omame spread her blue foam yoga mat on the carpeted bedroom floor. Then she told the man to take off his top. He got down from the bed and pulled off his shirt. He looked even bigger without a shirt on. He was deep-chested, with bulging muscles, and had no drooping excess flesh. To all appearances, this was a very healthy body.

Following Aomame’s directions, he lay facedown on the mat. Aomame touched his wrist and took his pulse. It was strong and steady.

“Are you doing some kind of regular exercise?” Aomame asked.

“Not really,” he said. “Just breathing.”

“Just breathing?”

“It’s a little different from ordinary breathing,” the man said.

“Like you were doing before in the dark, I suppose. Deep, repetitive breathing with all the muscles of your body.”

Facedown, he gave a little nod.

Aomame could not quite grasp it. While his intense style of breathing certainly must take a good deal of physical strength, was it possible for mere breathing to maintain such a tight, powerful body?

“What I’m about to do now involves a good deal of pain,” Aomame said in a voice without inflection. “It has to hurt for it to do any good. On the other hand, I can adjust the amount of pain. So if it hurts, don’t just bear it—speak up.”

The man paused for a moment before saying, “If there is a pain I’ve never tasted, I’d like to try it.” This sounded mildly sarcastic to her.

“Pain is not fun for anybody.”

“But a painful technique is more effective, is that it? I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.”

Aomame allowed herself a momentary facial expression in the pale darkness. Then she said, “I understand. Let’s both see how it goes.”

As always, Aomame started with the stretching of the shoulder blades. The first thing she noticed when she touched his flesh was its suppleness. This was fine, healthy flesh, fundamentally different in composition from the tired, stiff flesh of the urbanites with whom she dealt at the gym. At the same time, however, she had a strong sense that its natural “flow” was being blocked by something, the way a river’s flow can be blocked temporarily by floating timber or other debris.

Leaning her weight into her elbow, Aomame squeezed the man’s shoulder upward—slowly at first, but then with a serious application of strength. She knew he was feeling pain—intense pain that would make any ordinary human being cry out. But he bore it in silence. His breathing remained calm, nor was there any hint of a frown on his face. He tolerates pain well, she thought. She decided to see how much he could stand. She held nothing back from her next push, until the shoulder blade joint gave out with a dull snap and she could tell that the track had been switched. The man’s breathing paused momentarily but immediately resumed its quiet, steady pace.

“Your shoulder blade was tremendously obstructed,” Aomame explained, “but that took care of it. Now the flow is back to normal.”

She jammed her fingers in under the shoulder blade up to the second joint. The muscles here were meant to be flexible, and once the obstruction was removed they would quickly return to normal.

“That feels much better,” the man murmured.

“It must have hurt quite a bit.”

“Not more than I could stand.”

“I myself have a rather high tolerance for pain, but if someone had done the same thing to me, I’m pretty sure I would have cried out.”

“In most cases, one pain is alleviated or canceled out by another pain. The senses are, ultimately, relative.”

Aomame placed her hand on his left shoulder blade, felt for the muscles with her fingertips, and determined that they were in about the same condition that the right ones had been. Let’s see just how relative this can be. “I’ll do the left side now. It should hurt about as much as the right side did.”

“Do what you need to. Don’t worry about me.”

“Meaning, I shouldn’t hold back at all?”

“No need for that.”

Following the same procedure, Aomame corrected the joints and the muscles around the left shoulder blade. As instructed, she did not hold back. Once she had decided she would not hold anything back, Aomame took the shortest possible route without hesitation. The man reacted even more calmly than he had with the right side. He accepted the pain with complete equanimity, making only one brief swallowing sound in his throat. All right, let’s see how much he can stand, Aomame thought.

She started working on his muscles one after another in order, loosening them up, following her mental checklist. All she had to do was mechanically follow the usual route, like a capable and fearless night watchman making the rounds of his building with a flashlight.

All of his muscles were more or less “blocked,” like a region that has suffered a horrible disaster, its waterways obstructed, their embankments collapsed. Any ordinary human being in such a condition would probably not be able to stand up—or even breathe normally. This man was supported by his sturdy flesh and strong will. However despicable his behavior might have been, Aomame could not deny him her professional admiration for his ability to bear such intense pain in silence.

