Tengo listened to Komatsu’s story without comment.

“They brought food three times a day. At what time, I don’t know. They took my watch away, and the room didn’t have a window, so I didn’t even know if it was day or night. I listened carefully but couldn’t hear a sound. I doubt anyone could hear any sound from me. I had no idea where they had taken me, though I did have a vague sense that we were somewhere off the beaten track. Anyhow, I was there for three days, and nothing happened. I’m not actually certain it was three days. They brought me nine meals altogether, and I ate them when they brought them. The lights in the room were turned out three times, and I slept three times. Usually I’m a light, irregular sleeper, but for some reason I slept like a log. It’s kind of strange, if you think about it. Do you follow me so far?”

Tengo silently nodded.

“I didn’t say a word for the entire three days. A young man brought my meals. He was thin and had on a baseball cap and a white medical face mask. He wore a kind of sweatshirt and sweatpants, and dirty sneakers. He brought my meals on a tray and then took them away when I was finished. They used paper plates and flimsy plastic knives, forks, and spoons. The food they brought was ordinary prepared food in silver foil packages—not very good, but not so bad you wouldn’t eat it. They didn’t bring much each meal, and I was hungry, so I ate every bite. This was kind of weird, too. Usually I don’t have much of an appetite, and if I’m not careful, sometimes I even forget to eat. They gave me milk and mineral water to drink. They didn’t provide coffee or tea. No single-malt whiskey or draft beer. No smokes, either. But what’re you going to do? It wasn’t like I was lounging around some nice hotel.”

As if he had just remembered that now he could smoke at his leisure, Komatsu pulled out a red Marlboro pack, stuck a cigarette between his lips, and lit it with a paper match. He sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, exhaled, and then frowned.

“The man who brought the meals never said a word. He must have been ordered by his superiors not to say anything. I’m sure he was at the bottom of the totem pole, a kind of all-purpose gofer. I think he must have been trained in one of the martial arts, though. He had a sort of focus to the way he carried himself.”

“You didn’t ask him anything?”

“I knew that if I spoke to him, he wouldn’t respond, so I just kept quiet and let things be. I ate the food they brought me, drank my milk, went to bed when they turned out the lights, woke up when they turned them back on. In the morning the young guy would come and bring me an electric razor and toothbrush, and I would shave and brush my teeth. When I was done he would take them back. Other than toilet paper, there was nothing else to speak of in the room. They didn’t let me take a shower or change my clothes, but I never felt like taking a shower or changing. There was no mirror in the room, but that didn’t bother me. The worst thing was definitely the boredom. I mean, from the time I woke up till the time I went to sleep, I had to sit there alone, not speaking to anyone, in this white, completely square, dice-like room. I was bored to tears. I’m kind of a print junkie, I always need to have something to read with me—a room-service menu, you name it. But I didn’t have any books, newspapers, or magazines. No TV or radio, no games. No one to talk to. Nothing to do but sit in the chair and stare at the floor, the walls, the ceiling. It was a totally absurd feeling. I mean, you’re walking down the road when some people jump out of nowhere, grab you, put chloroform or something over your nose, drag you off somewhere, and hold you in a strange, windowless little room. A weird situation no matter how you cut it. And you get so bored you think you’re going to lose your mind.”

Komatsu stared with deep feeling at the cigarette between his fingers, the smoke curling up, then flicked the ash into the ashtray.

“I think they must have thrown me into that tiny room for three days, with nothing to do, trying to get me to break down. They seemed to know what they were doing when it came to breaking a person’s spirit, pushing someone to the edge. On the fourth day—after I had my fourth breakfast, in other words—two other men came in. I figured this was the pair that had kidnapped me. I was attacked so suddenly that I didn’t get a good look at their faces. But when I saw them on the fourth day, it started to come back to me—how they had pulled me into the car so roughly that I thought they were going to twist my arm off, how they had stuffed a cloth soaked with some kind of drug on my nose and mouth. The two of them didn’t say a word the whole time, and it was over in an instant.”

Remembering the events, Komatsu frowned.

“One of them wasn’t very tall, but he was solidly built, with a buzzcut. He had a deep tan and prominent cheekbones. The other one was tall, with long limbs, sunken cheeks, his hair tied up behind him in a ponytail. Put them side by side and they looked like a comedy team. You’ve got your tall, thin one, and your short, stocky one with a goatee. But I could tell at a glance these were no comedians. They were a dangerous pair. They would never hesitate to do whatever had to be done, without making a big scene. They acted very relaxed, which made them all the more scary, and their eyes were frighteningly cold. They both wore black cotton trousers and white short-sleeved shirts. They were probably in their mid- to late twenties, the bald one maybe a little older than the other one. Neither one wore a watch.”

Tengo was silent, waiting for him to go on.

“Buzzcut did all the talking. Ponytail just stood there in front of the door, ramrod straight, without moving a muscle. It seemed like he was listening to our conversation, but then again, maybe not. Buzzcut sat down right across from me in a folding metal chair he had brought, and talked. There were no other chairs, so I sat on the bed. The guy had no facial expression at all. His mouth moved when he spoke, but other than that, his face was frozen, like a ventriloquist’s dummy.”

The first thing Buzzcut said when he sat down across from Komatsu was this: “Are you able to guess who we are, and why we brought you here?”

“No, I can’t,” Komatsu replied.

Buzzcut stared at Komatsu for a while with his depthless eyes. “But say you had to make a guess,” he went on, “what would you say?” His words were polite enough, but his tone was forceful, his voice as hard and cold as a metal ruler left for a long time in a fridge.

Komatsu hesitated, but then said, honestly, that if he were forced to make a guess, he would say it had something to do with the Air Chrysalis affair. Nothing else came to mind. “That would mean you two are probably from Sakigake,” he continued, “and we are in your compound.”

Buzzcut neither confirmed nor denied what Komatsu had said. He just stared at him. Komatsu kept silent as well.

“Let’s talk, then, based on that hypothesis,” Buzzcut quietly began. “What we’re going to say from now on is an extension of that hypothesis of yours, all based on the assumption that this is indeed the case. Is that acceptable?”

“That would be fine,” Komatsu replied. They were going to talk about this as indirectly as they could. This was not a bad sign. If they were planning not to let him out of here alive, they wouldn’t go to the trouble.

“As an editor at a publishing house, you were in charge of publishing Eriko Fukada’s Air Chrysalis. Am I correct?”

“You are,” Komatsu admitted. This was common knowledge.

“Based on our understanding, there was some fraud involved in the publication. Air Chrysalis received a literary prize for debut novelists from a literary journal. But before the selection committee received the manuscript, a third party rewrote it considerably at your direction. After the work was secretly revised, it won the prize, was published as a book, and became a bestseller. Do I have my facts correct?”