fter climbing down from the slide and leaving the playground, Tengo wandered aimlessly through the streets of Koenji, from one block to the next, hardly conscious of where his feet were taking him. He tried to organize the jumble of ideas in his head, but unified thinking was beyond him now, probably because he had thought about too many different things at once while sitting on the slide: about the increase in the number of moons, about blood ties, about a new chapter in his life, about his dizzyingly realistic daydream, about Fuka-Eri and Air Chrysalis, and about Aomame, who was probably in hiding somewhere nearby. With his head a confused tangle of thoughts, Tengo felt his powers of concentration being tested to the limit. He wished he could just go to bed and be fast asleep. He could continue this process in the morning. No amount of additional thinking would bring him any clarity now.

Back at his apartment, he found Fuka-Eri sitting at his desk, intently sharpening pencils with a small pocketknife. Tengo always kept ten pencils in his pencil holder, but now there were at least twenty. She had done a beautiful job of sharpening them. Tengo had never seen such beautifully sharpened pencils. Their points were like needles.

“You had a phone call,” she said, checking the sharpness of the current pencil with her finger. “From Chikura.”

“You weren’t supposed to be answering the phone.”

“It was an important call.”

She had probably been able to tell it was important from the ring.

“What was it about?” Tengo asked.

“They didn’t say.”

“But it was from the sanatorium in Chikura, right?”

“They want a call.”

“They want me to call them?”

“Today. Even if it’s late.”

Tengo sighed. “You don’t know the number, I suppose.”

“I do.”

She had memorized the number. Tengo wrote it down. Then he looked at the clock. Eight thirty.

“What time did they call?” he asked.

“A little while ago.”

Tengo went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Resting his hands on the edge of the sink, he closed his eyes and confirmed that his brain was functioning normally. Then he went to the phone and dialed the number. Perhaps his father had died. Or at least it was a life-and-death issue of some sort. They would not have called this late if it were not about something important.

A woman answered the phone. Tengo gave his name and said he was calling in response to an earlier message.

“Mr. Kawana’s son?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Tengo said.

“We met here the other day,” she said.

Tengo pictured the middle-aged nurse with metal-framed glasses. He could not recall her name.

He uttered a few polite words, adding, “I gather you called earlier?”

“Yes, I did. I’ll connect you with the doctor in charge so you can talk to him directly.”

With the receiver pressed against his ear, Tengo waited—and waited—for the doctor to pick up. “Home on the Range” seemed as if it would go on playing forever. Tengo closed his eyes and pictured the sanatorium on the Boso Peninsula shore. The thickly overlapping pine trees, the sea breeze blowing through them, the Pacific Ocean waves breaking endlessly on the beach. The hushed entryway lobby without visitors. The sound of movable beds being wheeled down the corridors. The sun-damaged curtains. The well-pressed white uniforms of the nurses. The thin, flat coffee in the lunchroom.

Finally, the doctor picked up the phone.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. I got an emergency call from one of the other sickrooms a few minutes ago.”

“That’s fine,” Tengo said. He tried to recall what his father’s doctor looked like, until it occurred to him that he had never met the man. His brain was still not functioning properly. “So, is something wrong with my father?”

The doctor paused a moment and then said, “Well, it’s not that something in particular happened today, just that his condition has not been good lately. I hate to tell you this, but he is in a coma.”

“You mean, he’s completely unconscious?”

“Exactly.”

Tengo struggled to make his brain work. “Did he come down with something that made him go into a coma?”

“Properly speaking, no,” the doctor said with apparent difficulty.

Tengo waited.

“It’s difficult to explain on the phone, but there is not one particular thing wrong with him. He does not have cancer or pneumonia or any other illness that we can name. Medically speaking, we can’t see any distinguishing symptoms. We don’t know what the cause might be, but in your father’s case, it appears that his natural life-sustaining force is visibly weakening. And since we don’t know the cause, we don’t know what treatment to apply. We are continuing to feed him intravenously, but this is strictly treating the symptoms.”

“Is it all right for me to ask you a very direct question?” Tengo asked.

“Yes, of course,” the doctor said.

“Are you saying that my father is not going to last much longer?”

“That might be a strong possibility if he stays in his current condition.”

“So he’s more or less wasting away of old age?”

The doctor made a vague sound into the phone. Then he said, “Your father is still in his sixties, not yet ready to ‘waste away of old age.’ He is basically healthy. We haven’t found anything wrong with him other than his impaired cognitive abilities. He gets rather good scores on the periodic strength tests we perform. We are not aware of a single problem he might have.”

