1Q84 (103 page)

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
.

“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.

“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.”

Ushikawa toyed with his lighter. Buzzcut’s eyes patiently followed Ushikawa’s movements, and then he looked up.

“I would appreciate it if you would tell me what you’ve found, even if it’s incomplete. Granted, you have your own way of doing things, but if I don’t take something concrete back to my superiors, we’ll be in a tough spot. I think you’re in a bit of a precarious situation yourself, Mr. Ushikawa.”

These guys really
are
up a creek
, Ushikawa realized. The two of them were martial arts experts, which is why they were selected to be Leader’s bodyguards. Despite that, Leader had been murdered right under their noses. Not that there was actually any evidence that he had been murdered—several doctors in the religion had examined the body and found no external injuries. But medical equipment within the religion was rudimentary at best. And time was of the essence. If a thorough, legal autopsy had been performed by a trained pathologist, they might very well have discovered evidence of foul play, but it was too late now. The body had been secretly disposed of within the Sakigake compound.

At any rate, these two bodyguards had failed in their assignment to protect Leader, and their position in the religion was shaky. Their role now was to locate this woman, after she had seemingly vanished into thin air. The order was out: leave no stone unturned until they found her. But so far they had come up empty-handed. They were trained bodyguards, but when it came to finding missing persons, they lacked the right skills.

“I understand where you’re coming from,” Ushikawa replied. “And I will tell you some things I’ve discovered. Not the whole story, but I can reveal parts of it.”

Buzzcut sat there for a while, his eyes narrowed. And then he nodded. “That would be fine. We have uncovered a few details ourselves, things you may already be aware of, or perhaps not. We should share whatever information we have.”

Ushikawa put the lighter down and tented his fingers on top of the desk.

“The young woman, Aomame,” he began, “was asked to come to a suite at the Hotel Okura, and helped Leader to relax his muscles by working his body through a series of stretching exercises. This was at the beginning of September, on the evening of that tremendous thunderstorm. Aomame treated him for around an hour in a separate room, then left Leader while he slept. She told you to let him sleep undisturbed for two hours, and you followed her instructions. But Leader wasn’t asleep. He was already dead. There were no external injuries, and it appeared to be a heart attack. Right after this, the woman vanished. She had cleared out of her apartment beforehand. The place was empty. And the next day her resignation letter arrived at the sports club. Everything seemed to follow a preset plan. The inevitable conclusion is that this Miss Aomame was the one who murdered Leader.”

Buzzcut nodded. It all sounded correct to him.

“Your goal is to get to the bottom of what actually occurred,” Ushikawa added. “Whatever it takes, you need to catch this woman.”

“If this Aomame really is the one who killed Leader, we need to know why, and who’s behind it.”

Ushikawa looked down at his ten fingers resting on the desk, as if they were some curious object he had never set eyes on before. He raised his head and looked at the man across from him.

“You’ve already run a background check on Aomame’s family, correct? All of her family members are devout members of the Witnesses. Her parents are still quite active and they have continued to proselytize door to door. Her older brother, who is thirty-four, works at the religion headquarters in Odawara. He is married and has two children. His wife is also a devout Witness. Aomame is the only one in the family who left the religion—an apostate, they called her—and she was essentially disowned. I have found no evidence that the family has had any contact with her for nearly the last twenty years. I think it’s impossible her family would hide her. At the age of eleven, she cut all ties with her family, and has been on her own pretty much ever since. She lived with her uncle for a while, but since she entered high school she has effectively been independent. Quite an impressive feat. And quite a strong-willed woman.”

Buzzcut didn’t say a word. He might have already had all this information.

“There is no way that the Witnesses are involved,” Ushikawa went on. “They are well known to be pacifists, following the principle of nonresistance. It’s not possible that their organization itself was aiming to take Leader’s life. On that we can be agreed, I think.”

Buzzcut nodded. “The Witnesses aren’t involved in this. That much I know. Just to be sure, though, we had a talk with her brother. We took
every possible precaution
. But he didn’t know anything.”