This is what Tengo was looking at. Tengo Kawana had come to this playground to see this scene, or perhaps to check that it still existed. He has known for some time that there are two moons. No doubt about it. He didn’t look at all surprised to see it. On top of the slide, Ushikawa sighed deeply. What kind of crazy world is this? he asked himself. What sort of world have I gottenmyself into? But no answer came. Swept by countless clouds racing by, the two moons—one big, one small—hung in the sky like a riddle.

There’s one thing I can say for sure, he decided. This isn’t the world I came from. The earth I know has only one moon. That is an undeniable fact. And now it has increased to two.

Ushikawa began to have a sense of déjà vu. I’ve seen the same thing before somewhere, he thought. He focused, desperately searching his memory. He frowned, grit his teeth, dredging the dark sea bottom of his mind. And it finally hit him. Air Chrysalis.

He looked around, but all he saw was the same world as always. White lace curtains were drawn in windows in the condo across the street, peaceful lights on behind them. Nothing out of the ordinary. Only the number of moons was different.

He carefully climbed down from the slide, and hurriedly left the playground as if running from the eyes of the moons. Am I going nuts? he wondered. No, that can’t be it. I’m not going crazy. My mind is like a brand-new steel nail—hard, sober, straight. Hammered at just the right angle, into the core of reality. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m completely sane.

It’s the world around me that’s gone crazy.

And I have to find out why.

CHAPTER 20

Aomame

ONE ASPECT OF MY TRANSFORMATION

On Sunday the wind had died down. It was a warm, calm day, totally different from the night before. People took off their heavy coats and enjoyed the sunshine. Aomame, however, did not enjoy the nice weather—she spent the day as always, shut away in her room, the curtains closed.

As she listened to Janáček’s Sinfonietta, the sound down low, she stretched and then turned to her exercise machine to do some resistance training. She was gradually adding routines to her training workout and it now took nearly two hours to complete. Afterward she cooked, cleaned the apartment, and lay on the sofa to read In Search of Lost Time. She had finally begun volume three, The Guermantes Way. She tried her best to keep busy. She only watched TV twice a day—the NHK news broadcasts at noon and seven p.m. As always, nothing big was going on—no, actually, lots of big events were happening in the world. People all around the world had lost their lives, many of them in tragic ways—train wrecks, ferry boats sinking, plane crashes. A civil war went on with no end in sight, an assassination, a terrible ethnic massacre. Weather shifts had brought on drought, floods, famine. Aomame deeply sympathized with the people caught up in these tragedies and disasters, but even so, not a single thing had occurred that had a direct bearing on her.

Neighborhood children were playing in the playground across the street, shouting something. She could hear the crows gathered on the roof, cawing out the latest gossip. The air had that early-winter city smell.

It suddenly hit her that ever since she had been living in this condo she had never once felt any sexual desire. Not once had she felt like having sex. She hadn’t even masturbated. Maybe it was due to her pregnancy and her body’s hormonal changes. Still, Aomame was relieved. This wasn’t exactly the place to find a sexual outlet, should she decide she had to sleep with someone. She was happy, too, to not have any more periods. Her periods had never been heavy, but still she felt as if she had set down a load she had been carrying forever. It was one less thing to have to think about.

In the three months that she had been here, her hair had grown long. In September it had barely touched her shoulders, but now it was down to her shoulder blades. When she was a child her mother had always trimmed it short, and from junior high onward, because sports had been her life, she had never let it grow out. It felt a bit too long now, but she couldn’t very well cut it herself. She trimmed her bangs, but that was all. She kept her hair up during the day and let it down at night. And then, while listening to music, she brushed it a hundred strokes, something you can only do if you have plenty of time on your hands.

Normally she wore almost no makeup, and now especially there was no need for it. But she wanted to keep a set daily routine as much as she could, so she made sure to take good care of her skin. She massaged her skin with creams and lotions, put on a face mask before bedtime. She was basically a very healthy person, and just a little extra care was all it took for her skin to be beautiful and lustrous. Or maybe this, too, was a by-product of being pregnant? She had heard that pregnant women had beautiful skin. Either way, when she sat at her mirror, let down her hair, and examined her face, she did feel she looked prettier than ever before. Or at least she was taking on the composure of a mature woman. Probably.

Aomame had never once felt beautiful. No one had ever told her that she was. Her mother treated her like she was an ugly child. “If only you were prettier,” her mother always said—meaning if she were prettier, a cuter child, they could recruit more converts. So Aomame had always avoided looking at herself in mirrors. When she absolutely had to, she quickly, efficiently, checked out her reflection.

Tamaki Otsuka had told her she liked her features. Not bad at all, she had said. They are actually very nice. You should have more confidence. That had made Aomame happy. She was just entering puberty, and her friend’s warm words calmed her. Maybe I’m not as ugly as my mother said I was, she began to think. But even Tamaki had never called her beautiful.

Now, however, for the first time in her life, Aomame saw something beautiful in her face. She was able to sit in front of the mirror longer than ever before and examine her face more thoroughly. She wasn’t being narcissistic. She inspected her face from a number of angles, as if it were somebody else’s. Had she really become beautiful? Or was it her way of appreciating everything that had changed, not her face itself? Aomame couldn’t decide.

Occasionally she would put on a big frown in the mirror. Her frowning face looked the same as it always had. The muscles in her face stretched in all directions, her features unraveled, each distinct from the other. All possible emotions in the world gushed out from her face. It was neither beautiful nor ugly. From one angle she looked demonic, from a different angle comic. And from yet another angle her face was a chaotic jumble. When she stopped frowning her facial muscles gradually relaxed, like ripples vanishing on the surface of water, and her usual features returned. And then Aomame discovered a new, slightly different version of herself.

“You should smile more naturally,” Tamaki had often told her. “Your features are gentle when you smile, so it’s a shame that you don’t do so more often.” But Aomame could never smile easily, or casually, in front of people. When she forced it, she ended up with a tight sneer, which made others even more tense and uncomfortable. Tamaki was different: she had a natural, cheerful smile. People meeting her for the first time immediately felt friendly toward her. In the end, though, disappointment and despair drove Tamaki to take her own life, leaving Aomame—who couldn’t manage a decent smile—behind.