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Tengo came to a halt and thought for a minute. “I’m not sure. It depends on how things go.”

  “Can you still take time off from your job?”

  “I asked somebody to teach my classes for me, so I should be okay for a while.”

  “Where do you usually eat?” the nurse asked.

  “At a restaurant in town,” he replied. “They only provide breakfast at the inn so I go someplace nearby and eat their set meal, or a rice bowl, that sort of thing.”

  “Is it good?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. Though I don’t really notice what it tastes like.”

  “That won’t do,” the nurse said, looking displeased. “You have to eat more nutritious food. I mean, look—these days your face reminds me of a horse sleeping standing up.”

  “A horse sleeping standing up?” Tengo asked, surprised.

  “Horses sleep standing up. You’ve never seen that?”

  Tengo shook his head. “No, I never have.”

  “Their faces look like yours,” the middle-aged nurse said. “Go check out your face in the mirror. At first glance you can’t tell they’re asleep, but if you look closely you will see that their eyes are open, but they aren’t seeing anything.”

  “Horses sleep with their eyes open?”

  The nurse nodded deeply. “Just like you.”

  For a moment Tengo did think about going to the bathroom and looking at himself in the mirror, but he decided against it. “I understand. I’ll try to eat better from now on.”

  “Would you care to go out to get some yakiniku?”

  “Yakiniku?” Tengo didn’t eat much meat. He didn’t usually crave it. But now that she had brought it up, he thought it might be good to have some meat for a change. His body might indeed be crying out for more nourishment.

  “All of us were talking about going out now to eat some yakiniku. You should join us.”

  “All of us?”

  “The others finish work at six thirty and we’ll meet afterward. There will be three of us. Interested?”

  The other two were Nurse Omura and Nurse Adachi. The three of them seemed to enjoy spending time together, even after work. Tengo considered the idea of going out to eat yakiniku with them. He didn’t want to disrupt his simple lifestyle, but he couldn’t think of a plausible excuse in order to refuse. It was obvious to them that in a town like this Tengo would have plenty of free time on his hands.

  “If you don’t think I’ll be a bother.”

  “Of course you won’t,” the nurse said. “I don’t invite people out if I think they’ll be a bother. So don’t hesitate to come with us. It will be nice to have a healthy young man along for a change.”

  “Well, healthy I definitely am,” Tengo said in an uncertain voice.

  “That is the most important thing,” the nurse declared, giving it her professional opinion.

  It wasn’t easy for all three nurses to be off duty at the same time, but once a month they managed it. The three of them would go into town, eat something nutritious, have a few drinks, sing karaoke, let loose, and blow off some steam. They definitely needed a change of scenery. Life in this rural town was monotonous, and with the exception of the doctors and other nurses at work, the only people they saw were the elderly, those devoid of memory and signs of life.

  The three nurses ate and drank a lot, and Tengo couldn’t keep up. As they got livelier, he sat beside them, quietly eating a moderate amount of grilled meat and sipping his draft beer so he didn’t get drunk. After they left the yakiniku place, they went to a bar, bought a bottle of whiskey, and belted out karaoke. The three nurses took turns singing their favorite songs, then teamed up to do a Candies number, complete with choreographed steps. Tengo was sure they had practiced, they were that good. Tengo wasn’t into karaoke, but he did manage one Yosui Inoue song he vaguely remembered.

  Nurse Adachi was normally reserved, but after a few drinks, she turned animated and bold. Once she got a bit tipsy, her red cheeks turned a healthy tanned color. She giggled at silly jokes and leaned back, in an entirely natural way, on Tengo’s shoulder. Nurse Omura had changed into a light blue dress and had let down her hair. She looked three or four years younger and her voice dropped an octave. Her usually brisk, businesslike manner was subdued, and she moved languidly, as if she had taken on a different personality. Only Nurse Tamura, with her metal-framed glasses, looked and acted the same as always.

