named Aomame,” the dowager said to the girl. “Don’t worry, she 
works with me.” 
The girl glanced at Aomame and gave a barely perceptible nod. 
“And this is Tsubasa,” the dowager said, completing the introductions. Then she 
asked the girl, “How long has it been, Tsubasa, since you came here?” 
The girl shook her head—again almost imperceptibly—as if to say she didn’t 
know. 
“Six weeks and three days,” the dowager said. “You may not be counting the days, 
but I am. Do you know why?” 
Again the girl gave a slight shake of the head. 
“Because time can be very important,” the dowager said. “Just counting it can have 
great significance.” 
To Aomame, Tsubasa looked like any other ten-year-old girl. She was rather tall 
for her age, but she was thin and her chest had not begun to swell. She looked 
chronically malnourished. Her features were not bad, but the face gave only the 
blandest impression. Her eyes made Aomame think of frosted windows, so little did 
they reveal of what was inside. Her thin, dry lips gave an occasional nervous twitch as 
if they might be trying to form words, but no actual sound ever emerged from them. 
From a paper bag she had brought with her, the dowager produced a box of 
chocolates with a Swiss mountain scene on the package. She spread its contents on 
the table: a dozen pretty pieces of varied shapes. She gave one to Tsubasa, one to 
Aomame, and put one in her own mouth. Aomame put hers in her mouth. After seeing 
what they had done, Tsubasa also put a piece of chocolate in her mouth. The three of 
them ate chocolate for a while, saying nothing. 
“Do you remember things from when you were ten years old?” the dowager asked 
Aomame. 
“Very well,” Aomame said. She had held the hand of a boy that year and vowed to 
love him for the rest of her life. A few months later, she had had her first period. A lot 
of things changed inside Aomame at that time. She left the faith and cut her ties with 
her parents. 
“I do too,” the dowager said. “My father took us to Paris when I was ten, and we 
stayed there for a year. He was a foreign service officer. We lived in an old apartment 
house near the Luxembourg Gardens. The First World War was in its final months, 

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and the train stations were full of wounded soldiers, some of them almost children, 
others old men. Paris is breathtakingly beautiful in all seasons of the year, but bloody 
images are all I have left from that time. There was terrible trench warfare going on at 
the front, and people who had lost arms and legs and eyes wandered the city streets 
like abandoned ghosts. All that caught my eye were the white of their bandages and 
the black of the armbands worn by mourning women. Horse carts hauled one new 
coffin after another to the cemeteries, and whenever a coffin went by, people would 
avert their eyes and clamp their mouths shut.” 
The dowager reached across the table. After a moment of thought, the girl brought 
her hand out from her lap and laid it in the dowager’s hand. The dowager held it tight. 
Probably, when she was a girl passing horse carts stacked with coffins on the streets 
of Paris, her father or mother would grasp her hand like this and assure her that she 
had nothing to worry about, that she would be all right, that she was in a safe place 
and needn’t be afraid. 
“Men produce several million sperm a day,” the dowager said to Aomame. “Did 
you know that?” 
“Not the exact figure,” Aomame said. 
“Well, of course, I don’t know the exact figure, either. It’s more than anyone can 
count. And they come out all at once. The number of eggs a woman produces, though, 
is limited. Do you know how many that is?” 
“Not exactly, no.” 
“It’s only around four hundred in the course of her lifetime,” the dowager said. 
“And they are not made anew each month: they are all already stored inside the 
woman’s body from the time she is born. After her first period, she produces one 
ripened egg a month. Little Tsubasa here has all her eggs stored inside her already. 
They should be pretty much intact—packed away in a drawer somewhere—because 
her periods haven’t started. It goes without saying, of course, that the role of each egg 
is to be fertilized by a sperm.” 
Aomame nodded. 
“Most of the psychological differences between men and women seem to come 
from differences in their reproductive systems. From a purely physiological point of 
view, women live to protect their limited egg supply. That’s true of you, of me, and of 
Tsubasa.” Here the dowager gave a wan little smile. “That should be in the past tense 
in my case, of course.” 
Aomame did some quick mental calculations.