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  Tengo shook his head slightly. There was no need to explain everything now. They could fill in all the gaps later, as they went—if there were indeed gaps that needed to be filled. Tengo felt that as long as it was something the two of them could share—even a gap they had to abandon or a riddle they never could solve—he could discover a joy there, something akin to love.

  “What do I need to know about you at this point?” Tengo asked.

  “What do you know about me?” Aomame asked in return.

  “Almost nothing,” Tengo said. “You’re an instructor at a sports club. You’re single. You’ve been living in Koenji.”

  “I know almost nothing about you, too,” Aomame said, “though I do know a few small things. You teach math at a cram school in Yoyogi. You live alone. And you’re the one who really wrote Air Chrysalis.”

  Tengo looked at her face, his lips parted in surprise. There were very few people who knew this about him. Did she have some connection with the cult?

  “Don’t worry. We’re on the same side,” she said. “If I told you how I came to know this, it would take too long. But I do know that you wrote Air Chrysalis together with Eriko Fukada. And that you and I both entered a world where there are two moons in the sky. And there’s one more thing. I’m carrying a child. I believe it’s yours. For now, these are the important things you ought to know.”

  “You’re carrying my child?” The driver might be listening, but Tengo wasn’t worrying about it at this point.

  “We haven’t seen each other in twenty years,” Aomame said, “but yes, I’m carrying your child. I’m going to give birth to your child. I know it sounds totally crazy.”

  Tengo was silent, waiting for her to continue.

  “Do you remember that terrible thunderstorm in the beginning of September?”

  “I remember it well,” Tengo said. “The weather was nice all day, then after sunset it turned stormy, with wild lightning. Water flowed down into the Akasaka-Mitsuke Station and they had to shut down the subway for a while.” The Little People are stirring, Fuka-Eri had said.

  “I got pregnant the night of that storm,” Aomame said. “But I didn’t have those sorts of relations with anyone on that day, or for several months before and after.”

  She paused and waited until this reality had sunk in, then continued.

  “But it definitely happened that night. And I’m certain that the child I’m carrying is yours. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s true.”

  The memory of the strange sexual encounter he had with Fuka-Eri that night came back to him. Lightning was crashing outside, huge drops of rain lashing the window. The Little People were indeed stirring. He was lying there, faceup in bed, his whole body numb, and Fuka-Eri straddled him, inserted his penis inside her, and squeezed out his semen. She looked like she was in a complete trance. Her eyes were closed from start to finish, as if she were lost in meditation. Her breasts were ample and round, and she had no pubic hair. The whole scene was unreal, but he knew it had really happened.

  The next morning, Fuka-Eri had acted as if she had no memory of the events of the previous night, or else tried to give the impression that she didn’t remember. To Tengo it had felt more like a business transaction than sex. On that stormy night, Fuka-Eri used his body to collect his semen, down to the very last drop. Even now, Tengo could recall that strange sensation. Fuka-Eri had seemed to become a totally different person.

  “There is something I recall,” Tengo said dryly. “Something that happened to me that night that logic can’t explain.”

  Aomame looked deep into his eyes.

  “At the time,” he went on, “I didn’t know what it meant. Even now, I’m not sure. But if you did get pregnant that night, and there’s no other possible explanation for it, then the child inside you has to be mine.”

  Fuka-Eri must have been the conduit. That was the role she had been assigned, to act as the passage linking Tengo and Aomame, physically connecting the two of them over a limited period of time. Tengo knew this must be true.

  “Someday I’ll tell you exactly what happened then,” Tengo said, “but right now I don’t think I have the words to explain it.”

  “But you really believe it, right? That the little one inside me is your child?”

  “From the bottom of my heart,” Tengo said.

  “Good,” Aomame said. “That’s all I wanted to know. As long as you believe that, then I don’t care about the rest. I don’t need any explanations.”

  “So you’re pregnant,” Tengo asked again.

  “Four months along,” Aomame said, guiding his hand to rest on her belly.

  Tengo was quiet, seeking signs of life there. It was still very tiny, but his hand could feel the warmth.

  “Where are we moving on to? You, me, and the little one.”

  “Somewhere that’s not here,” Aomame replied. “A world with only one moon. The place where we belong. Where the Little People have no power.”

  “Little People?” Tengo frowned slightly.

  “You described the Little People in detail in Air Chrysalis. What they look like, what they do.”

  Tengo nodded.

  “They really exist in this world,” Aomame said. “Just like you described them.”

  When he had rewritten the novel, he had thought the Little People were merely the figment of the active imagination of a seventeen-year-old girl. Or that they were at most a kind of metaphor or symbol. But Tengo could now believe that the Little People really existed, that they had real powers.

  “Not just the Little People,” Aomame said, “but all of it really exists in this world—air chrysalises, maza and dohta, two moons.”

  “And you know the pathway out of this world?”

  “We’ll take the pathway I took to get into this world so that we can get out of it. That’s the only exit I can think of.” She added, “Do you have the manuscript of the novel you’re writing?”

  “Right here,” Tengo said, lightly tapping the russet-colored bag slung over his shoulder. It struck him as strange. How did she know about this?