  “My kids are staying with a neighbor tonight,” Nurse Omura explained. “And my husband has to work the night shift. You have to take advantage of times like this to just go out and have fun. It’s important to get away from it all sometimes. Don’t you agree, Tengo?”

  The three nurses had started calling him by his first name. Most people around him seemed to do that naturally. Even his students called him “Tengo” behind his back.

  “Yes, that’s for sure,” Tengo agreed.

  “We just have to get out sometimes,” Nurse Tamura said, sipping a glass of Suntory Old whiskey and water. “We’re just flesh and blood, after all.”

  “Take off our uniforms, and we’re just ordinary women,” Miss Adachi said, and giggled at her comment.

  “Tell me, Tengo,” Nurse Omura said. “Is it okay to ask this?”

  “Ask what?”

  “Are you seeing anybody?”

  “Yes, tell us,” Nurse Adachi said, crunching down on some corn nuts with her large, white teeth.

  “It’s not an easy thing to talk about,” Tengo said.

  “We don’t mind if it’s not easy to talk about,” the experienced Nurse Tamura said. “We have lots of time, and we would love to hear about it. I’m dying to hear this hard-to-talk-about story.”

  “Tell us, tell us!” Nurse Adachi said, clapping her hands lightly and giggling.

  “It’s not all that interesting,” Tengo said. “It’s kind of trite and pointless.”

  “Well, then just cut to the chase,” Nurse Omura said. “Do you have a girlfriend, or not?”

  Tengo gave in. “At this point, I’m not seeing anyone.”

  “Hmm,” Nurse Tamura said. She stirred the ice in her glass with a finger and licked it. “That won’t do. That won’t do at all. A young, vigorous man like yourself without a girlfriend, it’s such a waste.”

  “It’s not good for your body, either,” the large Nurse Omura said. “If you keep it stored inside you for a long time, you’ll go soft in the head.”

  Young Nurse Adachi was still giggling. “You’ll go soft in the head,” she said, and poked her forehead.

  “I did have someone until recently,” Tengo said, somewhat apologetically.

  “But she left?” Nurse Tamura said, pushing up the bridge of her glasses.

  Tengo nodded.

  “You mean she dumped you?”

  “I don’t know,” Tengo said, inclining his head. “Maybe she did. I think I probably was dumped.”

  “By any chance is that person—a lot older than you?” Nurse Tamura asked, her eyes narrowed.

  “Yes, she is,” Tengo said. How did she know that?

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Nurse Tamura said, looking proudly at the other two nurses. They nodded.

  “I told the others that,” Nurse Tamura said, “that you were going out with an older woman. Women can sniff out these things.”

  “Sniff, sniff,” went Nurse Adachi.

  “On top of that, maybe she was already married,” Nurse Omura said in a lazy tone. “Am I right?”

  Tengo hesitated for a moment and then nodded. Lying was pointless.

  “You bad boy,” Nurse Adachi said, and poked him in the thigh.

  “Ten years older,” Tengo said.

  “Goodness!” Nurse Omura exclaimed.

  “Ah, so you had an experienced, older married woman loving you,” Nurse Tamura, herself a mother, said. “I’m envious. Maybe I should do that myself. And comfort lonely, gentle young Tengo here. I might not look it, but I still have a pretty decent body.”

  She grabbed Ten
go’s hand and was about to press it against her breasts. The other two women managed to stop her. Even if you were letting your hair down, there was a line that shouldn’t be crossed between nurses and a patient’s relative. That’s what they seemed to think—or else they were afraid that someone might spot them. It was a small town, and rumors spread quickly. Maybe Nurse Tamura’s husband was the jealous type. Tengo had enough problems and didn’t want to get caught up in any more.

  “You’re really something,” Nurse Tamura said, wanting to change the subject. “You come all this way here, sit by your father’s bedside for hours a day reading aloud to him … Not many people would do that.”

  Young Nurse Adachi tilted her head a bit. “I agree, he really is something. I really respect you for that.”

  “You know, we’re always praising you,” Nurse Tamura said.

