Aomame hadn’t pulled the trigger.

It was the beginning of September. She was standing in a turnout on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3, in the midst of a traffic jam, bathed in bright morning sunlight as she stuck the black muzzle of a Heckler & Koch in her mouth. Dressed in a Junko Shimada suit and Charles Jourdan high heels.

People were watching her from their cars, as if something was about to occur but they had no idea what. There was a middle-aged woman in a silver Mercedes coupe. There were suntanned men looking down at her from the high cab of a freight truck. Aomame planned to blow her brains out right before their very eyes with a 9mm bullet. Taking her life was the only way she could vanish from this 1Q84 world. That way she would be able to save Tengo’s life. At least Leader had promised that. He had promised that much, and sought his own death.

Aomame didn’t find it particularly disappointing that she had to die. Everything, she felt, had already been decided, ever since she was first pulled into this 1Q84 world. I’m just following the plan that has already been laid out. Continuing to live, alone, in this unreasonable world—where there are two moons in the sky, one large, one small, where something called Little People control the destiny of others—what meaning could it have anyway?

In the end, though, she didn’t pull the trigger. At the last moment she relaxed her right index finger and removed the muzzle from her mouth. Like a person surfacing from deep under water she took a long breath, and exhaled, as if replacing every molecule of air within her.

She stopped moving toward death because she had heard a distant voice. At that point, she was in a soundless space. From the moment she put pressure on the trigger, all noise around her vanished. She was wrapped in silence, as if at the bottom of a pool. Down there, death was neither dark nor fearful. Like amniotic fluid to a fetus, it was natural, self-evident. This isn’t so bad, Aomame thought, and almost smiled. That was when she heard a voice.

The voice sounded far away, as if coming from a distant time. She didn’t recognize it. It reached her only after many twists and turns, and in the process it lost its original tone and timbre. What was left was a hollow echo, stripped of meaning. Still, within that sound, Aomame could detect a warmth she hadn’t felt for years. The voice seemed to be calling her name.

She relaxed her finger on the trigger, narrowed her eyes, and listened carefully, trying to hear the words the voice was saying. But all she could make out, or thought that she made out, was her name. The rest was wind whistling through a hollow space. In the end the voice grew distant, lost any meaning at all, and was absorbed into the silence. The void enveloping her disappeared, and, as if a cork had been pulled, the noise and clamor around her rushed in. And she no longer wanted to die.

Maybe I can see Tengo one more time at that little playground, she thought. I can die after that. I’ll take a chance on that happening. Living—not dying—means the possibility of seeing Tengo again. I want to live, she decided. It was a strange feeling. Had she ever experienced that feeling before in her life?

She released the hammer of the automatic pistol, set the safety, and put it inside her shoulder bag. She straightened up, put on her sunglasses, and walked in the opposite direction of traffic back to her taxi. People silently watched her, in her high heels, striding down the expressway. She didn’t have to walk for long. Even in the traffic jam, her taxi had managed to inch forward and had come up to where she was now standing.

Aomame knocked on the window and the driver lowered it.

“Can I get in again?”

The driver hesitated. “That thing you put in your mouth over there looked like a pistol.”

“It was.”

“A real one?”

“No way,” Aomame replied, curling her lips.

The driver opened the door, and she climbed in. She took the bag off her shoulder and laid it on the seat and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. She could still taste the metal and the residue of gun oil.

“So, did you find an emergency stairway?” the driver asked.

Aomame shook her head.

“I’m not surprised. I never heard of an emergency stairway anywhere around here,” the driver said. “Would you still like to get off at the Ikejiri exit?”

“Yes, that would be fine,” Aomame replied.

The driver rolled down his window, stuck his hand out, and pulled over into the right lane in front of a large bus. The meter in the cab was unchanged from when she had gotten out.

Aomame leaned back against the seat, and, breathing slowly, she gazed at the familiar Esso billboard. The huge tiger was looking in her direction, smiling, with a gas hose in his paw. Put a Tiger in Your Tank, the ad read.

“Put a tiger in your tank,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?” the driver said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

I think I’ll stay alive here a bit longer, and see with my own eyes what’s going to happen. I can still die after that—it won’t be too late. Probably.

The day after she gave up on killing herself, Tamaru called her. So Aomame told him that the plan had changed—that she was going to stay put, and not change her name or get plastic surgery.

On the other end of the line Tamaru was silent. Several theories noiselessly aligned themselves in his mind.

“In other words, you’re saying you don’t want to move to another location?”

“Correct,” Aomame replied. “I would like to stay here for the time being.”

“That place is not set up to hide someone for an extended period.”

“If I stay inside and don’t go out, they shouldn’t find me.”

“Don’t underestimate them,” Tamaru said. “They will do everything they can to pinpoint who you are and hunt you down. And you won’t be the only one in danger. It could involve those around you. If that happens, I could be put in a difficult position.”

“I’m very sorry about that. But I need a bit more time.”

“A bit more time? That’s a little vague,” Tamaru said.

“That’s the only way I can put it.”

Tamaru was silent, in thought. He seemed to have sensed how firm her decision was.

“I have to keep my priorities straight,” he said. “Do you understand that?”

“I think so.”

Tamaru was silent again, and then continued.

“All right. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. Since you insist on staying, you must have your reasons.”

“I do,” Aomame said.

Tamaru briefly cleared his throat. “As I have told you before, we have committed to take you someplace safe, and far away—to erase any trail, change your face and name. Maybe it won’t be a total transformation, but as close to total as we can manage. I thought we were agreed on this.”

“Of course I understand. I’m not saying I don’t like the plan itself. It’s just that something unexpected occurred, and I need to stay put for a while longer.”

“I am not authorized to say yes or no to this,” Tamaru said, making a faint sound in the back of his throat. “It might take a while to get an answer.”

“I’ll be here,” Aomame said.

“Glad to hear it,” Tamaru said, and hung up.

The phone rang the next morning, just before nine. Three rings, then it stopped, and rang again. It had to be Tamaru.

Tamaru launched right in without saying hello. “Madame also is concerned about you staying there for very long. It is just a safe house, and it is not totally secure. Both of us agree that it’s best to move you somewhere far away, somewhere more secure. Do you follow me?”

“I do.”

“But you are a calm, cautious person. You don’t make stupid mistakes, and I know you are committed. We trust you implicitly.”