Edge

by Kōji Suzuki

  Hashiba’s neck had become sore from straining upwards for so long; he massaged his shoulders. The ema with the red marker character on it had fallen back into place, but it looked different somehow, strange. Hashiba looked closer, staring now. He realized that the board was upside down. The character for happiness was symmetrical enough to still be readable upside down—in fact it looked almost the same. However, Hashiba couldn’t shake the feeling that the chance turning of the character wasn’t a good omen. Caught in his reverie he jumped when Kagayama put a hand on his shoulder.

  “There’s something really strange about this place.”

  Hashiba couldn’t help but agree; there was no other way to describe it. The atmosphere was odd somehow, but it was impossible to put your finger on why it felt that way. The sky was already getting dark now; they wouldn’t be able to film anymore in this light. He saw Saeko and Shigeko had managed to stand up.

  “You both okay?” he asked, deciding that at this point it was probably best to go back to the hotel and call it a day.

  He thought back to the Fujimura house at Takato. Even there he had not sensed an air as clearly odd as this. Any anomaly they had felt there was probably influenced by Shigeko’s reaction. Here, however, everyone could sense the odor of something in the air. Hashiba looked down at the goose bumps bristling on his arms—he couldn’t remember the last time he had them. Even at his childhood friend’s house in Mishima, when he’d bumped into someone that shouldn’t have been there in the outhouse, he hadn’t reacted like this. Hashiba rolled his sleeves up and saw that his hairs were all standing on end.

  Hashiba saw Hosokawa approaching, head tilted to one side and left hand raised to it. Extending the hand he said, “Hey, Hashiba, take a look at this …”

  The face of the wristwatch had a large dial for the time and a separate digital display in a small rectangular window that could display the atmospheric pressure, temperature, and bearings. It was the directional index that Hosokawa was drawing attention to:

  350, 349, 345, 341, 337, 332, 322, 320, 314, 311, 305, 299, 256, 243, 219, 199, 172, 145, 123, 99, 33, 9, 321, 269, 190 …

  Hashiba realized that the numbers were shifting according to a rule—on a compass dial, they would be swinging from north to west, to south—counterclockwise. Furthermore, it seemed to be gaining speed.

  “It’s certainly never done this before …”

  Of course not. A compass pointed north no matter where you were; it never spun counterclockwise like that.

  As the phasing continued to accelerate, Hashiba cried, “There’s something up with the geomagnetic field?”

  There seemed no question that the area was experiencing an intense magnetic disturbance. Hashiba wondered if it was something left over from whatever event that spirited away the missing people. Or was it a sign of something else, something yet to occur, another shift towards the abnormal? He looked over to where Saeko stood—trying to catch her eye, perhaps hoping that she would have the answer. At the very least they now knew that there was some sort of connection between the disappearances and a concurrent flux in magnetic fields. Saeko didn’t notice Hashiba’s stare; her eyes were distant, focused out towards the horizon.

  “Anyway, let’s get out of here,” Hosokawa nudged, clearly wanting to get away from the shrine as soon as possible.

  Hashiba felt exactly the same. “Agreed. Back to the hotel.”

  Hashiba was ready to carry Shigeko on his back if he had to, but after she’d stood back up, she seemed able to walk. He stayed at her side and helped her down the stone steps.

  As they reached the base they were greeted by Sodeyama, who was out of breath, having just run up the path. He looked terrified.

  “What happened?” Hashiba asked.

  Sodeyama stooped forwards still gasping for breath, hands on his knees. Eventually, he straightened up, returning Hashiba’s question with one of his own.

  “I saw some sort of cloud appear above the shrine. What the hell was that?”

  “Gulls. A load of gulls flying away—all at once.”

  Sodeyama shook his head in disbelief. “Gulls? Up here?”

  “Have you had that here before?”

  Sodeyama paused. “It looks like the whole system’s gone mad.”

  “The system?” Hashiba wasn’t sure what Sodeyama meant.

  “The whole eco-system. Not just plants, but insects, birds. It’s gone haywire …”

  It’s not just the eco-system, Hashiba thought. Something’s affecting the local magnetic field too … But he didn’t give utterance to the thought. If he didn’t understand the mechanism of what was happening, there was no point in confusing the situation any further.

  Saeko continued to stare eastwards where the huge flock of gulls had flown. She felt chilled to the core, and shivers ran down her spine and stimulated her bladder. She’d been wanting to urinate, and she didn’t think she could hold it anymore. Turning away from the sky, she scanned the area under the Soga Shrine for a toilet. It was then that Saeko noticed.

