engo thought about his brain. Lots of things made him do this.

The size of the human brain had increased four times over the past two and a half million years. In terms of weight, the brain occupied only two percent of the human body, but it consumed some forty percent of the body’s total energy (according to a book he had recently read). Owing to the dramatic expansion of the brain, human beings had been able to acquire the concepts of time, space, and possibility.

Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely. Sometimes things that should not be there at all might be added onto time. By adjusting time this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences. In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able—but just barely—to preserve their own sanity. Surely, if a person had to accept the time through which he had just passed uniformly in the given order, his nerves could not bear the strain. Such a life, Tengo felt, would be sheer torture.

Through the expansion of the brain, people had acquired the concept of temporality, but they simultaneously learned ways in which to change and adjust time. In parallel with their ceaseless consumption of time, people would ceaselessly reproduce time that they had mentally adjusted. This was no ordinary feat. No wonder the brain was said to consume forty percent of the body’s total energy!

Tengo often wondered whether he had actually witnessed the memory he retained from the age of one and a half or, at most, two—the scene in which his mother in underclothes let a man who was not his father suck on her breasts. Her arms were wrapped around the man. Could a one- or two-year-old infant distinguish such details and remember them so vividly? Wasn’t this a false memory that he had later conveniently fashioned to protect himself?

That was entirely conceivable. At some point Tengo’s brain might have subconsciously created the memory of another man (his possibly “real” father) in order to “prove” that he was not the biological child of the man who was supposed to be his father. This was how he tried to eliminate “the man who was supposed to be his father” from the tight circle of blood. By establishing inside himself the hypothetical existence of a mother who must be alive somewhere and a “real” father, he was trying to create a portal leading out of his limited, suffocating life.

The problem with this view was that the memory came with such a vivid sense of reality. It had such an authentic feel, and weight, and smell, and depth. It was stubbornly fastened to the walls of his mind like an oyster clinging to a sunken ship. He could never manage to shake it off, to wash it away. He found it impossible to believe that such a memory was a mere counterfeit that his mind had created in response to some need. It was too real, too solid, to be imaginary.

What if it was real, then? Tengo thought.

His infant self would certainly have been frightened to witness such a scene. Someone else, some other human being, was sucking on breasts that should have been for him—someone bigger and stronger. And it appeared that Tengo’s mother had—at least temporarily—forgotten about him, creating a situation that threatened his very survival, small and weak as he was. The primal terror of that moment may have been indelibly imprinted on the photo paper of his mind.

The memory of that terror came rushing back to him when he least expected it, attacking him with all the ferocity of a flash flood, and putting him into a near panic. This terror spoke to him, forcing him to remember: Wherever you go, whatever you do, you can never escape the pressure of this water. This memory defines who you are, shapes your life, and is trying to send you to a place that has been decided for you. You can writhe all you want, but you will never be able to escape from this power.

It suddenly occurred to Tengo: When I lifted the pajamas that Fuka-Eri wore from the washing machine and smelled them, I might have been hoping to find my mother’s smell. But why do I have to look for my departed mother’s image in, of all things, the smell of a seventeen-year-old girl? There should be a more likely place to look—in the body of my older girlfriend, for one thing....

Tengo’s girlfriend was ten years his senior, but for some reason he never sought his mother’s image in her. Neither did he have any particular interest in her smell. She took the lead in most of their sexual activity. Tengo simply did as she directed, hardly thinking, making neither choices nor judgments. She demanded only two things of him: good erections and well-timed ejaculations. “Don’t come yet,” she would command. “Hold on a little longer.” And he would pour all his energy into holding on. “Okay, now! Come now!” she would whisper by his ear, and he would let go at precisely that point with as intense an ejaculation as he could manage. Then she would praise him, caressing his cheek: “Oh, Tengo! You’re wonderful!” Tengo had an innate knack for precision in all realms, including correct punctuation and discovering the simplest possible formula necessary to solve a math problem.

It didn’t work this way when he had sex with younger women. He would have to think from beginning to end, making choices and judgments. This made Tengo uncomfortable. All the responsibilities fell on his shoulders. He felt like the captain of a small boat on a stormy sea, having to take the rudder, inspect the setting of the sails, keep in mind the barometric pressure and the wind direction, and modulate his own behavior so as to boost the crew’s trust in him. The slightest mistake or accident could lead to tragedy. This felt less like sex than the discharging of a duty. As a result he would tense up and miss the timing of an ejaculation or fail to become erect when necessary. This would only increase his doubts about himself.

