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  “We have to take your father for some tests, Mr. Kawana,” the nurse said. “Would you like to wait here?”

  Tengo looked at the clock. “Is something wrong with him?”

  The nurse shook her head. “No, not at all. We just don’t have the testing equipment in this room, so we’re taking him to where it is. It’s nothing special. The doctor will probably talk to you afterward.”

  “I see. I’ll wait here.”

  “You could go to the lunchroom for some hot tea. You should get some rest.”

  “Thank you,” Tengo said.

  The two men gently lifted his father’s thin body, with the intravenous tubes still attached, and transferred him to the wheeled bed, moving the bed and intravenous stand into the corridor with quick, practiced movements. Still they did not say a word.

  “This won’t take too long,” the nurse said.

  But his father did not return to the room for a long time. The light coming in the window grew slowly weaker, but Tengo did not turn on the lamp. If he did so, he felt, something important here would be lost.

  An indentation remained in the bed where his father had been lying. His father now probably weighed next to nothing, but still he had left a clear impression of his shape. Looking at the indentation, Tengo had a strong feeling that he had been left behind in this world all alone. He even felt that the dawn might never come again, once the sun had set tonight.

  Sitting on the stool by the bed, steeped in the colors of the approaching evening, Tengo stayed in the same position, lost in thought. Then suddenly it occurred to him that he had not actually been thinking at all but had been aimlessly submerging himself in a vacuum. He stood up slowly, went to the toilet, and relieved himself. After washing his face with cold water, he dried his face with his handkerchief and looked at himself in the mirror. Then, recalling what the nurse had said, he went downstairs to the lunchroom and drank some hot green tea.

  His father had still not been brought back to the room when Tengo returned there after twenty minutes downstairs. Instead, what he found, in the hollow that his father had left in the bed, was a white object that he had never seen before.

  Nearly five feet in length, it had smooth, beautiful curves. At first sight, it seemed to be shaped like a peanut shell, its entire surface covered with something like short, soft down that emitted a faint but even glow. In the rapidly darkening room, the pale bluish light enveloped the object softly. The thing lay still in the bed, as if to fill the individual space that his father had temporarily left behind. Tengo halted in the doorway, hand on the knob, staring at the mysterious object. His lips seemed to move somewhat, but no words emerged from them.

  What is this thing? Tengo asked himself as he stood there, frozen to the spot, eyes narrowed. How had this come to be here in his father’s place? No doctor or nurse had brought it in, that much was obvious. Around it hovered some special kind of air that was out of sync with reality.

  Then it suddenly hit him: This is an air chrysalis!

  This was the first time that Tengo had ever seen an air chrysalis. He had described some in great detail in the novella, but of course he had never seen a real one with his own eyes, and he had never thought of them as things that actually existed. But what he saw before him now was the very object his mind had imagined and his words had described: an air chrysalis. He experienced such a violent sense of déjà vu that it felt as if a metal band had been tightened around his stomach. Nevertheless, he stepped inside the room and closed the door. Better not let anyone see him. He swallowed the saliva that had been collecting in his mouth, making a strange sound in his throat.

  Tengo crept toward the bed, stopping when there was no more than a yard between him and it, examining the air chrysalis in greater detail. Now he could be sure that it looked exactly like the picture he had drawn of an air chrysalis at the time he wrote the story. He had done a simple pencil sketch before attempting to create a description of an air chrysalis, first putting the image in his mind into visual form and then transferring it into words. He had left the picture pinned to the wall over his desk while he rewrote Air Chrysalis. It was shaped more like a cocoon than a chrysalis, but “air chrysalis” was the only name by which Fuka-Eri (and Tengo himself) could possibly call the thing.