  Aomame gave a hesitant smile. “I just know.”

  “It looks like you know a lot of things,” Tengo said. It was the first time he had seen her smile. It was the faintest of smiles, yet he felt the tides start to shift all over the world. He knew it was happening.

  “Don’t let go of it,” Aomame said. “It’s very important for us.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

  “We came into this world so that we could meet. We didn’t realize it ourselves, but that was the purpose of us coming here. We faced all kinds of complications—things that didn’t make sense, things that defied explanation. Weird things, gory things, sad things. And sometimes, even beautiful things. We were asked to make a vow, and we did. We were forced to go through hard times, and we made it. We were able to accomplish the goal that we came here to accomplish. But danger is closing in fast. They want the dohta inside of me. You know what the dohta signifies, I imagine.”

  Tengo took a deep breath. “You’re having our dohta—yours and mine.”

  “I don’t know all the details of whatever principle’s behind it, but I’m giving birth to a dohta. Either through an air chrysalis, or else I’m the air chrysalis. And they’re trying to get ahold of all three of us. To make a new system so they can hear the voice.”

  “But what’s my role in this? Assuming I have a role beyond being the father of the dohta.”

  “You are—” Aomame began, and stopped. The next words wouldn’t come. There were several gaps that remained, gaps they would have to work together, over time, to fill in.

  “I decided to find you,” Tengo said, “but I couldn’t. You found me. I actually didn’t do anything. It seems—how should I put it?—unfair.”

  “Unfair?”

  “I owe you a lot. But in the end, I wasn’t much help.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Aomame said firmly. “You’re the one
who guided me this far. In an invisible way. The two of us are one.”

  “I think I saw that dohta,” Tengo said. “Or at least what the dohta signifies. It was you as a ten-year-old, asleep inside the faint light of an air chrysalis. I could touch her fingers. It only happened once.”

  Aomame leaned her head on Tengo’s shoulder. “We don’t owe each other anything. Not a thing. But what we do need to worry about is protecting this little one. They’re closing in. Almost on top of us. I can hear their footsteps.”

  “I won’t ever let anyone else get the two of you—you or the little one. Now that we’ve met each other, we’ve found what we were looking for when we came to this world. This is a dangerous place. But you said you know where there’s an exit.”

  “I think so,” Aomame said. “If I’m not mistaken.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Tengo and Aomame

  LIKE A PEA IN A POD

  Aomame recognized the spot as they got out of the taxi. She stood at the intersection looking around and found the gloomy storage area, surrounded by a metal panel fence, down below the expressway. Leading Tengo by the hand, she crossed at the crosswalk and headed toward it.

  She couldn’t remember which of the metal panels had the loose bolts, but after patiently testing each one, she found a space that a person could manage to slip through. Aomame bent down and, careful to keep her clothes from getting snagged, slipped inside. Tengo hunched down as much as his large body would allow, and followed behind her. Inside the storage area, everything was exactly as it had been in April, when Aomame had last seen it. Discarded, faded bags of cement, rusty metal pipes, weary weeds, scattered old wastepaper, splotches of hardened white pigeon excrement here and there. In eight months, nothing had changed. During that time, perhaps no one had ever set foot in here. It was like a sandbar on a main highway in the middle of the city—a completely abandoned, forgotten little spot.

  “Is this the place?” Tengo asked, looking around.

  Aomame nodded. “If there’s no exit here, then we’re not going anywhere.”

  In the darkness Aomame searched for the emergency stairway she had climbed down, the narrow stairs linking the expressway and the ground below. The stairway has to be here, she told herself. I have to believe it.

  And she found it. It was actually closer to a ladder than a stairway. It was shabbier and more rickety than she remembered. She was amazed that she had managed to clamber down it before. At any rate, though, here it was. All they needed to do now was climb up, step by step, instead of down. She took off her Charles Jourdan high heels, stuffed them into her bag, and slung the bag across her shoulders. She stepped onto the first rung of the ladder in her stocking feet.

  “Follow me,” Aomame said, turning around to Tengo.

  “Maybe I should go first?” Tengo asked worriedly.

  “No, I’ll go first.” This was the path she had come down, and she would have to be the first to climb back up.

  The stairway was colder than when she had come down it. Her hands got so numb that she thought she would lose all feeling. The wind whipped between the support columns under the expressway. It was much more sharp and piercing than it had been before. The stairway was aloof and uninviting. It promised her nothing.

  At the beginning of September when she had searched for the stairway on the expressway, it had vanished. The route had been blocked. Yet now the route from the storage area, going up, was still here, just as she had predicted. She had had a feeling that if she started from this direction, she would find it. If this little one inside me, she thought, has any special powers, then it will surely protect me and show me the right way to go.

  The stairway existed, but whether it really connected up to the expressway, she didn’t know. It might be blocked halfway, a dead end. In this world, anything could happen. The only thing to do was to climb up with her own hands and feet and find out what was there—and what was not.

