After the quake blind willow, sleeping woman dance dance dance

All I can do is live the life I have. I can’t 
trade it in for a new one. However strange and misshapen it might be, this is it for the 
gene carrier that is me
. 
I hope the dowager and Tsubasa will be happy
, Aomame thought as she walked 
along. 
If they can become truly happy, I don’t mind sacrificing myself to make it 
happen. I myself probably have no future to speak of. But I can’t honestly believe that 
the two of them are going to have tranquil, fulfilled lives—or even ordinary lives. The 
three of us are more or less the same. Each of us has borne too great a burden in the 
course of our lives. As the dowager said, we are like a single family—but an extended 
family engaged in an endless battle, united by deep wounds to the heart, each bearing 
some undefined absence
. 
In the course of pursuing these thoughts, Aomame became aware of her own 
intense urge for male flesh. 
Why, of all things, should I start wanting a man at a time 
like this?
She shook her head as she walked along, unable to judge whether this 
increased sexual desire had been brought about by psychological tension or was the 
natural cry of the eggs stored inside her or just a product of her own genes’ warped 
machinations. The desire seemed to have very deep roots—or, as Ayumi might say, “I 
want to fuck like crazy.” 
What should I do now?
Aomame wondered. 
I could go to 
one of my usual bars and look for the right kind of guy. It’s just one subway stop to 
Roppongi
. But she was too tired for that. Nor was she dressed for seduction: no 
makeup, only sneakers and a vinyl gym bag. 
Why don’t I just go home, open a bottle 
of red wine, masturbate, and go to sleep? That’s it. And let me stop thinking about the 
moon
. 
One glance was all it took for Aomame to realize that the man sitting across from her 
on the subway home from Hiroo to Jiyugaoka was her type—mid-forties, oval face, 
hairline beginning to recede. Head shape not bad. Healthy complexion. Slim, stylish 
black-framed glasses. Smartly dressed: light cotton sport coat, white polo shirt, 
leather briefcase on lap. Brown loafers. A salaried working man from the look of him, 
but not at some straitlaced corporation. Maybe an editor at a publishing company, or 
an architect at a small firm, or something to do with apparel, that was probably it. He 
was deeply absorbed in a paperback, its title obscured by a bookstore’s plain wrapper. 
Aomame thought she would like to go somewhere and have hot sex with him. She 
imagined herself touching his erect penis. She wanted to squeeze it so tightly that the 
flow of blood nearly stopped. Her other hand would gently massage his testicles. The 
hands now resting in her lap began to twitch. She opened and closed her fingers 
unconsciously. Her shoulders rose and fell with each breath. Slowly, she ran the tip of 
her tongue over her lips. 
But her stop was coming up soon. She had to get off at Jiyugaoka. She had no idea 
how far the man would be going, unaware that he was the object of her sexual 
fantasies. He just kept sitting there, reading his book, obviously unconcerned about 
the kind of woman who was sitting across from him. When she left the train, Aomame 
felt like ripping his damned paperback to shreds, but of course she stopped herself. 

---

221
Aomame was sound asleep in bed at one o’clock in the morning, having an intensely 
sexual dream. In the dream, her breasts were large and beautiful, like two grapefruits. 
Her nipples were hard and big. She was pressing them against the lower half of a 
man. Her clothes lay at her feet, where she had cast them off. Aomame was sleeping 
with her legs spread. As she slept, Aomame had no way of knowing that two moons 
were hanging in the sky side by side. One of them was the big moon that had always 
hung there, and the other was a new, smallish moon. 
Tsubasa and the dowager were also asleep, in Tsubasa’s room. Tsubasa wore new 
checked pajamas and slept curled into a tight little ball in bed. The dowager, still 
wearing her street clothes, was stretched out in a long chair, a blanket over her knees. 
She had been planning to leave after Tsubasa fell asleep, but had fallen asleep there. 
Set back from the street in its hilltop location, the apartment house was hushed, its 
grounds silent but for the occasional distant scream of an accelerating motorcycle or 
the siren of an ambulance. The German shepherd also slept, curled up outside the 
front door. The curtains had been drawn across the window, but they glowed white in 
the light of a mercury-vapor lamp. The clouds began to part, and from the rift, now 
and then two moons peeked through. The world’s oceans were adjusting their tides. 
Tsubasa slept with her cheek pressed against the pillow, her mouth slightly open. 
Her breathing could not have been any quieter, and aside from the occasional tiny 
twitch of one shoulder, she barely moved. Her bangs hung over her eyes. 
Soon her mouth began to open wider, and from it emerged, one after another, a 
small troupe of Little People. Each one carefully scanned the room before emerging. 
Had the dowager awakened at that point, she might have been able to see them, but 
she remained fast asleep. She would not be waking anytime soon. The Little People 
knew this. There were five of them altogether. When they first emerged, they were the 
size of Tsubasa’s little finger, but once they were fully on the outside, they would 
give themselves a twist, as though unfolding a tool, and stretch themselves to their 
full one-foot height. They all wore the same clothing without distinguishing features, 
and their facial features were equally undistinguished, making it impossible to tell 
them apart. 
They climbed down from the bed to the floor, and from under the bed they pulled 
out an object about the size of a Chinese pork bun. Then they sat in a circle around the 
object and started feverishly working on it. It was white and highly elastic. They 
would stretch their arms out and, with practiced movements, pluck white, translucent 
threads out of the air, applying them to the fluffy, white object, making it bigger and 
bigger. The threads appeared to have a suitably sticky quality. Before long, the Little 
People themselves had grown to nearly two feet in height. They were able to change 
their height freely as needed. 
Several hours of concentrated work followed, during which time the Little People 
said nothing at all. Their teamwork was tight and flawless. Tsubasa and the dowager 
remained sound asleep the whole time, never moving a muscle. All the other women 
in the safe house enjoyed deeper sleeps than usual. Stretched out on the front lawn, 
perhaps dreaming, the German shepherd let out a soft moan from the depths of its 
unconscious. 

---

222
Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light. 

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223