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Aomame felt not the slightest regret at having caused male club members to feel anxious and a

It was Aomame’s opinion that, if she were unable to deliver an effective kick to the balls when forcefully attacked by a man, there would be very little else left for her to try. In the actual heat of combat, it was virtually impossible to perform such high-level techniques as grabbing your opponent’s arm and twisting it behind his back. That only happened in the movies. Rather than attempting such a feat, a woman would be far better off ru

In any case, Aomame had mastered at least ten separate techniques for kicking men in the balls. She had even gone so far as to have several younger men she knew from college put on protective cups and let her practice on them. “Your kicks really hurt, even with the cup on,” one of them had screamed in pain. “No more, please!” If the need arose, she knew, she would never hesitate to apply her sophisticated techniques in actual combat. If there’s any guy crazy enough to attack me, I’m going to show him the end of the world—close up. I’m going to let him see the kingdom come with his own eyes. I’m going to send him straight to the Southern Hemisphere and let the ashes of death rain all over him and the kangaroos and the wallabies.

.    .    .

As she pondered the coming of the kingdom, Aomame sat at the bar taking little sips of her Tom Collins. She would glance at her wristwatch every now and then, pretending that she was here to meet someone, but in fact she had made no such arrangement. She was simply keeping an eye out for a suitable man among the bar’s arriving patrons. Her watch said eight thirty. She wore a pale blue blouse beneath a dark brown Calvin Klein jacket and a navy-blue miniskirt. Her handmade ice pick was not with her today. It was resting peacefully, wrapped in a towel in her dresser drawer at home.

This was a well-known singles bar in the Roppongi entertainment district. Single men came here on the prowl for single women—or vice versa. A lot of them were foreigners. The bar was meant to look like a place where Hemingway might have hung out in the Bahamas. A stuffed swordfish hung on the wall, and fishing nets dangled from the ceiling. There were lots of photographs of people posing with giant fish they had caught, and there was a portrait of Hemingway. Happy Papa Hemingway. The people who came here were apparently not concerned that the author later suffered from alcoholism and killed himself with a hunting rifle.

Several men approached Aomame that evening, but none she liked. A pair of typically footloose college students invited her to join them, but she couldn’t be bothered to respond. To a thirtyish company employee with creepy eyes she said she was here to meet someone and turned him down flat. She just didn’t like young men. They were so aggressive and self-confident, but they had nothing to talk about, and whatever they had to say was boring. In bed, they went at it like animals and had no clue about the true enjoyment of sex. She liked those slightly tired middle-aged men, preferably in the early stages of baldness. They should be clean and free of any hint of vulgarity. And they had to have well-shaped heads. Such men were not easy to find, which meant that she had to be willing to compromise.

Sca

On the bar’s big wall television, Queen was performing. Aomame didn’t much like Queen’s music. She tried her best not to look in that direction. She also tried hard not to listen to the music coming from the speakers. After the Queen video ended, ABBA came on. Oh, no. Something tells me this is going to be an awful night.

.    .    .

Aomame had met the dowager of Willow House at the sports club where she worked. The woman was enrolled in Aomame’s self-defense class, the short-lived radical one that emphasized attacking the doll. She was a small woman, the oldest member of the class, but her movements were light and her kicks sharp. In a tight situation, I’m sure she could kick her opponent in the balls without the slightest hesitation. She never speaks more than necessary, and when she does speak she never beats around the bush. Aomame liked that about her. “At my age, there’s no special need for self-defense,” the woman said to Aomame with a dignified smile after class.

“Age has nothing to do with it,” Aomame snapped back. “It’s a question of how you live your life. The important thing is to adopt a stance of always being deadly serious about protecting yourself. You can’t go anywhere if you just resign yourself to being attacked. A state of chronic powerlessness eats away at a person.”

The dowager said nothing for a while, looking Aomame in the eye. Either Aomame’s words or her tone of voice seemed to have made a strong impression on her. She nodded gravely. “You’re right. You are absolutely right,” she said. “You have obviously done some solid thinking about this.”

A few days later, Aomame received an envelope. It had been left at the club’s front desk for her. Inside Aomame found a short, beautifully pe

A man answered the phone—a secretary, it seemed. When Aomame gave her name, he switched her to an extension without a word. The dowager came on the line and thanked her for calling. “If it’s not too much bother, I’d like to invite you out for a meal,” she said. “I’d like to have a nice, long talk with you, just the two of us.”

“With pleasure,” Aomame said.

“How would tomorrow night be for you?”

Aomame had no problem with that, but she had to wonder what this elegant older woman could possibly want to speak about with someone like her.

The two had di

She wanted Aomame to become her personal trainer, instructing her in martial arts at her home two or three days a week. Also, if possible, she wanted Aomame to help her with muscle stretching.