fter he finished breakfast, Tengo took a shower. He washed his hair and shaved at the sink, then changed into the clothes he had washed and dried. He left the inn, bought the morning edition of the paper at a kiosk at the station, and went to a coffee shop nearby and had a cup of hot black coffee.

There wasn’t much of interest in the newspaper. At least as far as this particular morning’s paper was concerned, the world was a dull, boring place. It felt like he was rereading a paper from a week ago, not today. Tengo folded up the paper and glanced at his watch. It was nine thirty. Visiting hours at the sanatorium began at ten.

It didn’t take long to pack for the trip back home. He didn’t have much luggage, just a few changes of clothes, toiletries, a few books, and a sheaf of manuscript paper. He stuffed it all inside his canvas shoulder bag. He slung the bag over his shoulder, paid his bill for the inn, and took a bus from the station to the sanatorium. It was the beginning of winter, and there were few people this morning heading to the beach. Tengo was the only one getting out at the stop in front of the sanatorium.

At the reception desk he wrote his name and the time in the visitors’ log. A young nurse he had never seen before was stationed at the reception desk. Her arms and legs were terribly long and thin, and a smile played around the corners of her lips. She made him think of a kindly spider guiding people along the path through a forest. Usually it was Nurse Tamura, the middle-aged woman with glasses, who sat at the reception desk, but today she wasn’t there. Tengo felt a bit relieved. He had been dreading any suggestive comments she might make because he had accompanied Kumi Adachi back to her apartment the night before. Nurse Omura, too, was nowhere to be seen. They might have been sucked into the earth without a trace. Like the three witches in Macbeth.

But that was impossible. Kumi Adachi was off duty today, but the other two nurses said they were working as usual. They must just be working somewhere else in the facility right now.

Tengo went upstairs to his father’s room, knocked lightly, twice, and opened the door. His father was lying on the bed, sleeping as always. An IV tube came out of his arm, a catheter snaked out of his groin. There was no change from the day before. The window was closed, as were the curtains. The air in the room was heavy and stagnant. All sorts of smells were mixed together—a medicinal smell, the smell of the flowers in the vase, the breath of a sick person, the smell of excreta—all the smells that life brings with it. Even if the life force here was weak, and his father was unconscious, metabolism went on unchanged. His father was still on this side of the great divide. Being alive, if you had to define it, meant emitting a variety of smells.

The first thing Tengo did when he entered the sickroom was go straight to the far wall, where he drew the curtains and flung open the window. It was a refreshing morning, and the room was in desperate need of fresh air. It was chilly outside, but not what you would call cold. Sunlight streamed in and the curtain rustled in the sea breeze. A single seagull, legs tucked neatly underneath, caught a draft of wind and glided over the pine trees. A ragged line of sparrows sat on an electrical line, constantly switching positions like musical notes being rewritten. A crow with a large beak came to rest on top of a mercury-vapor lamp, cautiously surveying his surroundings as he mulled over his next move. A few streaks of clouds floated off high in the sky, so high and far away that they were like abstract concepts unrelated to the affairs of man.

With his back to the patient, Tengo gazed for a while at this scene outside. Things that are living and things that are not. Things that move and things that don’t. What he saw out the window was the usual scenery. There was nothing new about it. The world has to move forward. Like a cheap alarm clock, it does a halfway decent job of fulfilling its assigned role. Tengo gazed blankly at the scenery, trying to postpone facing his father even by a moment, but he couldn’t keep delaying forever.

Finally Tengo made up his mind, turned, and sat down on the stool next to the bed. His father was lying on his back, facing the ceiling, his eyes shut. The quilt that was tucked up to his neck was neat and undisturbed. His eyes were deeply sunken. It was like some piece was missing, and his eye sockets couldn’t support his eyeballs, which had quietly caved in. Even if he were to open his eyes, what he would see would be like the world viewed from the bottom of a hole.

“Father,” Tengo began.

His father didn’t answer. The breeze blowing in the room suddenly stopped and the curtains hung limply, like a worker in the midst of a task suddenly remembering something else he had to do. And then, after a while, as if gathering itself together, the wind began to blow again.

“I’m going back to Tokyo today,” Tengo said. “I can’t stay here forever. I can’t take any more time off from work. It’s not much of a life, but I do have a life to get back to.”

There was a two- to three-day growth of whiskers on his father’s cheeks. A nurse shaved him with an electric razor, but not every day. His whiskers were salt-and-pepper. He was only sixty-four, but he looked much older, like someone had mistakenly fast-forwarded the film of his life.

