“What finally happened to him?”

“I really don’t know. I ran away from the orphanage when I was fourteen and lived on my own after that. I headed straight for the ferry, crossed over to the main island, and I haven’t set foot in Hokkaido since then. The last I saw him, he was bent over a workbench, concentrating on his carving. You couldn’t get through to him at those times, so we never even said good-bye. If he’s still alive, I imagine he’s still carving rats somewhere. It was all he could do.”

Aomame kept silent and waited for the rest of the story.

“I often think of him even now. Life in the orphanage was terrible. They fed us next to nothing, and we were always hungry. The winters were cold. The work was harsh, and the older kids bullied us something awful. But he never seemed to find the life there all that painful. He appeared to be happy as long as he could carve. Sometimes he would go half mad when he picked up his carving tools, but otherwise he was a truly docile little fellow. He didn’t make trouble for anyone but just kept quietly carving his rats. He’d pick up a block of wood and stare at it for a long time until he could see what kind of rat in what kind of pose was lurking inside. It took a long while before he could see the figure, but once that happened, all he had to do was pull the rat out of the block with his knives. He often used to say that: ‘I’m going to pull the rat out.’ And the rats he pulled out looked as if they might start moving at any moment. He kept on freeing these imaginary rats that were locked up in their blocks of wood.”

“And you were the boy’s protector.”

“Yes, but not because I wanted to be. I just ended up in that position. And once you were given a position, you had to live up to it, no matter what. That was the rule. Say, if one of the other boys took away his carving tools just to be nasty, I would go and beat him up. Even if the other kid was older or bigger or there was more than one of them, I had to beat him up. Of course, there were times when they beat me up. Lots of times. But it didn’t matter whether I won or lost those fights: I always got the tools back for him. That was the main thing. See what I mean?”

“I think so,” Aomame said. “But finally you had to abandon him.”

“Well, I had to go on living. I couldn’t stay with him forever, taking care of him. I didn’t have that luxury, obviously.”

Aomame opened her right hand again and stared at it.

“I’ve seen you holding a little carved rat now and then. Did he make that?”

“Yes, he gave me a little one. I took it when I ran away. I keep it with me.”

“You know, Tamaru, you’re not the kind of guy who usually talks about himself. Why now?”

“One thing I wanted to tell you is that I often think of him,” Tamaru said. “Not that I want to see him again or anything. I really don’t. We wouldn’t have anything to talk about, for one thing. It’s just that I still have this vivid image of him ‘pulling rats out’ of blocks of wood with total concentration, and that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something—or tries to. People need things like that to go on living—mental landscapes that have meaning for them, even if they can’t explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That’s what I think.”

“Are you saying that they’re like a basis for us to live?”

“Maybe so.”

“I have such mental landscapes, too.”

“You’d better handle them with care.”

“I will.”

“I have one more thing to say, and that is that I will do everything I can to protect you. If there’s somebody I have to beat up, I’ll go out and beat them up. Win or lose, I won’t abandon you.”

“Thank you.”

A few tranquil seconds of silence followed.

“Don’t leave that apartment for a while. Just think of it as a jungle one step outside your door. Okay?”

“Got it,” Aomame said.

The connection was cut. Hanging up, Aomame realized how tightly she had been gripping the receiver.

What Tamaru wanted to convey to me was that I’m now an indispensable part of their family, that ties once formed will never be cut, Aomame thought. We are bound by artificial blood, so to speak. Aomame was grateful to Tamaru for having delivered that message. He must have realized what a painful time this was for Aomame. It was precisely because he thought of her as a member of the family that he had begun to share some of his secrets.

To think that such a close connection could only be formed through violence was almost too much for Aomame to bear. We can only share these deep feelings because of my unique circumstances: I’ve broken the law, killed several people, and now someone is after me and may even kill me. Would it have been possible to form such a relationship if murder had not been involved? Could we have formed such bonds of trust if I were not an outlaw? I doubt it.

She watched the TV news, drinking tea. There were no more reports on the flooding of the Akasaka-Mitsuke subway station. Once the water receded the next day and the trains were running normally again, it had become old news. The death of Sakigake’s Leader was still not public knowledge. Only a handful of people knew about that. Aomame imagined the large man’s corpse being consumed by the high-temperature incinerator. Tamaru had said that not a single bone would be left. Unrelated to either grace or pain, everything would become smoke and blend into the early-autumn sky. Aomame could picture the smoke and the sky.

There was a report on the disappearance of the seventeen-year-old girl who wrote the bestselling book Air Chrysalis. Eriko Fukada, or “Fuka-Eri,” as she was known, had been missing for over two months. The police had received a search request from her guardian and were carrying on a thorough investigation, but nothing had come to light as yet, the announcer said. The screen showed a stack of copies of Air Chrysalis in a bookstore, and a poster with the photo of the beautiful author hung on the store wall. A young female bookstore clerk was interviewed: “The book is still selling like crazy. I bought a copy myself and read it. It’s really good—very imaginative! I hope they find out where Fuka-Eri is soon.”

The report said nothing about a relationship between Eriko Fukada and Sakigake. The media were very cautious when religious organizations were involved.

In any case, Eriko Fukada was missing. She had been violated by her father when she was ten years old. They had had “ambiguous congress,” if Aomame was to accept his terminology. Through that act, they had led the Little People into him. How did he put it, again? That’s it—they were Perceiver and Receiver. Eriko Fukada was the one who perceived, and her father was the one who received. Then the man started to hear special voices. He became the agent of the Little People and the founder of the religion called Sakigake. She left the religion after that. Then, as a force against the Little People, she teamed up with Tengo and wrote the novella Air Chrysalis, which became a bestseller. Now, for some reason or other, she has disappeared, and the police are looking for her.

Meanwhile, last night, using a specially made ice pick, I killed Eriko Fukada’s father, leader of the religion called Sakigake. People from the religion transported his corpse from the hotel and secretly “disposed” of it. Aomame could not imagine how Eriko Fukada would deal with the news of her father’s death. It was a death that he himself asked for, a painless “mercy killing,” but the fact is that I used these hands of mine to end the life of a human being. A person’s life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are linked, and I surely have to bear some responsibility for those as well.