“I meant it as a compliment.”

“I know. I get good mileage, too,” she said, and took Tengo’s hand. “Do you mind if I hold your hand? It makes it more fun to walk together, and more relaxed.”

“I don’t mind,” Tengo replied. Holding hands like this with Kumi Adachi, he remembered Aomame and the classroom in elementary school. It felt different now, but there was something in common.

“I must be a little drunk,” Kumi said.

“You think so?”

“Yup.”

Tengo looked at the young nurse’s face again. “You don’t look drunk.”

“I don’t show it on the outside. That’s just the way I am. But I’m wasted.”

“Well, you were knocking them back pretty steadily.”

“I know. I haven’t drunk this much in a long time.”

“You just have to get out like this sometimes,” Tengo said, quoting Mrs. Tamura.

“Of course,” Kumi said, nodding vigorously. “People have to get out sometimes—have something good to eat, have some drinks, belt out some songs, talk about nothing in particular. But I wonder if you ever have times like that. Where you just get it out of your system, to clear your head? You always seem so cool and composed, Tengo.”

Tengo thought about it. Had he done anything lately to unwind? He couldn’t recall. If he couldn’t recall, that probably meant he hadn’t. The whole concept of getting something out of his system was something he might be lacking.

“Not so much, I guess,” Tengo admitted.

“Everybody’s different.”

“There are all sorts of ways of thinking and feeling.”

“Just like there are lots of ways of being drunk,” the nurse said, and giggled. “But it’s important, Tengo.”

“You may be right,” he said.

They walked on in silence for a while, hand in hand. Tengo felt uneasy about the change in the way she spoke. When she had on her nurse’s uniform, Kumi was invariably polite. But now in civilian clothes, she was more outspoken, probably partly due to the alcohol. That informal way of talking reminded him of someone. Somebody had spoken the same way. Someone he had met fairly recently.

“Tengo, have you ever tried hashish?”

“Hashish?”

“Cannabis resin.”

Tengo breathed in the night air and exhaled. “No, I never have.”

“How about trying some?” Kumi Adachi asked. “Let’s try it together. I have some at home.”

“You have hashish?”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“They certainly can,” Tengo said vaguely. So a healthy young nurse living in a seaside little town on the Boso Peninsula had hashish in her apartment. And she was inviting him to smoke some.

“How did you get ahold of it?” Tengo asked.

“A girlfriend from high school gave it to me for a birthday present last month. She had gone to India and brought it back.” Kumi began swinging Tengo’s hand with her own in a wide arc.

“But there’s a stiff penalty if you’re caught smuggling pot into the country. The Japanese police are really strict about it. They have pot-sniffing dogs at the airports.”

“She’s not the type to worry about little details,” Kumi said. “Anyhow, she got through customs okay. Would you like to try it? It’s high-quality stuff, very potent. I checked into it, and medically speaking there’s nothing dangerous about it. I’m not saying it isn’t habit forming, but it’s much milder than tobacco, alcohol, or cocaine. Law enforcement says it’s addictive, but that’s ridiculous. If you believe that, then pachinko is far more dangerous. You don’t get a hangover, so I think it would be good for you to try it to blow off some steam.”

“Have you tried it yourself?”

“Of course. It was fun.”

“Fun,” Tengo repeated.

“You’ll understand if you try it,” Kumi said, and giggled. “Say, did you know? When Queen Victoria had menstrual cramps she used to smoke marijuana to lessen the pain. Her court doctor actually prescribed it to her.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s true. I read it in a book.”

Which book? Tengo was about to ask, but decided it was too much trouble. That was as far as he wanted to go picturing Queen Victoria having menstrual cramps.

“So how old were you on your birthday last month?” Tengo asked, changing subjects.

“Twenty-three. A full-fledged adult.”

“Of course,” Tengo said. He was already thirty, but yet to have a sense of himself as an adult. It just felt to him like he had spent thirty years in the world.

“My older sister is staying over tonight at her boyfriend’s, so I’m by myself. So come on over. Don’t be shy. I’m off duty tomorrow so I can take it easy.”

Tengo searched for a reply. He liked this young nurse. And she seemed to like him, too. But she was inviting him to her place. He looked up at the sky, but it was covered with thick gray clouds and he couldn’t see the moons.

“The other day when my girlfriend and I smoked hashish,” Kumi began, “that was my first time, but it felt like my body was floating in the air. Not very high, just a couple of inches. You know, floating at that height felt really good. Like it was just right.”

“Plus you won’t hurt yourself if you fall.”

“Yeah, it’s just the right height, so you can feel safe. Like you’re being protected. Like you’re wrapped in an air chrysalis. I’m the dohta, completely enveloped in the air chrysalis, and outside I can just make out maza.”

“Dohta?” Tengo asked. His voice was surprisingly hard. “Maza?”

The young nurse was humming a tune, swinging their clasped hands as they walked down the deserted streets. She was much shorter than Tengo, but it didn’t seem to bother her at all. An occasional car passed by.

“Maza and dohta. It’s from the book Air Chrysalis. Do you know it?” she asked.

“I do.”

“Have you read it?”

Tengo silently nodded.

“Great. That makes things easier. I love that book. I bought it in the summer and read it three times. I hardly ever read a book three times. And as I was smoking hashish for the first time in my life I thought it felt like I was inside an air chrysalis myself. Like I was enveloped in something and waiting to be born. With my maza watching over me.”

“You saw your maza?” Tengo asked.

“Yes, I did. From inside the air chrysalis you can see outside, to a certain extent. Though you can’t see in from outside. That’s how it’s structured. But I couldn’t make out her expression. She was a vague outline. But I knew it was my maza. I could feel it very clearly. That this person was my maza.”

“So an air chrysalis is actually a kind of womb.”

“I guess you could say that. I don’t remember anything from when I was in the womb, so I can’t make an exact comparison,” Kumi Adachi said, and giggled again.

It was the kind of cheaply made two-story apartment building you often find in the suburbs of provincial cities. It looked fairly new, yet it was already starting to fall apart. The outside stairway creaked, and the doors didn’t quite hang right. Whenever a large truck rolled by outside, the windows rattled. The walls were thin, and if anyone were to practice a bass guitar in one of the apartments, the whole building would end up being one large sound box.

Tengo wasn’t all that drawn to the idea of smoking hashish. He had a sane mind, yet he lived in a world with two moons. There was no need to distort the world any more than that. He also didn’t have any sexual desire for Kumi Adachi. Certainly he did feel friendly toward this young twenty-three-year-old nurse. But friendliness and sexual desire were two different things, at least for Tengo. So if she hadn’t mentioned maza and dohta, most likely he would have made up an excuse and not gone inside. He would have taken a bus back, or, if there weren’t any buses, he would have had her call a cab, and then returned to the inn. This was, after all, the cat town. It was best to avoid any dangerous spots. But once Kumi mentioned the words maza and dohta, Tengo couldn’t turn down her invitation. Maybe she could give him a hint as to why the young Aomame had appeared in the air chrysalis in the hospital room.