“You didn’t wake up the whole time I was here. The doctor says your physical condition is still not so bad. The strange thing is, you’re almost as healthy as you used to be.”

Tengo paused, letting the words sink in.

“I don’t know if you can hear what I’m saying or not. Even if the words are vibrating your eardrums, the circuit beyond that might be shot. Or maybe the words I speak are actually reaching you but you’re unable to respond. I don’t really know. But I have been talking to you, and reading to you, on the assumption that you can hear me. Unless I assume that, there’s no point in me speaking to you, and if I can’t speak to you, then there’s no point in me being here. I can’t explain it well, but I’m sensing something tangible, as if the main points of what I’m saying are, at least, getting across.”

No response.

“What I’m about to say may sound pretty stupid. But I’m going back to Tokyo today and I don’t know when I might be back here. So I’m just going to say what’s in my mind. If you find it dumb, then just go ahead and laugh. If you can laugh, I mean.”

Tengo paused and observed his father’s face. Again, there was no response.

“Your body is in a coma. You have lost consciousness and feeling, and you are being kept alive by life-support machines. The doctor said you’re like a living corpse—though he put it a bit more euphemistically. Medically speaking, that’s what it probably is. But isn’t that just a sham? I have the feeling your consciousness isn’t lost at all. You have put your body in a coma, but your consciousness is off somewhere else, alive. I’ve felt that for a long time. It’s just a feeling, though.”

Silence.

“I can understand if you think this is a crazy idea. If I told anybody else, they would say I was hallucinating. But I have to believe it’s true. I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.”

Again more silence.

“I took time off from my job, came to this town, rented a room at an inn, and have been coming here every day and talking to you—for almost two weeks now. But I wasn’t just doing it to see how you were doing or to take care of you. I wanted to see where I came from, what sort of bloodline I have. None of that matters anymore. I am who I am, no matter who or what I’m connected with—or not connected with. Though I do know that you are the one who is my father. And that’s fine. Is this what you call a reconciliation? I don’t know. Maybe I just reconciled with myself.”

Tengo took a deep breath. He spoke in a softer tone.

“During the summer, you were still conscious. Your mind was muddled, but your consciousness was still functioning. At that time I met a girl here, in this room, again. After they took you to the examination room she appeared. I think it must have been something like her alter ego. I came to this town again and have stayed here this long because I have been hoping I could see her one more time. Honestly, that’s why I came.”

Tengo sighed and brought his hands together on his lap.

“But she didn’t come. What brought her here last time was a thing called an air chrysalis, a capsule she was encased in. It would take too long to explain the whole thing, but an air chrysalis is a product of the imagination, a fictitious object. But it’s not fictitious anymore. The boundary between the real world and the imaginary one has grown obscure. There are two moons in the sky now. These, too, were brought over from the world of fiction.”

Tengo looked at his father’s face. Could he follow what Tengo was saying?

“In that context, saying your consciousness has broken away from your body and is freely moving about some other world doesn’t sound so farfetched. It’s like the rules that govern the world have begun to loosen up around us. As I said before, I have this strange sense that you are actually doing that. Like you have gone to my apartment in Koenji and are knocking on the door. You know what I mean? You announce you’re an NHK fee collector, bang hard on the door, and yell out a threat in a loud voice. Just like you used to do all the time when we made the rounds in Ichikawa.”

He felt a change in the air pressure in the room. The window was open, but there was barely any sound coming in. There was just the occasional burst of chirping sparrows.

“There is a girl staying in my apartment in Tokyo. Not a girlfriend or anything—something happened and she’s taking shelter there temporarily. A few days ago she told me on the phone about an NHK collector who came by, how he knocked on the door, and what he did and said out in the corridor. It was strange how closely it resembled the methods you used to use. The words she heard were exactly the same lines I remember, the expressions I was hoping I could totally erase from my memory. And I’m thinking now that that fee collector might actually have been you. Am I wrong?”

Tengo waited thirty seconds. His father didn’t twitch a single eyelash.

“There’s just one thing I want: for you to never knock on my door again. I don’t have a TV. And those days when we went around together collecting fees are long gone. I think we already agreed on that, that time in front of my teacher—I don’t remember her name, the one who was in charge of my class. A short lady, with glasses. You remember that, right? So don’t knock on my door ever again, okay? And not just my place. Don’t knock on any more doors anywhere. You’re not an NHK fee collector anymore, and you don’t have the right to scare people like that.”

