Ritiro delle Ninjette is a secluded mountain retreat in California, reached by a long ascent through increasingly difficult roads. Its role in the novel is both practical and transformative: DL comes there seeking expiation, while Takeshi Fumimota’s arrival converts her private remorse into a formal obligation that binds the two of them together.

Setting and Arrival

The retreat stands high among the California mountains, on a ridge reached after a day-long journey eastward. Takeshi plans his route by studying a road map, weighing alternative paths and possible changes of direction before beginning the climb. The journey itself becomes a trial of endurance; by the time he reaches the retreat, he is no longer fully in command of himself and attracts more attention than he wants.

He arrives after seeing his former wife, Michiko Yomama, on television. The encounter leaves him in grief, but the following day he resumes travelling, buying an ukulele and the blue-and-tan suit he will wear when Prairie Wheeler meets him. His arrival brings an unsettled history with DL into the retreat’s courtyard: he recognizes her as the woman whose earlier attack left him technically dead, while his desire for her persists. The mountain sanctuary therefore receives not a composed seeker but a visitor carrying grief, danger, and an unresolved attachment.

The Courtyard and DL’s Penance

Sister Rochelle interrupts the tense exchange between Takeshi and DL. She judges that the two belong together and orders DL, under penalty of severe sanctions, to serve as Takeshi’s devoted aide as a way of repairing the wrong she has done him. DL stipulates that their arrangement must involve no sex. When she asks how long the penance will last, Sister Rochelle sets its duration at one year and one day, linking the term to the time DL’s earlier action had taken from Takeshi’s life.

The order makes the retreat more than a secluded training ground: its discipline is applied to a specific injury and relationship. DL’s wish for expiation is redirected into sustained service, while Takeshi objects to her having to accompany him. Their bickering as they leave the courtyard with the novices watching gives the new partnership an immediately practical, uneasy form rather than a reconciliation.

The Clinic and Its Machinery

Sister Rochelle leads them to the retreat’s clinic, her source of pride, where the Puncutron is housed. The clinic occupies a spacious former barn divided into treatment rooms. At its center stands the enormous Puncutron, a therapeutic machine bristling with antennae and attachments and rising to the height of a two-storey building.

The device is presented as one of the therapeutic appliances freely sold in California at the time. Its appearance does little to reassure a patient, although it has supporters in the health-care world and has so far stayed ahead of the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to challenge its manufacturers. The clinic’s mixture of alternative treatment, institutional confidence, and regulatory evasion gives the retreat a distinctly material counterpart to its language of karmic repair: spiritual imbalance is discussed alongside a conspicuous machine intended to correct a bodily flow.

Prairie’s Visit and the Retreat’s Wider Role

The retreat also becomes a place where Prairie hears difficult information about her mother. In its sunlit kitchen, DL tells her what she has learned about Frenesi Gates and Weed Atman: the gun was in someone else’s hand, but Weed says Frenesi helped arrange what happened. Prairie’s question about whether her mother killed a man registers the personal stakes of the disclosure. The retreat thus shelters not only training and penance but a conversation that alters Prairie’s understanding of her family history.

The year-and-one-day obligation established there shapes the later connection between DL and Takeshi. The narrative eventually marks the dropping of their no-sex clause after the first year, recalling the retreat’s prescribed term as a boundary that has lasted rather than a casual rule. Ritiro delle Ninjette is therefore a threshold in their story: DL arrives seeking a way to answer for the past, and leaves with a continuing responsibility to Takeshi and a relationship whose terms can change only with time.