As if sensing something from his silence, Fuka-Eri asked, “Are you okay.”

“I’m fine. Just ignore the NHK person, okay?”

“The crow said the same thing.”

“Glad to hear it,” Tengo said.

Ever since he saw two moons in the sky, and an air chrysalis materializing on his father’s bed in the sanatorium, nothing surprised Tengo very much. Fuka-Eri and the crow exchanging opinions by the windowsill wasn’t hurting anybody.

“I think I’ll be here a little longer. I can’t go back to Tokyo yet. Is that all right?”

“You should be there as long as you want to be.”

And then she hung up. Their conversation vanished in an instant, as if someone had taken a nicely sharpened hatchet to the phone line and chopped it in two.

Afterward Tengo called the publishing company where Komatsu worked. He wasn’t in. He had put in a brief appearance around one p.m. but then had left, and the person on the phone had no idea where he was or if he was coming back. This wasn’t that unusual for Komatsu. Tengo left the number for the sanatorium, saying that was where he could be found during the day, and asked that Komatsu call back. If he had left the inn’s number and Komatsu ended up calling in the middle of the night, that would be a problem.

The last time he had heard from Komatsu had been near the end of September, just a short talk on the phone. Since then Komatsu hadn’t been in touch, and neither had Tengo. For a three-week period starting at the end of August, Komatsu had disappeared. He had called the publisher with some vague excuse, claiming he was ill and needed time off to rest, but hadn’t called afterward, as if he were a missing person. Tengo was concerned, but not overly worried. Komatsu had always done his own thing. Tengo was sure that he would show up before long and saunter back into the office.

Such self-centered behavior was usually forbidden in a corporate environment. But in Komatsu’s case, one of his colleagues always smoothed things over so he didn’t get in trouble. Komatsu wasn’t the most popular man, but somehow there always seemed to be a willing person on hand, ready to clean up whatever mess he left behind. The publishing house, for its part, was willing, to a certain extent, to look the other way. Komatsu was self-centered, uncooperative, and insolent, but when it came to his job, he was capable. He had handled, on his own, the bestseller Air Chrysalis. So they weren’t about to fire him.

As Tengo had predicted, one day Komatsu simply returned, without explaining why he was away or apologizing for his absence, and came back to work. Tengo heard the news from another editor he worked with who happened to mention it.

“So how is Mr. Komatsu feeling?” Tengo asked the editor.

“He seems fine,” the man replied. “Though he seems less talkative than before.”

“Less talkative?” Tengo asked, a bit surprised.

“How should I put it—he’s less sociable than before.”

“Was he really quite sick?”

“How should I know?” the editor said, apathetically. “He says he’s fine, so I have to go with that. Now that he’s back we’ve been able to take care of the work that has been piling up. While he was away there were all sorts of things to do with Air Chrysalis that were a real pain, things I had to take care of in his absence.”

“Speaking of Air Chrysalis, are there any developments in the case of the missing author, Fuka-Eri?”

“No, no updates. No progress at all, and not any idea where the author is. Everybody is at their wits’ end.”

“I’ve been reading the newspapers but haven’t seen a single mention of it recently.”

“The media has mostly backed off the story, or maybe they’re deliberately distancing themselves from it. And the police don’t appear to be actively pursuing the case. Mr. Komatsu will know the details, so he would be the one to ask. But as I said, he has gotten a bit less talkative. Actually he’s not himself at all. He used to be brimming with confidence, but he has toned that down, and has gotten more introspective, I guess you would say, just sitting there half the time. He’s more difficult to get along with, too. Sometimes it seems like he has totally forgotten that there are other people around, like he is all by himself inside a hole.”

“Introspective,” Tengo said.

“You’ll know what I mean when you talk with him.”

Tengo had thanked him and hung up.

A few days later, in the evening, Tengo called Komatsu. He was in the office. Just like the editor had told him, the way Komatsu spoke had changed. Usually the words slipped out smoothly without a pause, but now there was awkwardness about him, as if he were preoccupied. Something must be bothering him, Tengo thought. At any rate, this was no longer the cool Komatsu he knew.

“Are you completely well now?” Tengo asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you took a long break from work because you weren’t feeling well, right?”

“That’s right,” Komatsu said, as if he had just recalled the fact. A short silence followed. “I’m fine now. I’ll tell you all about it sometime, before long. I can’t really explain it at this point.”

Sometime, before long. Tengo mulled over the words. There was something odd about the sound of Komatsu’s voice. The sense of distance that you would normally expect was missing, and his words were flat, without any depth.

Tengo found an appropriate point in the conversation to say good-bye, and hung up. He decided not to bring up Air Chrysalis or Fuka-Eri. Something in Komatsu’s tone indicated he was trying to avoid these topics. Had Komatsu ever had trouble discussing anything before?

This phone call, at the end of September, was the last time he had spoken to Komatsu. More than two months had passed since then. Komatsu usually loved to have long talks on the phone. Tengo was, as it were, the wall against which Komatsu hit a tennis ball. Maybe he was going through a period when he just didn’t want to talk to anyone, Tengo surmised. Everybody has times like that, even somebody like Komatsu. And Tengo, for his part, didn’t have anything pressing he had to discuss with him. Air Chrysalis had stopped selling and had practically vanished from the public eye, and Tengo knew exactly where the missing Fuka-Eri happened to be. If Komatsu had something he needed to discuss, then he would surely call. No calls simply meant he didn’t have anything to talk about.

But Tengo was thinking that it was getting about time to call him. I’ll tell you all about it sometime, before long. Komatsu’s words had stuck with him, oddly enough, and he couldn’t shake them.

Tengo called his friend who was subbing for him at the cram school, to see how things were going.

“Everything’s fine,” his friend replied. “How is your father doing?”

“He has been in a coma the whole time,” Tengo explained. “He’s breathing, and his temperature and blood pressure are low but stable. But he’s unconscious. I don’t think he’s in any pain. It’s like he has gone over completely to the dream world.”

“Not such a bad way to go,” his friend said, without much emotion. What he was trying to say was This might sound a little insensitive, but depending on how you look at it, that’s not such a bad way to die. But he had left out such prefatory remarks. If you study for a few years in a mathematics department, you get used to that kind of abbreviated conversation.

“Have you looked at the moon recently?” Tengo suddenly asked. This friend was probably the only person he knew who wouldn’t find it suspicious to be asked, out of the blue, about the moon.

His friend gave it some thought. “Now that you mention it, I don’t recall looking at the moon recently. What’s going on with the moon?”