he phone woke Tengo. The luminous hands of his clock pointed to a little after one a.m. The room was dark, of course. Tengo knew the call was from Komatsu. No one but Komatsu would call him at one in the morning—and keep the phone ringing until he picked it up, however long it took. Komatsu had no sense of time. He would place a call the moment a thought struck him, never considering the hour. It could be the middle of the night or the crack of dawn. The other person could be enjoying his wedding night or lying on his deathbed. The prosaic thought never seemed to enter Komatsu’s egg-shaped head that a call from him might be disturbing.

Which is not to say that he did this with everyone. Even Komatsu worked for an organization and collected a salary. He couldn’t possibly go around behaving toward everyone with a total disregard for common sense. Only with Tengo could he get away with it. Tengo was, for Komatsu, little more than an extension of Komatsu himself, another arm or leg. If Komatsu was up, Tengo must be up. Tengo normally went to bed at ten o’clock and woke at six, maintaining a generally regular lifestyle. He was a deep sleeper. Once something woke him, though, it was hard for him to get to sleep again. He was high-strung to that extent. He had tried to explain this to Komatsu any number of times, and pleaded with him not to call in the middle of the night, like a farmer begging God not to send swarms of locusts into his fields before harvest time.

“Got it,” Komatsu declared. “No more nighttime calls.” But his promise had not sunk deep roots in his brain. One rainfall was all it took to wash them out.

Tengo crawled out of bed and, bumping into things, managed to find his way to the phone in the kitchen. All the while, the phone kept up its merciless ringing.

“I talked to Fuka-Eri,” Komatsu said. He never bothered with the standard greetings, no “Were you sleeping?” or “Sorry to call so late.” Pretty impressive. Tengo couldn’t help admiring him.

Tengo frowned in the dark, saying nothing. When roused at night, it took his brain a while to start working.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, I did.”

“It was just a phone call. But I did talk to her. Or at her. She just listened. You couldn’t exactly call it a conversation. She hardly talks. And she’s got an odd way of speaking. You’ll see what I mean. Anyhow, I gave her a general outline of my plan, like, what did she think of the idea of going after the new writers’ prize by having somebody rewrite Air Chrysalis to get it into better shape? I couldn’t give her much more than a rough idea on the phone and ask her if she had any interest, assuming we’d meet and talk over the details. I kept it sort of vague. If I got too direct about stuff like this, I could put myself in an awkward position.”

“And so?”

“No answer.”

“No answer?”

Komatsu paused for effect. He put a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a match. Hearing the sounds over the phone, Tengo could imagine the scene vividly. Komatsu never used a lighter.

“Fuka-Eri says she wants to meet you first,” Komatsu said, exhaling. “She didn’t say whether or not she was interested in the plan, or whether or not she liked the idea. I guess the main thing is to start by meeting you and talking about it face-to-face. She’ll give me her answer after that, she says. The responsibility is all yours, don’t you think?”

“And so?”

“Are you free tomorrow evening?”

His classes started in the morning and ended at four. Fortunately (or unfortunately) he had nothing after that. “I’m free,” he said.

“Good. I want you to go to the Nakamuraya Café in Shinjuku at six o’clock. I’ll reserve a table for you in the back where it’s quiet. It’ll be in my name and on the company’s tab, so eat and drink as much as you like. The two of you can have a nice, long talk.”

“Without you?”

“That’s the way Fuka-Eri wants it. She says there’s no point in meeting me yet.”

Tengo kept silent.

“So that’s how it is,” Komatsu said cheerily. “Give it your best shot, Tengo. You’re a big lug, but you make a good impression on people. And besides, you teach at a cram school. You’re used to talking to these precocious high school girls. You’re the right guy for the job, not me. Flash her a smile, win her over, get her to trust you. I’ll be looking forward to the good news.”

“Now, wait just a minute. This was all your idea. I still haven’t even told you if I’ll do it. Like I said the other day, this is a tremendously risky plan, and I don’t see it working all that well. It could turn into a real scandal. How am I supposed to convince this girl I’ve never met to go along with it when I myself haven’t decided to take it on?”

