Aomame

The morning after meeting Ayumi, Aomame awakes at home in her own bed with no memory of how she got there. She has a terrible hangover, which is unusual for her, and she cannot remember much from last night. She has a fuzzy memory of having sex with one man and then, after meeting back up with Ayumi, trading partners and having sex with the other man as well.

In the afternoon, Aomame goes to Willow House to give the dowager a deep tissue massage. The dowager accepts the painful treatment and says that it does her good. She suggests that Aomame consider having a committed relationship. At this, Aomame admits that she is already in love. However, the man does not know she exists, and she has no intention of revealing herself to him. The dowager hears this with an obvious sense of sadness.

This conversation makes Aomame think about the death of her childhood friend Tamaki Otsuka. Tamaki and Aomame met in high school. They bonded because they were the two best players on their school’s softball team and because they both had difficult home lives. Aomame, for reasons not yet revealed in the story, had left her family in fifth grade and gone to live with an uncle. She felt constantly lonely because she lacked her own family. Meanwhile, Tamaki’s parents had a “terrible relationship” that “turned the home into a wasteland.” Both girls badly needed consistent support, so for that they turned to each other.

Aomame and Tamaki remained friends into adulthood. Tamaki was unusually intellectually gifted, so she went to a university and to law school. Aomame attended a college of physical education and continued playing softball. For years they saw each other weekly. Aomame sought stability in adulthood, but Tamaki was “a born victim” who sought out a long series of bad relationships with men. While Aomame remained a virgin, Tamaki flung herself into a rocky sex life and, eventually, a bad marriage. After the wedding, she stopped seeing Aomame. On the phone, Tamaki claimed her life was wonderful, but then one day she wrote a letter expressing the exact opposite:

I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prison. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key...I deserve all the pain I am feeling.

After reading these frightening words, Aomame tried to visit her friend, but she was already too late. Tamaki had hung herself. A subsequent autopsy revealed that she had been brutally abused by her husband.

After a period of grief, Aomame decided to enact revenge. Drawing on her training in acupuncture, she devised the ice pick tool that could kill a man instantly. After she used it on Tamaki’s husband, she said the following prayer:

O Lord in Heaven, may Thy name be praised in utmost purity for ever and ever, and may Thy kingdom come to us. Please forgive our many sins, and bestow Thy blessings upon our humble pathways. Amen.

This is the same prayer that Tengo remembers hearing a girl in his class say every day in elementary school. This strongly suggests that Aomame is that girl.