She worked on one muscle after another, forcing it to move, bending and stretching it to the limit, and each time the joint would release a dull pop. She was fully aware that this was something close to torture. She had performed this muscle stretching on many athletes, tough men used to living with physical pain, but even the toughest of them at some point couldn’t stop themselves from letting out a cry—or something close to a cry. Some even wet themselves. But this man never even groaned. He was very impressive. Still, it was possible to guess the pain he was feeling from the sweat oozing on the back of his neck. Aomame herself was starting to develop a film of sweat on her body.

It took close to thirty minutes for her to loosen up the muscles on the back of his body. When this was finished, she took a moment’s break to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

This is very odd, Aomame thought. I came here to kill this man. In my bag is the superfine ice pick I made. If I hold its point at the right spot on the back of his neck and punch the handle, it will be all over. He would never know what happened to him as his life came to an instantaneous end and he moved on to another world. That way, in effect, his body would be released from all pain. Instead, I’m spending all my energy to ease the pain that he is feeling in the real world.

I am probably doing it because this is the work that I have been given to do, Aomame thought. Whenever I have work before me, I have to pour all my strength into getting it done. That is just the way I am. If I am given the job of curing problem muscles, then I will pour all my strength into that. If I have to kill a person and have a proper reason for doing so, I will do that with all my strength.

Obviously, though, I can’t do both at the same time. The two jobs have conflicting purposes and call for incompatible methods. I can only do one at a time. At the moment I am trying to bring this man’s muscles back to as normal a state as possible. I am concentrating my mind on that task and mobilizing all the strength I can muster up. I can think about the other task after this one is finished.

At the same time, Aomame was unable to suppress her curiosity. The man’s far-from-ordinary illness; the fine, healthy muscles so terribly obstructed by it; the strong will and powerful flesh that enabled him to bear the intense pain he called his “payment for heavenly grace”: all aroused her curiosity. She wanted to see what she could do for this man, what kind of response his flesh would show. It was a matter of both professional curiosity and personal curiosity. Also, if I killed him now, I would have to leave right away. If the job ends too quickly, the two men in the next room might find it suspicious. I told them that it would take an hour at the very least.

“I’m halfway done. Now I’ll do the second half. Could you please turn over onto your back?”

The man rolled over slowly like some large aquatic animal that has been cast up on the shore.

“The pain is definitely lessening,” the man said after releasing a long breath. “None of the treatments I have tried thus far have done as much.”

“I am only treating the symptoms, however, not solving the basic problem. Until you identify the cause, the same thing will probably keep happening.”

“I know that. I considered using morphine, but I would rather not use drugs if possible. Long-term use of drugs destroys the function of the brain.”

“I will go on with the rest of the treatment now,” Aomame said. “I gather you are all right with my not holding back.”

“It goes without saying.”

Aomame emptied her mind and worked on the man’s muscles with total concentration. The structure of each muscle in the human body was engraved in her professional memory—its function, the bones to which it was attached, its unique characteristics, its sensitivities. She inspected, shook, and effectively worked on each muscle and joint in order, the way zealous inquisitors used to test every point of pain in their victims’ bodies.

Thirty minutes later, they were bathed in sweat, panting like lovers who have just had miraculously deep sex. The man said nothing for a time, and Aomame was at a loss for words.

Finally, the man spoke: “I don’t want to exaggerate, but I feel as if every part of my body has been replaced.”

Aomame said, “You might experience something of a backlash tonight. During the night your muscles might tighten up tremendously and let out a scream, but don’t worry, they will be back to normal tomorrow morning.”

If you have a tomorrow morning, Aomame thought.

Sitting cross-legged on the yoga mat, the man took several deep breaths, as though testing the condition of his body. Then he said, “You really do seem to have a special talent.”

Aomame toweled the sweat from her face as she said, “What I do is strictly practical. I studied the structure and function of the muscles in college and have expanded my knowledge through actual practice. I’ve put together my own system by making tiny adjustments to my technique, just doing things that are obvious and reasonable. ‘Truth’ here is for the most part observable and provable. It also involves a good deal of pain, of course.”

The man opened his eyes and looked at Aomame as though intrigued. “So that is what you believe.”

“What do you mean?” Aomame asked.

“That truth is strictly something observable and provable.”

Aomame pursed her lips slightly. “I’m not saying it is true for all truths, just that it happens to be the case in my professional field. Of course, if it were true in all fields, things in general would be a lot easier to grasp.”

“Not at all,” the man said.

“Why is that?”

“Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.”