The doctor stopped talking at that point. Then he went on:

“But … come to think of it … observing him these past few days, there may be some degree of what you call ‘wasting away of old age.’ His physical functions overall have declined, and he seems to be losing the will to live. Normally, these symptoms don’t emerge until the patient passes his mid-eighties. When a person gets that old, we often see him grow tired of living and abandon the effort to maintain life. But I have no idea why that should be happening to a man in his sixties like Mr. Kawana.”

Tengo bit his lip and gave this some thought.

“When did the coma start?” Tengo asked.

“Three days ago,” the doctor said.

“You mean he hasn’t awakened for three days?”

“Not once.”

“And his vital signs are gradually weakening?”

The doctor said, “Not drastically, but as I just said, the level of his life-sustaining force is gradually—but visibly—going down, like a train dropping its speed little by little as it begins to stop.”

“How much time do you think he has left?”

“I can’t say for sure. If his present condition continues as is, he might have another week in the worst case,” the doctor said.

Tengo changed his grip on the receiver and bit his lip again.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Tengo said. “Even if you hadn’t called, I was thinking of going there soon. But I’m glad you called. I’m very grateful to you.”

The doctor seemed relieved to hear this. “Please do come. The sooner you see him the better, I think. He may not be able to talk to you, but I’m sure your father will be glad you’re here.”

“He is completely unconscious, though, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He is not conscious.”

“Do you think he is in pain?”

“For now, no, probably not. That is the one silver lining in all this. He is sound asleep.”

“Thank you very much,” Tengo said.

“You know, Mr. Kawana,” the doctor said, “your father was a very easy patient to take care of. He never gave anyone any trouble.”

“He’s always been like that,” Tengo said. Then, thanking the doctor once again, he ended the call.

Tengo warmed his coffee and drank it at the kitchen table, sitting across from Fuka-Eri.

“You’ll be leaving tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked.

Tengo nodded. “Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town again.”

“You’re going to the cat town,” Fuka-Eri asked without expression.

“You will be waiting here,” Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he had become used to asking questions without question marks.

“I will be waiting here.”

“I’ll go to the cat town alone,” Tengo said. He took a sip of coffee. Then it suddenly occurred to him to ask her, “Do you want something to drink?”

“White wine if you have some.”

Tengo opened the refrigerator to see if he had any chilled white wine. In back he found a bottle of Chardonnay he had recently bought on sale. The label had a picture of a wild boar. He pulled the cork, poured some into a wineglass, and placed it before Fuka-Eri. After some hesitation, he poured himself a glass as well. He was definitely more in the mood for wine than coffee. It was a bit too chilled, and a bit too sweet, but the alcohol calmed Tengo’s nerves somewhat.

“You’ll be going to the cat town tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked again.

“I’ll take a train first thing in the morning,” Tengo said.

Tipping back his glass of white wine, Tengo recalled that he had ejaculated into the body of the beautiful seventeen-year-old girl now sitting across the table from him. It had happened only the night before, but it seemed like something that had occurred in the distant past—almost a historical event. Still, the sensation of it remained as vivid as ever inside him.

“The number of moons increased,” Tengo said, as if sharing a secret, slowly turning the wineglass in his hand. “When I looked at the sky a little while ago, there were two moons—a big, yellow one and a small, green one. They might have been there from before, but I never noticed them. I finally realized it just a little while ago.”

Fuka-Eri had nothing to say regarding the fact that the number of moons had increased, nor could Tengo discern any sense of surprise at the news. Her expression had not changed at all. She did not even give her usual little shrug. It did not appear to be news to her.

“I don’t have to tell you that having two moons in the sky is the same as the world of Air Chrysalis,” Tengo said. “And the new moon looks exactly as I described it—the same size and color.”

Fuka-Eri had nothing to say. She never answered questions that needed no answers.

“Why do you think such a thing has happened? How could such a thing have happened?”

Still no answer.

Tengo decided to ask her directly, “Could this mean that we have entered into the world depicted in Air Chrysalis?”

Fuka-Eri spent several moments carefully examining the shapes of her fingernails. Then she said, “Because we wrote the book together.”

Tengo set his wineglass on the table. Then he asked Fuka-Eri, “We wrote Air Chrysalis and published it. It was a joint effort. Then the book became a bestseller, and information regarding the Little People and mazas and dohtas was revealed to the world. As a result of that, you and I together entered into this newly altered world. Is that what it means?”

“You are acting as a Receiver.”

“I’m acting as a Receiver,” Tengo said, echoing her words. “True, I wrote about Receivers in Air Chrysalis, but I didn’t understand any of that. What does a Receiver do, specifically?”

Fuka-Eri gave her head a little shake, meaning she could not explain it.

“If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation,” Tengo’s father had said.

“We had better stay together,” Fuka-Eri said, “until you find her.”