  During his revision, Tengo had created most of the external features of an air chrysalis and added them to his descriptions, including the gracefully narrowed waist in the middle and the swelling, round, decorative protuberance at either end. These came entirely from Tengo’s mind. There had been no mention of them in Fuka-Eri’s original narrative. To Fuka-Eri, an air chrysalis was simply that—an air chrysalis, something midway between an object and a concept—and she seemed to feel little need to describe its appearance in words. Tengo had to invent all the details himself, and the air chrysalis that he was now seeing had these same details exactly: the waist in the middle and the lovely protuberances at either end.

  This is the very air chrysalis I sketched and described, Tengo thought. The same thing happened with the two moons. For some reason, every detail he had put into writing had now become a reality. Cause and effect were jumbled together.

  All four of Tengo’s limbs felt a strange, nervous, twisting sensation, and his flesh began to crawl. He could no longer distinguish how much of this present world was reality and how much of it fiction. How much of it belonged to Fuka-Eri, how much was Tengo’s, and how much was “ours”?

  A small tear had opened at the very top of the air chrysalis: the chrysalis was about to break in two. The gap that had formed was perhaps an inch long. If he bent over and brought his eye to the opening, he could probably see what was inside. But Tengo could not find the courage to do so. He sat down on the stool by the bed, staring at the air chrysalis while his shoulders rose and fell imperceptibly as he struggled to bring his breathing under control. The white chrysalis lay there still, emitting its faint glow, quietly waiting, like a mathematical proposition, for Tengo to approach it.

  What could possibly be inside the chrysalis?

  What was it trying to show him?

  In the novella Air Chrysalis, the young girl protagonist discovers her own other self inside. Her dohta. She leaves her dohta behind and runs away from the community alone. But what could possibly be inside of Tengo’s air chrysalis? (Tengo felt intuitively that this air chrysalis must be his own.) Was it something good or something evil? Was it something that would guide him somewhere or something that would stand in his way? And who could possibly have sent this air chrysalis to him here?

  Tengo knew quite well that he was being asked to act. But he could not find the courage that would enable him to stand and look inside the chrysalis. He was afraid. The thing inside the chrysalis might wound him or greatly change his life. The thought caused Tengo to grow stiff, sitting on the little stool like someone who has lost a place of refuge. He was feeling the same kind of fear that had kept him from looking up his parents’ family register or searching for Aomame. He did not want to know what was inside the air chrysalis that had been prepared for him. If he could get by without knowing what was in there, that was how he wanted to walk out of this room. If possible, he wanted to leave this room now, get on the train, and go back to Tokyo. He wanted to close his eyes, block his ears, and burrow himself in his own little world.

  But Tengo also knew that this was impossible. If I leave here without seeing what is inside, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. I’ll probably never be able to forgive myself for having averted my eyes from that something, whatever it might be.

  Tengo remained seated on the stool for a long time, unsure of what he should do, unable to go either forward or back. Folding his hands on his knees, he stared at the air chrysalis on the bed, glancing occasionally out the window, as if hoping to escape. The sun had set, and a pale afterglow was slowly enveloping the pine woods. Still there was no wind, nor could he hear the sound of the waves. It was almost mysteriously quiet. And as the room’s darkness i
ncreased, the light emitted by the white object became deeper and more vivid. The chrysalis itself seemed like a living thing to Tengo, with its soft glow of life, its unique warmth, its nearly imperceptible vibration.

  Finally Tengo made up his mind, stood up from the stool, and leaned over the bed. Running away now was out of the question. He couldn’t live forever like a frightened child, averting his eyes from the things before him. Only by learning the truth—whatever that truth might be—could people be given the right kind of power.

  The tear in the air chrysalis was unchanged, neither bigger nor smaller than before. Squinting, he looked in through the opening, but he could not see very far inside. It was dark in there, and a thin membrane seemed to be stretched across the space inside. Tengo steadied his breathing and made sure his hands were not shaking. Then he put his fingers into the inch-long opening and slowly spread it apart, as if opening the two leaves of a double sliding door. It opened easily with little resistance and no sound, as if it had been waiting for his hands.

  Now the light of the air chrysalis itself was softly illuminating its interior, like light reflected from snow. He was able to see inside, however dimly.