The man turned his neck several times before continuing.

“If a certain belief—call it ‘Belief A’—makes the life of that man or this woman appear to be something of deep meaning, then for them Belief A is the truth. If Belief B makes their lives appear to be powerless and puny, then Belief B turns out to be a falsehood. The distinction is quite clear. If someone insists that Belief B is the truth, people will probably hate him, ignore him, or, in some cases, attack him. It means nothing to them that Belief B might be logical or provable. Most people barely manage to preserve their sanity by denying and rejecting images of themselves as powerless and puny.”

“But people’s flesh—all flesh, with only minor differences—is a powerless and puny thing. This is self-evident, don’t you think?”

“I do,” the man said. “All flesh, with only minor differences, is a powerless and puny thing doomed soon to disintegrate and disappear. That is an unmistakable truth. But what, then, of a person’s spirit?”

“I try my best not to think about the spirit.”

“And why is that?”

“Because there is no particular need to think about it.”

“Why is there no particular need to think about the spirit? Setting aside the question of whether it has any practical value to do so, thinking about one’s own spirit is one of the most indispensable of all human tasks, is it not?”

“I have love,” Aomame declared.

Oh, no, what am I doing? she thought. Talking about love to this man I’m about to kill!

As a breeze sends ripples over the surface of a quiet pond, a faint smile spread across the man’s face, conveying a natural and even friendly emotion.

“Do you think that love is all a person needs?” he asked.

“I do.”

“Now, this ‘love’ of yours—does it have a particular individual as its object?”

“It does,” Aomame said. “It is directed toward a specific man.”

“Powerless, puny flesh and an absolute love free of shadows …,” he murmured. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “You don’t seem to have any need for religion.”

“Maybe I don’t have any need.”

“Because your attitude is itself the very essence of religion, as it were.”

“You said before that religion offers not so much truth as beautiful hypotheses. Where does that leave the religion that you head?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t consider what I do to be a religious activity,” the man said. “What I am doing is listening to the voices and transmitting them to people. I am the only one who can hear the voices. That I can hear them is an unmistakable truth, but I can’t prove that their messages are the truth. All I can do is to embody their accompanying traces of heavenly grace.”

Lightly biting her lip, Aomame set down her towel. She wanted to ask what kinds of grace he was talking about, but she stopped herself. This could go on forever. She still had an important task she had to complete.

“Can you lie facedown again? I’m going to work on loosening up your neck muscles,” Aomame said.

The man stretched out his huge frame again on the yoga mat and presented the back of his thick neck to Aomame.

“In any case, you have a magic touch,” he said, using the English expression.

“Magic touch?”

“Fingers that give off extraordinary power. An acute sense for locating those special points on the body. A special capacity that is granted to very few individuals. This is not something you can learn through study and practice. I have something—a very different kind of something—that came to me in the same way. But as with all forms of heavenly grace, people have to pay a price for the gifts they are given.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” Aomame said. “I simply developed my techniques through study and a lot of practice. They were not ‘granted’ to me by anybody.”

“I’m not going to get involved in a debate with you. Just remember this: the gods give, and the gods take away. Even if you are not aware of having been granted what you possess, the gods remember what they gave you. They don’t forget a thing. You should use the abilities you have been granted with the utmost care.”

Aomame looked at her ten fingers. Then she placed them on the back of the man’s neck, concentrating all her awareness into her fingertips. The gods give, and the gods take away.

“I’ll be through soon. This is the finishing touch,” she announced drily to the man’s back.

She seemed to hear thunder in the distance. She raised her face and looked out the window. There was nothing to see but the dark sky. Again the sound came, reverberating hollowly in the quiet room.

“It is going to rain any time now,” the man declared in a voice without feeling.

Hands on the back of the man’s thick neck, Aomame searched for the special spot. This required unusual powers of concentration. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and listened for the flow of his blood there. Her fingertips strained to read detailed information from the elasticity of his skin and the conduction of his body heat. There was only one special spot, and it was exceptionally small. On some people, it was easy to find, but much more difficult on others. This man they called “Leader” was clearly the latter type. This was like trying to find a single coin in a pitch-dark room entirely by feel, while taking care not to make any sound. At last, however, she found it. She placed her fingertip on it and engraved the feel and its precise position into her mind as though marking a map, a special ability that had been imparted to her.

“Please stay in that exact position,” Aomame said to the man as he lay there prone. She reached out for the gym bag lying next to them and from it took out the hard case holding the little ice pick.

“One spot is left on the back of your neck where the flow is still blocked,” Aomame said calmly, “and I can’t seem to resolve it with only the strength of my fingers. If I can remove the blockage in this one place, it should give you great relief from your pain. I want to place one simple acupuncture needle there. Don’t worry, I’ve done this any number of times. Do you mind?”

The man released a deep breath. “I am leaving it entirely up to you. I will accept anything from you that will erase the pain I am feeling.”

She took the ice pick from the case and slipped the cork from its tip. The point had its usual deadly sharpness. She held the ice pick in her left hand and used the index finger of her right hand to locate the point she had found earlier. This was the spot, without the slightest doubt. She placed the point against the spot and took a deep breath. Now all she needed to do was bring her right hand down on the handle like a hammer and drive the needle’s exceedingly fine point deep into the spot. Then it would all be over.

But something held her back. For some reason, she was unable to bring down the fist she was holding aloft. With this, it will be all over, Aomame thought. With one stroke, I can send this man to the “other side.” Then I leave the room looking cool, change my face and name, and take on a new personality. I can do it. Without fear, without pangs of conscience. This man has repeatedly committed loathsome acts that deserve death, there can be no doubt. But, for some reason, she could not bring herself to do it. What held her right hand back was an incoherent yet persistent doubt. This is all happening too easily, her instincts were warning her.

Reason had nothing to do with it. She simply knew: something was wrong. Something was not natural. All her powers and abilities were clashing inside her, their disparate elements engaged in a fierce struggle. Her face performed deep contortions in the darkness.

“What is it?” the man called out. “I’m waiting. I’m waiting for you to finish once and for all.”

When she heard this, Aomame finally realized what was holding her back. This man knows. He knows what I am about to do to him.

“There is no need for you to hesitate,” the man said calmly. “It’s all right. What you want is also what I want.”

The thunder continued to rumble, but there was no lightning to be seen, just a roar like distant cannons. The battlefield was still far off. The man continued.

“If there were ever a perfect treatment, that is it. You did a careful job of stretching out my muscles. I have only the purest respect for your skill. But as you pointed out yourself, it is, ultimately, nothing but a symptomatic treatment. My pain has advanced to the point where it can only be resolved by severing my life at the roots, by going down to the basement and cutting the main switch. You are about to do that for me.”

Aomame maintained her pose, the left hand holding the needle against the special spot on the back of his neck, the right hand held aloft. She could move neither forward nor back.

“If you want to put a stop to what you are about to do, there are any number of ways you can do that. It’s simple,” he said. “Try bringing your right hand down.”

As directed, Aomame tried to lower her right hand. But it would not budge. It was frozen in midair, like the hand of a stone statue.

“I have the power to do that—not that it was something I ever hoped to obtain. All right, you can move your right hand now. Now you are in complete control of my life.”

Aomame became aware that she could now move her right hand freely. She clenched her fist and opened it. It felt entirely normal. He must have employed something like hypnotism. Whatever it was, it was very powerful.

“They have granted me these special powers, but in return they have impressed certain demands upon me. Their desires have become my desires—implacable desires that I have been unable to defy.”

“They?” Aomame asked. “Do you mean the Little People?”

“So you know about them. Good. That will save time explaining.”

“All I know is that name. I don’t know who or what the Little People are.”

“Probably no one knows for sure who the Little People are,” the man said. “All that people are able to learn is that they exist. Have you read Frazer’s The Golden Bough?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“It is a very interesting book that has much to teach us. In certain periods of history in several parts of the world—in ancient times, of course—the king was often killed at the end of his reign, usually after a fixed period of ten to twelve years. When the term ended, the people would gather together and slaughter him. This was deemed necessary for the community, and the kings themselves willingly accepted it. The killing had to be cruel and bloody, and it was considered a great honor bestowed upon the one who was king. Now, why did the king have to be killed? It was because in those days the king was the one who listened to the voices, as the representative of the people. Such a person would take it upon himself to become the circuit connecting ‘us’ with ‘them.’ And slaughtering the one who listened to the voices was the indispensable task of the community in order to maintain a balance between the minds of those who lived on the earth and the power manifested by the Little People. In the ancient world, ‘to rule’ was synonymous with ‘listening to the voices of the gods.’ Such a system was at some point abandoned, of course. Kings were no longer killed, and kingship became secular and hereditary. In this way, people stopped hearing the voices.”

