Tengo took a deep breath. He spoke in a softer tone.

“During the summer, you were still conscious. Your mind was muddled, but your consciousness was still functioning. At that time I met a girl here, in this room, again. After they took you to the examination room she appeared. I think it must have been something like her alter ego. I came to this town again and have stayed here this long because I have been hoping I could see her one more time. Honestly, that’s why I came.”

Tengo sighed and brought his hands together on his lap.

“But she didn’t come. What brought her here last time was a thing called an air chrysalis, a capsule she was encased in. It would take too long to explain the whole thing, but an air chrysalis is a product of the imagination, a fictitious object. But it’s not fictitious anymore. The boundary between the real world and the imaginary one has grown obscure. There are two moons in the sky now. These, too, were brought over from the world of fiction.”

Tengo looked at his father’s face. Could he follow what Tengo was saying?

“In that context, saying your consciousness has broken away from your body and is freely moving about some other world doesn’t sound so farfetched. It’s like the rules that govern the world have begun to loosen up around us. As I said before, I have this strange sense that you are actually doing that. Like you have gone to my apartment in Koenji and are knocking on the door. You know what I mean? You announce you’re an NHK fee collector, bang hard on the door, and yell out a threat in a loud voice. Just like you used to do all the time when we made the rounds in Ichikawa.”

He felt a change in the air pressure in the room. The window was open, but there was barely any sound coming in. There was just the occasional burst of chirping sparrows.

“There is a girl staying in my apartment in Tokyo. Not a girlfriend or anything—something happened and she’s taking shelter there temporarily. A few days ago she told me on the phone about an NHK collector who came by, how he knocked on the door, and what he did and said out in the corridor. It was strange how closely it resembled the methods you used to use. The words she heard were exactly the same lines I remember, the expressions I was hoping I could totally erase from my memory. And I’m thinking now that that fee collector might actually have been you. Am I wrong?”

Tengo waited thirty seconds. His father didn’t twitch a single eyelash.

“There’s just one thing I want: for you to never knock on my door again. I don’t have a TV. And those days when we went around together collecting fees are long gone. I think we already agreed on that, that time in front of my teacher—I don’t remember her name, the one who was in charge of my class. A short lady, with glasses. You remember that, right? So don’t knock on my door ever again, okay? And not just my place. Don’t knock on any more doors anywhere. You’re not an NHK fee collector anymore, and you don’t have the right to scare people like that.”

Tengo stood up, went to the window, and looked outside. An old man in a bulky sweater, clutching a cane, was walking in front of the woods. He was probably just taking a stroll. He was tall, with white hair, and excellent posture. But his steps were awkward, as if he had forgotten how to walk, as if with each step forward he was remembering how to do it. Tengo watched him for a while. The old man slowly made his way across the garden, then turned the corner of the building and disappeared. It didn’t look like he had recalled the art of walking. Tengo turned to face his father.

“I’m not blaming you. You have the right to send your consciousness wherever you want. It’s your life, and your consciousness. You have your own idea of what is right, and you’re putting it into practice. Maybe I don’t have the right to say these things. But you need to understand: you are not an NHK fee collector anymore. So you shouldn’t pretend to be one. It’s pointless.”

Tengo sat down on the windowsill and searched for his next words in the air of the cramped hospital room.

“I don’t know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can’t go around seeking it at other people’s doors. Even if it is at the place you’re most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.”

Tengo gazed silently at his father’s face.

“I don’t want you to knock on anybody’s door anymore. That’s all I ask of you, Father. I have to be going. I came here every day talking to you in your coma, reading to you. And I think at least a part of us has reconciled, and I think that reconciliation has actually taken place in the real world. Maybe you won’t like it, but you need to come back here again, to this side. This is where you belong.”

Tengo lifted his shoulder bag and slung it across his shoulder. “Well, I’ll be off, then.”

His father said nothing. He didn’t stir and his eyes remained shut—the same as always. But somehow it seemed like he was thinking about something. Tengo was quiet and paid careful attention. It felt to him like his father might pop open his eyes at any moment and abruptly sit up in bed. But none of that happened.

The nurse with the spidery limbs was still at the reception desk as he left. A plastic name tag on her chest said Tamaki.

“I’m going back to Tokyo now,” Tengo told her.

“It’s too bad your father didn’t regain consciousness while you were here,” she said, consolingly. “But I’m sure he was happy you could stay so long.”

Tengo couldn’t think of a decent response. “Please tell the other nurses good-bye for me. You have all been so helpful.”

He never did see bespectacled Nurse Tamura or busty Nurse Omura and her ever-present ballpoint pen. It made him a little sad. They were outstanding nurses, and had always been kind to him. But perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t see them. After all, he was slipping out of the cat town alone.

As the train pulled out of Chikura Station, he recalled spending the night at Kumi Adachi’s apartment. It had only just happened yesterday. The gaudy Tiffany lamp, the uncomfortable love seat, the TV comedy show he could hear from next door. The hooting of the owl in the woods. The hashish smoke, the smiley-face shirt, the thick pubic hair pressed against his leg. It had been less than a day, but it felt like long ago. His mind felt unstable. Like an unbalanced set of scales, the core of his memories wouldn’t settle down in one spot.

Suddenly anxious, Tengo looked around him. Was this reality actually real? Or had he once again boarded the wrong reality? He asked a passenger nearby and made sure this train was indeed headed to Tateyama. It’s okay, don’t worry, he told himself. At Tateyama I can change to the express train to Tokyo. He was drawing farther and farther away from the cat town by the sea.

As soon as he changed trains and took his seat, as if it could barely wait, sleep claimed him. A deep sleep, like he had lost his footing and fallen into a bottomless hole. His eyelids closed, and in the next instant his consciousness had vanished. When he opened his eyes again, the train had passed Makuhari. The train wasn’t particularly hot inside, yet he was sweating under his arms and down his back. His mouth had an awful smell, like the stagnant air he had breathed in his father’s sick room. He took a stick of gum out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth.

Tengo was sure he would never visit that town again—at least not while his father was alive. While there was nothing in this world that he could state with one hundred percent certainty, he knew there was probably nothing more he could do in that seaside town.