“Up to me?” Aomame asked with a slight frown. “What do you mean by that?”

The man quietly shook his head. “You are fated to pass through great hardships and trials. Once you have done that, you should be able to see things as they are supposed to be. That is all I can say. No one knows for certain what it means to die until they actually do it.”

Aomame picked up a towel and carefully dried the tears still clinging to her face. Then she examined the slender ice pick in her hand again to be certain that its fine point had not been broken off. With her right index finger, she searched again for the fatal point on the back of the man’s neck as she had done before. She was able to find it right away, so vividly was it etched into her brain. She pressed the point softly with her fingertip, gauged its resilience, and made sure once again that her intuition was not mistaken. Taking several slow, deep breaths, she calmed the beating of her heart and steadied her heightened nerves. Her head would have to be perfectly clear. She swept away all thoughts of Tengo for the moment. Hatred, anger, confusion, pity: all these she sealed off in a separate space. Error was unacceptable. She had to concentrate her attention on death itself, as if focusing a narrow beam of light.

“Let us complete our work,” Aomame said calmly. “I must remove you from this world.”

“Then I can leave behind all the pain that I have been given.”

“Leave behind all the pain, the Little People, a transformed world, those hypotheses … and love.”

“And love. You are right,” the man said as if speaking to himself. “I used to have people I loved. All right, then, let each of us finish our work. You are a terribly capable person, Aomame. I can tell that.”

“You, too,” Aomame said. Her voice had taken on the strange transparency of one who will deliver death. “You, too, are surely a very capable, superior person. I am sure there must have been a world in which there was no need for me to kill you.”

“That world no longer exists,” the man said. These were the last words he spoke.

That world no longer exists.

Aomame placed the sharp point against that delicate spot on the back of his neck. Concentrating all her attention, she adjusted the angle of the ice pick. Then she raised her right fist in the air. Holding her breath, she waited for a signal. No more thinking, she said to herself. Let each of us complete our work. That is all. There is no need to think, no need for explanations. Just wait for the signal. Her fist was as hard as a rock, devoid of feeling.

Outside the window, the thunder-without-lightning rumbled with increased force. Raindrops pelted the glass. The two of them were in an ancient cave—a dark, damp, low-ceilinged cave. Dark beasts and spirits surrounded the entrance. For the briefest instant around her, light and shadow became one. A nameless gust of wind blew through the distant channel. That was the signal. Aomame brought her fist down in one short, precise movement.

Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart.

CHAPTER 14

Tengo

A PACKAGE IN HIS HANDS

“Come here and hold me,” Fuka-Eri said. “The two of us have to go to the town of cats together one more time.”

“Hold you?” Tengo asked.

“You don’t want to hold me,” Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark.

“No, that’s not it. It’s just that—I didn’t quite get what you were saying.”

“This will be a purification,” she informed him in uninflected tones. “Come here and hold me. You put on pajamas, too, and turn out the light.”

As instructed, Tengo turned out the bedroom ceiling light. He undressed, took out his pajamas, and put them on. When was the last time I washed these? he wondered as he slipped into his pajamas. Judging from the fact that he could not remember, it must have been quite some time ago. Fortunately, they did not smell of sweat. Tengo had never sweated very much, and he did not have a strong body odor. But still, he reflected, I ought to wash my pajamas more often. Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.

He got into bed and gingerly wrapped his arms around Fuka-Eri, who laid her head on Tengo’s right arm. She lay very still, like a creature about to enter hibernation. Her body was warm, and so soft as to feel utterly defenseless. But she was not sweating.

The thunder increased in intensity, and now it was beginning to rain. As though crazed with anger, the raindrops slammed sideways against the window glass. The air was damp and sticky, and the world felt as if it might be oozing its way toward its dark finale. The time of Noah’s flood might have felt like this. If so, it must have been quite depressing in the violent thunderstorm to have the narrow ark filled with the rhinoceroses, the lions, the pythons, and so forth, all in pairs, all used to different modes of living, with limited communication skills, and the stink something special.

The word “pair” made Tengo think of Sonny and Cher, but Sonny and Cher might not be the most appropriate pair to put aboard Noah’s ark to represent humanity. Though they might not be entirely inappropriate, either. There must be some other couple who would be a more appropriate human sample.

Embracing Fuka-Eri in bed like this, with her wearing his own pajamas, Tengo had a strange feeling. He even felt as if he might be embracing a part of himself, as if he were holding someone with whom he shared flesh and body odor and whose mind was linked with his.

Tengo imagined the two of them having been chosen as a pair to board Noah’s ark instead of Sonny and Cher. But even they could hardly be said to be the most appropriate sample of humanity. The very fact of our embracing each other in bed like this is far from appropriate, no matter how you look at it. The thought kept Tengo from being able to relax. He decided instead to imagine Sonny and Cher becoming good friends with the python pair on the ark. It was an utterly pointless thing to imagine, but at least it enabled him to relax the tension in his body.

Lying in Tengo’s arms, Fuka-Eri said nothing. Nor did she move or open her mouth. Tengo didn’t say anything either. Even embracing Fuka-Eri in bed, he felt almost nothing that could be called sexual desire. To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication. And so, to look for sexual desire in a place where there was no possibility of communication seemed inappropriate to him. He realized, too, that what Fuka-Eri was looking for was not his sexual desire. She was looking for something else from him, but what that something else was, he could not tell.

The purpose of doing so aside, the sheer act of holding a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl in his arms was by no means unpleasant. Her ear would touch his cheek now and then. Her warm breath grazed his neck. Her breasts were startlingly large and firm for a girl with such a slim body. He could feel them pressed against him in the area above his stomach. Her skin exuded a marvelous fragrance. It was the special smell of life that could only be exuded by flesh still in the process of formation, like the smell of dew-laden flowers in midsummer. He had often experienced that smell as an elementary school student on his way to early-morning radio exercises.

I hope I don’t have an erection, Tengo thought. If he did have an erection, she would know immediately, given their relative positions. If that happened, it would make things somewhat uncomfortable. With what words and in what context could he explain to a seventeen-year-old girl that erections simply happen sometimes, even when not directly driven by sexual desire? Fortunately, however, no erection had happened so far, nor did he have any sign of one. Let me stop thinking about smells. I have to concentrate my mind on things having as little to do with sex as possible.