He spoke with Toshie Ota in her classroom after school. She looked to be in her mid-fifties. Her appearance was the polar opposite of the refined vice principal back at the Ichikawa elementary school. Miss Ota was short and stocky and, from behind, had a weird sort of gait, like a crustacean. She wore tiny metal-framed glasses, but the space between her eyebrows was flat and broad and you could clearly see the downy hair growing there. She had on a wool suit of indeterminate age, though no doubt it was already out of fashion by the time it was manufactured, and it carried with it a faint odor of mothballs. The suit was pink, but an odd sort of pink, like some other color had been accidentally mixed in. They had probably been aiming for a classy, subdued sort of hue, but because they didn’t get it right, the pink of her suit sank deeply back into diffidence, concealment, and resignation. Thanks to this, the brand-new white blouse peeking out of the collar looked like some indiscreet person who had wandered into a wake. Her dry hair, with some white strands mixed in, was pinned back with a plastic clip, probably the nearest thing she had had on hand. Her limbs were on the beefy side, and she wore no rings on her stubby fingers. There were three thin wrinkles at her neckline, sharply etched, like notches on the road of life. Or maybe they were marks to commemorate when three wishes had come true—though Ushikawa had serious doubts that this had ever happened.

The woman had been Tengo Kawana’s homeroom teacher from third grade until he graduated from elementary school. Teachers changed classes every two years, but in this case she had happened to be in charge of his class for all four. Aomame was in her class in only third and fourth grades.

“I remember Mr. Kawana very well,” she said.

In contrast to her gentle-looking exterior, her voice was strikingly clear and youthful. It was the kind of voice that would pierce the farthest reaches of a noisy classroom. Your profession really molds you, Ushikawa thought, impressed, sure that she must be a most capable teacher.

“Mr. Kawana was an outstanding pupil in every area of school. I have taught countless students in a number of schools, for over twenty-five years, yet I have never run across a student as brilliant as he was. He outdid everyone in anything he tried. He was quite personable and had strong leadership qualities. I knew he could make it in any field he chose. In elementary school he particularly stood out in arithmetic and math, but I wasn’t so surprised to hear that he has been a success in literature.”

“I understand that his father was an NHK fee collector.”

“Yes, that’s right,” the teacher said.

“Mr. Kawana told me that his father was quite strict,” Ushikawa said. This was just a shot in the dark.

“Exactly so,” she said, without hesitating. “His father did have a strict way about him. He was proud of his work—a wonderful thing—but this seemed to be a burden at times for Tengo.”

Ushikawa had skillfully tied topics together and teased out the details from her. This was his forte—to let the other person do the talking, as much as possible. Tengo hated having to tag along with his father on his rounds on the weekend, she told him, and in fifth grade he ran away from home. “It was more like he was kicked out rather than ran away,” she explained. So Tengo had been forced to go with his father to collect the fees, Ushikawa mused. And—just as he thought—this must have taken an emotional toll on the boy.

Miss Ota had taken the temporarily homeless Tengo into her home for the night. She prepared a bed for him, and made sure he ate breakfast the next morning. That evening she went to Tengo’s house and convinced his father to take him back. From the way she talked about this event, you would have thought it was the highlight of her entire life. She told him too about how they happened to run into each other again at a concert when Tengo was in high school. Tengo had played the timpani, wonderfully, she added.

“It was Janáček’s Sinfonietta. Not an easy piece, by any means. Tengo had first taken up the timpani only a few weeks before. But even with such little preparation he played his part beautifully. It was miraculous.”

This lady has deep feelings for Tengo, Ushikawa thought admiringly. Almost a kind of unconditional love. What would it feel like to be loved that deeply by someone else?

“Do you remember Masami Aomame?” Ushikawa asked.

“I remember her very well,” the teacher replied. But her voice wasn’t as happy as when she had talked about Tengo. The tone of her voice had dropped two notches on the scale.

“Quite an unusual name, isn’t it?” Ushikawa said.

“Yes, very unusual. But I don’t remember her just because of her name.”

A short silence followed.

“I heard her family were devout members of the Witnesses,” Ushikawa said, sounding her out.

“Could you keep this between just the two of us?” the teacher asked.

“Of course. I won’t repeat it to anyone.”

The woman nodded. “There is a large branch office of the religion in Ichikawa, so I have had several children from the Witnesses in my class over the years. As a teacher this led to some delicate problems I had to address. But no one was as devout as Miss Aomame’s parents.”

“In other words, they were uncompromising.”

As if recalling the time, the teacher bit her lip. “Exactly. When it came to their principles they were extremely firm, and I think they sought the same strict obedience from their children. This made Miss Aomame quite isolated in the class.”

“So in a sense she was someone rather special.”

“She was,” the teacher admitted. “But you can’t blame the child for this. Responsibility for it lies in the intolerance that can take over a person’s mind.”

The teacher explained more about Aomame. Generally the other children just ignored her. They tried to treat her as if she wasn’t there. She was a foreign element, brandishing strange principles that bothered others. The class was all in agreement on this. Aomame reacted by keeping a low profile.

“I tried to do my best, but children’s unity is stronger than you might think, and the way Miss Aomame reacted to this was to transform herself into something close to a ghost. Nowadays we would have referred her to counseling, but such a system wasn’t in place back then. I was still young, and it took all I had to get everybody in the class on the same page. Though I’m sure that sounds like I’m trying to excuse myself.”

Ushikawa could understand what she was getting at. Being an elementary school teacher was hard work. To a certain extent, you had to let the children figure out things on their own.

“There is always just a thin line separating deep faith from intolerance,” Ushikawa said. “And it’s very hard for people to do anything about it.”

“Absolutely,” the woman said. “But still, at a different level there should have been something I could do. I tried talking with Miss Aomame any number of times, but she would barely respond. She had a very strong will, and once she was set on something she wouldn’t change her mind. She was quite bright, very quick-witted, with a strong desire to learn. But she tried hard to suppress any of that, to keep it from showing. Probably not standing out was her only way of protecting herself. I’m sure if she had been living in a normal environment she would have been an outstanding pupil. I feel really bad looking back on it now.”

“Did you ever speak with her parents?”

The teacher nodded. “Many times. Her parents came to school to complain about religious persecution. When they did, I asked them to try to make more of an effort to help their daughter fit in to the class. I asked if they could bend their principles just a little. They refused point-blank. Their top priority was keeping true to the rules of their faith. To them the highest happiness lay in going to heaven, and life in this profane world was merely transient. But this was the logic of an adult worldview. Unfortunately, I could never get them to see how much pain it was causing their young daughter to be ignored in class, shunned by the other children—how this would lead to an emotional wound that might never heal.”