After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

The Tale of the Heike
. One reporter then asked which part of 
The Tale of the Heike
she liked best, in response to which she recited her favorite passage from memory, 
which took a full five minutes. Everyone was so amazed, the recitation was followed 
by a stunned silence. Fortunately (in Tengo’s opinion), no one asked for her favorite 
song. 
In response to the question “Who was the happiest for you about winning the new 
writers’ prize?” she took a long time to think (a scene that came easily to mind for 
Tengo), finally answering, “That’s a secret.” 
As far as he could tell from the news reports, Fuka-Eri said nothing in the 
question-and-answer session that was untrue. Her picture was in all the papers, 
looking even more beautiful than the Fuka-Eri of Tengo’s memory. When he spoke 
with her in person, his attention was diverted from her face to her physical 
movements to her changes of expression to the words she formed, but seeing her in a 
still photograph, he was able to realize anew what a truly beautiful girl she was. A 
certain glow was perceptible even in the small shots taken at the press conference (in 
which he was able to confirm that she was wearing the same summer sweater). This 
glow was probably what Komatsu had called “that air about her: you know she’s not 
an ordinary person.” 
Tengo folded the evening papers, put them away, and went to the kitchen. There he 
made himself a simple dinner while drinking a can of beer. The work that he himself 
had rewritten had won the new writers’ prize by unanimous consent, had already 
attracted much attention, and was on the verge of becoming a bestseller. The thought 
made him feel very strange. He wanted simply to celebrate the fact, but it also made 
him feel anxious and unsettled. He had been expecting this to happen, but he 
wondered if it was really all right for things to move ahead so smoothly. 
While fixing dinner, he noticed that his appetite had disappeared. He had been 
quite hungry, but now he didn’t want to eat a thing. He covered the half-made food in 

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plastic wrap and put it away in the refrigerator. Then he sat in a kitchen chair and 
drank his beer in silence while staring at the calendar on the wall. It was a free 
calendar from the bank containing photos of Mount Fuji. Tengo had never climbed 
Mount Fuji. He had never gone to the top of Tokyo Tower, either, or to the roof of a 
skyscraper. He had never been interested in high places. He wondered why not. 
Maybe it was because he had lived his whole life looking at the ground. 
Komatsu’s prediction came true. The magazine containing Fuka-Eri’s 
Air Chrysalis
nearly sold out the first day and soon disappeared from the bookstores. Literary 
magazines 
never
sold out. Publishers continued to absorb the losses each month, 
knowing that the real purpose of these magazines was to find and publish fiction that 
would later be collected and sold in a hardcover edition—and to discover new young 
writers through the prize competitions. No one expected the magazines themselves to 
sell or be profitable. Which is why the news that a literary magazine had sold out in a 
single day drew as much attention as if snow had fallen in Okinawa (though its having 
sold out made no difference to its running in the red). Komatsu called to tell him the 
news. 
“This is just great,” Komatsu said. “When a magazine sells out, people can’t wait 
to read the piece to find out what it’s like. So now the printers are going crazy trying 
to rush the book version of 
Air Chrysalis
out—top priority! At this rate, it doesn’t 
matter whether the piece wins the Akutagawa Prize or not. Gotta sell ’em while 
they’re hot! And make no mistake about it, this is going to be a bestseller, I guarantee 
you. So, Tengo, you’d better start planning how you’re going to spend all your 
money.” 
One Saturday-evening newspaper’s literary column discussed