« Ce que nous faisons est juste. »

The statement “Ce que nous faisons est juste” is the Dowager’s recurring justification for her covert work, offered to Aomamé as reassurance and accepted with visible hesitation. Its repetition gives their undertaking a moral formula, but the need to repeat it also leaves room for doubt about what that certainty is meant to contain.

The phrase in conversation

The Dowager first declares that they are doing nothing wrong while looking directly into Aomamé’s eyes. Aomamé bites her lip lightly, then nods. When the Dowager asks whether she agrees, Aomamé assents, and the older woman restates the conviction: what they are doing is right. The exchange makes the phrase more than an abstract principle; it is a compact affirmation passed between the two women at a moment when agreement needs to be made explicit.

The Dowager rises and picks up an empty watering can, holding it as if it were a precision weapon. Her face has paled, and she fixes her gaze on a corner of the greenhouse. Aomamé looks there too, but sees only potted thistles. The juxtaposition gives the assurance a tense setting: the words insist on moral clarity while the Dowager’s gesture and expression suggest the weight of the work behind them.

A repeated reassurance

As the meeting ends, the Dowager accompanies Aomamé by the arm and tells her not to worry, then asks her to remember that what they are doing is right. Aomamé recognizes the pattern: their conversations always end with the same words. She considers that the older woman may repeat them to convince herself, like a mantra or a prayer. The phrase thus works in two directions—comforting Aomamé while also revealing that the Dowager may need reassurance of her own.

The repetition does not resolve the ethical question so much as mark how insistently the women must live with it. The Dowager’s confidence is stated plainly, but Aomamé’s perception of the words as self-persuasion keeps a small gap between declaration and certainty. The text leaves that gap open rather than supplying a final judgment.

The greenhouse and the world outside

The assurance belongs to an enclosed greenhouse, where no sound from the outside world enters and a butterfly continues to sleep peacefully. After leaving, Aomamé checks that there are no butterflies around her, opens the door, and steps into the brisk, fresh air. She registers the scents of trees and lawn as belonging to the real world, where time follows its usual course, and fills her lungs with that air.

That movement out of the greenhouse gives the recurring phrase a quiet frame. Inside, it serves as a protective moral refrain; outside, ordinary time and physical surroundings resume. The contrast does not negate the Dowager’s conviction, but it separates the sheltered space in which the women affirm it from the world to which their actions belong.