Unconsciously opening and closing her elevated right hand, Aomame listened to what the man was saying.

“They have been called by many different names, but in most cases have not been called anything at all. They were simply there. The expression ‘Little People’ is just an expedient. My daughter called them that when she was very young and brought them with her.”

“Then you became a king.”

The man drew a strong breath in through his nose and held it in his lungs for a time before releasing it slowly. “I am no king. I became one who listens to the voices.”

“And now you are seeking to be slaughtered.”

“No, it need not be a slaughter. This is 1984, and we are in the middle of the big city. There is no need for a brutal, bloody killing. All you have to do is take my life. It can be neat and simple.”

Aomame shook her head and relaxed the muscles of her body. The point of the needle was still pressed against the spot on the back of his neck, but she found it impossible to summon the will to kill this man.

Aomame said, “You have raped many young girls—girls barely ten years old, some perhaps even younger.”

“That is true,” the man said. “There are aspects to what I did, I must admit, that can be viewed that way in the light of commonly held concepts. In the eyes of earthly law, I am a criminal. I did have physical relations with girls who had still not reached maturity—even if it was something that I myself did not seek.”

All that Aomame could do was inhale and exhale deeply. She had no idea how to go about quieting the intense emotional currents streaming through her body. Her face was greatly distorted, and her right and left hands seemed to be longing for entirely different things.

“I would like you to take my life,” the man said. “It makes no sense for me to go on living in this world. I should be obliterated in order to maintain the world’s balance.”

“What would happen after I killed you?”

“The Little People would lose one who listens to their voices. I still have no successor.”

“How is it possible to believe this?” Aomame practically spit the words out between her taut lips. “You may just be a sexual pervert trying to justify your despicable actions with convenient rationalizations. There never were any ‘Little People,’ no voices of the gods, no heavenly grace. You may be just another phony claiming to be a prophet or religious leader.”

“See the clock over there?” the man said without lifting his head. “On the right-hand chest of drawers.”

Aomame looked to the right. There was a rounded, waist-high chest, on top of which sat a clock embedded in a marble frame—obviously, a heavy object.

“Keep your eyes on it. Don’t look away.”

As instructed, Aomame kept her neck turned in that direction and fixed her eyes on the clock. Beneath her fingers, she could feel every muscle in the man’s body turning to stone and filling with an incredibly intense power. As if in response to that power, the marble clock rose slowly from the surface of the chest. She watched it begin to tremble, as if hesitating, come to rest at a point some three inches in the air, and stay there for a full ten seconds. Then the man’s muscles lost their strength, and the clock dropped back to the chest with a dull thud, as if it had just remembered the earth’s gravity.

The man took a long time to release a deep, exhausted-sounding breath.

“Even a little thing like that takes a huge amount of energy,” he said once he had expelled every last breath in his body. “Enough to shorten my life. But I hope you see it now: at least I am no phony.”

Aomame did not answer him. The man took time bringing his strength back with a series of deep breaths. The clock went on silently displaying the time as though nothing had happened. Only its position on top of the chest had shifted slightly on a diagonal. Aomame stared hard at the clock while the second hand made a circuit.

“You do have special powers,” Aomame said drily.

“As you have now seen.”

“There is an episode involving the devil and Christ in The Brothers Karamazov, I recall. The Christ is undergoing harsh austerities in the wilderness when the devil challenges him to perform a miracle—to change a stone into bread. But the Christ ignores him. Miracles are the devil’s temptation.”

“Yes, I know that. I, too, have read The Brothers Karamazov. And what you say is true: this kind of showing off doesn’t solve a thing. But I had to convince you in the limited amount of time we have, so I went ahead and performed for you.”

Aomame remained silent.

“In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil,” the man said. “Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good. This is what I mean when I say that I must die in order to keep things in balance.”

“I don’t feel any need to kill you at this point,” Aomame declared. “As you probably know, that is what I came here to do. I can’t permit a person like you to exist. I was determined to obliterate you from this world. But I no longer feel that determination. You are suffering terribly, I can tell. You deserve to die slowly, going to pieces bit by bit, in terrible pain. I can’t find it in me to grant you an easy death.”

Still lying facedown, the man responded with a small nod. “If you were to kill me, my people would be sure to track you down. They are absolute fanatics, and they are powerful and persistent. With me gone, the religion would lose its centripetal force. But once it is formed, a system takes on a life of its own.”