Komatsu remained silent at his end. Then, after a moment’s pause, he said, “Now listen, Tengo. We’ve already pulled out of the station. You can’t stop the train and get off now. I’m totally committed. And you’re more than half committed, I’m sure. We share the same fate.”

Tengo shook his head. Share the same fate? When did this melodrama get started? “Just the other day you told me to take my time and think it over, didn’t you?”

“It’s been five days since then. You’ve had plenty of time to think it over. What’s your decision?” Komatsu demanded.

Tengo was at a loss for words. “I don’t have a decision,” he said honestly.

“So then, why don’t you try meeting this Fuka-Eri girl and talking it over? You can make up your mind after that.”

Tengo pressed his fingertips hard against his temples. His brain was still not working properly. “All right. I’ll talk to her. Six o’clock tomorrow at the Shinjuku Nakamuraya. I’ll give her my explanation of the situation. But I’m not promising any more than that. I can explain the plan, but I can’t convince her of anything.”

“That’s all I ask, of course.”

“So anyway, how much does Fuka-Eri know about me?”

“I filled her in on the general stuff. You’re twenty-nine or thirty, a bachelor, you teach math at a Yoyogi cram school. You’re a big guy, but not a bad guy. You don’t eat young girls. You live a simple lifestyle, you’ve got gentle eyes. And I like your writing a lot. That’s about it.”

Tengo sighed. When he tried to think, reality hovered nearby, then retreated into the distance.

“Do you mind if I go back to bed? It’s almost one thirty, and I want at least a little sleep before the sun comes up. I’ve got three classes tomorrow starting in the morning.”

“Fine. Good night,” Komatsu said. “Sweet dreams.” And he hung up.

Tengo stared at the receiver in his hand for a while, then set it down. He wanted to get to sleep right away if possible, and to have good dreams if possible, but he knew it wouldn’t be easy after having been dragged out of bed and forced to participate in an unpleasant conversation. He could try drinking himself to sleep, but he wasn’t in the mood for alcohol. He ended up drinking a glass of water, getting back in bed, turning on the light, and beginning to read a book. He hoped it would make him sleepy, but he didn’t actually fall asleep until almost dawn. Tengo took the elevated train to Shinjuku after his third class ended. He bought a few books at the Kinokuniya bookstore, and then headed for the Nakamuraya Café. He gave Komatsu’s name at the door and was shown to a quiet table in the back. Fuka-Eri was not there yet. Tengo told the waiter he would wait for the other person to come. Would he want something to drink while he waited? He said that he would not. The waiter left a menu and a glass of water on the table. Tengo opened one of his new books and started reading. It was a book on occultism and it detailed the function of curses in Japanese society over the centuries. Curses played a major role in ancient communities. They had made up for the gaps and inconsistencies in the social system. It seemed like an enjoyable time to be alive.

Fuka-Eri had still not come at six fifteen. Unconcerned, Tengo went on reading. It didn’t surprise him that she was late. This whole business was so crazy, he couldn’t complain to anybody if it took another crazy turn. It would not be strange if she changed her mind and decided not to show up at all. In fact, he would prefer it that way—it would be simpler. He could just report to Komatsu that he waited an hour and she never showed. What would happen after that was no concern of his. He would just eat dinner by himself and go home, and that would satisfy his obligation to Komatsu.

Fuka-Eri arrived at 6:22. The waiter showed her to the table and she sat down across from Tengo. Resting her small hands on the table, not even removing her coat, she stared straight at him. No “Sorry I’m late,” or “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.” Not even a “Hi” or a “Nice to meet you.” All she did was look directly at Tengo, her lips forming a tight, straight line. She could have been observing a new landscape from afar. Tengo was impressed.

