“I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at,” Tengo said. That intuitive sense of distaste he experienced when first meeting Ushikawa was creeping up on him again.

“No, of course not. You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful—as painful as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life—you will be getting older. You are probably beginning to grasp that painful sense that you are losing something, are you not?”

Tengo wondered if this man could be dropping hints about Kyoko Yasuda. Perhaps he knew that they had been meeting here once a week, and that recently something had caused her to leave him.

“You seem to know a great deal about my private life,” Tengo said.

“No, not at all,” Ushikawa insisted. “I’m just talking about life in general. Really. I know very little about your private life.”

Tengo remained silent.

“Please, Mr. Kawana,” Ushikawa said with a sigh, “be so good as to accept our grant. Frankly speaking, you are in a rather precarious position. We can back you up in a pinch. We can throw you a life preserver. If things go on like this, you might find yourself in an inextricable situation.”

“An inextricable situation,” Tengo said.

“Exactly.”

“Can you tell me specifically what kind of ‘situation’ you mean?”

Ushikawa paused momentarily. Then he said, “Believe me, Mr. Kawana, there are things it is better not to know. Certain kinds of knowledge rob people of their sleep. Green tea is no match for these things. They might take restful sleep away from you forever. What I, uh, want to say to you is this. Think about it this way: it’s as if you opened a special spigot and let a special something out before you knew what was happening, and it’s having an effect on the people around you—a rather less-than-desirable effect.”

“Do the Little People have anything to do with this?”

It was a shot in the dark, but it shut Ushikawa up for a while. His was a heavy silence, like a black stone sunk to the bottom of a deep body of water.

“I want to know the truth, Mr. Ushikawa. Let’s stop throwing riddles at each other and talk more concretely. What has happened to her?”

“ ‘Her’? I don’t know what you mean.”

Tengo sighed. This was too delicate a matter to discuss on the phone.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kawana, but I’m just a messenger sent by my client. For now, my job is to speak of fundamental matters as indirectly as possible,” Ushikawa said circumspectly. “I’m sorry if I seem to be deliberately tantalizing you, but I’m only allowed to talk about this in the vaguest terms. And, to tell you the truth, my own knowledge of the matter is quite limited. In any case, though, I really don’t know anything about ‘her,’ whoever she might be. You’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“All right, then, who are the Little People?”

“Again, Mr. Kawana, I don’t know anything at all about these ‘Little People’—or at least nothing more than that they appear in the book Air Chrysalis. I will tell you this, however: judging from the drift of your remarks, it seems to me that you have let something out of the bag before you yourself knew what it was all about. That can be awfully dangerous under certain circumstances. My client knows very well just how dangerous it is and what kind of danger it poses, and they have a degree of understanding regarding how to deal with the danger, which is precisely why we have tried to extend a helping hand to you. To put it quite bluntly, we have very long arms—long and strong.”

“Who is this ‘client’ you keep mentioning? Someone connected with Sakigake?”

“Unfortunately, I have not been granted the authority to divulge any names,” Ushikawa said with what sounded like genuine regret. “I can say, however, without going into detail, that they have their own very special power. Formidable power. We can stand behind you. Please understand—this is our final offer. You are free to take it or leave it. Once you make up your mind, however, there is no going back. So please think about it very carefully. And let me say this: if you are not on their side, regrettably, under certain circumstances, their long arms could, when extended, have certain undesirable—though unintended—effects on you.”

“What kind of ‘undesirable effects’?”

Ushikawa did not immediately reply to Tengo’s question. Instead, Tengo heard what sounded like the faint sucking of saliva at both sides of Ushikawa’s mouth.

“I don’t know the exact answer to that,” Ushikawa said. “They haven’t told me anything specific, which is why I am speaking in generalities.”

“So, what is it that I supposedly let out of the bag?” Tengo asked.

“I don’t know the answer to that, either,” Ushikawa said. “At the risk of repeating myself, I am nothing but a hired negotiator. By the time the full reservoir of information reaches me, it’s squeezed down to a few droplets. All I’m doing is passing on to you exactly what my client has told me to with the limited authority I have been granted. You may wonder why the client doesn’t just contact you directly, which would speed things up, and why they have to use this strange man as an intermediary, but I don’t know any better than you do.”

Ushikawa cleared his throat and waited for another question, but when there was none, he continued, “Now, Mr. Kawana, you were asking what it is that you let out of the bag, right?”

Tengo said yes, that was right.

“Well, Mr. Kawana, I’m not sure why exactly, but I can’t help wondering if it might be something for which a third party couldn’t offer a simple solution. I suspect it’s something you would need to go out on your own and work up a sweat to find out. And it could very well be that after you’ve gone through all that and reached a point where you’ve figured out the answer, it’s too late. To me, it seems obvious that you have a, uh, very special talent—a superior and beautiful talent, a talent that ordinary people do not possess. Which is precisely why your recent accomplishment carries an authority that cannot be easily overlooked. And my client appears to value that talent of yours very highly. That is why we are offering you this grant. Unfortunately, however, sheer talent is not enough. And depending upon how you look at it, possessing an outstanding talent that is not sufficient may be more dangerous than possessing nothing at all. That is my impression, however vague, of the recent matter.”

“So what you are saying, then, is that your client has sufficient knowledge and ability to tell about such things.”

“Hmm, I really can’t say about that, don’t you think? I mean, nobody can ever declare whether such qualities are ‘sufficient.’ ”

“Why do they need me?”

“If I may use the analogy of epidemic, you people may be playing the role of—pardon me—the main carriers of a disease.”

“ ‘You people?’ ” Tengo said. “Are you talking about Eriko Fukada and me?”

Ushikawa did not answer the question. “Uh, if I may use a classical analogy here, you people might have opened Pandora’s box and let loose all kinds of things in the world. This seems to be what my client thinks you’ve done, judging from my own impressions. The two of you may have joined forces by accident, but you turned out to be a far more powerful team than you ever imagined. Each of you was able to make up for what the other lacked.”