  Tengo’s face reddened. He wasn’t in this town to nurse his father. He was staying here hoping to again see the air chrysalis, and the faint light it gave off, and inside it, the sleeping figure of Aomame. That was the only reason he remained here. Taking care of his unconscious father was only a pretext. But he couldn’t reveal the truth. If he did, he would have to start by explaining an air chrysalis.

  “It’s because I never did anything for him up till now.” Awkwardly, he scrunched up his large frame in the narrow wooden chair, sounding uncomfortable. But the nurses found his attitude appealingly humble.

  Tengo wanted to tell them he was sleepy so he could get up and go back to his inn, but he couldn’t find the right opportunity. He wasn’t the type, after all, to assert himself.

  “Yes, but—” Nurse Omura said, and cleared her throat. “To get back to what we were talking about, I wonder why you and that married woman ten years older than you broke up. I imagine you were getting along all right? Did her husband find out or something?”

  “I don’t know the reason,” Tengo said. “At one point she just stopped calling, and I haven’t heard from her since.”

  “Hmm,” Nurse Adachi said. “I wonder if she was tired of you.”

  Nurse Omura shook her head. She held one index finger pointing straight up and turned to her younger colleague. “You still don’t know anything about the world. You don’t get it at all. A forty-year-old married woman who snags a young, vigorous, delicious young man like this one and enjoys him to the fullest doesn’t then just up and say Thanks. It was fun. Bye! It’s impossible. Of course, the other way around happens sometimes.”

  “Is that right?” Nurse Adachi said, inclining her head just a fraction. “I guess I’m a bit naive.”

  “Yes, that’s the way it is,” Nurse Omura declared. She looked at Tengo for a while, as if stepping back from a stone monument to examine the words chiseled into it. Then she nodded. “When you get a little older you’ll understand.”

  “Oh, my—it’s been simply ages,” Nurse Tamura said, sinking deeper into her chair.

  For a time the three nurses were lost in a conversation about the sexual escapades of someone he didn’t know (another nurse, he surmised). With his glass of whiskey and water in hand, Tengo surveyed these three nurses, picturing the three witches in Macbeth. The ones who chant “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” as they fill Macbeth’s head with evil ambitions. But Tengo wasn’t seeing the three nurses as evil beings. They were kind and straightforward women. They worked hard and took good care of his father. Overworked, living in this small, less-than-stimulating fishing town, they were just letting off steam, as they did once every month. But when he witnessed how the energy in these three women, all of different generations, was converging, he couldn’t help but envision the moors of Scotland—a gloomy, overcast sky, a cold wind and rain howling through the heath.

  In college he had read Macbeth in English class, and somehow a few lines remained with him.

  By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something wicked this way comes,

  Open, locks,

  Whoever knocks!

  Why should he remember only these lines? He couldn’t even recall who spoke them in the play. But they made Tengo think of that persistent NHK collector, knocking at the door of his apartment in Koenji. Tengo looked at his own thumbs. They didn’t feel pricked. Still, Shakespeare’s skillful rhyme had an ominous ring to it.

  Something wicked this way comes …

  Tengo prayed that Fuka-Eri wouldn’t unlock the door.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ushikawa

  I’M HEADING YOUR WAY

  For a while Ushikawa had to give up collecting more information on the elderly dowager in Azabu. The security around her was just too tight, and he knew he would come smack up against a high wall whatever direction he went in. He wanted to find out more about the safe house, but it was too risky hanging out in the neighborhood any longer. There were security cameras, and given his looks, Ushikawa was too conspicuous. Once the other party was on its guard, things could get a bit sticky, so he decided to stay away from the Willow House and try a different approach.

  The only different approach he could come up with, though, was to reinvestigate Aomame. He had already asked a PI firm he had worked with to collect more information on her, and he did some of the legwork himself, questioning people involved with her. Nothing suspicious or opaque surfaced. Ushikawa frowned, sighing deeply. I must have overlooked something, he thought. Something critical.

