n Wednesday morning when the phone rang, Tengo was still asleep. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep until nearly dawn, and the whiskey he had drunk still remained in him. He got out of bed, and was surprised to see how light it was outside.

“Tengo Kawana?” a man said. It was a voice he had never heard before.

“Yes,” Tengo replied. The man’s voice was quiet and businesslike, and he was sure it must be more paperwork regarding his father’s death. But his alarm clock showed it was just before eight a.m. Not the time that a city office or funeral home would be calling.

“I am sorry to be calling so early, but I was rather in a hurry.”

Something urgent. “What is it?” Tengo’s brain was still fuzzy.

“Do you recall the name Aomame?” the man asked.

Aomame? His hangover and sleepiness vanished. His mind reset quickly, like after a short blackout in a stage play. Tengo regripped the receiver.

“Yes, I do,” he replied.

“It’s quite an unusual name.”

“We were in the same class in elementary school,” Tengo said, somehow able to get his voice back to normal.

The man paused. “Mr. Kawana, do you have interest at this moment in talking about Aomame?”

Tengo found the man’s way of speaking odd. His diction was unique, like listening to lines from an avant-garde translated play.

“If you do not have any interest, then it will be a waste of time for both of us. I’ll end this conversation right away.”

“I am interested,” Tengo said hurriedly. “Sorry, but what is your connection here?”

“I have a message from her,” the man said, ignoring his question. “Aomame is hoping to see you. What about you, Mr. Kawana? Would you care to see her as well?”

“I would,” Tengo said. He coughed and cleared his throat. “I have been wanting to see her for a long time.”

“Fine. She wants to see you. And you are hoping to see her.”

Tengo suddenly realized how cold the room was. He grabbed a nearby cardigan and threw it over his pajamas.

“So what should I do?” Tengo asked.

“Can you come to the slide after dark?” the man said.

“The slide?” Tengo asked. What was this guy talking about?

“She said if I told you that, you would understand. She would like you to come to the top of the slide. I’m merely telling you what Aomame said.”

Tengo’s hand went to his hair, which was a mass of cowlicks and knots after sleeping. The slide. Where I saw the two moons. It’s got to be that slide.

“I think I understand,” he replied, his voice dry.

“Fine. Also, if there is something valuable you would like to take with you, make sure you have it on you. So you’re all set to move on, far away.”

“Something valuable I would like to take with me?” Tengo repeated in surprise.

“Something you don’t want to leave behind.”

Tengo pondered this. “I’m not sure I totally understand, but by moving on far away, do you mean never coming back here?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the man said. “As I said previously, I am merely transmitting her message.”

Tengo ran his fingers through his tangled hair and considered this. Move on? “I might have a fair amount of papers I would want to bring.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” the man said. “You are free to choose whatever you like. However, when it comes to luggage, I have been asked to tell you that you should be able to keep both hands free.”

“Keep both hands free,” Tengo repeated. “So, a suitcase wouldn’t work, would it?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

From the man’s voice it was hard to guess his age, looks, or build. It was the sort of voice that provided no tangible clues. Tengo felt he wouldn’t remember the voice at all, as soon as the man hung up. Individuality or emotions—assuming there were any to begin with—were hidden deep down, out of sight.

“That’s all that I need to relay,” the man said.

“Is Aomame well?” Tengo asked.

“Physically, she’s fine,” the man said, choosing his words carefully. “Though right now she’s caught in a somewhat tense situation. She has to watch her every move. One false step and it might all be over.”

“All be over,” Tengo repeated mechanically.

“It would be best not to be too late,” the man said. “Time has become an important factor.”

Time has become an important factor, Tengo repeated to himself. Was there an issue with this man’s choice of words? Or am I too much on edge?

“I think I can be at the slide at seven tonight,” Tengo said. “If for some reason I’m not able to come tonight, I’ll be there tomorrow at the same time.”

“Understood. And you know which slide we’re talking about.”

