As he said this he turned his palms faceup, like someone checking to see if it was raining. Komatsu waited for his next words, but there weren’t any. Now that he had finished speaking, Buzzcut looked exhausted. He slowly rose from his chair, folded it, and exited the cube-shaped room without so much as a glance back. The heavy door closed, the lock clicking shut. Komatsu was left all alone.

“They kept me locked away in that square little room for four more days. We had already discussed what was important. They had told me what they wanted to say and we had come to an agreement. So I couldn’t see the point of keeping me there any longer. That duo never appeared again, and the young man in charge of me never uttered a word. I ate the same monotonous food, shaved with the electric razor, and spent my time staring at the ceiling and the walls. I slept when they turned off the lights, woke up when they switched them on. And I pondered what Buzzcut had told me. What really struck me most was the fact that he said we were fortunate. Buzzcut was right. If these guys wanted to, they could do anything they wanted. They could be as cold-blooded as they liked. While I was locked up in there, I really came to believe this. I think they must have kept me locked up for four more days knowing that would be the result. They don’t miss a beat—they’re very meticulous.”

Komatsu picked up his glass and took a sip of the highball.

“They drugged me again with chloroform or whatever, and when I woke up it was daybreak and I was lying on a bench in Jingu Gaien. It was the end of September, and the mornings were cold. Thanks to this I actually did wind up with a cold and a fever and I really was in bed for the next three days. But I guess I should consider myself fortunate if that’s the worst that happened to me.”

Komatsu seemed to be finished with his story. “Did you tell this to Professor Ebisuno?” Tengo asked.

“Yes, after I was released, and a few days after my fever broke, I went to his house on the mountain. I told him pretty much what I told you.”

“What was his reaction?”

Komatsu drained the last drop of his highball and ordered a refill. He urged Tengo to do the same, but Tengo shook his head.

“Professor Ebisuno had me repeat the story over and over and asked a lot of detailed questions. I answered whatever I could. I could repeat the same story as many times as he wished. I mean, after I last spoke with Buzzcut, I was locked up alone for four days in that room. I had nobody to talk to, and plenty of time on my hands. So I went over what he had told me and was able to accurately remember all the details. Like I was a human tape recorder.”

“But the part about Fuka-Eri’s parents dying was just something they claimed happened. Right?” Tengo asked.

“That’s right. They insisted it happened, but there’s no way to verify it. They didn’t file a death notice. Still, considering the way Buzzcut sounded, it didn’t seem like he was making it up. As he said, Sakigake considers people’s lives and deaths a sacred thing. After I finished my story, Professor Ebisuno was silent for a time, thinking it over. He really thinks about things deeply, for a long time. Without a word, he stood up, left the room, and didn’t come back for quite a while. I think he was trying to accept his friends’ deaths, trying to understand them as inevitable. He may have already half expected that they were no longer of the world and had resigned himself to that fact. Still, actually being told that two close friends have died has got to hurt.”

Tengo remembered the bare, spartan living room, the chilly, deep silence, the occasional sharp call of a bird outside the window. “So,” he asked, “have we actually backed our way out of the minefield?”

A fresh highball was brought over. Komatsu took a sip.

“No conclusion was reached right then. Professor Ebisuno said he needed time to think. But what other choice do we have than to do what they told us? I got things rolling right away. At work I did everything I could and stopped them from printing additional copies of Air Chrysalis, so in effect it’s out of print. There will be no paperback edition, either. The book already sold a lot of copies and made the company plenty of money, so they won’t suffer a loss. In a large company like this you have to have meetings about it, the president has to sign off on it—but when I dangled before them the prospect of a scandal connected with a ghostwriter, the higher-ups were terrified and in the end did what I wanted. It looks like I’ll be given the silent treatment from now on, but it’s okay. I’m used to it.”

“Did Professor Ebisuno accept what they said about Fuka-Eri’s parents being dead?”

“I think so,” Komatsu said. “But I imagine it will take some time for it to really sink in, for him to fully accept it. As far as I could tell, those guys were serious. They would make a few concessions, but I think they’re hoping to avoid any more trouble. Which is why they resorted to kidnapping—they wanted to make absolutely sure we got the message. And they didn’t need to tell me about how they secretly incinerated the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Fukada. Even though it would be hard to prove, desecration of bodies is a major crime. But still they brought it up. They laid their cards on the table. That’s why I think most of what Buzzcut told me was the truth. Maybe not every detail, but the overall picture, at least.”

Tengo went over what Komatsu had told him. “Fuka-Eri’s father was the one who heard the voice. A prophet, in other words. But when his daughter published Air Chrysalis and it became a bestseller, the voice stopped speaking to him, and as a result the father died a natural death.”

“Or rather he put an end to his own existence naturally,” Komatsu said.

“And so it’s critical for Sakigake to gain a new prophet. If the voice stops speaking, then the religion’s whole reason for existence is lost. So they don’t have the time to worry about the likes of us. In a nutshell, that’s the story, right?”

“I think so.”

“Air Chrysalis contains information of critical importance to them. When it was published and became widely read, the voice went silent. But what critical information could the book be pointing toward?”

“During those last four days of my confinement I thought a lot about that,” Komatsu said. “Air Chrysalis is a pretty short novel. In the story the world is filled with Little People. The ten-year-old girl who is the protagonist lives in an isolated community. The Little People secretly come out at night and create an air chrysalis. The girl’s alter ego is inside the chrysalis and a mother-daughter relationship is formed—the maza and the dohta. There are two moons in that world, a large one and a small one, probably symbolizing the maza and the dohta. In the novel the protagonist—based on Fuka-Eri herself, I think—rejects being a maza and runs away from the community. The dohta is left behind. The novel doesn’t tell us what happened to the dohta after that.”

Tengo stared for a time at the ice melting in his glass.

“I wonder if the one who hears the voice needs the dohta as an intermediary,” Tengo said. “It’s through her that he can hear the voice for the first time, or perhaps through her that the voice is translated into comprehensible language. Both of them have to be there for the message of the voice to take its proper form. To borrow Fuka-Eri’s terms, there’s a Receiver and a Perceiver. But first of all the air chrysalis has to be created, because the dohta can only be born through it. And to create a dohta, the proper maza must be there.”

“That’s your opinion, Tengo.”

Tengo shook his head. “I wouldn’t call it an opinion. As I listened to you summarize the plot, I just thought that must be the way it is.”