“The Professor won’t mind,” Fuka-Eri said with a kind of shrug of the shoulders. “And I won’t mind.”

“But I might mind,” Tengo said.

“Why.”

“Well …,” Tengo started to say, but no further words came out. He was not even sure what he had intended to say. This often happened when he was talking with Fuka-Eri. He would momentarily lose track of what he was going to say. It was like sheet music being scattered by a gust of wind.

Fuka-Eri reached out and gently grasped Tengo’s left hand in her right hand as if to comfort him.

“You don’t get it,” she said.

“Don’t get what?”

“We are one.”

“We are one?” Tengo asked with a shock.

“We wrote the book together.”

Tengo felt the pressure of Fuka-Eri’s fingers against his palm. It was not strong, but it was even and steady.

“That’s true. We wrote Air Chrysalis together. And when we are eaten by the tiger, we’ll be eaten together.”

“No tiger will come out,” Fuka-Eri said, her voice unusually grave.

“That’s good,” Tengo said, though it didn’t make him especially happy. A tiger might not come out, but there was no telling what might come out instead.

They stood in front of Shinjuku Station’s ticket machines. Fuka-Eri looked up at him, still gripping his hand. People streamed past them on both sides.

“Okay, if you want to stay at my place, you can,” Tengo said, resigning himself. “I can sleep on the sofa.”

“Thank you,” Fuka-Eri said.

Tengo realized this was the first time he had ever heard anything resembling polite language from Fuka-Eri’s mouth. No, it might not have been the first time, but he could not recall when he might have heard it before.

CHAPTER 19

Aomame

WOMEN SHARING A SECRET

“The Little People?” Aomame asked gently, peering at the girl. “Tell us, who are these ‘Little People’?”

But having pronounced only those few words, Tsubasa’s mouth clamped shut again. As before, her eyes had lost all depth, as though the effort of speaking the words had exhausted most of her energy.

“Somebody you know?” Aomame asked.

Again no answer.

“She has mentioned those words several times before,” the dowager said. “ ‘The Little People.’ I don’t know what she means.”

The words had an ominous ring, a subtle overtone that Aomame sensed like the sound of distant thunder.

She asked the dowager, “Could these ‘Little People’ have been the ones who injured her?”

The dowager shook her head. “I don’t know. But whatever they are, the ‘Little People’ undoubtedly carry great significance for her.”

Hands resting side by side atop the table, the girl sat utterly still, her opaque eyes staring at a fixed point in space.

“What in the world could have happened to her?” Aomame asked.

The dowager replied almost coolly, “There is observable evidence of rape. Repeated rape. Terrible lacerations on the outer lips of her vagina, and injury to the uterus. An engorged adult male sex organ penetrated her small uterus, which is still not fully mature, largely destroying the area where a fertilized egg would become implanted. The doctor thinks she will probably never be able to become pregnant.”

The dowager appeared almost intentionally to be discussing these graphic details in the girl’s presence. Tsubasa listened without comment and without any perceptible change of expression. Her mouth showed slight movements now and then but emitted no sound. She almost seemed to be listening out of sheer politeness to a conversation about a stranger far away.

“And that is not all,” the dowager continued quietly. “Even if some procedure managed to restore the function of her uterus, the girl will probably never want to have sex with anyone. A good deal of pain must have accompanied any penetration that could cause such terrible damage, and it was done to her repeatedly. The memory of that much pain won’t simply fade away. Do you see what I mean?”

Aomame nodded. Her fingers were tightly intertwined atop her knees.

“In other words, the eggs prepared inside her have nowhere to go. They—” the dowager glanced at Tsubasa and went on, “have already been rendered infertile.”

Aomame could not tell how much of this Tsubasa understood. Whatever her mind was able to grasp, her living emotions appeared to be somewhere else. They were not here, at least. Her heart seemed to have been shut up inside a small, dark room with a locked door, a room located in another place.

The dowager went on, “I am not saying that a woman’s only purpose in life is to bear children. Each individual is free to choose the kind of life she wants to lead. It is simply not permissible for someone to rob her by force of her innate right as a woman before she has the opportunity to exercise it.”

Aomame nodded in silence.

“Of course it is not permissible,” the dowager repeated. Aomame noticed a slight quaver in her voice. She was obviously finding it difficult to keep her emotions in check. “This child ran away, alone, from a certain place. How she was able to manage it, I do not know. But she has nowhere else to go but here. Nowhere else is safe for her.”

“Where are her parents?”

The dowager scowled and tapped the tabletop with her fingernails. “We know where her parents are. But they are the ones who allowed this terrible thing to happen. They are the ones she ran away from.”

“You’re saying that the parents approved of having their own daughter raped?”

“They not only approved of it, they encouraged it.”

“But why would anyone …?” Aomame could not find the words to go on.

The dowager shook her head. “I know, it’s terrible. Such things should never be allowed to happen. But the situation is a difficult one. This is not a simple case of domestic violence. The doctor said we have to report it to the police, but I asked him not to. He’s a good friend, so I managed to convince him to hold off.”

“But why didn’t you want to report it to the police?” Aomame asked.

“This child was clearly the victim of a savage, inhuman act. Moreover, it was a heinous crime that society should punish with severe criminal penalties,” the dowager said. “But even if we were to report it to the police, what could they do? As you see, the child herself can hardly speak. She can’t properly explain what happened or what was done to her. And even if she were able to, we have no way to prove it. If we handed her over to the police, she might just be sent back to her parents. There is no place else for her to go, and they do have parental rights. Once she was back with them, the same thing would probably be done to her again. We cannot let that happen.”

Aomame nodded.

“I am going to raise her myself,” the dowager declared. “I will not send her anywhere. I don’t care who comes for her—her parents or anyone—I will not give her up. I will hide her somewhere else and take charge of her upbringing.”

Aomame sat for a while, looking back and forth between the dowager and the girl.

“So, then, can we identify the man who committed such sexual violence against this child? Was it one man?” Aomame asked.

“We can identify him. He was the only one.”

“But there’s no way to take him to court?”

“He is a very powerful man,” the dowager said. “He can exert his influence on people directly. This girl’s parents were under his influence. And they still are. They do whatever he orders them to do. They have no individual character, no powers of judgment of their own. They take his word as the absolute truth. So when he tells them they must give him their daughter, they cannot refuse. Far from it, they do his bidding without question and hand her over gladly, knowing full well what he plans to do to her.”