  Night fell quickly at this time of year, and its shadow darkly stretched in the dense growth surrounding the hollow of the garden path. Beyond, Hatsushima Island floated in the sea, but the color of the water was reddish.

  Slightly above the pale green hue of the inverted curvature of the valley, an orangey-red sheaf of light hovered lazily. She was looking eastwards; it couldn’t be from the sunset. A light that seemed more ethereal, more beautiful than any sunset she had seen before described a meandering arc as it rose upwards into the sky, there depositing subtly varying layers of red.

  During her childhood here in Atami, Saeko had often stood looking out to sea from the hills. But she had never seen anything even remotely like this. It looked almost divine, a heavenly light, bewitching. At the same time, it seemed that every cell in Saeko’s body was ringing out in alarm, as though she wouldn’t be able to get away if she gave in to the spell.

  Hashiba came to her side, followed her gaze, and noticed the odd scenery.

  “It looks like the aurora,” Saeko said quietly.

  Hashiba himself had never seen an aurora. “I didn’t know you could see one in Atami,” he remarked casually.

  “You can’t. At the very least, I’ve never heard of such a thing. You’re only supposed to be able to see them close to the poles, from places with high latitude.”

  Perhaps because of the beauty of the spectacle, Saeko didn’t feel the terror that such an anomaly should have brought about. Something about the world, at its center, was changing.

  Saeko recalled what her father had once said: The world has to be described more beautifully.

  She tried to tell herself that she wasn’t afraid thanks to his words, but the relentless pressure on her bladder kept bringing her back to the present.

  Shigeko alone seemed to grasp the true consequences of what they saw. With a resigned look, she muttered, “It’s too much. This is beyond me.”

  Saeko felt that she understood. If what was at work here transcended human artifice, then no matter what an individual may attempt, it was already too late.

  4Saeko and the rest of the crew checked into the hotel as soon as they left the herb gardens.

  You could see the waves right below you. The hotel directly overlooked the sea into which its foundations stretched and stood as high as the sheer cliffs of Nishikigaura; only the front lobby was adjacent to land, and the guest rooms practically hovered above water. The place was well known for the stunning view of the cliffs looming across the window. The grandeur and scale of the rocky face did more to shatter any sense of the everyday than the white, crashing waves below.

  Though it was no longer the case, the area used to have the unfortunate reputation of being one of Japan’s worst suicide spots. Looking across at them at night, Saeko could see why that might have been. The jagged outline of the cliffs seemed to be built for that purpose, as though they invited death.

  She stood next to the opened window in
her room, letting in the cool night air. After checking in she had gone to soak in the hotel’s hot spring baths but had turned the heating too high in her room. Finally, the temperature was becoming comfortable again. Saeko stood for a while, allowing the air to cool her skin.

  She had the room to herself. The male crew were all sharing rooms to save on expenses but had booked separate twin western-style rooms for herself and Shigeko. The digital clock on the bedside desk indicated that it was almost eleven o’clock. Saeko usually kept a late routine—it was still too early for bed. However, the events of the last couple of days had left her exhausted and she felt ready to fall asleep the moment she lay down. She saw the other, empty bed, and lamented the fact that she would be sleeping alone tonight. Thinking how great it would be if Hashiba was with her now, she let out a deep sigh.

  After the post-dinner meeting Hashiba had suddenly announced that he had to go back to Tokyo. Until that moment Saeko had been certain that they would be spending the night together. The revelation had disappointed her immensely. As Hashiba had mumbled something about urgent work coming up, he had averted his eyes. She’d wanted to question him but refrained because of the rest of the crew. She’d ended up standing there helplessly watching him get a cab from the hotel for some spurious reason.

  If he’d stayed in the hotel it would have been easy for him to sneak across to her room at night. Hashiba would be on the Tokaido bullet train now, probably already coming up to Yokohama. That was if he’d been able to make the last kodama train bound for Tokyo. It was unlikely that the ever-competent Hashiba would have missed it, but the taxi had been summoned to the hotel with very little time to spare so it wasn’t impossible. Saeko found herself hoping that he had missed the train; then he might come back to the hotel after all.

