engo, open your eyes,” Aomame whispered. Tengo opened his eyes. Time began to flow again in the world.

“There’s the moon,” Aomame said.

Tengo raised his face and looked up at the sky. The clouds had parted and above the bare branches of the zelkova tree he could make out the moons. A large yellow moon and a smaller, misshapen green one. Maza and dohta. The glow colored the edges of the passing clouds, like a long skirt whose hem had been accidentally dipped in dye.

Tengo turned now to look over at Aomame sitting beside him. She was no longer a skinny, undernourished ten-year-old girl, dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs, her hair crudely trimmed by her mother. There was little left of the girl she had been, yet Tengo knew her at a glance. This was clearly Aomame and no other. Her eyes, brimming with expression, were the same, even after twenty years. Strong, unclouded, clear eyes. Eyes that knew exactly what they longed for. Eyes that knew full well what they should see, and weren’t going to let anyone get in her way. And those eyes were looking right at him. Straight into his heart.

Aomame had spent the last twenty years somewhere unknown to him. During that time, she had grown into a beautiful woman. Instantly and without reservation, Tengo absorbed all those places, and all that time, and they became a part of his own flesh and blood. They were his places now. His time.

I should say something, Tengo thought, but no words would come. He moved his lips, just barely, searching for proper words in the air, but they were nowhere to be found. All that came out from between his lips were swirls of white breath, like a wandering solitary island. As she gazed into his eyes, Aomame gave a slight shake of her head, just once. Tengo understood what that meant. You don’t have to say a thing. She continued to hold his hand inside his pocket. She didn’t let go, not even for a moment.

“We’re seeing the same thing,” Aomame said quietly as she gazed deep into his eyes. This was, at once, a question and a confirmation.

“There are two moons,” Aomame said.

Tengo nodded. There are two moons. He didn’t say this aloud. For some reason his voice wouldn’t come. He just thought it.

Aomame closed her eyes. She curled up and pressed her cheek against his chest. Her ear was right above his heart. She was listening to his thoughts. “I needed to know this,” Aomame said. “That we’re in the same world, seeing the same things.”

Tengo suddenly noticed that the whirling pillar rising up inside him had vanished. All that surrounded him now was a quiet winter night. There were lights on in a few of the windows in the apartment building across the way, hinting at people other than themselves alive in this world. This struck the two of them as exceedingly strange, even as somehow illogical—that other people could also exist, and be living their lives, in the same world.

Tengo leaned over slightly and breathed in the fragrance of Aomame’s hair. Beautiful, straight hair. Her small, pink ears peeped out like shy little creatures.

It was such a long time, Aomame thought.

It was such a long time, Tengo thought too. At the same time, though, he noticed how the twenty years that had passed now held no substance. It had all passed by in an instant, and took but an instant to be filled in.

Tengo took his hand out of his pocket and put it around her shoulder. Through his palm he could feel the wholeness of her body. He raised his face and looked up at the moons again. Through breaks in the clouds, the odd pair of moons was still bathing the earth in a strange mix of color. The clouds made their way leisurely across the sky. Under that light, Tengo once again keenly felt the mind’s ability to relativize time. Twenty years was a long time. But Tengo knew that if he were to meet Aomame in another twenty years, he would feel the same way he did now. Even if they were both over fifty, he would still feel the same mix of excitement and confusion in her presence. His heart would be filled with the same joy and certainty.

Tengo kept these thoughts to himself, but he knew that Aomame was listening carefully to these unspoken words. Her little pink ear pressed against his chest. She was hearing everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and conjure up vivid, living scenery.

“I want to stay here forever and forget all about time,” Aomame said in a small voice. “But there’s something the two of us have to do.”

We have to move on, Tengo thought.

“That’s right, we have to move on,” Aomame said. “The sooner the better. We don’t have much time left. Though I can’t yet put into words where we’re going.”

There’s no need for words, Tengo thought.

“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” Aomame asked.

Tengo shook his head. The winds of reality had not extinguished the flame in his heart. There was nothing more significant.

“We will never be apart,” Aomame said. “That’s more clear than anything. We will never let go of each other’s hand again.”

A new cloud appeared and gradually swallowed up the moons. The shadow enveloping the world grew one shade deeper.

“We have to hurry,” Aomame whispered. The two of them stood up on the slide. Once again their shadows became one. Like little children groping their way through a dark forest, they held on tightly to each other’s hand.

“We’re going to leave the cat town,” Tengo said, speaking aloud for the first time. Aomame treasured this fresh, newborn voice.

“The cat town?”

“The town at the mercy of a deep loneliness during the day and, come night, of large cats. There’s a beautiful river running through it, and an old stone bridge spanning the river. But it’s not where we should stay.”

We call this world by different names, Aomame thought. I call it the year 1Q84, while he calls it the cat town. But it all means the same thing. Aomame squeezed his hand even tighter.

“You’re right, we’re going to leave the cat town now. The two of us, together,” Aomame said. “Once we leave this town, day or night, we will never be apart.”

As the two of them hurried out of the park, the pair of moons remained hidden behind the slowly moving clouds. The eyes of the moons were covered. And the boy and the girl, hand in hand, made their way out of the forest.