The apartment was a typical place for two sisters in their twenties living together. There were two small bedrooms, plus a combined kitchen and dining room that connected to a tiny living room. The furniture looked thrown together from all over, with no unifying style. Above the laminated dining table there hung a tacky imitation Tiffany lamp, quite out of place. If you were to open the curtain, with its tiny floral pattern, outside there was a cultivated field, and beyond that, a thick, dark grove of various trees. The view was nice, with nothing to obstruct it, but far from heartwarming.

Kumi sat Tengo down on the love seat in the living room—a gaudy, red love seat—facing the TV. She took out a can of Sapporo beer from the fridge and set it down, with a glass, in front of him.

“I’m going to change into something more comfortable, so wait here. I’ll be right back.”

But she didn’t come back for a long time. He could hear the occasional sound from behind the door across the narrow corridor—the sound of drawers that didn’t slide well, opening and closing, the thud of things clunking to the ground. With each thud, Tengo couldn’t help but look in that direction. Maybe she really was drunker than she looked. He could hear a TV through the thin walls of the apartment. He couldn’t make out what the people were saying, but it appeared to be a comedy show, and every ten or fifteen seconds there was a burst of laughter from the audience. Tengo regretted not having turned down her invitation. At the same time, though, in a corner of his mind he felt it was inevitable that he had come here.

The love seat was cheap, and the fabric itched whenever his skin touched it. Something bothered him, too, about the shape of it, and he couldn’t get comfortable no matter how he shifted around. This only amplified his sense of unease. Tengo took a sip of beer and picked up the TV remote from the table. He stared at it for a time, as if it were some odd object, and then hit the on button. He surfed through a few channels, finally settling on an NHK documentary about railroads in Australia. He chose this program simply because it was quieter than the others. While an oboe piece played in the background, a woman announcer was calmly introducing the elegant sleeper cars in the line that ran across the whole of Australia.

Tengo sat there in the uncomfortable love seat, unenthusiastically following the images on the screen, but his mind was on Air Chrysalis. Kumi Adachi had no idea that he was the one who had really written the book. Not that it mattered—what did matter was that while he had written such a detailed description of the air chrysalis, Tengo knew next to nothing about it. What was an air chrysalis? And what did maza and dohta signify? He had no idea what they meant when he wrote Air Chrysalis, and he still didn’t. Still, Kumi liked the book and had read it three times. How could such a thing be possible?

Kumi came back out as the show was discussing the dining-car menu. She plunked down on the love seat next to Tengo. It was so narrow their shoulders touched. She had changed into an oversized long-sleeved shirt and faded cotton pants. The shirt had a large smiley face on it. The last time Tengo had seen a smiley face was the beginning of the 1970s, back when Grand Funk Railroad rattled the jukeboxes with their crazy loud songs. But the shirt didn’t look that old. Somewhere, were people still manufacturing smiley-face shirts?

Kumi took a fresh beer from the fridge, loudly popped it open, poured it in her glass, and chugged down a third of it. She narrowed her eyes like a satisfied cat and pointed at the TV screen. In between red cliffs the train was traveling down an endlessly straight line.

“Where is this?”

“Australia,” Tengo said.

“Australia,” Kumi Adachi said, as if searching the recesses of memory. “The Australia in the Southern Hemisphere?”

“Right. The Australia with the kangaroos.”

“I have a friend who went to Australia,” Kumi said, scratching next to her eye. “It was right during the kangaroo mating season. He went to one town and the kangaroos were doing it all over the place. In the parks, in the streets. Everywhere.”

Tengo thought he should make a comment, but he couldn’t think of anything. Instead he took the remote and turned off the TV. With the TV off, the room suddenly grew still. The sound of the TV next door, too, was gone. The occasional car would pass by on the road outside, but other than that it was a quiet night. If you listened carefully, though, there was a muffled, far-off sound. It was steady and rhythmic, but Tengo had no idea what it was. It would stop for a time, then start up again.

“It’s an owl,” the nurse explained. “He lives in the woods nearby. He hoots at night.”

“An owl,” Tengo repeated vaguely.

Kumi rested her head on his shoulder and held his hand. Her hair tickled his neck. The love seat was still uncomfortable. The owl continued hooting knowingly off in the woods. That voice sounded encouraging to Tengo, but at the same time like a warning. Or maybe a warning that contained a note of encouragement. It was a very ambiguous sound.

“Tell me, do you think I’m too forward?” Kumi Adachi asked.

Tengo didn’t reply. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“That’s a perplexing question,” she said, indeed looking a bit perplexed. “Most of the smart young men head off to Tokyo as soon as they graduate from high school. There are no good colleges here, and not enough decent jobs, either. They have no other choice.”

“But you’re here.”

“Yes. Considering the lousy pay they give us, the work is pretty hard. But I kind of like living here. The problem is finding a boyfriend. I’m open to it if I find someone, but there aren’t so many chances.”

The hands of the clock on the wall pointed to just before eleven. If he didn’t go back to the inn by the eleven o’clock curfew, he wouldn’t be able to get in. But Tengo couldn’t rouse himself from the cramped love seat. His body just wouldn’t listen. Maybe it was the shape of the chair, or maybe he was drunker than he thought. He listened vaguely to the owl’s hooting, felt Kumi’s hair tickle his neck, and gazed at the faux Tiffany lamp.

Kumi Adachi whistled cheerfully as she prepared the hashish. She used a safety razor to slice thin slices off a black ball of hash, stuffed the shavings into a small, flat pipe, and then, with a serious look on her face, lit a match. A unique, sweetly smoky smell soon filled the room. Kumi took the first hit. She inhaled deeply, held it in her lungs for a long time, then slowly exhaled. She motioned to Tengo to do the same. Tengo took the pipe and followed her example. He tried to hold the smoke in his lungs as long as possible, and then let it out ever so slowly.

They leisurely passed the pipe back and forth, never exchanging a word. The neighbor next door switched on his TV and they could hear the comedy show again. The volume was a bit louder than before. The happy laughter of the studio audience swelled up, the laughter only stopping during the commercials.

They took turns smoking for about five minutes, but nothing happened. The world around Tengo was unchanged—colors, shapes, and smells were the same as before. The owl kept on hooting in the woods, Kumi Adachi’s hair on his neck still itched. The two-person love seat remained uncomfortable. The second hand on the clock ticked away at the same speed and the people on TV kept on laughing out loud when someone said something funny, the kind of laugh that you could laugh forever but never end up happy.

“Nothing’s happening,” Tengo said. “Maybe it doesn’t work on me.”

Kumi lightly tapped his knee twice. “Don’t worry. It takes time.”

And she was right. Finally it hit him. He heard a click, like a secret switch being turned on, and then something inside his head sloshed thickly. It felt like tipping a bowl of rice porridge sideways. My brain is vibrating, Tengo thought. This was a new experience for him—considering his brain as an object apart from the rest of him, physically experiencing the viscosity of it. The deep hoot of the owl came in through his ears, mixed with the porridge inside, and melted into it.