“The yoga mat,” the young man said. “You’re forgetting your yoga mat. It’s still on the bedroom floor.”

Aomame smiled. “He is lying on top of it, sound asleep. We can’t just shove him aside and pull it out. I’ll give it to you if you like. It’s not expensive, and it’s had a lot of use. If you don’t need it, throw it away.”

Buzzcut thought about this for a moment and finally nodded. “Thank you again. I’m sure you’re very tired.”

As Aomame neared the door, Ponytail stood and opened it for her. Then he bowed slightly. That one never said a word, Aomame thought. She returned his bow and started to slip past him.

In that moment, however, a violent urge penetrated Aomame’s skin, like an intense electric current. Ponytail’s hand shot out as if to grab her right arm. It should have been a swift, precise movement—like grabbing a fly in thin air. Aomame had a vivid sense of its happening right there. Every muscle in her body stiffened up. Her skin crawled, and her heart skipped a beat. Her breath caught in her throat, and icy insects crawled up and down her spine. A blazing hot white light poured into her mind: If this man grabs my right arm, I won’t be able to reach for the pistol. And if that happens, I have no hope of winning. He feels it. He feels that I’ve done something. His intuition recognizes that something happened in this hotel room. He doesn’t know what, but it is something that should not have happened. His instincts are telling him, “You have to stop this woman,” ordering him to wrestle me to the floor, drop his whole weight on me, and dislocate my shoulders. But he has only instinct, no proof. If his feeling turns out to be wrong, he’ll be in big trouble. He was intensely conflicted, and now he’s given up. Buzzcut is the one who makes the decisions and gives the orders. Ponytail is not qualified. He struggled to suppress the impulse of his right hand and let the tension go out of his shoulder. Aomame had a vivid sense of the stages through which Ponytail’s mind had passed in that second or two.

Aomame stepped out into the carpeted hallway and headed for the elevator without looking back, walking coolly down the perfectly straight corridor. Ponytail, it seemed, had stuck his head out the door and was following her movements with his eyes. She continued to feel his sharp, knifelike gaze piercing her back. Every muscle in her body was tingling, but she refused to look back. She must not look back. Only when she turned the corner did she feel the tension go out of her. But still she could not relax. There was no telling what could happen next. She pushed the elevator’s “down” button and reached around to hold the pistol grip until the elevator came (which took an eternity), ready to draw the gun if Ponytail changed his mind and came after her. She would have to shoot him without hesitation before he put his powerful hands on her. Or shoot herself without hesitation. She could not decide which. Perhaps she would not be able to decide.

But no one came after her. The hotel corridor was hushed. The elevator door opened with a ring, and Aomame got on. She pressed the button for the lobby and waited for the door to close. Biting her lip, she glared at the floor number display. Then she exited the elevator, walked across the broad lobby, and stepped into a cab waiting for passengers at the front door. The rain had cleared up completely, but the cab had water dripping from its entire chassis, as if it had made its way here underwater. Aomame told the driver to take her to the west exit of Shinjuku Station. As they pulled away from the hotel, she exhaled every bit of air she was holding inside. Then she closed her eyes and emptied her mind. She didn’t want to think about anything for a while.

A strong wave of nausea hit her. It felt as if the entire contents of her stomach were surging up toward her throat, but she managed to force them back down. She pressed the button to open her window halfway, sending the damp night air deep into her lungs. Then she leaned back and took several deep breaths. Her mouth produced an ominous smell, as though something inside her were beginning to rot.

It suddenly occurred to her to search in her pants pocket, where she found two sticks of chewing gum. Her hands trembled slightly as she tore off the wrappers. She put the sticks in her mouth and began chewing slowly. Spearmint. The pleasantly familiar aroma helped to quiet her nerves. As she moved her jaw, the bad smell in her mouth began to dissipate. It’s not as if I actually have something rotting inside me. Fear is doing funny things to me, that’s all.

Anyhow, it’s all over now, Aomame thought. I don’t have to kill anyone anymore. And what I did was right, she told herself. He deserved to be killed for what he did. It was a simple case of just punishment. And as it happened (strictly by chance), the man himself had a strong desire to be killed. I gave him the peaceful death he was hoping for. I did nothing wrong. All I did was break the law.

Try as she might, however, Aomame was unable to convince herself that this was true. Only moments before, she had killed a far-from-ordinary human being with her own hands. She retained a vivid memory of how it felt when the needle sank soundlessly into the back of the man’s neck. That far-from-ordinary feeling was still there, in her hands, upsetting her to no small degree. She opened her palms and stared at them. Something was different, utterly different. But she was unable to discover what had changed, and how.

If she was to believe what he had told her, she had just killed a prophet, one entrusted with the voice of a god. But the master of that voice was no god. It was probably the Little People. A prophet is simultaneously a king, and a king is destined to be killed. She was, in other words, an assassin sent by destiny. By violently exterminating a being who was both prophet and king, she had preserved the balance of good and evil in the world, as a result of which she must die. But when she performed the deed, she struck a bargain. By killing the man and, in effect, throwing her own life away, she would save Tengo’s life. That was the content of the bargain. If she was to believe what he had told her.

Aomame had no choice but to believe fundamentally in what he had said. He was no fanatic, and dying people do not lie. Most importantly, his words had genuine persuasive power. They carried the weight of a huge anchor. All ships carry anchors that match their size and weight. However despicable his deeds may have been, the man was truly reminiscent of a great ship. Aomame had no choice but to recognize that fact.

Taking care that the driver did not see her, Aomame slipped the Heckler & Koch from her belt, set the safety catch, and put the gun in its pouch, relieving herself of 500 grams of solid, lethal weight.

“Wasn’t that thunder something?” the driver said. “And the rain was incredible.”

“Thunder?” Aomame said. It seemed to have happened a long time ago, though it had been a mere thirty minutes earlier. Yes, come to think of it, there had been some thunder. “Yes, really, incredible thunder.”

“The weather forecast said absolutely nothing about it. It was supposed to be beautiful all day.”

She tried to make her mind work. I have to say something. But I can’t think of anything good to say. My brain seems to have fogged over. “Weather forecasts are never right,” she said.

The driver glanced at Aomame in the rearview mirror. Maybe there was something funny about the way she spoke. The driver said, “I hear the water in the streets overflowed and ran down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station onto the tracks. It was because the rain all fell in one small area. They stopped the Ginza Line and the Marunouchi Line. I heard it on the radio news.”