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  “Does it take some special talent to act as a Receiver?”

  Fuka-Eri moved her chin slightly up and down, meaning that some talent was required.

  “But Air Chrysalis was originally your story, a story you wrote from scratch. It came from inside of you. All I did was take on the job of fixing the style. I was just a technician.”

  “Because we wrote the book together,” Fuka-Eri said as before.

  Tengo unconsciously brought his fingertips to his temple. “Are you saying I was acting as a Receiver from then on without even knowing it?”

  “From before that,” Fuka-Eri said. She pointed her right index finger at herself and then at Tengo. “I’m a Perceiver, and you’re a Receiver.”

  “In other words, you ‘perceive’ things and I ‘receive’ them?”

  Fuka-Eri gave a short nod.

  Tengo frowned slightly. “So you knew that I was a Receiver or had a Receiver’s special talent, and that’s why you let me rewrite Air Chrysalis. Through me, you turned what you had perceived into a book. Is that it?”

  No answer.

  Tengo undid his frown. Then, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes, he said, “I still can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but I’m guessing that around that time, I had already entered this world with two moons. I’ve just overlooked that fact until now. I never had occasion to look up at the night sky, so I never noticed that the number of moons had increased. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Fuka-Eri kept silent. Her silence floated up and hung in the air like fine dust. This was dust that had been scattered there only moments before by a swarm of moths from a special space. For a while, Tengo looked at the shapes the dust had made in the air. He felt he had become a two-day-old evening paper. New information was coming out day after day, but he was the only one who knew none of it.

  “Cause and effect seem to be all mixed up,” Tengo said, recovering his presence of mind. “I don’t know which came before and which came after. In any case, though, we are now inside this new world.”

  Fuka-Eri raised her face and peered into Tengo’s eyes. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he caught a hint of an affectionate gleam in her eyes.

  “In any case, the original world no longer exists,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug. “We will go on living here.”

  “In the world with two moons?”

  Fuka-Eri did not reply to this. The beautiful seventeen-year-old girl tensed her lips into a perfectly straight line and looked directly into Tengo’s eyes—exactly the way Aomame had looked into the ten-year-old Tengo’s eyes in the empty classroom, with strong, deep mental concentration. Under Fuka-Eri’s intense gaze, Tengo felt he might turn into stone, transforming into the new moon—the lopsided little moon. A moment later, Fuka-Eri finally relaxed her gaze. She raised her right hand and pressed her fingertips to her temple as if she were trying to read her own secret thoughts.

  “You were looking for someone,” the girl asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t find her.”

  “No, I didn’t find her,” Tengo said.

  He had not found Aomame, but instead he had discovered the two moons. This was because he had followed Fuka-Eri’s suggestion to dig deep into his memory, as a result of which he had thought to look at the moon.

  The girl softened her gaze somewhat and picked up her wineglass. She held a mouthful of wine for a while and then swallowed it carefully, like an insect sipping dew.

  Tengo said, “You say she’s hiding somewhere. If that’s the case, it won’t be easy to find her.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” the girl said.

  “I don’t have to worry,” Tengo echoed her words.

  Fuka-Eri nodded deeply.

  “You mean, I’m going to find her?”

  “She is going to find you,” Fuka-Eri said in a voice like a breeze passing over a field of soft grass.

  “Here, in Koenji?”

  Fuka-Eri inclined her head to one side, meaning she did not know. “Somewhere,” she said.

  “Somewhere in this world,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri gave him a little nod. “As long as there are two moons in the sky.”

  Tengo thought about this for a moment and said with some resignation, “I guess I have no choice but to believe you.”

  “I perceive and you receive,” Fuka-Eri said thoughtfully.

  “You perceive and I receive,” Tengo said.

  Fuka-Eri nodded.

  And is that why we joined our bodies? Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri. In that wild storm last night. What did that mean? But he did not ask those questions, which might have been inappropriate, and which he knew she never would have answered.

  If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation, Tengo’s father said somewhere.

  “You perceive and I receive,” Tengo repeated once again. “The same as when I rewrote Air Chrysalis.”

  Fuka-Eri shook her head. Then she pushed her hair back, revealing one beautiful, little ear as though raising a transmitter’s antenna.

  “It is not the same,” Fuka-Eri said. “You changed.”

  “I changed,” Tengo repeated.

  Fuka-Eri nodded.

  “How have I changed?”

  Fuka-Eri stared for a long time into the wineglass she was holding, as if she could see something important inside.

  “You will find out when you go to the cat town,” the beautiful girl said. Then, with her ear still showing, she took a sip of white wine.

  CHAPTER 23

  Aomame

  PUT A TIGER IN YOUR TANK

  Aomame woke at just after six o’clock in the morning. It was a clear, beautiful day. She made herself a pot of coffee, toasted some bread, and boiled an egg. While eating breakfast, she checked the television news to confirm that there was still no report of the Sakigake Leader’s death. They had obviously disposed of the body in secret without filing a report with the police or letting anyone else know. No problem with that. A dead person was still a dead person no matter how you got rid of him.

