Once a week his married girlfriend would come to spend the afternoon with him. Sex with a married woman ten years his senior was stress free and fulfilling, because it couldn’t lead to anything. As the sun was setting, he would head out for a long walk, and once the sun was down he would read a book while listening to music. He never watched television. Whenever the NHK fee collector came, he would point out that he had no television set, and politely refuse to pay. “I really don’t have one. You can come in and look if you want,” he would say, but the collector would never come in. They were not allowed to.

“I have something bigger in mind,” Komatsu said.

“Something bigger?”

“Much bigger. Why be satisfied with small-scale stuff like the new writers’ prize? As long as we’re aiming, why not go for something big?”

Tengo fell silent. He had no idea what Komatsu was getting at, but he sensed something disturbing.

“The Akutagawa Prize!” Komatsu declared after a moment’s pause.

“The Akutagawa Prize?” Tengo repeated the words slowly, as if he were writing them in huge characters with a stick on wet sand.

“Come on, Tengo, you can’t be that out of touch! The Akutagawa Prize! Every writer’s dream! Huge headlines in the paper! TV news!”

“Now you’re losing me. Are we still talking about Fuka-Eri?”

“Of course we are-Fuka-Eri and Air Chrysalis. Have we been discussing anything else?”

Tengo bit his lip as he tried to fathom the meaning behind Komatsu’s words. “But you yourself said there’s no way Air Chrysalis can take the new writers’ prize. Haven’t we been talking about that all along, how the work will never amount to anything the way it is?”

“Precisely. It’ll never amount to anything the way it is. That is for certain.”