Fuka-Eri was a small girl, small all over, and her face was more beautiful than in the pictures. Her most attractive facial feature was her deep, striking eyes. Under the gaze of two glistening, pitch-black pupils, Tengo felt uncomfortable. She hardly blinked and seemed almost not to be breathing. Her hair was absolutely straight, as if someone had drawn each individual strand with a ruler, and the shape of her eyebrows matched the hair perfectly. As with many beautiful teenage girls, her expression lacked any trace of everyday life. It also was strangely unbalanced—perhaps because there was a slight difference in the depth of the left and right eyes—causing discomfort in the recipient of her gaze. You couldn’t tell what she was thinking. In that sense, she was not the kind of beautiful girl who becomes a model or a pop star. Rather, she had something about her that aroused people and drew them toward her.

Tengo closed his book and laid it to one side. He sat up straight and took a drink of water. Komatsu had been right. If a girl like this took a literary prize, the media would be all over her. It would be a sensation. And then what?

The waiter came and placed a menu and a glass of water in front of her. Still she did not move. Instead of picking up the menu, she went on staring at Tengo. He felt he had no choice but to say something. “Hello.” In her presence, he felt bigger than ever.

Fuka-Eri did not return his greeting but continued to stare at him. “I know you,” she murmured at last.

“You know me?” Tengo said.

“You teach math.”

He nodded. “I do.”

“I heard you twice.”

“My lectures?”

“Yes.”

Her style of speaking had some distinguishing characteristics: sentences shorn of embellishment, a chronic shortage of inflection, a limited vocabulary (or at least what seemed like a limited vocabulary). Komatsu was right: it was odd.

“You mean you’re a student at my school?” Tengo asked.

Fuka-Eri shook her head. “Just went for lectures.”

“You’re not supposed to be able to get in without a student ID.”

Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug, as if to say, “Grown-ups shouldn’t say such dumb things.”

“How were the lectures?” Tengo asked, his second meaningless question.

Fuka-Eri took a drink of water without averting her gaze. She did not answer the question. Tengo guessed he couldn’t have made too bad an impression if she came twice. She would have quit after the first one if it hadn’t aroused her interest.

“You’re in your third year of high school, aren’t you?” Tengo asked.

“More or less.”

“Studying for college entrance exams?”

She shook her head.

Tengo could not decide whether this meant “I don’t want to talk about my college entrance exams” or “I wouldn’t be caught dead taking college entrance exams.” He recalled Komatsu’s remark on how little Fuka-Eri had to say.

The waiter came for their orders. Fuka-Eri still had her coat on. She ordered a salad and bread. “That’s all,” she said, returning the menu to the waiter. Then, as if it suddenly occurred to her, she added, “And a glass of white wine.”

The young waiter seemed about to ask her age, but she gave him a stare that made him turn red, and he swallowed his words. Impressive, Tengo thought again. He ordered seafood linguine and decided to join Fuka-Eri in a glass of white wine.

“You’re a teacher and a writer,” Fuka-Eri said. She seemed to be asking Tengo a question. Apparently, asking questions without question marks was another characteristic of her speech.

“For now,” Tengo said.

“You don’t look like either.”

“Maybe not,” he said. He thought of smiling but couldn’t quite manage it. “I’m certified as an instructor and I do teach courses at a cram school, but I’m not exactly a teacher. I write fiction, but I’ve never been published, so I’m not a writer yet, either.”

“You’re nothing.”

Tengo nodded. “Exactly. For the moment, I’m nothing.”

“You like math.”

Tengo mentally added a question mark to her comment and answered this new question: “I do like math. I’ve always liked it, and I still like it.”

“What about it.”

“What do I like about math? Hmm. When I’ve got figures in front of me, it relaxes me. Kind of like, everything fits where it belongs.”

“The calculus part was good.”

“You mean in my lecture?”

Fuka-Eri nodded.

“Do you like math?”

She gave her head a quick shake. She did not like math.

“But the part about calculus was good?” he asked.

Fuka-Eri gave another little shrug. “You talked about it like you cared.”

“Oh, really?” Tengo said. No one had ever told him this before.

“Like you were talking about somebody important to you,” she said.

“I can maybe get even more passionate when I lecture on sequences,” Tengo said. “Sequences were a personal favorite of mine in high school math.”