  At eight o’clock she showered, gave her hair a thorough brushing at the mirror, and applied a barely perceptible touch of lipstick. She put on stockings. Then she put on the white silk blouse she had hanging in the closet and completed her outfit with her stylish Junko Shimada suit. While shaking and twisting her body a few times to help her padded underwire bra conform more comfortably to her shape, she found herself again wishing that her breasts could have been somewhat bigger. She must have had that same thought at least 72,000 times while looking in the mirror. But so what? I can think what I want as many times as I want. This could be the 72,001st time, but what’s wrong with that? As long as I’m alive, I can think what I want, when I want, any way I want, as much as I want, and nobody can tell me any different. She put on her Charles Jourdan high heels.

  She stood at the full-length mirror by the front door and checked to see that her outfit was flawless. She raised one shoulder slightly and considered the possibility that she might look something like Faye Dunaway in The Thomas Crown Affair. Faye Dunaway played a coolheaded insurance investigator in that movie—a woman like a cold knife: sexy, great-looking in a business suit. Of course Aomame didn’t look like Faye Dunaway, but the atmosphere she projected was somewhat close—or at least not entirely different. It was that special atmosphere that only a first-class professional could exude. In addition, her shoulder bag contained a cold, hard automatic pistol.

  . . .

  Putting on her slim Ray-Ban sunglasses, she left the apartment. She crossed the street to the playground, walked up to the slide where Tengo had been sitting, and replayed last night’s scene in her head. It had happened twelve hours earlier. The actual Tengo had been right there—just across the street from me. He sat there for a long time, alone, looking up at the moons—the same two moons that she had been looking at.

  It felt almost like a miracle t
o Aomame—a kind of revelation—that she had come so close to Tengo. Something had brought her into his presence. And the event, it seemed, had largely restructured her physical being. From the moment she woke up in the morning, she had continued to feel a sort of friction throughout her entire body. He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.

  She stood there for a full five minutes, one hand on a step of the slide, frowning slightly, jabbing at the ground with the sharp heel of her shoe. She was checking the degree to which she had been stirred both physically and mentally, and savoring the sensation. Finally, she made up her mind, walked out of the playground to the nearest big street, and caught a cab.

  “I want you to go out to Yohga first, then take the Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 inbound until just before the Ikejiri exit,” she announced to the driver, who was understandably confused by these instructions.

  “So, miss, can you tell me exactly what your final destination is?” he asked, his tone rather on the easygoing side.

  “The Ikejiri exit. For now.”

  “Well, then, it would be much closer to go straight to Ikejiri from here. Going all the way out to Yohga would be a huge detour. And at this time of the morning, the inbound lanes of Number 3 are going to be completely jammed. They’ll hardly be moving. I’m as sure of that as I am that today is Wednesday.”

  “I don’t care if the expressway is jammed. I don’t care if today is Thursday or Friday or the Emperor’s Birthday. I want you to get on the Metropolitan Expressway from Yohga. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  The driver was a man in his early thirties. He was slim, with a long, pale face, and looked like a timid grazing animal. His chin stuck out like those of the stone faces on Easter Island. He was looking at Aomame in his rearview mirror, trying to decide from her expression whether his current passenger was totally bonkers or just an ordinary human being in a complicated situation. It was not easy for him to tell, though, especially from the image in the small mirror.

  Aomame took her wallet out of her shoulder bag and thrust a brand-new ten-thousand-yen bill toward his face. The money looked as if it had just been printed.

  “No change needed, and no receipt,” Aomame said curtly. “So keep your opinions to yourself and do what you’re told. Go first to Yohga, get on the expressway, and go to Ikejiri. This should cover the fare even if we get caught in traffic.”

  “It’s more than enough, of course,” the driver said, though he still seemed dubious. “Do you have some special business on the expressway?”

  Aomame shook the bill at him like a pennant in the wind. “If you don’t want to take me, I’ll get out and find another cab. So make up your mind, please. Now.”

  The driver stared at the ten-thousand-yen bill for a good ten seconds with his brows knit. Then he made up his mind and took the money. After holding the bill up to the light to check its authenticity, he shoved it into his business bag.

  “All right, then, let’s go, Metropolitan Expressway Number 3. It’s going to be badly backed up, though, I’m telling you, miss. And there’s no exit between Yohga and Ikejiri. No toilet, either. So if there’s any chance you might need to go, better take care of it now.”

  “Don’t worry, just take me straight there.”

  The driver made his way out of the network of residential streets to Ring Road Number 8 and joined the thick traffic heading for Yohga. Neither he nor Aomame said a word. He listened to the news, and she was lost in thought. As they neared the entrance to the Metropolitan Expressway, the driver lowered the radio’s volume and asked Aomame a question.

  “This may be none of my business, miss, but are you in some special line of work?”

  “I’m an insurance investigator,” Aomame said without hesitation.

  “An insurance investigator,” the driver repeated her words carefully, as if tasting a new food.

  “I find evidence in cases of insurance fraud,” Aomame said.