Such mistakes never happened with his older girlfriend. She fully appreciated him. She always praised and encouraged him. After the one time he ejaculated prematurely, she was careful never to wear a white slip again. And not just slips: she stopped wearing any white lingerie at all.

That day she was wearing black lingerie—a matching top and bottom—as she performed fellatio on him, fully enjoying the hardness of his penis and the softness of his testicles. Tengo could see her breasts moving up and down, enfolded in the black lace of her bra, as she moved her mouth. To keep himself from coming too soon, he closed his eyes and thought about the Gilyaks.

They have no courts, and they do not know the meaning of “justice.” How hard it is for them to understand us may be seen merely from the fact that up till the present day they still do not fully understand the purpose of roads. Even where a road has already been laid, they will still journey through the taiga. One often sees them, their families and their dogs, picking their way in Indian file across a quagmire right by the roadway.

Tengo imagined the scene: the shabbily dressed Gilyaks walking through the thick forest in line beside the road with their dogs and women, hardly speaking. In their concepts of time, space, and possibility, roads did not exist. Rather than walk on a road, they probably gained a clearer grasp of their own raison d’être by making their way quietly through the forest, in spite of the inconvenience.

The poor Gilyaks! Fuka-Eri had said.

Tengo thought of Fuka-Eri’s face as she slept. She had fallen asleep wearing Tengo’s too-large pajamas, the sleeves and cuffs rolled up. He had lifted them from the washing machine, held them to his nose, and smelled them.

I can’t let myself think about that! Tengo told himself, but it was already too late.

The semen surged out of him in multiple violent convulsions and into his girlfriend’s mouth. She took it in until he finished, then stepped out of bed and went to the bathroom. He heard her open the spigot, run the water, and rinse her mouth. Then, as if it had been nothing at all, she came back to the bed.

“Sorry,” Tengo said.

“I guess you couldn’t stop yourself,” she said, caressing his nose with her fingertip. “That’s okay, it’s no big deal. Did it feel that good?”

“Fantastic,” he said. “I think I can do it again in a few minutes.”

“I can hardly wait,” she said, pressing her cheek against Tengo’s bare chest. She closed her eyes, keeping very still. Tengo could feel the soft breath from her nose against his nipple.

“Can you guess what your chest reminds me of when I see it?” she asked Tengo.

“No idea.”

“A castle gate in a Kurosawa samurai movie.”

“A castle gate,” Tengo said, caressing her back.

“You know, like in Throne of Blood or Hidden Fortress. There’s always a big, sturdy castle gate in those old black-and-white movies of his, all covered with these huge iron rivets. That’s what I think of. Thick, solid …”

“I don’t have any rivets, though.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said.

Fuka-Eri’s Air Chrysalis placed on the bestseller lists the second week after it went on sale, rising to number one on the fiction list in the third week. Tengo traced the process of the book’s ascent through the newspapers they kept in the cram school’s teachers’ lounge. Two ads for the book also appeared in the papers, featuring a photo of the book’s cover and a smaller shot of Fuka-Eri wearing the familiar tight-fitting summer sweater that showed off her breasts so beautifully (taken, no doubt, at the time of the press conference). Long, straight hair falling to her shoulders. Dark, enigmatic eyes looking straight at the camera. Those eyes seemed to peer through the lens and focus directly on something the viewer kept hidden deep in his heart, of which he was normally unaware. They did so neutrally but gently. This seventeen-year-old girl’s unwavering gaze was disconcerting. It was just a small black-and-white photograph, but the mere sight of it almost certainly prompted many people to buy the book.

Komatsu had sent two copies of the book to Tengo a few days after it went on sale, but Tengo opened only the package, not the vinyl around the books themselves. True, the text inside the book was something he himself had written, and this was the first time his writing had taken the shape of a book, but he had no desire to open it and read it—or even glance at its pages. The sight of it gave him no joy. The sentences and paragraphs may have been his, but the story they comprised belonged entirely to Fuka-Eri. Her mind had given birth to it. His minor role as a secret technician had ended long before, and the work’s fate from this point onward had nothing to do with him. Nor should it. He shoved the two volumes into the back of his bookcase, out of sight, still wrapped in vinyl.

For a while after the one night Fuka-Eri slept in his apartment, Tengo’s life flowed along uneventfully. It rained a lot, but Tengo paid almost no attention to the weather, which ranked far down on his list of priorities. From Fuka-Eri herself, he heard nothing. The lack of contact probably meant that she had no particular problems for him to solve.

In addition to writing his novel every day, Tengo wrote a number of short pieces for magazines—anonymous jobs that anyone could do. They were a welcome change of pace, though, and the pay was good for the minimal effort involved. Three times a week, as usual, Tengo taught math at the cram school. He burrowed more deeply than ever into the world of mathematics in order to forget his concerns—issues involving Air Chrysalis and Fuka-Eri, mainly. Once he entered the mathematical world, his brain switched circuits (with a little click), his mouth emitted different kinds of words, his body began to use different kinds of muscles, and both the tone of his voice and the look on his face changed. Tengo liked the way this change of gears felt. It was like moving from one room into another or changing from one pair of shoes into another.

In contrast to the time he spent performing daily tasks or writing fiction, Tengo was able to attain a new level of relaxation—and even to become more eloquent—when he entered the world of mathematics. At the same time, however, he also felt he had become a somewhat more practical person. He could not decide who might be the real Tengo, but the switch was both natural and almost unconscious. He also knew that it was something he more or less needed.

As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students’ heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world’s riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a tender oyster. Tengo’s lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears. Since meeting Fuka-Eri, however, Tengo no longer felt sexual interest in such girls, nor did he have any urge to smell their pajamas.

Fuka-Eri is surely a special being, Tengo realized. She can’t be compared with other girls. She is undoubtedly someone of special significance to me. She is—how should I put it?—an all-encompassing image projected straight at me, but an image I find it impossible to decipher.

Still, I’d better end any involvement with Fuka-Eri. Tengo’s rational mind reached this lucid conclusion. I should also put as much distance as possible between myself and the piles of Air Chrysalis displayed in the front of all the bookstores, and the inscrutable Professor Ebisuno, and that ominously mysterious religious organization. I’d also better keep away from Komatsu, at least for the time being. Otherwise, I’m likely to be carried into even more chaotic territory, pushed into a dangerous corner without a shred of logic, driven into a situation from which I can never extricate myself.

But Tengo was also well aware that he could not easily withdraw from the twisted conspiracy in which he was now fully involved. He was no Hitchcockian protagonist, embroiled in a conspiracy before he knew what was happening. He had embroiled himself, knowing full well that it contained an element of risk. The machine was already in motion, gaining too much forward momentum for him to stop it. Tengo himself was one of its gears—and an important one at that. He could hear the machine’s low groaning, and feel its implacable motion.

Komatsu called Tengo a few days after Air Chrysalis topped the bestseller list for the second week in a row. The phone rang after eleven o’clock at night. Tengo was already in bed in his pajamas. He had been reading a book for a while, lying on his stomach, and was just about to turn off the bedside light. Judging from the ring, he knew it was Komatsu. Exactly how, he could not explain, but he could always tell when the call was from Komatsu. The phone rang in a special way. Just as writing had a particular style, Komatsu’s calls had a particular ring.

Tengo got out of bed, went to the kitchen, and picked up the receiver. He did not really want to answer the call and would have preferred to go quietly to sleep, to dream of Iriomote cats or the Panama Canal, or the ozone layer, or Basho—anything, as long as it was as far from here as possible. If he didn’t answer the phone now, though, it would just ring again in another fifteen minutes or half an hour. Better to take the call now.

“Hey, Tengo, were you sleeping?” Komatsu asked, easygoing as usual.

“I was trying,” Tengo said.

“Sorry about that,” Komatsu said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I just wanted to let you know that Air Chrysalis is selling well.”

“That’s great.”

“Like hotcakes. They can’t keep up. The poor guys at the printer are working through the night. Anyhow, I figured the numbers would be pretty good, of course. The author is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl. People are talking about it. All the elements are in place for a bestseller.”

“Unlike novels written by a thirty-year-old cram school teacher who looks like a bear, you mean.”

“Exactly. But still, you couldn’t call this a commercial novel. It’s got no sex scenes, it’s not a tearjerker. Not even I imagined it would sell so spectacularly.”

Komatsu paused as if he expected a response from Tengo. When Tengo said nothing, he went on:

“It’s not just selling a lot, either. The critical reception is wonderful, too. This is no lightweight drama slapped together on a whim by some youngster. The story itself is outstanding. Of course your superb revision made this possible, Tengo. That was an absolutely perfect piece of work you did.”

Made this possible. Ignoring Komatsu’s praise, Tengo pressed his fingertips against his temples. Whenever Komatsu openly praised Tengo, it was bound to be followed by something unpleasant.

Tengo asked Komatsu, “So tell me, what’s the bad news?”

“How do you know there’s bad news?”

“Look what time you’re phoning me! There has to be some bad news.”

“True,” Komatsu said, in apparent admiration. “You’ve got that special sensitivity, Tengo. I should have known.”

Sensitivity’s got nothing to do with it, Tengo thought. It’s just plain old experience. But he said nothing and waited to see what Komatsu was getting at.

“Unfortunately, you’re right, I do have a piece of unpleasant news,” Komatsu said. He paused meaningfully. Tengo imagined Komatsu at the other end, his eyes gleaming like a mongoose’s in the dark.

“It probably has something to do with the author of Air Chrysalis, am I right?”

“Exactly. It is about Fuka-Eri. And it’s not good. She’s been missing for a while.”

Tengo’s fingers kept pressing against his temples. “‘A while’? Since when?”

“Three days ago, on Wednesday morning, she left her house in Okutama for Tokyo. Professor Ebisuno saw her off. She didn’t say where she was going. Later in the day she phoned to say she wouldn’t be coming back to the house in the hills, that she was going to spend the night in their Shinano-machi condo. Professor Ebisuno’s daughter was also supposed to spend the night there, but Fuka-Eri never showed up. They haven’t heard from her since.”

Tengo traced his memory back three days, but could think of nothing relevant.

“They have absolutely no idea where she is. I thought she might have contacted you.”

“I haven’t heard a thing,” Tengo said. More than four weeks must have gone by since she spent the night in his apartment.

Tengo momentarily wondered whether he ought to tell Komatsu what she had said back then—that she had better not go back to the Shinano-machi condo. She might have been sensing something ominous about the place. But he decided not to mention it. He didn’t want to have to tell Komatsu that Fuka-Eri had stayed at his apartment.

“She’s an odd girl,” Tengo said. “She might have just gone off somewhere by herself without telling anybody”

“No, I don’t think so. She may not look it, but Fuka-Eri is a very conscientious person. She’s always very clear about her whereabouts, always phoning to say where she is or where she’s going and when. That’s what Professor Ebisuno tells me. For her to be out of touch for three full days is not at all usual for her. Something bad might have happened.”

“Something bad,” Tengo growled.

“The Professor and his daughter are both very worried,” Komatsu said.

“In any case, if she stays missing like this, it’ll put you in a difficult position, I’m sure,” Tengo said to Komatsu.

“True, especially if the police get involved. I mean, think about it: beautiful teenage writer of runaway bestseller disappears! You know the media would go crazy over that one. Then they’re going to drag me out for comments as her editor. No good can come of that. I’m strictly a shadow figure, I don’t do well in the sunlight. Once something like that gets going the truth could come out at any point.”

“What does Professor Ebisuno say?”

“That he’s going to file a search request with the police, maybe as soon as tomorrow,” Komatsu said. “I got him to hold off for a few days, but it’s not something that can be postponed for very long.”

“If the media get wind of the search request, they’ll be all over this.”

“I don’t know how the police are going to respond, but Fuka-Eri is the girl of the moment, not just some teenage runaway. Keeping this out of the public eye will likely be impossible.”

That might have been exactly what Professor Ebisuno was hoping for, Tengo thought: to cause a sensation using Fuka-Eri as bait, exploit it to clarify the relationship of Sakigake to Fuka-Eri’s parents, and learn the couple’s whereabouts. If so, then the Professor’s plan was working as he had imagined it would. But had the Professor fully grasped how dangerous this might prove to be? He certainly should have: Professor Ebisuno was not a thoughtless person. Indeed, deep thinking was exactly what he did for a living. And besides, there seemed to be a number of important facts surrounding Fuka-Eri’s situation of which Tengo was unaware, as though he were trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without having been given all the pieces. A wise person would have avoided getting involved from the beginning.

“Do you have any idea where she might be, Tengo?” Komatsu asked.

“Not at the moment.”

“No?” Komatsu said with a perceptible note of fatigue in his voice. He was not a man who often let such human failings show. “Sorry I woke you in the middle of the night.”

To hear words of apology coming from Komatsu’s mouth was also a rare occurrence.

“That’s okay,” Tengo said. “Given the situation.”

“You know, Tengo, if I had my way I would have preferred not to involve you in these real-world complications. Your only job was to do the writing, and you carried that off splendidly. But things never work out as smoothly as we want them to. And, as I said to you once before, we’re all shooting the rapids—”

“In the same boat,” Tengo mechanically finished the sentence.

“Exactly.”

“But come to think of it,” Tengo added, “won’t Air Chrysalis just sell all the more if Fuka-Eri’s disappearance becomes news?”

“It’s selling enough already,” Komatsu said with a note of resignation. “We don’t need any more publicity. The only thing a scandal will net us is trouble. What we ought to be thinking about is a nice, quiet spot to land in.”

“A spot to land in,” Tengo said.

