The dowager had listened attentively to Aomame’s long confession, offering no comment even when Aomame occasionally faltered in her detailed account. When Aomame finished her story, the dowager asked for clarification on a few particulars. Then she reached over and firmly grasped Aomame’s hand for a very long time.

“What you did was right,” she said, speaking slowly and with conviction. “If he had lived, he eventually would have done the same kind of thing to other women. Men like that always find victims. They’re made to do it over and over. You severed the evil at the root. Rest assured, it was not mere personal vengeance.”

Aomame buried her face in her hands and cried. She was crying for Tamaki. The dowager found a handkerchief and wiped her tears.

“This is a strange coincidence,” the dowager said in a low but resolute voice, “but I also once made a man vanish for almost exactly the same reason.”

Aomame raised her head and looked at the dowager. She did not know what to say. What could she be talking about?

The dowager continued, “I did not do it directly, myself, of course. I had neither the physical strength nor your special training. But I did make him vanish through the means that I had at my disposal, leaving behind no concrete evidence. Even if I were to turn myself in and confess, it would be impossible to prove, just as it would be for you. I suppose if there is to be some judgment after death, a god will be the one to judge me, but that doesn’t frighten me in the least. I did nothing wrong. I reserve the right to declare the justice of my case in anyone’s presence.”

The dowager sighed with apparent relief before continuing. “So, then, you and I now have our hands on each other’s deepest secrets, don’t we?”

Aomame still could not fully grasp what the dowager was telling her. She made a man vanish? Caught between deep doubt and intense shock, Aomame’s face began to lose its normal shape. To calm her down, the dowager began to explain what had happened, in a tranquil tone of voice.

Circumstances similar to those of Tamaki Otsuka had led her daughter to end her own life, the dowager said. Her daughter had married the wrong man. The dowager had known from the beginning that the marriage would not go well. She could clearly see that the man had a twisted personality. He had already been involved in several bad situations, their cause almost certainly deeply rooted. But no one could stop the daughter from marrying him. As the dowager had expected, there were repeated instances of domestic violence. The daughter gradually lost whatever self-respect and self-confidence she had and sank into a deep depression. Robbed of the strength to stand on her own, she felt increasingly like an ant trapped in a bowl of sand. Finally, she washed down a large number of sleeping pills with whiskey.

The autopsy revealed many signs of violence on her body: bruises from punching and severe battering, broken bones, and numerous burn scars from cigarettes pressed against the flesh. Both wrists showed signs of having been tightly bound. The man apparently enjoyed using a rope. Her nipples were deformed. The husband was called in and questioned by the police. He was willing to admit to some use of violence, but he maintained that it had been part of their sexual practice, under mutual consent, to satisfy his wife’s preferences.

As in Tamaki’s case, the police were unable to find the husband legally responsible. The wife had never filed a complaint, and now she was dead. The husband was a man of some social standing, and he had hired a capable criminal lawyer. And finally, there was no room for doubt that the death had been a suicide.

“Did you kill the man?” Aomame ventured to ask.

“No, I didn’t kill him—not that man,” the dowager said.

Unclear where this was heading, Aomame simply stared at her in silence.

The dowager said, “My daughter’s former husband, that contemptible man, is still alive in this world. He wakes up in bed every morning and walks down the street on his own two feet. Mere killing is not what I had planned for him.”

She paused for a moment to allow Aomame to absorb her words fully.

“I have socially destroyed my former son-in-law, leaving nothing behind. It just so happens that I possess that kind of power. The man is a weakling. He has a degree of intelligence, he speaks well, and has gained some social recognition, but he is basically weak and despicable. Men who wield great violence at home against their wives and children are invariably people of weak character. They prey upon those who are weaker than themselves precisely because of their own weakness. Destroying him was easy. Once men like that are destroyed, they can never recover. My daughter died a long time ago, but I have kept watch over him to this day. If he ever shows signs of recovery, I will not allow it to happen. He goes on living, but he might as well be a corpse. He won’t kill himself. He doesn’t have the courage to do that. And I won’t do him the favor of killing him, either. My method is to go on tormenting him mercilessly without letup but without killing him, as though skinning him alive. The man I made vanish was another person. A practical reason made it necessary for me to have him move to another place.”

The dowager went on to explain this to Aomame. The year after her daughter killed herself, the dowager set up a private safe house for women who were suffering from the same kind of domestic violence. She owned a small, two-story apartment building on a plot of land adjoining her Willow House property in Azabu and had kept it unoccupied, intending to demolish it before long. Instead, she decided to renovate the building and use it as a safe house for women who had nowhere else to go. She also opened a downtown “consultation office” through which women suffering from domestic violence could seek advice, primarily from lawyers in the metropolitan area. It was staffed by volunteers who took turns doing interviews and giving telephone counseling. The office kept in touch with the dowager at home. Women who needed an emergency shelter would be sent to the safe house, often with children in tow (some of whom were teenage girls who had been sexually abused by their fathers). They would stay there until more permanent arrangements could be made for them. They would be provided with basic necessities—food, clothing—and they would help each other in a kind of communal living arrangement. The dowager personally took care of all their expenses.

The lawyers and counselors made regular visits to the safe house to check on the women’s progress and discuss plans for their futures. The dowager would also drop in when she had time, listening to each woman’s story and offering her advice. Sometimes she would find them jobs or more permanent places to live. When troubles arose requiring intervention of a physical nature, Tamaru would head over to the safe house and handle them—say, for example, when a husband would learn of his wife’s whereabouts and forcibly try to take her back. No one could deal with such problems as quickly and expeditiously as Tamaru.

“There are those cases, however, that neither Tamaru nor I can fully deal with and for which we can find no practical remedy through the law,” the dowager said.

Aomame noticed that, as the dowager spoke, her face took on a certain bronze glow and her usual mild-mannered elegance faded until it had disappeared entirely. What took its place was a certain something that transcended mere anger or disgust. It was probably that small, hard, nameless core that lies in the deepest part of the mind. In spite of the facial change, however, her voice remained as cool and dispassionate as ever.

“Of course, a person’s existence (or nonexistence) cannot be decided on the basis of mere practical considerations—for example, if he is no longer there, it will eliminate the difficulties of divorce, say, or hasten the payment of life insurance. We take such action only as a last resort, after examining all factors closely and fairly, and arriving at the conclusion that the man deserves no mercy. These parasitical men, who can only live by sucking the blood of the weak! These incurable men, with their twisted minds! They have no interest in rehabilitating themselves, and we can find no value in having them continue to live in this world!”