Like a lonely castaway
Not only is her family background what isolated Aomame from the rest of her peers since her childhood and created her mistrust, but also her name which she was often made fun of for. Her name is a rare one, and she never met anyone with the same, and it made her feel like a lonely castaway on the open sea.
Like a frightened little animal
Discussing Fuka-Eri’s book and the prospect of Tengo rewriting it, Komatsu notes that Tengo has the intelligence and power to achieve greatness with his writing, but doesn’t have an idea what he should write about. He has something hidden inside him that he needs to write about, but can’t seem to get it out. It is like a frightened little animal hiding inside a cave.
A skilled carpenter
When Tengo finally sets out to rewrite Fuka-Eri’s Air Chrysalis he notices that it doesn’t turn out to be as difficult as he initially thought. He works slowly, in sections like remodeling a condo. He compares himself to a skilled carpenter who’s been put in charge of everything. Later on, Tengo will realize that he wanted to rewrite the book from the moment he set eyes on it, he felt the urge to make it available to the public, an urge that didn’t only come from inside himself.
Cage
Aomame has self-reflective thoughts about her life and childhood. She realizes that the habits that she was forced to follow in the strict family surroundings followed her into her independent adulthood. She still keeps a modest living because she realized, after being free, that all the things that were finally accessible to her only reminded her of the childhood trauma. Aomame reflects on freedom and compares it to a cage.
“Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren’t you just in another, larger one?”