Tengo stood up, went to the window, and looked outside. An old man in a bulky sweater, clutching a cane, was walking in front of the woods. He was probably just taking a stroll. He was tall, with white hair, and excellent posture. But his steps were awkward, as if he had forgotten how to walk, as if with each step forward he was remembering how to do it. Tengo watched him for a while. The old man slowly made his way across the garden, then turned the corner of the building and disappeared. It didn’t look like he had recalled the art of walking. Tengo turned to face his father.

“I’m not blaming you. You have the right to send your consciousness wherever you want. It’s your life, and your consciousness. You have your own idea of what is right, and you’re putting it into practice. Maybe I don’t have the right to say these things. But you need to understand: you are not an NHK fee collector anymore. So you shouldn’t pretend to be one. It’s pointless.”

Tengo sat down on the windowsill and searched for his next words in the air of the cramped hospital room.

“I don’t know what kind of life you had, what sorts of joys and sorrows you experienced. But even if there was something that left you unfulfilled, you can’t go around seeking it at other people’s doors. Even if it is at the place you’re most familiar with, and the sort of act that is your forte.”

Tengo gazed silently at his father’s face.

“I don’t want you to knock on anybody’s door anymore. That’s all I ask of you, Father. I have to be going. I came here every day talking to you in your coma, reading to you. And I think at least a part of us has reconciled, and I think that reconciliation has actually taken place in the real world. Maybe you won’t like it, but you need to come back here again, to this side. This is where you belong.”

Tengo lifted his shoulder bag and slung it across his shoulder. “Well, I’ll be off, then.”

His father said nothing. He didn’t stir and his eyes remained shut—the same as always. But somehow it seemed like he was thinking about something. Tengo was quiet and paid careful attention. It felt to him like his father might pop open his eyes at any moment and abruptly sit up in bed. But none of that happened.

The nurse with the spidery limbs was still at the reception desk as he left. A plastic name tag on her chest said Tamaki.

“I’m going back to Tokyo now,” Tengo told her.

“It’s too bad your father didn’t regain consciousness while you were here,” she said, consolingly. “But I’m sure he was happy you could stay so long.”

Tengo couldn’t think of a decent response. “Please tell the other nurses good-bye for me. You have all been so helpful.”

He never did see bespectacled Nurse Tamura or busty Nurse Omura and her ever-present ballpoint pen. It made him a little sad. They were outstanding nurses, and had always been kind to him. But perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t see them. After all, he was slipping out of the cat town alone.

As the train pulled out of Chikura Station, he recalled spending the night at Kumi Adachi’s apartment. It had only just happened yesterday. The gaudy Tiffany lamp, the uncomfortable love seat, the TV comedy show he could hear from next door. The hooting of the owl in the woods. The hashish smoke, the smiley-face shirt, the thick pubic hair pressed against his leg. It had been less than a day, but it felt like long ago. His mind felt unstable. Like an unbalanced set of scales, the core of his memories wouldn’t settle down in one spot.

Suddenly anxious, Tengo looked around him. Was this reality actually real? Or had he once again boarded the wrong reality? He asked a passenger nearby and made sure this train was indeed headed to Tateyama. It’s okay, don’t worry, he told himself. At Tateyama I can change to the express train to Tokyo. He was drawing farther and farther away from the cat town by the sea.

As soon as he changed trains and took his seat, as if it could barely wait, sleep claimed him. A deep sleep, like he had lost his footing and fallen into a bottomless hole. His eyelids closed, and in the next instant his consciousness had vanished. When he opened his eyes again, the train had passed Makuhari. The train wasn’t particularly hot inside, yet he was sweating under his arms and down his back. His mouth had an awful smell, like the stagnant air he had breathed in his father’s sick room. He took a stick of gum out of his pocket and popped it in his mouth.

Tengo was sure he would never visit that town again—at least not while his father was alive. While there was nothing in this world that he could state with one hundred percent certainty, he knew there was probably nothing more he could do in that seaside town.

When he got back to the apartment, Fuka-Eri wasn’t there. He knocked on the door three times, paused, then knocked two more times. Then he unlocked the door. Inside, the apartment was dead silent. He was immediately struck by how neat and clean everything was. The dishes were neatly stacked away in the cupboard, everything on the table and desk was neatly arranged, and the trash can had been emptied. There were signs that the place had been vacuumed as well. The bed was made, and no books or records lay scattered about. Dried laundry lay neatly folded on top of the bed.

