The dowager closed her mouth and momentarily glared at Aomame with eyes that could pierce a rock wall. Then she went on in her usual calm tone, “All we can do with such men is make them vanish one way or another—but always taking care not to attract people’s attention.”

“Is such a thing possible?”

“There are many ways for people to vanish,” the dowager said, pausing to let her words sink in. Then she continued, “I can arrange for people to vanish in certain ways. I have that kind of power at my disposal.”

Aomame struggled to understand, but the dowager’s words were too obscure.

The dowager said, “You and I have both lost people who were important to us. We lost them in outrageous ways, and we are both deeply scarred from the experience. Such wounds to the heart will probably never heal. But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever. We must stand up and move on to the next action—not for the sake of our own individual vengeance but for the sake of a more far-reaching form of justice. Will you help me in my work? I need a capable collaborator in whom I can put my trust, someone with whom I can share my secrets and my mission. Will you be that person? Are you willing to join me?”

Aomame took some time to fully comprehend what the dowager had said to her. It was an incredible confession and an equally incredible proposal. Aomame needed even more time to decide how she felt about the proposal. As she sorted this out for herself, the dowager maintained a perfect silence, sitting motionless in her chair, staring hard at Aomame. She was in no hurry. She seemed prepared to wait as long as it took.

Without a doubt, this woman has been enveloped by a form of madness, thought Aomame. But she herself is not mad or psychologically ill. No, her mind is rock steady, unshakably cool. That fact is backed up by positive proof. Rather than madness, it’s something that resembles madness. A correct prejudice, perhaps. What she wants now is for me to share her madness or prejudice or whatever it is. With the same coolheadedness that she has. She believes that I am qualified to do that.

How long had she been thinking? She seemed to have lost her grasp of time at some point while she was deeply absorbed in her own thoughts. Only her heart continued to tick off the time in its hard, fixed rhythm. Aomame visited several little rooms she possessed inside her, tracing time backward the way a fish swims upstream. She found there familiar sights and long-forgotten smells, gentle nostalgia and severe pain. Suddenly, from some unknown source, a narrow beam of light pierced Aomame’s body. She felt as though, mysteriously, she had become transparent. When she held her hand up in the beam, she could see through it. Suddenly there was no longer any weight to her body. At this moment Aomame thought, Even if I give myself over to the madness—or prejudice—here and now, even if doing so destroys me, even if this world vanishes in its entirety, what do I have to lose?

“I see,” Aomame said to the dowager. She paused, biting her lip. And then she said, “I would like to help in any way I can.”

The dowager reached out and grasped Aomame’s hands. From that moment onward, Aomame and the dowager shared their secrets, shared their mission, and shared that something that resembled madness. It may well have been sheer madness itself, though Aomame was unable to locate the dividing line. The men that she and the dowager together dispatched to a faraway world were ones for whom there were no grounds, from any point of view, for granting them mercy.

“Not much time has gone by since you moved that man in the Shibuya hotel to another world,” the dowager said softly. The way she talked about “moving” him to another world, she could as well have been talking about a piece of furniture.

“In another four days, it will be exactly two months.”

“Still less than two months, is it?” the dowager went on. “I really shouldn’t be asking you to do another job so soon. I would prefer to put at least six months between them. If we space them too closely, it will increase your psychological burden. This is not—how should I put it?—an ordinary task. In addition to which, someone might start suspecting that the number of heart attack deaths among men connected with my safe house was a bit too high.”

Aomame smiled slightly and said, “Yes, there are so many distrustful people around.”

The dowager also smiled. She said, “As you know, I am a very, very careful person. I don’t believe in coincidence or forecasts or good luck. I search for the least drastic possibilities in dealing with these men, and only when it becomes clear that no such possibilities exist do I choose the ultimate solution. And when, as a last resort, I take such a step, I eliminate all conceivable risks. I examine all the elements with painstaking attention to detail, make unstinting preparations, and only after I am convinced that it will work do I come to you. Which is why, so far, we have not had a single problem. We haven’t, have we?”

“No, you’re absolutely right,” Aomame said, and she meant it. She would prepare her equipment, make her way to the designated place, and find the situation arranged exactly as planned. She would plunge her needle—once—into the one precise spot on the back of the man’s neck. Finally, after making sure that the man had “moved to another place,” she would leave. Up to now, everything had worked smoothly and systematically.

“About this next case, though,” the dowager continued, “sorry to say, I am probably going to have to ask you to do something far more challenging. Our timetable has not fully matured yet, and there are many uncertainties. I may not be able to give you the kind of well-prepared situation we have provided so far. In other words, things will be somewhat different this time.”

“Different how?”

“Well, the man is not someone in an ordinary position,” the dowager said. “By which I mean, first of all, that he has extremely tight security.”

“Is he a politician or something?”

The dowager shook her head. “No, he is not a politician. I’ll tell you more about that later. I’ve tried to find a solution that would save us from having to send you in, but none of them seems likely to work. No ordinary approach can meet this challenge. I am sorry, but I have not been able to come up with anything other than asking you to do it.”

“Is it an urgent matter?” Aomame asked.

“No, it is not especially urgent. Neither is there a fixed deadline by which it must be accomplished. But the longer we put it off, the more people there are who could be hurt. And the opportunity that has been given to us is limited in nature. There is no way of telling when the next one would come our way.”

It was dark out. The sunroom was enveloped in silence. Aomame wondered if the moon was up. But she could not see it from where she was sitting.

“I intend to explain the situation to you in all possible detail. Before I do that, however, I have someone I would like you to meet. Shall we go now to see her?”

“Is she living in your safe house?”

The dowager inhaled slowly and made a small sound in the back of her throat. Her eyes took on a special gleam that Aomame had not seen before.

“She was sent here six weeks ago by our consultation office. For the first four weeks, she didn’t say a word. She was in some sort of dazed state and had simply lost the ability to speak. We knew only her name and age. She had been taken into protective custody when she was found sleeping in a train station in terrible condition, and after being passed around from one office to another she ended up with us. I’ve spent hours talking to her bit by bit. It took a long time for me to convince her that this is a safe place and she doesn’t have to be afraid. Now she can talk to some extent. She speaks in a confused, fragmented way, but, putting the pieces together, I’ve been able to form a general idea of what happened to her. It’s almost too terrible to talk about, truly heartbreaking.”