The test itself was simple. Just urinate into a clean container and then dip the indicator stick into it. Or, alternately, urinate directly onto the stick. Then wait a few minutes. If the color changes to blue you’re pregnant, if it doesn’t change color, you’re not. In one version, if two vertical lines appear in the little window, you’re pregnant. One line, and you’re not. The details might vary but the principle was the same. The presence or absence of human chorionic gonadotropin in urine indicated whether or not you were pregnant.

Human chorionic gonadotropin? Aomame frowned. She had been a female for thirty years and had never once heard that term. All this time, some crazy substance was stimulating her sex glands?

Aomame opened up The Women’s Anatomical Encyclopedia.

Human chorionic gonadotropin is secreted during the early stages of pregnancy, the book said, and helps maintain the corpus luteum. The corpus luteum secretes progestogens and estrogen to preserve the inner lining of the womb and prevent menstruation. In this way the placenta gradually takes form. In seven to nine weeks, once the placenta is complete, there is no more need for the corpus luteum and the role of the human chorionic gonadotropin is over.

In other words, this hormone was secreted from the time of implantation for seven to nine weeks. The timing was a little tricky in her case. One thing she could say was that if the test came back positive, she was without a doubt pregnant. If it was negative, then the conclusion wouldn’t be so clear-cut. It was possible that she had passed the time when she was secreting the hormone.

She didn’t feel the need to urinate. She went to the fridge, took out a bottle of mineral water, and had two glasses. But she still didn’t feel the need to go. Well, no need to rush it, she thought. She forgot about the pregnancy kits for a while and sat down on the sofa and concentrated on Proust.

It was after three when she felt the need to urinate. She peed into a container she found and stuck the test strip in it. As she watched, the strip changed color, until it was a vivid blue. A lovely shade of blue that would work well as the color of a car. A small blue convertible with a tan top. How great it would feel to drive along the coast in a car like that, racing through the summer breeze. But in the bathroom of an apartment in the middle of the city, in the deepening autumn, what this blue told her was the fact that she was pregnant—or, at least, that there was a 95 percent chance of it. Aomame stood in front of the mirror and gazed at the thin strip of paper, now blue. No matter how long she stared, the color wasn’t about to change.

Just to be sure, she tried another test. This one instructed you to “urinate directly onto the tip of the stick.” But since she wouldn’t feel the need to pee for a while she dipped the stick into the container of urine. Freshly collected urine. Pee directly on it or dip it in pee—what is the difference? You would get the same result. Two vertical lines clearly appeared in the little plastic window. This, too, told Aomame she might be pregnant.

Aomame poured the urine into the toilet and flushed it down. She wrapped the test strip in a wad of tissue and threw it in the trash, and rinsed the container in the bath. She went to the kitchen and drank two more glasses of water. Tomorrow I will try again and do the third test, she thought. Three is a good number to stop at. Strike one, strike two. Waiting, with bated breath, for the final pitch.

Aomame boiled some water and made hot tea, sat down on the sofa, and continued reading Proust. She laid out some cheese biscuits on one of a set of matching plates and munched on them as she sipped her tea. A quiet afternoon, perfect for reading. Her eyes followed the printed words, but nothing stayed with her. She had to reread the same spot several times. She gave up, shut her eyes, and she was driving a blue convertible, the top down, speeding along the shore. The light breeze, fragrant with the smell of the sea, rustled her hair. A sign along the road had two vertical lines. These meant Warning: You May Be Pregnant.

Aomame sighed and tossed her book aside.

She knew very well there was no need to try the third test. She could do it a hundred times and the result would be the same. It would be a waste of time. My human chorionic gonadotropin would still maintain the same attitude toward my womb—keeping the corpus luteum intact, obstructing my period from coming, helping form the placenta. Face it: I’m pregnant. The human chorionic gonadotropin knows that. And so do I. I can feel it as a pinpoint in my lower abdomen. It’s still tiny—nothing more than a hint of something. But eventually it will have a placenta, and grow bigger. It will take nutrition from me and, in the dark, heavy liquid, grow—steadily, unceasingly.

This was the first time she had been pregnant. She was always a very careful person, and only trusted what she could see with her own eyes. When she had sex she made absolutely sure her partner used a condom. Even when she was drunk, she never failed to check. As she had told the dowager, ever since her first menstruation at age ten, she had never missed a period. Her periods were regular, never more than a day late. Her cramps were light. She merely bled for a few days, that was all. It never got in the way of her exercising or playing sports.

She got her first period a few months after holding Tengo’s hand in the elementary school classroom. Somehow, she felt that the two events were connected. The feel of Tengo’s hand may have stirred something inside her. When she told her mother she got her period, her mother made a face, like it was one more burden to add to all the others she carried. It’s a little early, her mother commented. But that didn’t bother Aomame. It was her problem, not her mother’s or anybody else’s. She had stepped into a brand-new world.

And now she was pregnant.

She thought about her eggs. Of my allotted four hundred or so, one of them (near the middle of the bunch, she imagined) went and got herself fertilized. Most likely on that September night, during the terrible storm. In a dark room when I murdered a man. When I stuck a sharp needle from the base of his neck into the lower part of his brain. But that man was completely different from the men I had killed before. He knew he was about to be murdered, and he wanted it to happen. I actually gave him what he wanted. Not as punishment, but more as an act of mercy. In exchange for which, he gave me what I was seeking. An act of negotiation carried out in a deep, dark place. Very quietly, fertilization took place that night. I know it, she thought.

With these hands I took a man’s life, and almost simultaneously, a new life began inside me. Was this part of the transaction?

Aomame shut her eyes and stopped thinking. Her head empty, something silently flowed inside. And before she knew it, she was praying.

O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.

Why would a prayer come to my lips at a time like this? I don’t believe in things like heaven or paradise or the Lord, yet the words are chiseled into my brain. Ever since I was three or four and didn’t even know what they meant, I could recite this prayer from memory. If I made the slightest mistake, I got the back of my hands smacked with a ruler. Though you couldn’t normally see it, when something happened it would rise to the surface, like a secret tattoo.

What would my mother say if I told her I got pregnant without having had sex? She might see it as a terrible sacrilege against her faith. In any case, it was a kind of immaculate conception—though Aomame was certainly not a virgin. But still. Or maybe her mother wouldn’t be bothered to even deal with it, not even listen to her. Because she sees me as a failure, someone who long ago had fallen from her world.