“Yeah, that’s it. Faye Dunaway plays an insurance investigator. She’s a specialist in theft insurance. McQueen is this rich guy who commits crimes for fun. That was a great movie. I saw it when I was in high school. I really liked the music. It was very cool.”

“Michel Legrand.”

The driver hummed the first few bars of the theme song. Then he looked in the mirror for another close look at Aomame.

“Come to think of it, miss, something about you reminds me of Faye Dunaway.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said, struggling somewhat to hide the smile that formed around her lips.

The inbound side of Metropolitan Expressway Number 3 was, as the driver had predicted, beautifully backed up. The slowdown started less than a hundred yards from the entrance, an almost perfect specimen of chaos, which was exactly what Aomame wanted. The same outfit, the same road, the same traffic jam. Unfortunately, Janáček’s Sinfonietta was not playing on the car radio, and the sound quality didn’t measure up to that of the stereo in the Toyota Crown Royal Saloon, but that would have been asking for too much.

The cab inched ahead, hemmed in by trucks. It would stay in one place for a long time and then unpredictably creep ahead. The young driver of the refrigerated truck in the next lane was absorbed in his manga magazine during the long stops. The middle-aged couple in a cream Toyota Corona Mark II sat looking straight ahead, frowning, but never saying a word to each other. They probably had nothing to talk about, or maybe they had talked and now they were silent as a result. Aomame settled deeply into her seat. The taxi driver listened to the broadcast on his radio.

The cab finally passed a sign for Komazawa as it continued to crawl along toward Sangenjaya at a snail’s pace. Aomame looked up now and then to stare out the window. I won’t be seeing this neighborhood anymore. I’m going somewhere far away. But she was not about to start feeling nostalgic for the streets of Tokyo. All the buildings along the expressway were ugly, stained with the soot of automobile exhaust, and they carried garish billboards. The sight weighed on her heart. Why do people have to build such depressing places? I’m not saying that every nook and cranny of the world has to be beautiful, but does it have to be this ugly?

Finally, after some time, a familiar area entered Aomame’s field of vision—the place where she had stepped out of the cab. The middle-aged driver had told her, as if hinting at some deeper significance, that there was an emergency stairway at the side of the roadway. Just ahead was the large billboard advertising Esso gasoline. A smiling tiger held up a gas hose. It was the same billboard as before.

“Put a tiger in your tank.”

Aomame suddenly noticed that her throat was dry. She coughed once, thrust her hand into her shoulder bag, and took out a box of lemon-flavored cough drops. After putting a drop in her mouth, she returned the box to the bag. While her hand was in there, she gave the handle of the Heckler & Koch a strong squeeze, reassured by its weight and hardness. Good, she thought. The cab moved ahead somewhat.

“Get into the left lane, will you?” Aomame said to the driver.

“The right lane is moving better,” he objected softly. “And the Ikejiri exit is on the right. If I get into the left lane here, I’ll just have to move over again.”

Aomame was not ready to accept his objections. “Never mind, just get into the left lane.”

“If you say so, miss,” the driver said with resignation.

Leaning over and sticking his hand out the front passenger window, he signaled to the refrigerated truck behind him in the left lane. After making sure the driver had seen him, he raised the window again and squeezed the cab into the left lane. They moved ahead another fifty yards until the traffic came to a full stop again.

“Now open the door for me. I’m getting out here,” Aomame said.

“Getting out?” the driver asked, astonished. He made no move to pull the lever that opened the passenger door. “Here?!”

“Yes, this is where I’m getting out. I have something to do here.”

“But we’re right in the middle of the Metropolitan Expressway. It would be too dangerous to get out here, and even if you did, there’s no place you could go.”

“Don’t worry, there’s an emergency stairway right there.”

“Emergency stairway.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if there’s an emergency stairway or not, but if anyone found out I let a passenger out in a place like this, I’d be in big trouble with the cab company and the expressway management company. So please, miss, give me a break …”

“Sorry, I have to get out here,” Aomame said. She took another ten-thousand-yen bill from her wallet, gave it a snap, and shoved it at the driver. “I know I’m asking you to do something you shouldn’t do. This will pay for your trouble. So please stop arguing and let me out.”

The driver did not take the money, but he gave up and pulled the lever. The left-side passenger door opened.

“No, thanks, you’ve already paid me more than enough. But please be careful. The expressway doesn’t have shoulders, and no matter how backed up the traffic might be, it’s very dangerous for anybody to walk up here.”

“Thank you,” Aomame said. After stepping out, she knocked on the passenger-side front window and had him lower the glass. Leaning inside, she thrust the ten-thousand-yen bill into the driver’s hand.

“Never mind, just take it. Don’t worry, I have more money than I know what to do with.”

The driver looked back and forth between the bill and Aomame’s face.

Aomame said, “If this gets you into trouble with the police or the company, just tell them I threatened you with a pistol. You had no choice but to let me out. That’ll shut them up.”

The driver seemed unable to grasp what she was saying. More money than she knew what to do with? Threatened him with a pistol? Still, he took the money, probably fearing that she might do something even more unreasonable if he refused.

Just as she had done before, Aomame made her way between the expressway’s sidewall and the cars in the left lane, heading toward Shibuya. She had some fifty yards to pass. People in the cars looked at her, incredulous, but Aomame did not let them bother her. She walked ahead with long, confident strides, her back straight, like a fashion model on the Paris runway. The wind stirred her hair. Trucks speeding along the wide-open lanes heading in the other direction shook the roadway. The Esso billboard grew larger as she approached, until finally she reached the familiar emergency turnout.

Everything looked as it had before—the metal barrier, the yellow box next to it containing an emergency telephone.

This is where the year 1Q84 started, Aomame thought.

One world took the place of another from the time I climbed down this emergency stairway to Route 246 below. So I’m going to try climbing down again. The first time I did it, it was April, and I was wearing my beige coat. Now it’s early September, and the weather is too hot for a coat. Aside from the coat, though, I’m wearing exactly the same outfit I had on that day, when I killed that awful man who worked in oil—my Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high heels. White blouse. Stockings and white underwire bra. I pulled my miniskirt up to step over the barrier and climbed down the emergency stairway from here.

I’ll try doing the same thing again—purely out of curiosity. I just want to know what will happen if I do the same thing in the same place wearing the same outfit. I’m not hoping this will save me. I’m not especially afraid to die. If it comes to that, I’ll do it without hesitation. I can die smiling. But Aomame did not want to die ignorant, failing to grasp how things worked. I want to push myself to mylimits, and if things don’t work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live.