“Well, you know Komatsu. Common sense isn’t really his thing.”

Receiver in hand, Tengo thought about this remark. “It’s true, you never know what he’ll do next. He’s socially awkward and he can be self-centered, but as far as I know he’s not irresponsible about his work. I don’t care how sick he is, he wouldn’t just let everything go and not contact the office when Air Chrysalis is selling like this. He’s not that bad.”

“You’re absolutely right,” the editor said. “Maybe somebody should go to his place and see what’s up. There was all that trouble with Sakigake over Fuka-Eri’s disappearance, and we still don’t know where she is. Something might have happened. I can’t believe he’d fake being sick so he could take off from work and hide out with Fuka-Eri, right?”

Tengo said nothing. He could hardly tell the man that Fuka-Eri was right there in front of him, cleaning her ears with a cotton swab.

“And not just this case. Everything involving this book. I don’t know, there’s something wrong with it. We’re glad it’s selling so well, but there’s something about it that’s not quite right. And I’m not the only one: a lot of people at the company feel that way about it. Oh, by the way, Tengo, did you have something you wanted to talk to Komatsu about?”

“No, nothing special. I haven’t talked to him for a while, so I was just wondering what he’s up to.”

“Maybe the stress of it all finally got to him. Anyhow, Air Chrysalis is the first bestseller this company has ever had. I’m looking forward to this year’s bonus. Have you read the book?”

“Of course, I read the manuscript when it was submitted for the competition.”

“Oh, that’s right. You were a screener.”

“I thought it was well written and pretty interesting, too.”

“Oh, it’s interesting all right, and well worth a read.”

Tengo detected an ominous ring to his remark. “But something about it bothers you?”

“Well, this is just an editor’s intuition. You’re right: it is well written. A little too well written for a debut by a seventeen-year-old girl. And now she’s disappeared. And we can’t get in touch with her editor. The book is like one of those old ghost ships with nobody aboard: it just keeps sailing along, all sails set, straight down the bestseller seaway.”

Tengo managed a vague grunt.

“It’s creepy. Mysterious. Too good to be true. This is just between you and me, but people around here are whispering that Komatsu himself might have fixed up the manuscript—more than common sense would allow. I can’t believe it, but if it’s true, we could be holding a time bomb.”

“Maybe it was just a series of lucky coincidences.”

“Even so, good luck can only last so long,” the editor said.

Tengo thanked him and ended the call.

After hanging up, Tengo said to Fuka-Eri, “Mr. Komatsu hasn’t been to work for the past week. They can’t get in touch with him.”

Fuka-Eri said nothing.

“The people around me seem to be disappearing one after another,” Tengo said.

Still Fuka-Eri said nothing.

Tengo suddenly recalled the fact that people lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off, turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned. If so, there’s nothing mysterious about somebody suddenly disappearing one day.

“I may be next,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave her head a tight, little shake. “Not you,” she said.

“Why not me?”

“Because I did a purification.”

Tengo contemplated this for several seconds without reaching a conclusion. He knew from the start that no amount of thinking could do any good. Still, he could not entirely forgo the effort to think.

“In any case, we can’t see Mr. Komatsu right now,” Tengo said. “And I can’t give the money back to him.”

“The money is no problem,” Fuka-Eri said.

“Then what is a problem?” Tengo asked.

Of course, he did not receive an answer.

Tengo decided to follow through on last night’s resolution to search for Aomame. If he spent the whole day in a concentrated effort, he should at least be able to come up with some kind of clue. But in fact, it turned out not to be that easy. He left Fuka-Eri in his apartment (after warning her repeatedly not to open the door for anyone) and went to the telephone company’s main office, which had a complete set of telephone books for every part of the country, available for public use. He went through all the phone books for Tokyo’s twenty-three central wards, looking for the name “Aomame.” Even if he didn’t find Aomame herself, a relative might be living there, and he could ask that person for news of Aomame.

But he found no one with the name Aomame. He broadened his search to include the entire Tokyo metropolis and still found no one. He further broadened his search to include the entire Kanto region—the prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Saitama. At that point, his time and energy ran out. After glaring at the phone books’ tiny type all day, his eyeballs were aching.

Several possibilities came to mind.

1

She was living in a suburb of the city of Utashinai on Hokkaido.

2

She had married and changed her name to “Ito.”

3

She kept her number unlisted to protect her privacy.

4

She had died in the spring two years earlier from a virulent influenza.

There must have been any number of possibilities besides these. It didn’t make sense to rely strictly on the phone books. Nor could he read every one in the country. It could be next month before he finally reached Hokkaido. He had to find another way.

Tengo bought a telephone card and entered a booth at the telephone company. From there he called their old elementary school in Ichikawa and asked the female office worker who answered the phone to look up the address they had on file for Aomame, saying he wanted to reach her on alumni association business. The woman seemed kind and unhurried as she went through the roster of graduates. Aomame had transferred to another school in the fifth grade and was not a graduate. Her name therefore did not appear in the roster, and they did not know her current address. It would be possible, however, to find the address to which she moved at the time. Did he want to know that?

Tengo said that he did want to know that.

He took down the address and telephone number, “c/o Koji Tasaki” in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward. Aomame had apparently left her parents’ home at the time. Something must have happened. Figuring it was probably hopeless, Tengo tried dialing the phone number. As he had expected, the number was no longer in use. It had been twenty years, after all. He called Information and gave them the address and the name Koji Tasaki, but learned only that no telephone was listed under that name.

Next Tengo tried finding the phone number for the headquarters of the Society of Witnesses, but no contacts were listed for them in any of the phone books he perused—nothing under “Before the Flood,” nothing under “Society of Witnesses” or anything else of that ilk. He tried the classified directory under “Religious Organizations” but found nothing. At the end of this struggle, Tengo concluded that they probably didn’t want anyone contacting them.

This was, upon reflection, rather odd. They showed up all the time. They’d ring the bell or knock on the door, unconcerned that you might be otherwise occupied—be it baking a soufflé, soldering a connection, washing your hair, training a mouse to do tricks, or thinking about quadratic functions—and, with a big smile, invite you to study the Bible with them. They had no problem coming to see you, but you were not free to go to see them (unless you were a believer, probably). You couldn’t ask them one simple question. This was rather inconvenient.