“I think so.”

Tengo glanced at the clock. He had eleven hours to go.

“By the way, I heard that your father passed away on Sunday. My deepest condolences.”

Tengo instinctively thanked him, but then wondered how this man could possibly know about his father.

“Could you tell me a little more about Aomame?” Tengo said. “For instance, where she is, and what she does?”

“She’s single. She works as a fitness instructor at a sports club in Hiroo. She’s a first-rate instructor, but circumstances have changed and she has taken leave from her job. And, by sheer coincidence, she has been living not far from you. For anything beyond that, I think it best you hear directly from her.”

“Even what sort of tense situation she’s in right now?”

The man didn’t respond. Either he didn’t want to answer or he felt there was no need. For whatever reason, people like this seemed to flock to Tengo.

“Today at seven p.m., then, on top of the slide,” the man said.

“Just a second,” Tengo said quickly. “I have a question. I was warned by someone that I was being watched, and that I should be careful. Excuse me for asking, but did they mean you?”

“No, they didn’t mean me,” the man said immediately. “It was probably someone else who was watching you. But it is a good idea to be cautious, as that person pointed out.”

“Does my being under surveillance have something to do with Aomame’s unusual situation?”

“Somewhat tense situation,” the man said, correcting him. “Yes, most likely there is some sort of connection.”

“Is this dangerous?”

The man paused, and chose his words carefully, as if separating out varieties of beans from a pile. “If you call not being able to see Aomame anymore something dangerous, then yes, there is definitely danger involved.”

Tengo mentally rearranged this man’s roundabout phrasing into something he could understand. He didn’t have a clue about the background or the circumstances, but it was obvious that things were indeed fraught.

“If things don’t go well, we might not be able to see each other ever again.”

“Exactly.”

“I understand. I’ll be careful,” Tengo said.

“I’m sorry to have called so early. It would appear that I woke you up.”

Without pausing, the man hung up. Tengo gazed at the black receiver in his hand. As he had predicted, as soon as they hung up, the man’s voice had vanished from his memory. Tengo looked at the clock again. Eight ten. How should I kill all this time between now and seven p.m.? he wondered.

He started by taking a shower, washing his hair, and untangling it as best he could. Then he stood in front of the mirror and shaved, brushed his teeth, and flossed. He drank some tomato juice from the fridge, boiled water, ground coffee beans and made coffee, toasted a slice of bread. He set the timer and cooked a soft-boiled egg. He concentrated on each action, taking more time than usual. But still it was only nine thirty.

Tonight I will see Aomame on top of the slide.

The thought sent his senses spinning. His hands and legs and face all wanted to go in different directions, and he couldn’t gather his emotions in one place. Whatever he tried to do, his concentration was shot. He couldn’t read, couldn’t write. He couldn’t sit still in one place. The only thing he seemed capable of was washing the dishes, doing the laundry, straightening up his drawers, making his bed. Every five minutes he would stop whatever he was doing and glance at the clock. Thinking about time only seemed to slow it down.

Aomame knows.

He was standing at the sink, sharpening a cleaver that really didn’t need to be sharpened. She knows I’ve been to the slide in that playground a number of times. She must have seen me, sitting there, staring up at the sky. Otherwise it makes no sense. He pictured what he looked like on top of the slide, lit up by the mercury-vapor lamp. He had had no sense of being observed. Where had she been watching him from?

It doesn’t matter, Tengo thought. No big deal. No matter where she saw me from, she recognized me. The thought filled him with joy. Just as I’ve been thinking of her, she’s been thinking of me. Tengo could hardly believe it—that in this frantic, labyrinth-like world, two people’s hearts—a boy’s and a girl’s—could be connected, unchanged, even though they hadn’t seen each other for twenty years.

But why didn’t Aomame call out to me then, when she saw me? Things would be so much simpler if she had. And how did she know where I live? How did she—or that man—find out my phone number? He didn’t like to get calls, and had an unlisted number. You couldn’t get it even if you called the operator.

