Convinced of his sincerity, Aomame murders Leader by stabbing a tiny ice pick into his neck. Furthermore, Leader welcomes his own murder because he is in extraordinary pain and no longer wishes to serve the Little People, who compel him to rape young girls. When Aomame is alone with Leader, he appears to have foreknowledge of his assassination. Aomame’s benefactor orders him to be killed because he routinely rapes prepubescent girls. Meanwhile, Aomame is tasked with assassinating Leader, who at this point is revealed to be Fuka-Eri’s father and the rapist from whom she ran away at age ten. Later, Tengo learns that at age ten Fuka-Eri escaped from Sakigake, a shadowy religious commune led by a mysterious individual known only as “Leader.” Set in a world with two moons, Air Chrysalis tells the story of a ten-year-old girl living in a religious commune who encounters fantastical creatures known as the Little People. His friend and editor Komatsu asks him to ghostwrite a draft of a novella called Air Chrysalis which was submitted to the editor’s publishing house by a 17-year-old young woman named Fuka-Eri. Today, Tengo is a 29-year-old math teacher and writer. For the past 20 years, Aomame and Tengo have harbored a secret love for one another, even though they haven’t seen each other since fifth grade. Interspersed with Aomame’s narrative are chapters written from the perspective of Tengo Kawana, a classmate who knew Aomame in elementary school. When she emerges at street level, Aomame notices subtle changes that weren’t there just hours earlier and later sees that there are two moons in the sky. Before she does so, the cab driver warns her, “fter you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little” (9). Rather than miss her appointment, Aomame leaves the cab and descends an emergency stairway. She is running late for an appointment at a hotel, where she plans to assassinate a wealthy oil executive as retribution for abusing his wife. In 1984 Tokyo, 30-year-old Masami Aomame sits in a cab that is stuck in traffic on the expressway. This study guide refers to the 2011 edition published by Alfred A.
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