Aomame listened to him speak as he lay there facedown.

“What I did to your friend was very bad.”

“My friend?”

“Your girlfriend with the handcuffs. Now, what was her name again …?”

A sudden calm filled Aomame. The inner conflict was gone. A heavy silence hung over her now.

“Ayumi Nakano,” Aomame said.

“Poor girl.”

“Did you do that?” Aomame asked coldly. “Are you the one who killed Ayumi?”

“No, not at all. I didn’t kill her.”

“But for some reason you know—that someone killed her.”

“Our researcher found out,” the man said. “We don’t know who killed her. All we know is that your friend, the policewoman, was strangled to death in a hotel.”

Aomame’s right hand became tightly clenched again. “But you said, ‘What I did to your friend was very bad.’”

“That I was unable to prevent it. Whoever may have killed her, the fact is that they always go after your weakest point—the way wolves chase down the weakest sheep in the herd.”

“You’re saying that Ayumi was a weak point of mine?”

The man did not answer.

Aomame closed her eyes. “But why did they have to kill her? She was such a good person! She would never hurt anyone. Why? Because I am involved in this? If so, wouldn’t it have been enough just to destroy me?”

The man said, “They can’t destroy you.”

“Why not?” Aomame asked. “Why can’t they destroy me?”

“Because you have long since become a special being.”

“Special being?” Aomame asked. “In what way ‘special’?”

“You will discover that eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“When the time comes.”

Aomame screwed up her face again. “I can’t understand what you are saying.”

“You will at some point.”

Aomame shook her head. “In any case, they can’t attack me for now. And so they aimed at a weak point near me. In order to give me a warning. To keep me from taking your life.”

The man remained silent. It was a silence of affirmation.

“It’s too terrible,” Aomame said. She shook her head. “What real difference could it possibly have made for them to murder her?”

“No, they are not murderers. They never destroy anyone with their own hands. What killed your friend, surely, was something she had inside of her. The same kind of tragedy would have happened sooner or later. Her life was filled with risk. All they did was to provide the stimulus. Like changing the setting on a timer.”

Setting on a timer?

“She was no electric oven! She was a living human being! So what if her life was full of risk? She was a dear friend of mine. You people took that from me like nothing at all. Meaninglessly. Callously.”

“Your anger is entirely justified,” the man said. “You should direct it at me.”

Aomame shook her head. “Even if I take your life here, that won’t bring Ayumi back.”

“No, but it would provide some degree of retaliation against the Little People. You could have your revenge, as it were. They don’t want me to die yet. If I die now, it will open up a vacuum—at least a temporary vacuum, until a successor comes into being. It would be a strike against them. At the same time, it would be a benefit to you.”

“Someone once said that nothing costs more and yields less benefit than revenge,” Aomame said.

“Winston Churchill. As I recall it, though, he was making excuses for the British Empire’s budget deficits. It has no moral significance.”

“Never mind about morals. You are going to die in agony while some strange thing eats you up whether I raise a hand against you or not. I have no reason to sympathize with you for that. Even if the world were to lose all morals and go to pieces, it wouldn’t be my fault.”

The man took another deep breath. “All right, I see what you are saying. How about this, then? Let’s make a deal. If you will take my life, I will spare the life of Tengo Kawana. I still have that much power left.”

“Tengo,” Aomame said. The strength went out of her body. “So you know about that, too.”

“I know everything about you. Or perhaps I should say almost everything.”

“But you can’t possibly tell that much. Tengo’s name has never taken a step outside my heart.”

“Please, Miss Aomame,” the man said. Then he released a brief sigh. “There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart. And it just so happens—should I say?—that Tengo Kawana has become a figure of no little significance to us at the moment.”

Aomame was at a loss for words.

The man said, “But then again, chance has nothing to do with it. Your two fates did not cross through mere happenstance. The two of you set foot in this world because you were meant to enter it. And now that you have entered it, like it or not, each of you will be assigned your proper role here.”

“Set foot in this world?”

“Yes, in this year of 1Q84.”

“1Q84?” Aomame said, her face greatly distorting. I made that word up!

“True, it is a word you made up,” the man said, as if reading her mind. “I am just borrowing it from you.”

Aomame formed the word 1Q84 in her mouth.

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart,” Leader repeated softly.