Komatsu made a sound as though he were swallowing some imaginary thing. Then he lightly cleared his throat. “Well, let’s have a nice, long talk about that over dinner sometime. After this mess gets cleaned up. Good night, Tengo. You ought to get a good night’s rest.”

Komatsu hung up. As if he had just had a curse laid on him, Tengo could no longer sleep. He felt tired, but he couldn’t get to sleep.

What was this “You ought to get a good night’s rest” business? He thought about doing some work at the kitchen table, but he wasn’t in the mood. He took a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet, poured some into a glass, and drank it straight in small sips.

Maybe Fuka-Eri had been kidnapped by Sakigake. It seemed entirely plausible to Tengo. A bunch of them had staked out her Shinano-machi condo, forced her into a car, and taken her away. It was by no means impossible, if they had chosen the right moment and acted quickly. Maybe Fuka-Eri had already sensed their presence when she said she had better not go back to the condo.

Both the Little People and air chrysalises actually existed, Fuka-Eri had told Tengo. She had met the Little People in the Sakigake commune when she was being punished for having carelessly let the blind goat die, and she had made an air chrysalis with them for several nights running. As a result, something of great significance had happened to her. She had put the events into a story, and Tengo had refashioned the story into a finished piece of fiction. In other words, he had transformed it into a commodity, and that commodity was (to borrow Komatsu’s expression) selling like hotcakes. This in turn might be distressing to Sakigake. The stories of the Little People and the air chrysalis might be major secrets that must not be divulged to the outside world. And so, to prevent any further leaks, they had kidnapped Fuka-Eri and shut her up. They had resorted to force, even if it meant risking the possibility that her disappearance might arouse public suspicion.

This was, of course, nothing more than Tengo’s hypothesis. He had no evidence he could offer, no way he could prove it. Even if he told people, “The Little People and air chrysalises actually exist,” who could possibly take him seriously? First of all, Tengo himself did not know what it meant to say that such things “actually exist.”

Another possibility was that Fuka-Eri had become sick of all the hype surrounding her bestseller and had gone into hiding. This was entirely conceivable, of course. It was all but impossible to predict what she would do, but assuming she went into hiding, she would probably have left some kind of message for Professor Ebisuno and his daughter, Azami. There would have been no reason for her to worry them.

It was easy for Tengo to imagine, however, that Fuka-Eri might be in great danger if she had actually been abducted by Sakigake. Just as there had been no word from her parents, all word of Fuka-Eri might be lost. Even if the relationship between Fuka-Eri and Sakigake were revealed (which would not take a very long time), and this gave rise to a media scandal, it would all be for nothing if the police refused to get involved on the grounds that there was “no physical evidence that she was abducted.” She might remain locked up somewhere inside the high-walled religious commune. Had Professor Ebisuno concocted a plan that included such a worst-case scenario?

Tengo wanted to call Professor Ebisuno and ask him all these questions, but it was already past midnight, and he could only wait until tomorrow.

The next morning Tengo dialed the number he was given to call Professor Ebisuno’s house, but the call did not go through. All he got was the recorded message, “The number you have dialed is not presently in service. Please check the number and dial again.” He tried again several times, but always with the same results. He guessed that they had changed phone numbers after Fuka-Eri’s debut, due to an onslaught of calls requesting interviews.

Nothing unusual happened during the following week. Air Chrysalis went on selling in the same high numbers, coming out again at the top of the national bestseller list. No one contacted Tengo during the week. He tried phoning Komatsu at his office a few times, but he was always out (which was not unusual). Tengo left a message with the editorial office for Komatsu to call, but no call came (which was also not unusual). He read the newspaper every day, but he found no report that a search request had been filed for Fuka-Eri. Could Professor Ebisuno have decided not to file one? Perhaps he had filed a request but the police had not publicized it so as to search for her in secret, or they had not taken it seriously, treating it as just another case of a runaway teenager.

As always, Tengo taught mathematics at the cram school three days a week, continued writing his novel on other days, and spent Friday afternoon having intense sex with his girlfriend when she visited his apartment. But he could not focus. He spent day after day feeling uneasy and muddled, like someone who has mistakenly swallowed a thick swatch of cloud. He began losing his appetite. He would wake up at odd times in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep. Then he would think about Fuka-Eri. Where was she now? What was she doing? Whom was she with? What was happening to her? He imagined a variety of situations, all of them, with minor variations, deeply pessimistic. In the scenes he imagined, she was always wearing her thin, tight-fitting sweater that showed off the lovely shape of her breasts. The image made him gasp for breath and only added to his agitation.

It was on the Thursday of the sixth week after Air Chrysalis became a permanent fixture on the bestseller list that Fuka-Eri finally got in touch with him.