There was a lot that remained unknown and mysterious, and the lines that constructed this story were complicated. Which lines connected to which others, and what sort of cause-and-effect relationship existed, was beyond him. Still, ever since Fuka-Eri showed up in his life, he felt he had been living in a place where questions outnumbered answers. But he had a faint sense that this chaos was, ever so slowly, heading toward a denouement.

At seven this evening, though, at least some questions will be cleared up, Tengo thought. We’ll meet on top of the slide. Not as a helpless ten-year-old boy and girl, but as an independent, grown-up man and woman. As a math teacher in a cram school and a sports club instructor. What will we talk about then? I have no idea. But we will talk—we need to fill in the blanks between us, exchange information about each other. And—to borrow the phrasing of the man who called—we might then move on somewhere. So I need to make sure to bring what’s important to me, what I don’t want to leave behind—and pack it away so that I can have both hands free.

I have no regrets about leaving here. I lived here for seven years, taught three days a week at the cram school, but never once felt it was home. Like a floating island bobbing along in the flow, it was just a temporary place to rest, and nothing more. My girlfriend is no longer here. Fuka-Eri, too, who shared the place briefly—gone. Tengo had no idea where these two women were now, or what they were doing. They had simply, and quietly, vanished from his life. If he left the cram school, someone else would surely take over. The world would keep on turning, even without him. If Aomame wanted to move on somewhere with him, there was nothing to keep him from going.

What could be the important thing he should take with him? Fifty thousand yen in cash and a plastic debit card—that was the extent of the assets he had at hand. There was also one million yen in a savings account. No—there was more. His share of the royalties from Air Chrysalis was in the account as well. He had been meaning to return it to Komatsu but hadn’t gotten around to it. Then there was the printout of the novel he had begun. He couldn’t leave that behind. It had no real value to anyone else, but to Tengo it was precious. He put the manuscript in a paper bag, then stuffed it into the hard, russet nylon shoulder bag he used when he went to the cram school. The bag was really heavy now. He crammed floppy disks into the pocket of his leather jacket. He couldn’t very well take his word processor along with him, but he did add his notebooks and fountain pen to his luggage. What else? he wondered.

He remembered the envelope the lawyer had given him in Chikura. Inside were his father’s savings book and seal, a copy of their family record, and the mysterious family photo (if indeed that was what it was). It was probably best to take that with him. His elementary school report cards and the NHK commendations he would leave behind. He decided against taking a change of clothes or toiletries. They wouldn’t fit in the now-bulging bag, and besides, he could buy them as needed.

Once he had packed everything in the bag, he had nothing left to do. There were no dishes to wash, no shirts left to iron. He looked at the wall clock again. Ten thirty. He thought he should call his friend to take over his classes at the cram school, but then remembered that his friend was always in a terrible mood if you phoned before noon.

Tengo lay down on his bed, fully clothed, and let his mind wander through various possibilities. The last time he saw Aomame was when he was ten. Now they were both thirty. They had both gone through a lot of experiences in the interim. Good things, things that weren’t so good (probably slightly more of the latter). Our looks, our personalities, the environment where we live have all gone through changes, he thought. We’re no longer a young boy and a young girl. Is the Aomame over there really the Aomame he had been searching for? And was he the Tengo Kawana she had been looking for? Tengo pictured them on the slide tonight looking at each other, disappointed at what they saw. Maybe they wouldn’t find anything to talk about. That was a real possibility. Actually, it would be kind of strange if it didn’t turn out that way.

Maybe we shouldn’t meet again. Tengo stared up at the ceiling. Wasn’t it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core—a tiny flame to cup one’s hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.

