What should I do?

She listened to her labored breathing. Before she knew it, her body seemed to have split down the middle. One half was willing to accept the fact that Tengo was right there in front of her. The other half refused to accept it, trying to convince itself that this was not happening. Inside her, these two forces clashed, each trying to drag her in its own direction. It was as if every bit of her flesh was being shredded, her joints torn apart, her bones smashed.

Aomame wanted to run straight to the playground, climb the slide, and speak to Tengo there. But what should she say? She didn’t know how to move the muscles of her mouth. Could she manage to squeeze out a few words? “My name is Aomame. I held your hand in an elementary school classroom in Ichikawa twenty years ago. Do you remember me?”

Is that what she should say?

There should be something a little better.

The other Aomame gave her an order: “Stay hidden on this balcony. There’s nothing more you can do. You know that. You struck a bargain with Leader last night: you would save Tengo and help him to go on living in this world by throwing away your own life. That was the gist of your bargain. The contract has been concluded. You have sent Leader to the other world and agreed to offer your own life. What good would it do you now to see Tengo and talk about the past? And what would you do if he didn’t remember you or if he knew you only as ‘that strange girl who used to say the creepy prayers’? Then how would you feel as you went to your death?”

The thought made her go stiff all over. She began to shiver uncontrollably, as if she had caught a bad cold and might freeze to the core. She hugged herself for a time, shivering, but never once did she take her eyes off Tengo sitting on top of the slide and looking at the sky. He might disappear somewhere the moment she looked away from him.

She wanted Tengo to hold her in his arms, to caress her with his big hands. She wanted her whole body to feel his warmth, to have him stroke her from head to toe and warm her up. I want him to take away this chill I feel in my body’s core. Then I want him to come inside me and stir me with all his might, like a spoon in a cup of cocoa, slowly, to the very bottom. If he would do that for me, I wouldn’t mind dying right then and there. Really.

No, can that really be true? Aomame thought. If that really happened, I might not want to die anymore. I might want to stay with him forever and ever. My resolve to die might simply evaporate, like a drop of dew in the morning sun. Or then again, I might feel like killing him, shooting him first with the Heckler & Koch, and then blowing my own brains out. I can’t begin to predict what would happen or what I would be capable of.

What should I do?

Aomame could not decide. Her breathing became harsh. A jumble of thoughts came to her, one after another, tangled thoughts defying all her attempts to impose order upon them. What was right? What was wrong? She knew only one thing for sure: she wanted those thick arms of his to be holding her right now. What happened after that would happen: let God or the devil decide.

.    .    .

Aomame made up her mind. She went to the bathroom and wiped away the traces of her tears. She looked in the mirror and swiftly straightened her hair. Her face was an absolute mess. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her outfit was terrible—faded jersey workout clothes with a weird bulge in back where she had a 9mm automatic pistol shoved into her waistband. This was no way to present herself to the man for whom she’d been burning with desire for twenty years. Why wasn’t she wearing something a little more decent? But it was too late. She had no time to be changing clothes. She slipped on a pair of sneakers and ran down three floors on the condo building’s emergency stairway, crossed the street, entered the empty playground, and walked to the slide, where there was no sign of Tengo. Bathed in the artificial light of the mercury-vapor lamp, the top of the slide was deserted—darker, colder, and emptier than the far side of the moon.

Could it have been a hallucination?

No, it was no hallucination, Aomame told herself, out of breath. Tengo was there until a moment ago, without a doubt. She climbed to the top of the slide and stood there, looking all around. No sign of anybody. But he could not have gone very far. He was here until a very few minutes ago—four or five minutes at the most. If I run, I should be able to catch up with him.

But Aomame changed her mind. She stopped herself almost by force. No, I can’t do that. I don’t even know which way he walked from here. I don’t want to be running aimlessly around the streets of Koenji at night. That is not something I should be doing. While Aomame had hesitated on the balcony, wondering what she should do, Tengo had climbed down from the slide and left. Come to think of it, this is the fate I have been handed. I hesitated and hesitated and momentarily lost my powers of judgment, and in that time Tengo went away. That is what happened to me.

It’s just as well this way, Aomame told herself. It’s probably the best thing that could have happened. At least I succeeded in finding Tengo. I saw him just across the street. I trembled with the possibility of having his arms around me. If only for a few moments, I was able to taste that intense joy and anticipation. She closed her eyes and grasped the slide handrail, biting her lip.

Aomame sat down on top of the slide in the same posture that Tengo had adopted. She looked up at the southwestern sky, where the two moons, large and small, hung side by side. Until only moments ago, she had been watching Tengo from the balcony of her apartment, where her deep hesitation seemed to be lingering still.

1Q84: that is the name given to this world. I entered it six months ago without meaning to, and now I am about to leave it quite deliberately. Tengo will stay here after I am gone. I have no idea, of course, what kind of world it will be for Tengo. There is no way I can see it through to the end. But so what? I am going to die for him. I was unable to live for myself: that possibility had already been stripped from me. Instead, I will be able to die for him. That is enough. I can die smiling.

This is no lie.

Aomame struggled to feel whatever hint of Tengo’s presence might be left at the top of the slide, but no warmth of any kind remained there. The night wind, with its presentiment of autumn, cut through the leaves of the zelkova tree, removing all traces of Tengo. Even so, Aomame went on sitting there, looking up at the moons, bathed in their odd, emotionless light. The city sounds blended together into one urban noise surrounding her with its basso continuo. She thought of the little spiders that had spun their webs on the emergency stairway of the Metropolitan Expressway. Were those spiders still alive and maintaining their webs?

She smiled.

I’m ready, she thought. I’ve made my preparations.

But there was one place she would have to visit first.

CHAPTER 22

Tengo

AS LONG AS THERE ARE

TWO MOONS IN THE SKY

After climbing down from the slide and leaving the playground, Tengo wandered aimlessly through the streets of Koenji, from one block to the next, hardly conscious of where his feet were taking him. He tried to organize the jumble of ideas in his head, but unified thinking was beyond him now, probably because he had thought about too many different things at once while sitting on the slide: about the increase in the number of moons, about blood ties, about a new chapter in his life, about his dizzyingly realistic daydream, about Fuka-Eri and Air Chrysalis, and about Aomame, who was probably in hiding somewhere nearby. With his head a confused tangle of thoughts, Tengo felt his powers of concentration being tested to the limit. He wished he could just go to bed and be fast asleep. He could continue this process in the morning. No amount of additional thinking would bring him any clarity now.