  “Wow,” the driver said, obviously impressed. “Does Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 have something to do with this insurance fraud stuff?”

  “It does indeed.”

  “Just like that movie, isn’t it?”

  “What movie?”

  “It’s a really old one, with Steve McQueen. I don’t remember what it’s called.”

  “The Thomas Crown Affair,” Aomame said.

  “Yeah, that’s it. Faye Dunaway plays an insurance investigator. She’s a specialist in theft insurance. McQueen is this rich guy who commits crimes for fun. That was a great movie. I saw it when I was in high school. I really liked the music. It was very cool.”

  “Michel Legrand.”

  The driver hummed the first few bars of the theme song. Then he looked in the mirror for another close look at Aomame.

  “Come to think of it, miss, something about you reminds me of Faye Dunaway.”

  “Thank you,” Aomame said, struggling somewhat to hide the smile that formed around her lips.

  The inbound side of Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 was, as the driver had predicted, beautifully backed up. The slowdown started less than a hundred yards from the entrance, an almost perfect specimen of chaos, which was exactly what Aomame wanted. The same outfit, the same road, the same traffic jam. Unfortunately, Janáček’s Sinfonietta was not playing on the car radio, and the sound quality didn’t measure up to that of the stereo in the Toyota Crown Royal Saloon, but that would have been asking for too much.

  The cab inched ahead, hemmed in by trucks. It would stay in one place for a long time and then unpredictably creep ahead. The young driver of the refrigerated truck in the next lane was absorbed in his manga magazine during the long stops. The middle-aged couple in a cream Toyota Corona Mark II sat looking straight ahead, frowning, but never saying a word to each other. They probably had nothing to talk about, or maybe they had talked and now they were silent as a result. Aomame settled deeply into her seat. The taxi driver listened to the broadcast on his radio.

  The cab finally passed a sign for Komazawa as it continued to crawl along toward Sangenjaya at a snail’s pace. Aomame looked up now and then to stare out the window. I won’t be seeing this neighborhood anymore. I’m going somewhere far away. But she was not about to start feeling nostalgic for the streets of Tokyo. All the buildings along the expressway were ugly, stained with the soot of automobile exhaust, and they carried garish billboards. The sight weighed on her heart. Why do people have to build such depressing places? I’m not saying that every nook and cranny of the world has to be beautiful, but does it have to be this ugly?

  Finally, after some time, a familiar area entered Aomame’s field of vision—the place where she had stepped out of the cab. The middle-aged driver had told her, as if hinting at some deeper significance, that there was an emergency stairway at the side of the roadway. Just ahead was the large billboard advertising Esso gasoline. A smiling tiger held up a gas hose. It was the same billboard as before.

  “Put a tiger in your tank.”

  Aomame suddenly noticed that her throat was dry. She coughed once, thrust her hand into her shoulder bag, and took out a box of lemon-flavored cough drops. After putting a drop in her mouth, she returned the box to the bag. While her hand was in there, she gave the handle of the Heckler & Koch a strong squeeze, reassured by its weight and hardness. Good, she thought. The cab moved ahead somewhat.

  “Get into the left lane, will you?” Aomame said to the driver.

  “The right lane is moving better,” he objected softly. “And the Ikejiri exit is on the right. If I get into the left lane here, I’ll just have to move over again.”

  Aomame was not ready to accept his objections. “Never mind, just get into the left lane.”

  “If you say so, miss,” the driver said with resignation.
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  Leaning over and sticking his hand out the front passenger window, he signaled to the refrigerated truck behind him in the left lane. After making sure the driver had seen him, he raised the window again and squeezed the cab into the left lane. They moved ahead another fifty yards until the traffic came to a full stop again.

  “Now open the door for me. I’m getting out here,” Aomame said.

  “Getting out?” the driver asked, astonished. He made no move to pull the lever that opened the passenger door. “Here?!”

  “Yes, this is where I’m getting out. I have something to do here.”

  “But we’re right in the middle of the Metropolitan Expressway. It would be too dangerous to get out here, and even if you did, there’s no place you could go.”

  “Don’t worry, there’s an emergency stairway right there.”

  “Emergency stairway.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if there’s an emergency stairway or not, but if anyone found out I let a passenger out in a place like this, I’d be in big trouble with the cab company and the expressway management company. So please, miss, give me a break …”

  “Sorry, I have to get out here,” Aomame said. She took another ten-thousand-yen bill from her wallet, gave it a snap, and shoved it at the driver. “I know I’m asking you to do something you shouldn’t do. This will pay for your trouble. So please stop arguing and let me out.”

  The driver did not take the money, but he gave up and pulled the lever. The left-side passenger door opened.

  “No, thanks, you’ve already paid me more than enough. But please be careful. The expressway doesn’t have shoulders, and no matter how backed up the traffic might be, it’s very dangerous for anybody to walk up here.”

  “Thank you,” Aomame said. After stepping out, she knocked on the passenger-side front window and had him lower the glass. Leaning inside, she thrust the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand.