“Might help,” Tengo said. “Are you saying that if I remember something about her, I might get a hint about where she is hiding?”

Without answering, she gave a little shrug. The gesture might have contained an affirmative nuance.

“Thank you,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave him a tiny nod, like a contented cat.

Tengo prepared lunch in the kitchen. Fuka-Eri was intently choosing records from the record shelf. Not that he had a lot of records there, but it took her time to choose. At the end of her deliberations, she took out an old Rolling Stones album, put it on the turntable, and lowered the tonearm. It was a record that he had borrowed from somebody in high school and, for some reason, never given back. He hadn’t heard it in years.

Listening to tracks like “Mother’s Little Helper” and “Lady Jane,” he made rice pilaf using ham and mushrooms and brown rice, and miso soup with tofu and wakame. He boiled cauliflower and flavored it with curry sauce he had prepared. He made a green bean and onion salad. Cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think—about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions. He could think in a more orderly fashion while standing in the kitchen and moving his hands than while doing nothing. Today, however, no amount of thinking would tell him what kind of “special place” Fuka-Eri had been talking about. Trying to impose order on something where there had never been any was a waste of effort. The number of places he could arrive at was limited.

The two of them sat across from each other eating dinner. Their conversation was virtually nonexistent. Like a bored married couple, they transported the food to their mouths in silence, each thinking—or not thinking—separate thoughts. It was especially difficult to distinguish between the two in Fuka-Eri’s case. When the meal ended, Tengo drank coffee and Fuka-Eri ate a pudding she found in the refrigerator. Whatever she ate, her expression never changed. Chewing seemed to be the only thing she was thinking about.

Tengo sat at his desk, and, following Fuka-Eri’s suggestion, he tried hard to recall something about Aomame.

You remember some things about her. One of them might help.

But Tengo could not concentrate. Another Rolling Stones record was playing. “Little Red Rooster”—a performance from the time Mick Jagger was crazy about Chicago blues. Not bad, but not a song written for people engaged in deep thinking or in the midst of seriously digging through old memories. The Rolling Stones were not a band much given to such kindness. He needed someplace quiet where he could be alone.

“I’m going out for a while,” Tengo said.

Studying the Rolling Stones album jacket in her hand, Fuka-Eri nodded, as if to say, “Fine.”

“If anyone comes here, don’t open the door for them,” Tengo said.

Tengo walked toward the station wearing a navy-blue long-sleeved T-shirt, chinos from which the crease had long since faded, and sneakers. Just before reaching the station, he turned into a bar called Barleyhead and ordered a draft beer. The place served drinks and snacks. It was small enough so that twenty customers filled it up. He had come here any number of times before. Young people made it quite noisy late at night, but there were relatively few customers in the hour between seven and eight, when the mood was nice and hushed. It was perfect for sitting alone in a corner and reading a book while drinking a beer. The chairs were comfortable, too. He had no idea where the bar’s name came from or what it meant. He could have asked one of the employees, but he was not good at small talk with strangers, and not knowing the source of the name didn’t really matter. It was just a pleasant bar that happened to be named Barleyhead.

Fortunately, no music was playing. Tengo sat at a table by a window, drinking Carlsberg draft and munching on mixed nuts from a small bowl, thinking about Aomame. Picturing Aomame meant that Tengo himself became a ten-year-old boy again. It also meant that he experienced a major turning point in his life once again. After Aomame grasped his hand when they were ten, he refused to make any more rounds with his father doing NHK subscription collections. Shortly after that he experienced a definite erection and his first ejaculation. That was a watershed in his life. Of course, the transformation would have come—sooner or later—whether or not Aomame grasped his hand, but Aomame urged him on and promoted the change as if she had given his back a gentle shove.

He stared at the open palm of his left hand for a long time. That ten-year-old girl grasped this hand and hugely changed something inside me, but I can’t give areasonable explanation of how such a thing could have happened. Still, the two of us understood each other and accepted each other in a very natural way in every last particular—almost miraculously so. Such things don’t happen all that often in this life. For some people, they might never happen. At the time, however, Tengo had not been able to fully comprehend the event’s decisive meaning. And not just back then. He had not truly been able to understand its meaning until almost the present moment. He had only vaguely embraced the girl’s image in his heart over the years.

She was thirty now, and her outward appearance might be very different from what he remembered from when they were ten. She must have grown taller, her chest developed, and her hairstyle must have changed. If she left the Society of Witnesses, she was probably wearing makeup. She might be sporting expensive, stylish clothing. Tengo found it hard to imagine Aomame striding down the street wearing a Calvin Klein suit and high heels. But such a thing was, of course, conceivable. People grow up, and when they grow up they change. She could be in this bar right this moment without my realizing it.

Tipping back his beer glass, Tengo took another look at his surroundings. She was somewhere close by. Within walking distance. Fuka-Eri said so. And Tengo accepted Fuka-Eri at her word. If she said it, it must be true.

The only other customers in the room were a young couple, probably students, sitting at the bar, engaged in an intense and intimate conversation, their foreheads practically touching. Seeing them, Tengo felt a profound loneliness, the sort he had not experienced for a very long time. I’m alone in this world, he thought. I have no ties with anyone.

Tengo closed his eyes and concentrated on the elementary school classroom once again. He had closed his eyes and visited that place last night, too—with a tremendously concrete sense of reality—when he and Fuka-Eri joined bodies during the violent thunderstorm. Because of that, the picture he conjured now came back with special vividness, as if it had been cleansed of all dust by last night’s rain.

Unease and expectation and fear scattered to the farthest corners of the spacious classroom, and hid themselves in the room’s many objects like cowardly little animals. Tengo was able to re-create the scene in meticulous detail—the blackboard with its partially erased mathematical formulas, the broken pieces of chalk, the cheap, sun-damaged curtains, the flowers in the vase on the teacher’s podium (though he couldn’t tell what type), the children’s paintings pinned to the wall, the world map behind the podium, the smell of the floor wax, the waving of the curtains, the children’s shouts coming through the window. His eyes could trace each omen or plan or riddle they contained.

During those several seconds when Aomame was holding his hand, Tengo had seen many things and accurately seared each image on his retinas, like a camera taking a photograph. These images comprised one of the basic landscapes that helped him survive his pain-filled teens. The scene always included the strong sensation of the girl’s fingers. Her right hand never failed to encourage Tengo during the agonizing process of becoming an adult. Don’t worry, I’m with you, the hand declared.