After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

The same thing could 
have happened to me
, Aomame thought, biting her lip. 
Of course, people were not embroiled in rape in the Society of Witnesses. In her 
case at least, it never came to a sexual threat. The “brothers and sisters” around her 
were all mild-mannered, sincere people. They thought seriously about their faith, and 
they lived with reverence for their doctrines—to the point of staking their lives on 
them. But decent motives don’t always produce decent results. And the body is not 
the only target of rape. Violence does not always take visible form, and not all 
wounds gush blood. 
Seeing Tsubasa reminded Aomame of herself at that age. 
My own will made it 
possible for me to escape back then. But when you’re as seriously wounded as
this 
girl, it may not be possible to bring yourself back. You might never be able to return 
your heart to its normal condition again
. The thought sent a stab of pain through 
Aomame’s chest. What she had discovered in Tsubasa was 
herself as she might have 
been
. 
“I have to confess something to you,” the dowager said softly to Aomame. “I can 
tell you this now, but the fact is, though I knew it was a disrespectful thing to do, I ran 
a background check on you.” 
The remark brought Aomame back to the present. She looked at the dowager. 
“It was right after the first time I invited you to the house and we talked. I hope 
you’re not offended.” 
“No, not at all,” Aomame said. “In your situation, it was a natural thing to do. The 
work we are engaged in is by no means ordinary.” 
“Exactly. We are walking a very delicate, fine line. We have to be able to trust 
each other. No matter who the other person is, though, you can’t have trust if you 
don’t know what you need to know. So I had them look up everything about you. 
From the present all the way back into the past. I suppose I should say ‘almost 
everything,’ of course. No one can know 
everything
about another person. Not even 
God, probably.” 
“Or the devil,” Aomame said. 
“Or the devil,” the dowager repeated with a faint smile. “I know that you carry 
cult-connected psychological scars from when you were a girl. Your parents were—

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and still are—ardent believers in the Society of Witnesses, and they have never 
forgiven you for abandoning the faith. That causes you pain even now.” 
Aomame nodded silently. 
“To give you my honest opinion,” the dowager went on, “the Society of Witnesses 
is not a proper religion. If you had been badly injured or come down with an illness 
that required surgery, you might have lost your life then and there. Any religion that 
would prohibit life-saving surgery simply because it goes against the literal word of 
the Bible can be nothing other than a cult. This is an abuse of dogma that crosses the 
line.” 
Aomame nodded. The rejection of blood transfusion is the first thing pounded into 
the heads of Witness children. They are taught that it is far better to die and go to 
heaven with an immaculate body and soul than to receive a transfusion in violation of 
God’s teaching and go to hell. There is no room for compromise. It’s one road or the 
other: you go either to hell or to heaven. Children have no critical powers. They have 
no way of knowing whether such a doctrine is correct, either as an idea widely 
accepted by society or as a scientific concept. All they can do is believe what their 
parents teach them. 
If I had been caught in the position of needing a transfusion when 
I was little, I’m sure I would have followed my parents’ orders and chosen to reject