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seemed to be pleading with him about something. The woman was young and beautiful; in a way, she resembled Paprika.
    “Who’s that woman?” Freeze-frame.
    “The wife of one of our employees, a man called Namba. But I’ve never actually met her in the flesh.”
    “Well, does she look like someone else?”
    “No one in particular. You, perhaps.”
    “And who’s the man in the photo?”
    “That’s Namba.”
    “So Namba’s dead.”
    “Yes, but in reality he’s very much alive. I met him just this afternoon.”
    “Is he one of your enemies in the company?”
    “Quite the opposite. He’s very important to me – he manages the Development Office.”
    “So he’s your junior?”
    “Yes, but it doesn’t feel like that. To me he’s a colleague, a comrade in arms, an ally – someone I can talk to.”
    Paprika started the picture again. After showing mourners at the funeral for a few more moments, the picture suddenly broke off.
    “Yes, that’s when I woke up. When I saw the mourners, it came home to me that Namba really had died – in the dream, I mean. I think it was the shock that woke me.”
    Paprika played the same short dream back twice more.
    “Fancy some coffee? We’ll have it in the next room,” she said as she got up, looking distinctly weary.
    Noda was willing, and they moved to the living room. The bright night view of Shinjuku showed no sign of dimming, even after two in the morning.
    “You seem to have a lot of residues,” Paprika said as she arranged coffee cups on her glass table.
    “Residues?”
    “Residues from your day’s activity. It’s a Freudian term.”
    “You mean the office, Sukenobu, Namba, all that?”
    Paprika poured the finest Blue Mountain coffee into Noda’s cup, with the precision of a scientist transferring a solution from one flask to the other. “You said your Japanese literature teachers ‘all had it in for you,’ didn’t you.”
    “Did I?”
    “You said it twice. But people don’t usually use that phrase in that kind of situation.”
    “I suppose they don’t. They’d normally say they were always being told off, or something like that. So it must have something to do with how I feel about Sukenobu.”
    “So you’re saying this Sukenobu has got it in for you?”
    Noda groaned as he picked up his cup. “Well, now I think about it, that’s not really true either. ‘Itching for a fight’ might be a better phrase.” The rich aroma of the coffee wafted into his nostrils. “Ah, that smells good.”
    Paprika said nothing but gazed out at the night sky, apparently lost in thought as she sipped her coffee.
    “Could I venture my opinion as an amateur?” asked Noda.
    “Go on.”
    “Why did I give the wrong answer to the teacher, even though I knew the right one in reality? Well, it’s a strategy I sometimes use against Sukenobu at work. To deliberately let down my guard, you see, as a trap. So as well as being a ‘residue,’ it could also stem from my superiority complex toward him.”
    “Was that what it was?!” Paprika laughed. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
    “I don’t know why Namba died in the dream. And why did his wife appear, when I’ve never even met her?”
    “An unknown woman who appears in a man’s dream is what Jung calls the anima .”
    “What’s that?”
    “The feminine inner personality present in the subconscious of the male. And a man who appears in a woman’s dream is her animus .”
    “But she looked like you.”
    Paprika blushed. “It was just your impression on meeting me for the first time. You imprinted that on your anima . It wasn’t even a residue of your day!” She almost sounded angry.
    “In that case,” Noda said, calmly returning Paprika’s glare, “if my anima is a representation of myself, or an idealized vision of the feminine inside me, would that dream just now express some feminine concern that Namba could die?”
    “Hmm. What standing does Namba have in your company?”
    “He’s