Tengo looked at Fuka-Eri for a time, trying to read her expression, but as always, there was no expression on her face to read. Unconsciously, he turned aside to look out the window, but there were no moons to be seen, only an ugly, twisted mass of electric lines.

“Does it take some special talent to act as a Receiver?”

Fuka-Eri moved her chin slightly up and down, meaning that some talent was required.

“But Air Chrysalis was originally your story, a story you wrote from scratch. It came from inside of you. All I did was take on the job of fixing the style. I was just a technician.”

“Because we wrote the book together,” Fuka-Eri said as before.

Tengo unconsciously brought his fingertips to his temple. “Are you saying I was acting as a Receiver from then on without even knowing it?”

“From before that,” Fuka-Eri said. She pointed her right index finger at herself and then at Tengo. “I’m a Perceiver, and you’re a Receiver.”

“In other words, you ‘perceive’ things and I ‘receive’ them?”

Fuka-Eri gave a short nod.

Tengo frowned slightly. “So you knew that I was a Receiver or had a Receiver’s special talent, and that’s why you let me rewrite Air Chrysalis. Through me, you turned what you had perceived into a book. Is that it?”

No answer.

Tengo undid his frown. Then, looking into Fuka-Eri’s eyes, he said, “I still can’t pinpoint the exact moment, but I’m guessing that around that time, I had already entered this world with two moons. I’ve just overlooked that fact until now. I never had occasion to look up at the night sky, so I never noticed that the number of moons had increased. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Fuka-Eri kept silent. Her silence floated up and hung in the air like fine dust. This was dust that had been scattered there only moments before by a swarm of moths from a special space. For a while, Tengo looked at the shapes the dust had made in the air. He felt he had become a two-day-old evening paper. New information was coming out day after day, but he was the only one who knew none of it.

“Cause and effect seem to be all mixed up,” Tengo said, recovering his presence of mind. “I don’t know which came before and which came after. In any case, though, we are now inside this new world.”

Fuka-Eri raised her face and peered into Tengo’s eyes. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he caught a hint of an affectionate gleam in her eyes.

“In any case, the original world no longer exists,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave a little shrug. “We will go on living here.”

“In the world with two moons?”

Fuka-Eri did not reply to this. The beautiful seventeen-year-old girl tensed her lips into a perfectly straight line and looked directly into Tengo’s eyes—exactly the way Aomame had looked into the ten-year-old Tengo’s eyes in the empty classroom, with strong, deep mental concentration. Under Fuka-Eri’s intense gaze, Tengo felt he might turn into stone, transforming into the new moon—the lopsided little moon. A moment later, Fuka-Eri finally relaxed her gaze. She raised her right hand and pressed her fingertips to her temple as if she were trying to read her own secret thoughts.

“You were looking for someone,” the girl asked.

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t find her.”

“No, I didn’t find her,” Tengo said.

He had not found Aomame, but instead he had discovered the two moons. This was because he had followed Fuka-Eri’s suggestion to dig deep into his memory, as a result of which he had thought to look at the moon.

The girl softened her gaze somewhat and picked up her wineglass. She held a mouthful of wine for a while and then swallowed it carefully, like an insect sipping dew.

Tengo said, “You say she’s hiding somewhere. If that’s the case, it won’t be easy to find her.”

“You don’t have to worry,” the girl said.

“I don’t have to worry,” Tengo echoed her words.

Fuka-Eri nodded deeply.

“You mean, I’m going to find her?”

“She is going to find you,” Fuka-Eri said in a voice like a breeze passing over a field of soft grass.

“Here, in Koenji?”

Fuka-Eri inclined her head to one side, meaning she did not know. “Somewhere,” she said.

“Somewhere in this world,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri gave him a little nod. “As long as there are two moons in the sky.”

Tengo thought about this for a moment and said with some resignation, “I guess I have no choice but to believe you.”

“I perceive and you receive,” Fuka-Eri said thoughtfully.

“You perceive and I receive,” Tengo said.

Fuka-Eri nodded.

And is that why we joined our bodies? Tengo wanted to ask Fuka-Eri. In that wild storm last night. What did that mean? But he did not ask those questions, which might have been inappropriate, and which he knew she never would have answered.

If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation, Tengo’s father said somewhere.

“You perceive and I receive,” Tengo repeated once again. “The same as when I rewrote Air Chrysalis.”

Fuka-Eri shook her head. Then she pushed her hair back, revealing one beautiful, little ear as though raising a transmitter’s antenna.

“It is not the same,” Fuka-Eri said. “You changed.”

“I changed,” Tengo repeated.

Fuka-Eri nodded.

“How have I changed?”

Fuka-Eri stared for a long time into the wineglass she was holding, as if she could see something important inside.

“You will find out when you go to the cat town,” the beautiful girl said. Then, with her ear still showing, she took a sip of white wine.