Let me think about it in a different way, Aomame thought. I won’t try to force an explanation on the inexplicable, but instead I’ll examine the phenomenon from a different angle, as the riddle that it is.

Am I seeing this pregnancy as something good, something to be welcomed? Or as something unwelcome, something inappropriate?

I can’t reach a conclusion no matter how hard I think about it. I’m still in a state of shock. I’m mixed up, confused. In certain ways I feel split in two. And understandably I’m having trouble swallowing this new reality.

Yet Aomame also had to recognize that she was watching this little heat source with a positive sense of anticipation. She simply had to see what happened to this thing growing inside her. Obviously she was anxious and scared. It might be more than she could imagine. It might be a hostile foreign entity that greedily devoured her from the inside. She could imagine all sorts of negative possibilities. But she was in thrall to a healthy curiosity. Like a sudden flash of light in the dark, a thought abruptly sprang to her mind.

Maybe this is Tengo’s child inside my womb.

Aomame frowned a bit and considered this. Why do I have to be pregnant with Tengo’s child?

How about looking at it like this? she thought. On that chaotic night, when so much took place, some process was at work in this world and Tengo sent his semen into my womb. Somehow, through a gap in the thunder and rain, the darkness and the murder, a special kind of passageway opened, through some logic I can’t understand. Just for an instant. And in that instant we took advantage of the passageway. I took that opportunity to greedily accept Tengo into me. I became pregnant. Egg 201—or was it 202?—grabbed onto one of his millions of spermatozoa, a single sperm cell that was as healthy and clever and straightforward as the one who produced it.

That’s a pretty wild idea. It doesn’t make any sense. I could try to explain it until I went hoarse and nobody would ever believe me. But the whole notion of me being pregnant itself doesn’t make any sense. But remember—this is the year 1Q84. A strange world where anything can happen.

What if this reallyisTengo’s child? she wondered.

That morning at the turnout on Metropolitan Expressway No. 3 through Tokyo, I didn’t pull the trigger. I really went there, and stuck the muzzle in my mouth, planning to die. I wasn’t afraid of death, because I was dying to save Tengo. But some higher power acted on me and snatched me away from death. From far away I heard a voice calling my name. Maybe it called me because I was pregnant? Was something trying to tell me of this new life inside me?

Aomame recalled the dream, and the refined older woman who put her coat on her to cover her nakedness. She got out of her silver Mercedes and gave me her light, soft eggshell-colored coat. She knew then that I was pregnant, and she gently protected me from people’s stares, the cold wind, and other vicious things.

This was a good sign.

Aomame’s tight face relaxed, her expression returned to normal. Someone is watching over me, protecting me, she believed. Even in this 1Q84 world, I’m not alone. Probably.

Aomame took her now cold tea over to the window. She went out to the balcony and sank into the garden chair so no one could spot her, and gazed out through the gaps in the screen at the playground. She tried to think of Tengo. For some reason, though, today her thoughts just wouldn’t go to him. What she saw instead was the face of Ayumi Nakano. Ayumi was smiling cheerfully, a totally natural, unreserved smile. The two of them were at a restaurant seated across from each other, drinking wine. They were both pretty drunk. The excellent Burgundy in their blood gently coursed through their bodies, giving the world around them a faint purplish tinge.

“But still,” Ayumi said, “it seems to me that this world has a serious shortage of both logic and kindness.”

“Oh well, no problem,” Aomame said. “The world’s going to end before we know it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“And the kingdom is going to come.”

“I can hardly wait,” Ayumi said.

Why did I talk about the kingdom then, I wonder? Aomame found it odd. Why would I suddenly bring up a kingdom that I don’t even believe in? And not long after that Ayumi died.

I think when I mentioned the kingdom, the mental image I had was different from the kingdom the Witnesses believe in. Probably it was a more personal kind of kingdom, which is why the term could slip out so naturally. But what sort of kingdom do I believe in? What sort of kingdom do I think will appear after the world has been destroyed?

She gently laid her hands on her stomach and listened carefully. No matter how hard she listened, she didn’t hear a thing.

Ayumi Nakano was cast off by this world. Her hands were tightly bound with cold handcuffs, and she was choked to death with a rope (and, as far as Aomame knew, the murderer had yet to be caught). An official autopsy was conducted, then she was sewn back up, taken to a crematorium, and burned. The person known as Ayumi Nakano no longer existed in this world. Her flesh and her blood were lost forever. She only remained in the realm of documents and memory.

No, maybe that’s not entirely true. Maybe she was still alive and well in 1984. Still grumbling that she wasn’t allowed to carry a pistol, still sticking parking tickets under the wipers of illegally parked cars. Still going around to high schools to teach girls about contraception. “If he doesn’t have on a condom, girls, then there shouldn’t be any penetration.”

Aomame desperately wanted to see Ayumi. If she could climb back up that emergency stairway on the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3 and return to the world of 1984, then maybe she would see her again. Maybe there Ayumi is still alive, and I’m not being chased by these Sakigake freaks. Maybe we could stopby that restaurant on Nogizaka again and enjoy another glass of Burgundy. Or perhaps—

Climb back up that emergency stairway?

Like rewinding a cassette tape, Aomame retraced her thoughts. Why haven’t I thought of that before? I tried to go down that emergency stairway again but couldn’t find the entrance. The stairway, which should have been across from the Esso billboard, had vanished. But maybe if I took it from the opposite direction it would work out—not climb down the stairway but go up. Slip into that storage area under the expressway and go the opposite direction, back up to the Metropolitan Expressway No. 3. Go back up the passage. Maybe that’s the answer.

Aomame wanted to race out that very minute to Sangenjaya and see if it was possible. It might actually work out. Or maybe it wouldn’t. But it was worth trying. Wear the same suit, the same high heels, and climb back up that spiderweb-infested stairway.

But she suppressed the impulse.

No, it won’t work. I can’t do that. It was because I came to the 1Q84 world that I was able to see Tengo again, and to be pregnant with what is most likely his child. I have to see him one more time in this new world. I have to meet him again. Face-to-face. I can’t leave this world until that happens.

Tamaru called her the following afternoon.

“First, about the NHK fee collector,” Tamaru began. “I called the NHK business office and checked into it. The fee collector who covers the Koenji District said he had no memory of knocking on the door of apartment 303. He said he checked beforehand that there was a sticker on the door indicating that the fee was paid automatically from the account. Plus he said there was a doorbell, so he wouldn’t have knocked. He said that would only make his hand hurt. And on the day the fee collector was at your place, this man was making the rounds in another district. I don’t think he’s lying. He’s a fifteen-year veteran, and he has a reputation as a very patient, courteous person.”