  She cautiously climbed up one step after another. She looked down and saw Tengo right behind her. A fierce wind howled, making her spring coat flutter. It was a cutting wind. The hem of her short skirt had crept up to her thighs. The wind had made a mess of her hair, plastering it against her face and blocking her vision, so much so that she found it hard to breathe. Aomame regretted not having tied her hair back. And I should have worn gloves, too, she thought. Why didn’t I think of that? But regretting it wasn’t going to be any help. She had only thought to wear exactly the same thing as before. She had to cling to the rungs and keep on climbing.

  As she shivered in the cold, patiently climbing upward, she looked over at the balcony of the apartment building across the road. A five-story building made of brown brick tiles, the same building she had seen when she had climbed down. Lights were on in half the rooms. It was so close by she could almost reach out and touch it. It might lead to trouble if one of the residents happened to spot them climbing up the emergency stairway like this in the middle of the night. The two of them were lit up well under the lights from Route 246.

  Fortunately, no one appeared at any of the windows. All the curtains were drawn tight. This was only to be expected, really. Who was going to come out on their balcony in the middle of a freezing night to watch an emergency stairway on an expressway?

  There was a potted rubber plant on one of the balconies, crouching down next to a grubby lawn chair. In April when she had climbed down she had seen the same rubber plant—a much more pathetic little plant than the one she had left behind at her apartment in Jiyugaoka. This little rubber plant must have been there the whole eight months, huddled in the same exact spot. It was faded and bedraggled, shoved away into the most inconspicuous spot in the world, completely forgotten, probably hardly ever watered. Still, that little plant gave Aomame courage and certainty as she struggled up the rickety stairway, her hands and legs freezing, her mind anxious and confused. It’s okay, she told herself, I’m on the right track. At least I’m following the same path I took when I came here, from the opposite direction. This little rubber plant has been a landmark for me. A sober, solitary landmark.

  When I climbed down the stairs back then, I came across a few spiderwebs. And I thought of Tamaki Otsuka, how during summer break in high school we took a trip together, and at night, in bed, we stripped naked and explored each other’s bodies. Why had that memory suddenly come to her then, of all times, while climbing down an emergency stairway on the expressway? As she now climbed in the opposite direction, Aomame thought again of Tamaki. She remembered her smooth, beautifully shaped breasts. So different from my own underdeveloped chest, she thought. But those beautiful breasts are now gone forever.

  She thought of Ayumi Nakano, the lonely policewoman who, one August night, wound up in a hotel room in Shibuya, handcuffed, strangled with a bathrobe belt. A troubled young woman walking toward the abyss of destruction. She had had beautiful breasts as well.

  Aomame mourned the deaths of these two friends deeply. It saddened her to think that these women were forever gone from the world. And she mourned their lovely breasts—breasts that had vanished without a trace.

  Please, she pleaded. Protect me. I beg you—I need your help. She believed that her voiceless words had reached the ears of her unfortunate friends. They’ll protect me. I know it.

  When she finally came to the top of the ladder, she was faced with a catwalk that connected up to the side of the road. The catwalk had a low railing, and she would have to crouch low to pass through. Beyond the catwalk was a zigzagging stairway. Not a proper stairway, really, but certainly a far cry better than the ladder. As Aomame recalled, once she ascended the stairs she would come out onto the turnout along the expressway. Trucks barreling down the road sent shocks that rocked the catwalk, as if it were a small boat hit from the side by a wave. The roar of the traffic had increased.

  She checked that Tengo, who had come to the top of the ladder, was right behind her, and she reached out and took his hand. His hand was warm. She found it odd that
his hand could be so warm on such a cold night, after holding on to a freezing ladder.

  “We’re almost there,” Aomame said in his ear. With the traffic noise and the wind she had to raise her voice. “Once we get up those stairs we’ll be on the expressway.”

  That is, if the stairs aren’t blocked, she thought, but she kept this thought to herself.

  “You were planning to climb these stairs from the beginning?” Tengo asked.

  “Right. If I could locate them.”

  “And you went to the trouble of dressing like that. Tight skirt, high heels. Not exactly the right outfit to wear to climb steep stairs.”

  Aomame smiled again. “I had to wear these clothes. Someday I’ll explain it to you.”

  “You have beautiful legs,” Tengo said.

  “You like them?”

  “You bet.”

  “Thanks,” Aomame said. On the narrow catwalk she reached up and gently kissed his ear. A crumpled, cauliflower-like ear. His ear was freezing cold.

  She turned back, proceeded along the catwalk, and began climbing up the narrow, steep stairs. Her feet were freezing, her fingertips numb. She was careful not to slip. She continued up the stairs, brushing away her hair as the wind whipped by. The freezing wind brought tears to her eyes. She held on tightly to the handrail so she could keep her balance in the swirling wind, and as she took one cautious step after another, she thought of Tengo right behind her. Of his large hand, and his freezing-cold cauliflower ear. Of the little one sleeping inside her. Of the black automatic pistol inside her shoulder bag. And the seven 9mm cartridges in the clip.

  We have to get out of this world. To do that I have to believe, from the bottom of my heart, that these stairs will lead to the expressway. I believe, she told herself. She suddenly remembered something Leader had said on the stormy night, before he died. Lyrics to a song. She could recall them all, even now.

  It’s a Barnum and Bailey world,