The oversized shoulder bag that Fuka-Eri used was also gone. It didn’t appear, however, that she had remembered something she had to do or that something had suddenly come up and she had hurriedly left. Nor did it look like she had just gone out for a short time. Instead, all indications were that she had decided to leave for good, that she had taken her time cleaning the apartment and then left. Tengo tried picturing her pushing around the vacuum cleaner and wiping here and there with a wet cloth. It just didn’t fit her image at all.

He opened the mail slot inside the front door and found the spare key. From the amount of mail, she must have left yesterday or the day before. The last time he had called her had been in the morning two days earlier, and she had still been in the apartment. Last night he had had dinner with the three nurses and had gone back to Kumi’s place. What with one thing and another, he had forgotten to call her.

Normally she would have left a note behind in her unique cuneiform-like script, but there was no sign of one. She had left without a word. Tengo wasn’t particularly surprised or disappointed. No one could predict what the girl was thinking or what she would do. She just showed up when she wanted to, and left when she felt like it—like a capricious, independent-minded cat. In fact, it was unusual for her to have stayed put this long in one place.

The refrigerator was more full of food than he had expected. He guessed that a few days earlier, Fuka-Eri must have gone out and done some shopping on her own. There was a pile of steamed cauliflower as well, which seemed to have been cooked recently. Had she known that Tengo would be back in Tokyo in a day or two? Tengo was hungry, so he fried some eggs and ate them with the cauliflower. He made some toast and drank two mugs of coffee.

Next he phoned his friend who had covered for him at school and told him he expected to be back at work at the beginning of the week. His friend updated him on how much they had covered in the textbook.

“You really helped me out. I owe you one.”

“I don’t mind teaching,” the friend said. “I even enjoy it at times. But I found that the longer you teach, the more you feel like a total stranger to yourself.”

Tengo had often had an inkling of the same thing.

“Anything out of the ordinary happen while I was gone?”

“Not really. Oh, you did get a letter. I put it in a drawer in your desk.”

“A letter?” Tengo asked. “From whom?”

“A thin young girl brought it by. She had straight hair down to her shoulders. She came up to me and said she had a letter to give to you. She spoke sort of strangely. I think she might be a foreigner.”

“Did she have a large shoulder bag?”

“She did. A green shoulder bag. Stuffed full of things.”

Fuka-Eri may have been afraid to leave the letter behind in his apartment, scared that someone else might read it, or take it away. So she went directly to the cram school and gave it to his friend.

Tengo thanked his friend again and hung up. It was already evening, and he didn’t feel like taking the train all the way to Yoyogi to pick up the letter. He would leave it for tomorrow.

Right afterward he realized he had forgotten to ask his friend about the moon. He started to dial again but decided against it. Most likely his friend had forgotten all about it. This was something he would have to resolve on his own.

Tengo went out and aimlessly sauntered down the twilight streets. With Fuka-Eri gone, his apartment was too quiet and he couldn’t settle down. When they had been living together he didn’t really sense her presence all that much. He followed his daily routine, and she followed hers. But without her there, Tengo noticed a human-shaped void she had left behind.

It wasn’t because he was attracted to her. She was a beautiful, attractive young girl, for sure, but since Tengo first met her he had never felt anything like desire for her. Even after sharing the same apartment for so long, he never felt anything stirring within his heart. How come? Is there some reason I shouldn’t feel sexual desire for her? he wondered. It was true that on that stormy night they had had intercourse. But it wasn’t what he had wanted. It had all been her doing.

Intercourse was exactly the right word to describe the act. She had climbed on top of Tengo, who had been numb and unable to move, and inserted his penis inside her. Fuka-Eri had seemed to be in some transcendent state then, like a fairy in the throes of a lewd dream.

Afterward they lived together in the tiny apartment as if nothing had happened. The storm had stopped, morning came, and Fuka-Eri acted like she had completely forgotten the incident. And Tengo didn’t bring it up. He felt that if she really had forgotten, it was better to let her stay that way. It might be best if he himself forgot it too. Still, the question remained—why had she suddenly done such a thing? Was there some objective behind it all? Or had she been temporarily possessed?

There was only one thing Tengo knew for sure: it wasn’t an act of love. Fuka-Eri had a natural affinity for Tengo—that seemed certain. But it was farfetched to believe that she loved him, or desired him, or felt anything even close to these emotions. She felt no sexual desire for anyone. Tengo wasn’t confident in his powers of observation when it came to people, but still he couldn’t quite imagine Fuka-Eri passionately making love with a man, her breath hot and heavy. Or even engaged in not-so-passionate sex. That just wasn’t her.