  Ushikawa took out an address book from a drawer of his desk and dialed a number. Whenever he needed information that could only be obtained illegally, this was the number he called. The man on the other end lived in a much darker world than Ushikawa. As long as you paid, he could dig up almost any information you needed. The more tightly guarded the information, the higher the fee.

  Ushikawa was after two pieces of information. One was personal background on Aomame’s parents, who were still devout members of the Witnesses. Ushikawa was positive that the Witnesses had a central database with information on all their members. They had numerous followers throughout Japan, with much coming and going between the headquarters and the regional branches. Without a centralized database, the system wouldn’t run smoothly. Their headquarters was located in the suburbs of Odawara. They owned a magnificent building on a generous plot of land, and had their own factory to print pamphlets, and an auditorium and guest facilities for followers from all over the country. All their information was sourced from this location, and you could be sure it was under strict control.

  The second piece of information was Aomame’s employment record at the sports club. Ushikawa wanted to know the details of her job there, and the names of her personal clients. This kind of information wouldn’t be as closely guarded. Not that you could waltz in, say, “I wonder if you would mind showing me Miss Aomame’s file, please?,” and have them gladly hand it over.

  Ushikawa left his name and phone number on the machine. Thirty minutes later he got a call back.

  “Mr. Ushikawa,” a hoarse voice said.

  Ushikawa related the particulars of what he was looking for. He had never actually met the man. They always did business by phone, with materials sent over by special delivery. The man’s voice was a bit husky, and he occasionally cleared his throat. He might have had something wrong with it. There was always a perfect silence on the other end of the line, as if he were phoning from a soundproof room. All Ushikawa could hear was the man’s voice, and the grating sound of his breathing. Beyond that, nothing. The sounds he heard were all a bit exaggerated. What a creepy guy, Ushikawa thought each time. The world is sure full of creepy guys, he mused, knowing full well that, objectively speaking, this category would include himself. He had secretly nicknamed the man Bat.

  “In both cases, then, you’re after information concerning the name Aomame, right?” Bat said huskily, and cleared his throat.

  “Correct. It’s an unusual name.”

  “You want every bit of information I can get?”

  “As long as it involves the name Aomame, I want it all
. If possible, I would also like a photo of her, with a clear shot of her face.”

  “The gym should be easy. They aren’t expecting anyone to steal their information. The Witnesses, though, are a different story. They’re a huge organization, with a lot of money, and tight security. Religious organizations are some of the hardest groups to crack. They keep things tight to protect their members’ personal security, and there are always tax issues involved.”

  “Do you think you can do it?”

  “There are ways to pry open the door. What is more difficult is making sure you close it afterward. If you don’t do that, you’ll have a homing missile chasing you.”

  “You make it sound like a war.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. Some pretty scary things might pop out,” the man rasped. Ushikawa could tell from his tone of voice that this battle was something he enjoyed.

  “So, you’ll take it on for me?”

  The man lightly cleared his throat. “All right. But it’ll cost you.”

  “How much are we talking about, roughly?”

  The man gave him an estimate. Ushikawa had to swallow before he accepted. He had put aside enough of his own funds to cover it, and if the man came through, he could get reimbursed later on.

  “How long will it take?”

  “I assume this is a rush job?”

  “Correct.”

  “It’s hard to give an exact estimate, but I’m thinking a week to ten days.”

  “Fine,” Ushikawa said. He would have to let Bat determine the pace.

  “When I’ve gathered the material, I’ll call you. I’ll definitely get in touch before ten days are up.”

  “Unless a missile catches up with you,” Ushikawa said.

  “Exactly,” Bat said, totally blasé.

  After he hung up, Ushikawa hunched over his desk, turning things over in his mind. He had no idea how Bat would gather the information via some back door. Even if he asked, he knew he wouldn’t get an answer. The only thing for sure was that his methods weren’t legal. He would start by trying to bribe somebody inside. If necessary he might try trespassing. If computers were involved, things could get complicated.