“I see,” the Professor said. Then, as if he had just noticed the chilliness of the room, he rubbed his hands together. “I’ve also heard that you’re going to be revising the novella that Eri wrote in the hopes that she can win a literary magazine’s new writers’ prize. You’re planning to sell her to the public as a writer. Is my interpretation correct?”

“That is basically correct,” Tengo said. “An editor named Komatsu came up with the idea. I don’t know if the plan is going to work or not. Or whether it’s even ethical. My only role is to revise the style of the work, Air Chrysalis. I’m just a technician. Komatsu is responsible for everything else.”

The Professor concentrated on his thoughts for a while. In the hushed room, Tengo could almost hear his brain working. The Professor then said, “This editor, Mr. Komatsu, came up with the idea, and you’re cooperating with him on the technical side.”

“Correct.”

“I’ve always been a scholar, and, to tell you the truth, I’ve never read fiction with much enthusiasm. I don’t know anything about customary practice in the world of writing and publishing fiction, but what you people are planning to do sounds to me like a kind of fraud. Am I wrong about that?”

“No, you are not wrong. It sounds like fraud to me, too,” Tengo said.

The Professor frowned slightly. “You yourself obviously have ethical doubts about this scheme, and still you are planning to go along with it, out of your own free will.”

“Well, it’s not exactly my own free will, but I am planning to go along with it. That is correct.”

“And why is that?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself again and again all week,” Tengo said honestly.

The Professor and Fuka-Eri waited in silence for Tengo to continue.

“Reasoning, common sense, instinct—they are all pleading with me to pull out of this as quickly as possible. I’m basically a cautious, commonsensical kind of person. I don’t like gambling or taking chances. If anything, I’m a kind of coward. But this is different. I just can’t bring myself to say no to Komatsu’s plan, as risky as it is. And my only reason is that I’m so strongly drawn to Air Chrysalis. If it had been any other work, I would have refused out of hand.”

The Professor gave Tengo a quizzical look. “In other words, you have no interest in the fraudulent part of the scheme, but you have a deep interest in the rewriting of the work. Is that it?”

“Exactly. It’s more than a ‘deep interest.’ If Air Chrysalis has to be rewritten, I don’t want to let anyone else do it.”

“I see,” the Professor said. Then he made a face, as if he had accidentally put something sour in his mouth. “I see. I think I understand your feelings in the matter. But how about this Komatsu person? What is he in it for? Money? Fame?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what Komatsu wants,” Tengo said. “But I do think it’s something bigger than money or fame.”

“And what might that be?”

“Well, Komatsu himself might not see it that way, but he is another person who is obsessed with literature. People like him are looking for just one thing, and that is to find, if only once in their lifetimes, a work that is unmistakably the real thing. They want to put it on a tray and serve it up to the world.”

The Professor kept his gaze fixed on Tengo for a time. Then he said, “In other words, you and he have very different motives—motives that have nothing to do with money or fame.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Whatever your motives might be, though, the plan is, as you said, a very risky one. If the truth were to come out at some point, it would be sure to cause a scandal, and the public’s censure would not be limited to you and Mr. Komatsu. It could deliver a fatal blow to Eri’s life at the tender age of seventeen. That’s the thing that worries me most about this.”

“And you should be worried,” Tengo said with a nod. “You’re absolutely right.”

The space between the Professor’s thick, black eyebrows contracted half an inch. “But what you are telling me is that you want to be the one to rewrite Air Chrysalis even if it could put Eri in some danger.”

“As I said before, that is because my desire comes from a place that reason and common sense can’t reach. Of course I would like to protect Eri as much as possible, but I can’t promise that she would never be harmed by this. That would be a lie.”

“I see,” the Professor said. Then he cleared his throat as if to mark a turning point in the discussion. “Well, you seem to be an honest person, at least.”

“I’m trying to be as straightforward with you as I can.”

The Professor stared at the hands resting on his knees as if he had never seen them before. First he stared at the backs of his hands, and then he flipped them over and stared at his palms. Then he raised his face and said, “So, does this editor, this Mr. Komatsu, think that his plan is really going to work?”

“Komatsu’s view is that there are always two sides to everything,” Tengo said. “A good side and a not-so-bad side.”

The Professor smiled. “A most unusual view. Is this Mr. Komatsu an optimist, or is he self-confident?”

“Neither,” Tengo said. “He’s just cynical.”

The Professor shook his head lightly. “When he gets cynical, he becomes an optimist. Or he becomes self-confident. Is that it?”

“He might have such tendencies.”

“A hard man to deal with, it seems.”

“He is a pretty hard man to deal with,” Tengo said. “But he’s no fool.”

The Professor let out a long, slow breath. Then he turned to Fuka-Eri. “How about it, Eri? What do you think of this plan?”

Fuka-Eri stared at an anonymous point in space for a while. Then she said, “It’s okay.”

“In other words, you don’t mind letting Mr. Kawana here rewrite Air Chrysalis?”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“It might cause you a lot of trouble.”

Fuka-Eri said nothing in response to this. All she did was tightly grip the collar of her cardigan together at the neck, but the gesture was a direct expression of her firm resolve.

“She’s probably right,” the Professor said with a touch of resignation.

Tengo stared at her little hands, which were balled into fists.

“There is one other problem, though,” the Professor said to Tengo. “You and this Mr. Komatsu plan to publish Air Chrysalis and present Eri to the public as a novelist, but she’s dyslexic. Did you know that?”

“I got the general idea on the train this morning.”

“She was probably born that way. In school, they think she suffers from a kind of retardation, but she’s actually quite smart—even wise, in a very profound way. Still, her dyslexia can’t help your plan, to put it mildly.”

“How many people know about this?”

“Aside from Eri herself, three,” the Professor said. “There’s me, of course, my daughter Azami, and you. No one else knows.”

“You mean to say her teachers don’t know?”

“No, they don’t. It’s a little school in the countryside. They’ve probably never even heard of dyslexia. And besides, she only went to school for a short time.”

“Then we might be able to hide it.”

The Professor looked at Tengo for a while, as if judging the value of his face.

“Eri seems to trust you,” he said a moment later. “I don’t know why, but she does. And I—”

Tengo waited for him to continue.

“And I trust Eri. So if she says it’s all right to let you rewrite her novella, all I can do is give my approval. On the other hand, if you really do plan to go ahead with this scheme, there are a few things you should know about Eri.” The Professor swept his hand lightly across his right knee several times as if he had found a tiny piece of thread there. “What her childhood was like, for example, and where she spent it, and how I became responsible for raising her. This could take a while to tell.”