“Miss Takai, I know you find me unpleasant. I can understand perfectly what you’re thinking. And you’re right—I am an unpleasant person. I’m aware of that. But you have to understand, Miss Takai, that pleasant people don’t make good fee collectors. There are tons of people in the world who have decided they aren’t going to pay the NHK subscription fee, and if you’re going to collect from people like that you can’t always act so nice. I would rather leave with no problem, just say, Is that right? You don’t want to pay the fee? I understand. Sorry to bother you. But I can’t. Collecting the fee is my job, and besides, personally I don’t like it when people pretend not to be at home.”

The man stopped and paused. And then he knocked on the door ten times in a row.

“Miss Takai, you must be finding this annoying. Aren’t you starting to feel like a real thief by now? Think about it. We’re not talking about a lot of money here. Enough to buy a modest dinner at your neighborhood chain restaurant. Just pay it, and you won’t be treated like a thief. You won’t have anyone yelling at you outside or banging on your door anymore. Miss Takai, I know you’re hiding in there. You think you can hide and get away from me forever. Well—go ahead and try. You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you. You can’t act so sneaky forever. Consider this: there are people a whole lot poorer than you all over Japan who faithfully pay their fee every month. Is that fair?”

Fifteen knocks on the door followed. Aomame counted them.

“I get it, Miss Takai. You’re pretty stubborn too. Fine. I’ll be going now. I can’t stand outside here forever. But rest assured, I’ll be back. Once I decide on something, I don’t give up easily. And I don’t like people pretending to be out. I’ll be back, and I’ll knock on your door. I’ll keep banging on your door until the whole world has heard it. I promise you this, a promise just between you and me. All right? Well, I’ll be seeing you soon.”

She didn’t hear any footsteps. Perhaps he had on rubber soles. Aomame stayed still there for five minutes, staring at the door. The hallway outside was quiet again, and she couldn’t hear a thing. She crept to the front door, summoned her courage, and peered out the peephole. No one was there.

She reset the safety on the pistol and took some deep breaths to get her heart rate back down. She switched on the gas, heated up water, made green tea, and drank it. It was only an NHK collector, she told herself. But there was something malicious, sick even, about his voice. Whether this was directed at her personally or at the fictitious Miss Takai, she couldn’t tell. Still, that husky voice and persistent knock disturbed her, like something clammy sticking to your bare skin.

Aomame undressed and took a shower. She carefully scrubbed herself in the hot water. After she finished and had put on clean clothes, she felt a bit better. The clammy sensation was gone. She sat down on the sofa and drank the rest of the tea. She tried to read her book but couldn’t concentrate on the words. Fragments of the man’s voice came back to her.

“You think you can hide and get away from me forever. Well—go ahead and try. You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.”

She shook her head. The man just said whatever nonsense popped into his head, yelling things just to make people feel bad. He doesn’t know a thing about me—what I’ve done, why I’m here. Still, her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.

You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you.

The fee collector’s words sounded like they had deeper implications. Maybe it was just a coincidence, she thought, but that man knew exactly what to say to upset me. Aomame gave up reading and closed her eyes as she lay on the sofa.

Tengo, where are you? she wondered. She said it out loud. “Tengo, where are you?” Find me now. Before someone else does.

CHAPTER 6

Tengo

BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS

Tengo led a very orderly life in the small town by the sea. Once his days fell into a pattern, he tried his best to keep them that way. He wasn’t sure why he did so, but it seemed important. In the morning he would take a walk, work on his novel, then go to see his father in the sanatorium and read whatever he had at hand. Then he would go back to his room and sleep. One day followed the next like the monotonous rhythm of the work songs farmers sing as they plant their rice paddies.

There were several warm nights, followed by surprisingly cold ones. Autumn advanced a step, then retreated, but was steadily deepening. The change in seasons didn’t bring any change to Tengo’s life, however—he simply modeled each day on the one preceding it. He tried his best to become an invisible observer, staying quiet, keeping the effect of his presence to a minimum, silently waiting for that time to come. As the days passed, the difference between one day and the next grew fainter. A week passed, then ten days. But the air chrysalis never materialized. In the afternoon when his father was at the examination room, the only thing on his bed was the small, pitiful, person-shaped depression.

Was that just a one-time event? Tengo thought, biting his lip as he sat in the small room in the gathering twilight. A special revelation never to appear again? Or did I just see an illusion? No one answered him. The only sound that reached him was the roar of the far-off sea, and the wind blowing through the pine windbreak.

Tengo wasn’t certain that he was doing the right thing. Maybe the time he was spending here, in this room in a sanatorium in a town far from Tokyo, was meaningless. Even if it was, though, he didn’t think he could leave. Here in this room, he had seen the air chrysalis, and inside, in a faint light, the small sleeping figure of Aomame. He had touched it. Even if this was a one-time event, even if it was nothing more than a fleeting illusion, he wanted to stay as long as he possibly could, tracing with his mind’s eye the scene as he had witnessed it.

.    .    .

Once they discovered that he was not going back to Tokyo, the nurses began to act more friendly. They would take a short break between tasks and stop to chat. If they had a free moment they came to his father’s room to talk with him. They brought him tea and cakes. Two nurses alternated in caring for Tengo’s father—Nurse Omura, who was in her mid-thirties (she was the one who wore her hair up with a ballpoint pen stuck through her bun), and Nurse Adachi, who had rosy cheeks and wore her hair in a ponytail. Nurse Tamura, a middle-aged nurse with metal-framed glasses, usually staffed the reception desk, but if they happened to be shorthanded she would pitch in and care for his father too. All three of them seemed to take a personal interest in Tengo.

Except for his special hour at twilight, Tengo had plenty of time on his hands and talked with them about all kinds of things. It was more like a question-and-answer session, though, with the nurses asking questions about his life and Tengo responding as honestly as he could.

The nurses talked about their own lives as well. All three had been born in this area, had entered nursing school after high school, and had become nurses. They all found work at the sanatorium monotonous and boring, the working hours long and irregular, but they were happy to be able to work in their hometown. The work was much less stressful than being at a general hospital, where they would face life-and-death situations on a daily basis. The old people in the sanatorium gradually lost their memory and died, not really understanding their situation. There was little blood, and the staff minimized any pain. No one was brought there by ambulance in the middle of the night, and there were no distraught, sobbing families to deal with. The cost of living was low in the area, so even with a salary that wasn’t the most generous they were able to comfortably get by. Nurse Tamura, the one with glasses, had lost her husband five years earlier in an accident, and lived in a nearby town with her mother. Nurse Omura, who wore the ballpoint pen in her hair, had two little boys and a husband who drove a cab. Young Miss Adachi lived in an apartment on the outskirts of town with her sister, who was three years older and worked as a hair stylist.