“You like sequences,” Fuka-Eri asked, without a question mark.

“To me, they’re like Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. I never get tired of them. There’s always something new to discover.”

“I know the Well-Tempered Clavier.”

“You like Bach?”

Fuka-Eri nodded. “The Professor is always listening to it.”

“The Professor? One of your teachers?”

Fuka-Eri did not answer. She looked at Tengo with an expression that seemed to say, “It’s too soon to talk about that.”

She took her coat off as if it had only now occurred to her to do so. She emerged from it like an insect sloughing off its skin. Without bothering to fold it, she set it on the chair next to hers. She wore a thin crew-neck sweater of pale green and white jeans, with no jewelry or makeup, but still she stood out. She had a slender build, in proportion to which her full breasts could not help but attract attention. They were beautifully shaped as well. Tengo had to caution himself not to look down there, but he couldn’t help it. His eyes moved to her chest as if toward the center of a great whirlpool.

The two glasses of white wine arrived. Fuka-Eri took a sip of hers, and then, after thoughtfully studying the glass, she set it on the table. Tengo took a perfunctory sip. Now it was time to talk about important matters.

Fuka-Eri brought her hand to her straight black hair and combed her fingers through it for a while. It was a lovely gesture, and her fingers were lovely, each seemingly moving according to its own will and purpose as if in tune with something occult.

“What do I like about math?” Tengo asked himself aloud again in order to divert his attention from her fingers and her chest. “Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.”

Fuka-Eri thought about this for a while. “Why do you write fiction,” she asked in her expressionless way.

Tengo converted her question into longer sentences: “In other words, if I like math so much, why do I go to all the trouble of writing fiction? Why not just keep doing math? Is that it?”

She nodded.

“Hmm. Real life is different from math. Things in life don’t necessarily flow over the shortest possible route. For me, math is—how should I put it?—math is all too natural. It’s like beautiful scenery. It’s just there. There’s no need to exchange it with anything else. That’s why, when I’m doing math, I sometimes feel I’m turning transparent. And that can be scary.”

Fuka-Eri kept looking straight into Tengo’s eyes as if she were looking into an empty house with her face pressed up against the glass.

Tengo said, “When I’m writing a story, I use words to transform the surrounding scene into something more natural for me. In other words, I reconstruct it. That way, I can confirm without a doubt that this person known as ‘me’ exists in the world. This is a totally different process from steeping myself in the world of math.”

“You confirm that you exist,” Fuka-Eri said.

“I can’t say I’ve been one hundred percent successful at it,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri did not look convinced by Tengo’s explanation, but she said nothing more. She merely brought the glass of wine to her mouth and took soundless little sips as though drinking through a straw.

“If you ask me,” Tengo said, “you’re in effect doing the same thing. You transform the scenes you see into your own words and reconstruct them. And you confirm your own existence.”

Fuka-Eri’s hand that held her wineglass stopped moving. She thought about Tengo’s remark for a while, but again she offered no opinion.

“You gave shape to that process. In the form of the work you wrote,” Tengo added. “If the work succeeds in gaining many people’s approval and if they identify with it, then it becomes a literary work with objective value.”

Fuka-Eri gave her head a decisive shake. “I’m not interested in form.”

“You’re not interested in form,” Tengo said.

“Form has no meaning.”

“So then, why did you write the story and submit it for the new writers’ prize?”

She put down her wineglass. “I didn’t,” she said.

To calm himself, Tengo picked up his glass and took a drink of water. “You’re saying you didn’t submit it?”

Fuka-Eri nodded. “I didn’t send it in.”

“Well, who did?”

She gave a little shrug, then kept silent for a good fifteen seconds. Finally, she said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tengo repeated, emitting a long, slow breath from his pursed lips. Oh, great. Things really are not going to go smoothly. I knew it.