  What Tengo found in there was a beautiful ten-year-old girl.

  She was sound asleep. She wore a simple white dress or nightgown free of decoration, her small hands folded on top of her flat chest. Tengo knew instantly who this was. She had a slender face, and her lips formed a straight line, as if drawn with a ruler. Perfectly straight bangs lay over a smooth, well-shaped forehead. Her little nose seemed to be searching for something, aimed tentatively upward into space. Her cheekbones stretched slightly to either side. Her eyes were closed, but Tengo knew what they would look like when they opened. How could he not know? He had lived for twenty years holding the image of this girl in his heart.

  “Aomame,” Tengo said aloud.

  The girl was sound asleep—a deep and utterly natural sleep, with the faintest possible breathing. The beating of her heart was too ephemeral to be heard. She did not have enough strength to raise her eyelids. The time for that had not come yet. Her conscious mind was not here but rather somewhere far away. Still, the word that Tengo had spoken was able to impart the slightest vibration to her eardrums. It was her name.

  Aomame heard the call from far away. Tengo, she thought. She formed the word clearly with her mouth, though it didn’t move the lips of the girl in the air chrysalis or reach Tengo’s ears.

  As if his soul had been snatched, Tengo stared insatiably at the girl, taking one shallow breath after another. Her face looked totally peaceful, without the slightest shadow of sadness or pain or anxiety. Her thin, little lips seemed ready to begin moving at any moment to form meaningful words. Her eyelids appeared ready to open. Tengo prayed from the heart for this to happen. His prayer took no precise words, but his heart spun this formless prayer and sent it out into space. The girl, however, showed no sign of waking.

  “Aomame,” Tengo called again.

  There were things he had to say to Aomame, feelings he had to convey to her. He had been living with them, keeping them inside, for years. But all that Tengo could do now was speak her name.

  “Aomame,” he called.

  He dared then to reach out and touch the hand of the girl who lay in the air chrysalis, placing his big grown-up hand on hers. This was the little hand that had so tightly grasped the hand of his ten-year-old self. This hand had come straight for him, wanting him, giving him encouragement. The unmistakable warmth of life was there in the hand of the girl asleep inside the pale glow. Aomame came here to convey her warmth to me, Tengo thought. That was the meaning of the package she handed to me in that classroom twenty years ago. Now at last he was able to open the package and view its contents.

  “Aomame,” Tengo said. “I will find you, no matter what.”

  After the air chrysalis had gradually lost its glow and disappeared, as if sucked into the darkness, and the young Aomame had disappeared as well, Tengo found himself unable to judge whether all of this had really happened. But his fingers retained the touch and the intimate warmth of her little hand.

  This warmth will almost surely never fade, Tengo thought, sitting aboard the special express train heading for Tokyo. Tengo had lived for the past twenty years with the memory of her touch. He should be able to go on living with this new warmth.

  The express train traced a huge arc along the ocean shore beneath the towering mountains, until it reached a point along the coast where the two moons were visible, hanging side by side in the sky above the quiet sea. They stood out sharply—the big, yellow moon and the small, green one—vivid in outline but their distance impossible to grasp. In their light, the ocean’s tiny ripples shone mysteriously like scattered shards of glass. As the train continued around the curve, the two moons moved slowly across the window, leaving those delicate shards behind, like wordless hints, until they disappeared from view.

  Once the moons were gone, the warmth returned to Tengo’s chest. Faint as it was, the warmth was surely there, conveying a promise like a lamp a traveler sees in the far distance.

  I will go on living in this world, Tengo thought, closing his eyes. He did not know yet how this world was put together or under what principles it moved, and he had no way of predicting what would happen there. But that was all right. He didn’t have to be afraid. Whatever might be waiting for him, he would survive in this world with two moons, and he would find the path he needed to take—as long as he did not forget this warmth, as long as he did not lose this feeling in his heart.

  He kept his eyes closed like this for a long time. Eventually, he opened his eyes to stare into the darkness of the early-autumn night beyond the window. The ocean had long since disappeared.

