Aomame continued tapping on her teeth with the top end of her ballpoint pen as her mind spun furiously. She kept this up for a long time until finally, the thought struck her: Maybe I can look at it this way—the problem is not with me but with the world around me. It’s not that my consciousness or mind has given rise to some abnormality, but rather that some kind of incomprehensible power has caused the world around me to change.