Several times, Tengo had formed personal relationships with his female cram school students, though always after they had left the school and entered universities, and it was always the girls who took the initiative. They would call and say they wanted to see him. The two of them would meet and go somewhere together. He had no idea what attracted them to him, but ultimately he was a bachelor, and they were no longer his students. He had no good reason to refuse when asked for a date.

Twice the dates had led to sex, but the relationships had eventually faded on their own. Tengo could not quite relax when he was with energetic young college girls. It was like playing with a kitten, fresh and fun at first, but tiring in the end. The girls, too, seemed disappointed to discover that in person, Tengo was not the same as the passionate young math lecturer they encountered in class. He could understand how they felt.

Tengo was able to relax when he was with older women. Not having to take the lead in everything seemed to lift a weight from his shoulders. And many older women liked him. Which is why, after having formed a relationship with a married woman ten years his senior a year ago, he had stopped dating any young girls. By meeting his older girlfriend in his apartment once a week, any desire (or need) he might have for a flesh-and-blood woman was pretty well satisfied. The rest of the week he spent shut up in his room alone, writing, reading, and listening to music; occasionally he would go for a swim in the neighborhood pool. Aside from a little chatting with his colleagues at the cram school, he hardly spoke with anyone. He was not especially dissatisfied with this life. Far from it: for him, it was close to ideal.

But this seventeen-year-old girl, Fuka-Eri, was different. The mere sight of her sent a violent shudder through him. It was the same feeling her photograph had given him when he first saw it, but in the living girl’s presence it was far stronger. This was not the pangs of love or sexual desire. A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that Fuka-Eri had made. It had always been there inside Tengo. She had merely managed to shine a special light on it.

“You’re not interested in writing fiction, and you didn’t enter the new writers’ competition,” Tengo said as if confirming what she had told him.

With her eyes locked on his, Fuka-Eri nodded in agreement. Then she gave a little shrug, as if shielding herself from a cold autumn blast.

“You don’t want to be a writer.” Tengo was shocked to hear himself asking a question without a question mark. The style was obviously contagious.

“No, I don’t,” Fuka-Eri said.

At that point their meal arrived—a large bowl of salad and a roll for Fuka-Eri, and seafood linguine for Tengo. Fuka-Eri used her fork to turn over several lettuce leaves, inspecting them as if they were imprinted with newspaper headlines.

“Well, somebody sent your Air Chrysalis to the publisher for the new writers’ competition. I found it when I was screening manuscripts.”

“Air Chrysalis,” Fuka-Eri said, narrowing her eyes.

“That’s the title of the novella you wrote,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri kept her eyes narrowed, saying nothing.

“That’s not the title you gave it?” Tengo asked with an uneasy twinge.

Fuka-Eri gave her head a tiny shake.

He began to feel confused again, but he decided not to pursue the question of the title. The important thing was to make some progress with the discussion at hand.

“Never mind, then. Anyway, it’s not a bad title. It has real atmosphere, and it’ll attract attention, make people wonder what it could possibly be about. Whoever thought of it, I have no problem with it as a title. I’m not sure about the distinction between ‘chrysalis’ and ‘cocoon,’ but that’s no big deal. What I’m trying to tell you is that the work really got to me, which is why I brought it to Mr. Komatsu. He liked it a lot, too, but he felt that the writing needed work if it was going to be a serious contender for the new writers’ prize. The style doesn’t quite measure up to the strength of the story, so what he wants to do is have it rewritten, not by you but by me. I haven’t decided whether I want to do it or not, and I haven’t given him my answer. I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do.”

Tengo broke off at that point to see Fuka-Eri’s reaction. There was no reaction.

“What I’d like to hear from you now is what you think of the idea of me rewriting Air Chrysalis instead of you. Even if I decided to do it, it couldn’t happen without your agreement and cooperation.”

Using her fingers, Fuka-Eri picked a cherry tomato out of her salad and ate it. Tengo stabbed a mussel with his fork and ate that.

“You can do it,” Fuka-Eri said simply. She picked up another tomato. “Fix it any way you like.”

“Don’t you think you should take a little more time to think it over? This is a pretty big decision.”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. No need.

