Inside him, twenty years dissolved and mixed into one complex, swirling whole. Everything that had accumulated over the years—all he had seen, all the words he had spoken, all the values he had held—all of it coalesced into one solid, thick pillar in his heart, the core of which was spinning like a potter’s wheel. Wordlessly, Tengo observed the scene, as if watching the destruction and rebirth of a planet. Aomame kept silent as well. The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands.
