Aomame arrives for a scheduled meeting at Willow House. Both Tamaru and the dowager look utterly defeated; shortly after the guard dog’s baffling death, Tsubasa disappeared. The dowager believes that Tsubasa left on her own accord, but she is devastated, nevertheless. Her theory is that Bun’s murder was a message to Tsubasa that she must leave or else terrible things will continue to happen to those she cares about.

The dowager changes the subject to discuss plans to assassinate Leader. She says there are at least three other victims of child rape, and the earliest victim was Leader’s daughter, whom he raped seven years ago when she was ten. The dowager advises Aomame that this job won’t differ significantly from previous jobs, except that she will have to disappear afterwards, moving far away and even getting plastic surgery to change her face. Even though Aomame’s method leaves no evidence of foul play, the fanatical members of Sakigake will surely throw all of their energies into tracking down the last person who saw him alive and torturing her for information. Given that this will likely be the last time she sees the dowager, Aomame expresses her gratitude, characterizing the older woman as a surrogate for Aomame’s biological mother, who renounced her after she left the Society of Witnesses at age ten.