“Now, supposing I rewrote your novella,” Tengo continued, “I would be careful not to change the story but just strengthen the style. This would probably involve some major changes. But finally, you are the author. It would remain a work by the seventeen-year-old girl named Fuka-Eri. That would not change. If it won the prize, you would get it. Just you. If it were published as a book, you would be the only author listed on the title page. We would be a team—the three of us, you, me, and Mr. Komatsu, the editor. But the only name on the book would be yours. He and I would stay in the background and not say a word, kind of like prop men in a play. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

Fuka-Eri brought a piece of celery to her mouth with her fork. “I understand,” she said with a nod.

“Air Chrysalis belongs entirely to you. It came out of you. I could never make it mine. I would be nothing but your technical helper, and you would have to keep that fact a complete secret. We’d be engaged in a conspiracy, in other words, to lie to the whole world. Any way you look at it, this is not an easy thing to do, to keep a secret locked up in your heart.”

“Whatever you say,” Fuka-Eri said.

Tengo pushed his mussel shells to the side of his plate and started to take a forkful of linguine but then reconsidered and stopped. Fuka-Eri picked up a piece of cucumber and bit it carefully, as if tasting something she had never seen before.

Fork in hand, Tengo said, “Let me ask you one more time. Are you sure you have no objection to my rewriting your story?”

“Do what you want,” Fuka-Eri said, when she had finished the cucumber.

“Any way I rewrite it is okay with you?”

“Okay.”

“Why is that?” he asked. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug, saying nothing.

The two continued their meal wordlessly. Fuka-Eri gave her full concentration to her salad. Now and then she would butter a piece of bread, eat it, and reach for her wine. Tengo mechanically transported his linguine to his mouth and filled his mind with many possibilities.

Setting his fork down, he said, “You know, when Mr. Komatsu suggested this idea to me, I thought it was crazy, that there was no way it could work. I was planning to turn him down. But after I got home and thought about it for a while, I started to feel more and more that I wanted to give it a try. Ethical questions aside, I began to feel that I wanted to put my own stamp on the novella that you had written. It was—how to put this?—a totally natural, spontaneous desire.”

Or rather than a desire, hunger might be a better way to put it, Tengo added mentally. Just as Komatsu had predicted, the hunger was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress.

Fuka-Eri said nothing, but from somewhere deep inside her neutral, beautiful eyes, she looked hard at Tengo. She seemed to be struggling to understand the words that Tengo had spoken.

“You want to rewrite the story,” she asked.

Tengo looked straight into her eyes. “I think I do.”

A faint flash crossed Fuka-Eri’s black pupils, as if they were projecting something. Or at least they looked that way to Tengo.

Tengo held his hands out, as if he were supporting an imaginary box in the air. The gesture had no particular meaning, but he needed some kind of imaginary medium like that to convey his feelings. “I don’t know how to put it exactly,” he said, “but in reading Air Chrysalis over and over, I began to feel that I could see what you were seeing. Especially when the Little People appear. Your imagination has some special kind of power. It’s entirely original, and quite contagious.”

Fuka-Eri quietly set her spoon on her plate and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.

“The Little People really exist,” she said softly.

“They really exist?”

Fuka-Eri paused before she said, “Just like you and me.”

“Just like you and me,” Tengo repeated.

“You can see them if you try.”

Her concise speaking style was strangely persuasive. From every word that came to her lips, he felt a precise, wedge-like thrust. He still could not tell, though, how seriously he should take her. There was something out of the ordinary about her, a screw slightly loose. It was an inborn quality, perhaps. He might be in the presence of an authentic talent in its most natural form, or it could all be an act. Intelligent teenage girls were often instinctively theatrical, purposely eccentric, mouthing highly suggestive words to confuse people. He had seen a number of such cases when it was impossible to distinguish the real thing from acting. Tengo decided to bring the conversation back to reality—or, at least, something closer to reality.

“As long as it’s okay with you, I’d like to start rewriting Air Chrysalis tomorrow.”

“If that is what you want to do.”