  I will find Aomame, Tengo swore to himself again, no matter what happens, no matter what kind of world it may be, no matter who she may be.

  BOOK 3 OCTOBER-DECEMBER

  CHAPTER 1

  Ushikawa

  SOMETHING KICKING

  AT THE FAR EDGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

  “I wonder if you would mind not smoking, Mr. Ushikawa,” the shorter man said.

  Ushikawa gazed steadily at the man seated across the desk from him, then down at the Seven Stars cigarette between his fingers. He hadn’t lit it yet.

  “I’d really appreciate it,” the man added politely.

  Ushikawa looked puzzled, as if he were wondering how such an object possibly found its way into his hand.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “I won’t light up. I just took it out without thinking.”

  The man’s chin moved up and down, perhaps a half inch, but his gaze didn’t waver. His eyes remained fixed on Ushikawa’s. Ushikawa stuck the cigarette back in its box, the box in a drawer.

  The taller of the two men, the one with a ponytail, stood in the doorway, leaning so lightly against the door frame that it was hard to tell if he was actually touching it. He stared at Ushikawa as if he were a stain on the wall. What a creepy pair, Ushikawa thought. This was the third time he had met with these men, and they made him uneasy every time.

  Ushikawa’s cramped office had a single desk, and the shorter of the two men, the one with a buzz cut, sat across from him. He was the one who did the talking. Ponytail didn’t say a word. Like one of those stone guardian dogs at the entrance to a Shinto shrine, he stood stock-still, not moving an inch, watching Ushikawa.

  “It has been three weeks,” Buzzcut noted.

  Ushikawa picked up his desk calendar, checked what was written on it, and nodded. “Correct. It has been exactly three weeks since we last met.”

  “And in the meantime you haven’t reported to us even once. As I’ve mentioned before, Mr. Ushikawa, every moment is precious. We have no time to waste.”

  “I completely understand,” Ushikawa replied, fiddling with his gold lighter in place of the cigarette. “There’s no time to waste. I am well aware of this.”

  Buzzcut waited for Ushikawa to go on.
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  “The thing is,” Ushikawa said, “I don’t like to talk in fits and starts. A little of this, a little of that. I would like to wait until I start to see the big picture and things begin to fall into place and I can see what’s behind all this. Half-baked ideas can only lead to trouble. I know this sounds selfish, but that’s the way I do things.”

  Buzzcut gazed coolly at Ushikawa. Ushikawa knew the man didn’t think much of him, not that this really worried him much. As far as he could recall, no one had ever had a good impression of him. He was used to it. His parents and siblings had never liked him, and neither had his teachers or classmates. It was the same with his wife and children. If someone did like him, now then he would be concerned. But the other way around didn’t faze him.

  “Mr. Ushikawa, we would like to respect your way of doing things. And I believe we have done that. So far. But things are different this time. I’m sorry to say we don’t have the luxury of waiting until we know all the facts.”

  “I understand,” Ushikawa said, “but I doubt you’ve just been sitting back all this time waiting for me to get in touch. I suspect you’ve been running your own investigations?”

  Buzzcut didn’t respond. His lips remained pressed in a tight horizontal line, and his expression didn’t give anything away. But Ushikawa could tell that he wasn’t far from the truth. Over the past three weeks, their organization had geared up, and, although they had probably used different tactics from Ushikawa, they had been searching for the woman. But they must not have found anything, which is why they had turned up again in Ushikawa’s office.

  “It takes a thief to catch a thief,” Ushikawa said, spreading his hands wide, as if disclosing some fascinating secret. “Try to hide something, and this thief can sniff it out. I know I’m not the most pleasant-looking person, but I do have a nose for things. I can follow the faintest scent to the very end. Because I’m a thief myself. I have to do things my way, at my own pace. I completely understand that time is pressing, but I would like you to wait a little longer. You have to be patient, otherwise the whole thing may collapse.”