Tengo stared at the ceiling for a good hour, two conflicting emotions surging through him. More than anything, he wanted to meet Aomame. At the same time, he was afraid to see her. The cold disappointment and uncomfortable silence that might ensue made him shudder. His body felt like it was going to be torn in half. But he had to see her. This is what he had been wanting, what he had been hoping for with all his might, for the last twenty years. No matter what disappointment might come of it, he knew he couldn’t just turn his back on it and run away.

Tired of staring at the ceiling, he fell asleep on the bed, still lying faceup. A quiet, dreamless sleep of some forty or forty-five minutes—the deep, satisfying sleep you get after concentrating hard, after mental exhaustion. He realized that for the last few days he had only slept in fits and starts and hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep. Before it got dark, he needed to rid himself of the fatigue that had built up. He had to be rested and relaxed when he left here and headed for the playground. He knew this instinctively.

As he was falling asleep, he heard Kumi Adachi’s voice—or he felt like he heard it. When morning comes you’ll be leaving here, Tengo. Before the exit is blocked.

This was Kumi’s voice, and at the same time it was the voice of the owl at night. In his memory the voices were mixed, and hard to distinguish from each other. What Tengo needed then more than anything was wisdom—the wisdom of the night that had put down roots into the soil. A wisdom that might only be found in the depths of sleep.

At six thirty Tengo slung his bag diagonally across his shoulders and left his apartment. He had on the same clothes as the last time he went to the slide: gray windbreaker and old leather jacket, jeans, and brown work boots. All of them were worn but they fit well, like an extension of his body. I probably won’t ever be back here again, he thought. As a precaution he took the typed cards with his name on them out of the door slot and the mailbox. What would happen to everything else? He decided not to worry about it for now.

As he stood at the entrance to the apartment building, he peered around cautiously. If he believed Fuka-Eri, he was being watched. But just as before, there was no sign of surveillance. Everything was the same as always. Now that the sun had set, the road in front of him was deserted. He set off for the station, at a slow pace. He glanced back from time to time to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He turned down several narrow streets he didn’t need to take, then came to a stop and checked again to see if anyone was tailing him. You have to be careful, the man on the phone had cautioned. For yourself, and for Aomame, who’s in a tense situation.

But does the man on the phone really know Aomame? Tengo suddenly wondered. Couldn’t this be some kind of clever trap? Once this thought took hold, he couldn’t shake off a sense of unease. If this really was a trap, then Sakigake had to be behind it. As the ghostwriter of Air Chrysalis he was probably—no, make that definitely—on their blacklist. Which is why that weird guy, Ushikawa, came to him with that suspicious story about a grant. On top of that, Tengo had let Fuka-Eri hide out in his apartment for three months. There were more than enough reasons for the cult to be upset with him.

Be that as it may, Tengo thought, inclining his head, why would they go to the trouble of using Aomame as bait to lure me into a trap? They already know where I am. It’s not like I’m running away and hiding. If they have some business with me, they should approach me directly. There’s no need to lure me out to that slide in the playground. Things would be different if the opposite were true—if they were using me as bait to get Aomame.

But why lure her out?

He couldn’t understand it. Was there, by chance, some connection between Aomame and Sakigake? Tengo’s deductive reasoning hit a dead end. The only thing he could do was to ask Aomame herself—assuming he could meet her.

At any rate, as the man on the phone said, he would have to be cautious. Tengo scrupulously took a roundabout route and made sure no one was following him. Once certain of that, he hurried off in the direction of the playground....

He arrived at the playground at seven minutes to seven. It was dark out already, and the mercury-vapor lamp shone its even, artificial illumination into every nook and cranny of the tiny park. The afternoon had been lovely and warm, but now that the sun had set the temperature had dropped sharply, and a cold wind was blowing. The pleasant Indian summer weather they had had for a few days had vanished, and real winter, cold and severe, had settled in for the duration. The tips of the zelkova tree’s branches trembled, like the fingers of some ancient person shaking out a warning, with a desiccated, raspy sound.