“It is what I want to do,” Tengo replied.

“There’s someone to meet,” Fuka-Eri said.

“Someone you want me to meet?”

She nodded.

“Now, who could that be?”

She ignored his question. “To talk to,” she added.

“I don’t mind,” Tengo said, “if it’s something I should do.”

“Are you free Sunday morning,” she asked, without a question mark.

“I am,” Tengo said. It’s as if we’re talking in semaphore, he thought.

They finished eating and parted. At the door of the restaurant, Tengo slipped a few ten-yen coins into the pay phone and called Komatsu’s work number. He was still in his office, but it took him a while to come to the phone. Tengo waited with the receiver on his ear.

“How did it go?” Komatsu asked right away.

“Fuka-Eri is basically okay with me rewriting Air Chrysalis, I think.”

“That’s great!” Komatsu exclaimed. “Marvelous! To tell you the truth, I was a little worried about you. I mean, you’re not exactly the negotiator type.”

“I didn’t do any negotiating,” Tengo said. “I didn’t have to convince her. I just explained the main points, and she pretty much decided on her own.”

“I don’t care how you did it. The results are what count. Now we can go ahead with the plan.”

“Except that I have to meet somebody first.”

“Meet somebody? Who?”

“I don’t know. She wants me to meet this person and talk.”

Komatsu kept silent for a few seconds. “So when are you supposed to do that?”

“This Sunday. She’s going to take me there.”

“There’s one important rule when it comes to keeping secrets,” Komatsu said gravely. “The fewer people who know the secret, the better. So far, only three of us know about the plan—you, me, and Fuka-Eri. If possible, I’d like to avoid increasing that number. You understand, don’t you?”

“In theory,” Tengo said.

Komatsu’s voice softened as he said, “Anyhow, Fuka-Eri is ready to have you rewrite her manuscript. That’s the most important thing. We can work out the rest.”

Tengo switched the receiver to his left hand and slowly pressed his right index finger against his temple. “To be honest,” he said to Komatsu, “this is making me nervous. I don’t have any real grounds for saying so, but I have this strong feeling that I’m being swept up in something out of the ordinary. I didn’t feel it when I was with Fuka-Eri, but it’s been getting stronger since she left. Call it a premonition, or just a funny feeling, but there is something strange going on here. Something out of the ordinary. I feel it less with my mind than my whole body.”

“Was it meeting Fuka-Eri that made you feel this way?”

“Maybe so. She’s probably the real thing. This is just my gut feeling, of course.”

“You mean that she has real talent?”

“I don’t know about her talent,” Tengo said. “I’ve just met her, after all. But she may actually be seeing things that you and I can’t see. She might have something special. That’s what’s bothering me.”

“You mean she might have mental issues?”

“She’s definitely eccentric, but I don’t think she’s crazy. There’s a logical thread to what she says, more or less. It’s just that … I don’t know … something’s bothering me.”

“In any case, did she take an interest in you?” Komatsu asked.

Tengo searched for the appropriate words with which to answer him, but was unable to find them. “I really can’t say about that,” he replied.

“Well, she met you, and she must have thought you were qualified to rewrite Air Chrysalis. That means she liked you. Good work, Tengo! What happens from here on out, I don’t know, either. There is some risk, of course. But risk is the spice of life. Start rewriting the manuscript right away. We don’t have any time to lose. I’ve got to return the rewritten manuscript to the pile of entries as soon as possible, switch it for the original. Can you do the job in ten days?”

Tengo sighed. “What a taskmaster!”

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to make it absolutely polished. We can still touch it up in the next stage. Just get it into reasonably good shape.”

Tengo did a general estimate of the job in his head. “If that’s the case, I might be able to pull it off in ten days. It’s still going to be a huge job, though.”

“Just give it everything you’ve got,” Komatsu urged him cheerfully. “Look at the world through her eyes. You’ll be the go-between—connecting Fuka-Eri’s world and the real world we live in. I know you can do it, Tengo, I just—”

At this point the last ten-yen coin ran out.