These thoughts ran through his head as he walked the streets of Koenji. The sun had set and a cold wind had picked up, but he didn’t mind. He liked to think while he walked, then sit down at his desk and give form to his thoughts. That was his way of doing things. That was why he walked a lot. It might rain, it might be windy, he didn’t care. As he walked he found himself in front of a bar called Mugiatama—“Ears of Wheat.” Tengo couldn’t think of anything better to do, so he popped inside and ordered a Carlsberg draft beer. The bar had just opened and he was the only customer. He stopped thinking for a while, kept his mind a blank, and slowly sipped his beer.

But just like nature abhors a vacuum, Tengo wasn’t afforded the leisure of keeping his mind blank for long. He couldn’t help thinking of Fuka-Eri. Like a scrap of a dream, she wended her way into his mind.

That person may be very close. Somewhere you can walk to from here.

Fuka-Eri had said this. Which is why I went out to look for her. And came inside this bar. What other things did she say?

Do not worry. Even if you cannot find that person, that person will find you.

Just as Tengo was searching for Aomame, Aomame was searching for him. Tengo hadn’t really grasped that. He had been caught up in himself searching for her. It had never occurred to him that Aomame might be looking for him too.

I perceive and you receive.

This was also something Fuka-Eri had said. She perceives it, and Tengo receives it. But Fuka-Eri only made clear what she perceived when she felt like it. Whether she was operating on some principle or theory, or merely acting on a whim, Tengo couldn’t tell.

Again Tengo remembered the time they had intercourse. The beautiful seventeen-year-old climbed on top of him and put his penis inside her. Her ample breasts moved lithely in the air, like ripe fruit. She closed her eyes in rapture, her nostrils flaring with desire. Her lips formed something that didn’t come together as actual words. He could see her white teeth, her pink tongue darting out from between them every now and then. Tengo had a vivid memory of that scene. His body may have been numb, but his mind was clear. And he had a rock-hard erection.

But no matter how clearly he relived the scene in his head, Tengo didn’t feel any stir of sexual excitement. And it didn’t cross his mind to want to have sex with her again. He hadn’t had sex for the nearly three months since that encounter. More than that, he hadn’t even come once. For him this was quite unusual. He was a healthy, thirty-year-old single guy, with a normal sex drive, the sort of desire that had to be taken care of one way or another.

Still, when he was in Kumi Adachi’s apartment, in bed with her, her pubic hair pressing against his leg, he had felt no desire at all. His penis had remained flaccid the whole time. Maybe it was the hashish. But that wasn’t the reason, he decided. On that stormy night when he had had sex with Fuka-Eri, she had taken something important away, from his heart. Like moving furniture out of a room. He was convinced of it.

Like what, for instance?

Tengo shook his head.

When he had polished off the beer, he ordered a Four Roses on the rocks and some mixed nuts. Just like the last time.

Most likely his erection on that stormy night was too perfect. It was far harder, and bigger, than he had ever experienced. It didn’t look like his own penis. Smooth and shiny, it seemed less an actual penis than some conceptual symbol, and when he ejaculated it was powerful, heroic even, the semen copious and thick. This must have reached her womb, or even beyond. It was the perfect orgasm.

But when something is so complete, there has to be a reaction. That’s the way things go. What kind of erections have I had since? Tengo wondered. He couldn’t recall. Maybe he hadn’t even had one. Or if he had, it was obviously not very memorable, a subpar hard-on. If his erection had been a movie, it would have been low budget, straight to video. Not an erection even worth discussing. Most likely.

Maybe I’m fated to drift through life with nothing but second-rate erections, he asked himself, or not even second-rate ones? That would be a sad sort of life, like a prolonged twilight. But depending on how you look at it, it might be unavoidable. At least once in his life he had had the perfect erection, and the perfect orgasm. It was like the author of Gone With the Wind. Once you have achieved something so magnificent, you have to be content with it.

He finished his whiskey, paid the bill, and continued wandering the streets. The wind had picked up and the air was chillier than before. Before the world’s rules loosen up too much, he thought, and all logic is lost, I have to find Aomame. Nearly the only hope he could cling to now was the thought that he might run across her. If I don’t find her, then what value is there to my life? he wondered. She had been here, in Koenji, in September. If he were lucky, she was still in the same place. Not that he could prove it—but all he could do right now was pursue that possibility. Aomame is somewhere around here. And she is searching for me, too. Like two halves of a coin, each seeking the other.

He looked up at the sky, but he couldn’t see the moons. I have to go someplace where I can see the moon, Tengo decided.