Lights were on in several of the windows in the buildings nearby, but the playground was deserted. Tengo’s heart under the leather jacket beat out a slow but heavy rhythm. He rubbed his hands together repeatedly, to see if they had normal sensation. Everything’s fine, he told himself. I’m all set. Nothing to be afraid of. He made up his mind and started climbing up the ladder of the slide.

Once on top, he sat down as he had before. The bottom of the slide was cold and slightly damp. With his hands in his pockets, he leaned against the railing and looked up at the sky. There were clouds of all sizes—several large ones, several small ones. Tengo squinted and looked for the moons, but at the moment they weren’t visible, hidden behind the clouds. These weren’t dense, heavy clouds, but rather smooth white ones. Still, they were thick and substantial enough to hide the moons from his gaze. The clouds were gliding slowly from north to south. The wind didn’t seem too strong. Or maybe the clouds were actually higher up than they looked? At any rate, they weren’t in much of a hurry.

Tengo glanced at his watch. The hands showed three past seven, ticking away the time ever more accurately. Still no Aomame. Tengo spent several minutes gazing at the hands of his watch as if they were something extraordinary. Then he shut his eyes. Like the clouds on the wind, he was in no hurry. If things took time, he didn’t mind. He stopped thinking and gave himself over to the flow of time. At this moment, time’s natural, even flow was the most important thing.

With his eyes closed, he carefully listened to the sounds around him, as if searching for stations on a radio. He could hear the ceaseless hum of traffic on the expressway. It reminded him of the Pacific surf at the sanatorium in Chikura. A few seagull calls must have been mixed in as well. He could hear the intermittent beep as a large truck backed up, and a huge dog barking a short, sharp warning. Far away someone was shouting out a person’s name. He couldn’t tell where all these sounds were coming from. With his eyes closed for this long, each and every sound lost its sense of direction and distance. The freezing wind swirled up from time to time, but he didn’t feel the cold.

Tengo had temporarily forgotten how to feel or react to all stimulations and sensations.

He was suddenly aware of someone sitting beside him, holding his right hand. Like a small creature seeking warmth, a hand slipped inside the pocket of his leather jacket and clasped his large hand. By the time he became fully aware, it had already happened. Without any preface, the situation had jumped to the next stage. How strange, Tengo thought, his eyes still closed. How did this happen? At one point time was flowing along so slowly that he could barely stand it. Then suddenly it had leapt ahead, skipping whatever lay between.

This person held his big hand even tighter, as if to make sure he was really there. Long smooth fingers, with an underlying strength.

Aomame. But he didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t open his eyes. He just squeezed her hand in return. He remembered this hand. Never once in twenty years had he forgotten the feeling. Of course, it was no longer the tiny hand of a ten-year-old girl. Over the past twenty years her hand had touched many things. It had clasped untold numbers of objects in every possible shape. And the strength within it had grown. Yet Tengo knew right away: this was the very same hand. The way it squeezed his own hand and the feeling it was trying to convey were exactly the same.

Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years—all he had seen, all the words he had spoken, all the values he had held—all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter’s wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet.

Aomame kept silent as well. The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had no idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn’t get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn’t know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness.

How much time had passed? Five minutes, perhaps, or was it an hour? Or a whole day? Or maybe time had stood still. What did Tengo understand about time? He knew he could stay like this forever, the two of them silent on top of the slide, holding hands. He had felt that way at age ten, and now, twenty years on, he felt the same.

He knew, too, that it would take time for him to acclimate himself to this new world that had come upon him. His entire way of thinking, his way of seeing things, the way he breathed, the way he moved his body—he would need to adjust and rethink every single element of life. And to do that, he needed to gather together all the time that existed in this world. No—maybe the whole world wouldn’t be enough.

“Tengo,” Aomame whispered, a voice neither low or high—a voice holding out a promise. “Open your eyes.”

Tengo opened his eyes. Time began to flow again in the world.

“There’s the moon,” Aomame said.