The Willow Apartment is the Azabu residence associated with the elderly woman who trains with Aomamé and later directs her clandestine work. It serves as a meeting place for their practical lessons and as the point of reference for a covert arrangement whose payments are routed through Tamaru and kept untouched by Aomamé.

Setting and Introduction

Aomamé first meets the elderly woman through her work at a sports club, where the woman attends Aomamé’s self-defense class. The class is described as radical and short-lived: much of its training consists of striking a mannequin. The woman is the smallest and oldest participant, but she moves lightly and has an agile kick. Aomamé recognizes in her a directness she respects, imagining that, if necessary, she would kick an assailant in the testicles without hesitation or evasions.

At the end of one class, the woman remarks that at her age she no longer really needs protection from an attacker. Aomamé rejects age as the issue. What matters, she says, is how one lives and whether one remains able to protect oneself; resignation to being attacked leads nowhere, and chronic powerlessness destroys a person. The residence in Azabu becomes the setting for the continuing connection between this conviction and the elderly woman’s life.

A Place of Continuing Work

The relationship extends beyond the initial class. Aomamé is scheduled to give the woman a stretching session at the Willow Apartment at three o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. The appointment has been moved from Friday because the woman must go to the hospital for an examination; Tamaru reminds Aomamé of the change. Even after a night of heavy drinking, Aomamé recalls the obligation and expects that her headache will have passed before the session.

This appointment places the residence within Aomamé’s routine of work as well as her secret activities. The visit is presented as a concrete, practical commitment—an exercise session adjusted around a medical examination—rather than as an overtly dramatic encounter. That everyday arrangement gives the later covert transactions a foothold in an established relationship of instruction and service.

Secret Payments and the Security Network

After Aomamé carries out the assignments given to her, the elderly woman pays her through an anonymous system. A bundle of banknotes, wrapped in sturdy paper with no recipient named and no sender’s name or address, is left in a post-office box. Tamaru gives Aomamé the key; she retrieves the contents and returns it to him. She then places the money in a bank safe-deposit box without counting it. Two compact bundles, brick-like in appearance, have accumulated there.

The payments are not necessary for Aomamé’s living expenses: she does not spend even her monthly salary, which remains in reserve. When she explains this after receiving her first payment, the elderly woman calls the money a matter of form or protocol and insists that Aomamé accept it. She tells her not to use it if she does not need it, and suggests that, if the money is repugnant to her, she could donate it anonymously to charity. Her own advice is to deposit it somewhere and leave it untouched for a while. The Willow Apartment is thus linked not simply to care and exercise, but to a discreet arrangement in which remuneration, anonymity, and restraint are all deliberate.

Narrative Significance

The residence brings together two sides of the elderly woman’s connection with Aomamé. She is at once a participant in a self-defense class, a person with an ordinary appointment for stretching, and the source of assignments that lead to secret compensation. The contrast between the plain routines attached to the apartment and the anonymous bundles of cash makes the covert network feel embedded in daily life rather than separate from it.

The exchanges also echo Aomamé’s insistence that people must remain able to protect themselves. The woman initially frames self-protection as less necessary at her age; Aomamé answers with a principle about living without surrendering to powerlessness. Their continuing association at the Willow Apartment gives that principle a practical context, while the payments reveal the material consequences of Aomamé’s work without suggesting that money is her motive.