  Saeko wasn’t usually the type of person to mould reality around her expectations, and she wasn’t naïve enough to believe in treasures she had yet to obtain. Still, she couldn’t help looking for a sign that he was serious about their relationship. She would be thirty-six next May. After marrying at twenty-nine and getting divorced, Saeko had all but given up on her hopes of remarrying and having children. In the months since, however, the growing loneliness had exceeded her expectations. Now and again she even found herself regretting her decision to divorce, even though it was all she wanted at the time. At times, just picturing herself growing old alone gave her the chills. Yet finding a man she could date, let alone remarry, was a daunting task. There just weren’t any good men left. All the men she did like were already married; she was at that age. By some chance occurrence she had now met and fallen for Hashiba, who seemed perfect. He was sincere, kind, good at his work, and still unmarried. It seemed like something of a miracle.

  If she was able to build a life with Hashiba, perhaps she would finally be able to recover from the pain of losing her father. It would be like coming out of a long, dark tunnel. People might think it was foolish, but Saeko didn’t care—it was what she wanted, a modest sort of happiness. She wanted to immerse herself in the bustle of a normal, everyday life. At the very least, it would mean goodbye to her habit of unconsciously switching on the TV set in an empty room.

  Saeko shivered with cold and moved to close the window, but something she saw stopped her hand in mid-motion. Her room faced south, away from Atami. There were no electric lights, but it was still possible to make out the uneven contours of the rock face through the different shades of darkness. She strained her eyes, scanning the hazy depth of lighter and darker patches along the vertical cliff face beyond. The darker patches were hollows, and ledges jutting outwards looked a leaden gray from the faint starlight from above. Amidst this background, the white shape was hard to miss. It moved, reflecting light like the moon itself, asserting its existence.

  Saeko gasped and strained her eyes further. It wasn’t her imagination—there was something on the cliff top, a white human form. For a moment it was still, then it was moving again. Someone was out there.

  The white shape halted on the path running along the top of the cliffs. It clambered over the protective rails and started moving towards the edge. The shape was moving at right around the same height as Saeko’s room. There were probably tens of meters between them, but the image gradually started to resolve, becoming clearer. The figure was short and clad in a white kimono, and her face became visible. The image seemed to grow in size as though it was somehow being broadcast directly into the brain. Saeko could clearly make out the person’s features.

  Beyond a doubt, the figure on the cliff edge was Shigeko Torii.

  The moment she recognized the face Saeko sucked in air and held her breath. Wasn’t Shigeko resting in the room next door? How had she suddenly got out to the cliffs?

  There was no doubt, either, what Shigeko was about to do. Her desire seemed to channel directly into Saeko’s mind.

  I’m so tired …

  Saeko leant out of the window and started to wave her hands frantically, trying to get Shigeko to stop. But Shigeko seemed to interpret the gesture as a goodbye.

  It’s time for me to be with my son again …

  After waving back in the same manner, Shigeko promptly continued forward, brushing some branches out of her way, and without even a moment’s hesitation launched herself off the edge.

  As the figure tumbled, Shigeko’s face seemed not to head straight downward but to be tugged in towards Saeko for a moment, close enough so that the details of each wrinkle in the wizened visage seemed countable, before finally plunging head first into the waves below. A spray the color of the kimono met the body but there was no sound whatsoever.

  Saeko stood for a while looking at the waters below. Gradually, the sound of the waves coaxed her out of her state.

  Suicide …

  The word flashed across her mind. Nishikigaura had reclaimed its dubious legacy.

  Saeko’s heart hammered out of control, and she crouched down with one hand to her chest. The horrific image of Shigeko falling through the air replayed in an endless loop in her mind’s eye; the more she tried to get rid of it, the more viscously it stuck to the folds of her mind. She could see the strange way in which Shigeko’s falling body had seemed to glide momentarily towards her before plunging downwards into the sea. The phenomenon of her descent seemed neither real nor natural.

  Then she remembered the night before, what she had seen after her dinner with Hashiba. They had been walking out of the building when Seiji Fujimura had plummeted to the street in front of them. Another suicide—she had witnessed two plunges to the death in as many days. Not only that, but she knew both of the people involved. Saeko struggled to understand the implications of such a coincidence. Even now, she clearly remembered how Seiji’s body had seemed to float downwards, featherlike, his spirit seemingly severed from his body, disobeying the laws of gravity by that much. Nonetheless, his body had crashed into the ground with a thud of reality, and the tree branches had kept on swaying as if testifying to the fall.

  Saeko repressed the terrible image; she felt like she might throw up. But she knew she had to do something, she couldn’t just sit here like this. If Hashiba were around she’d bring it to him, but since he wasn’t, Saeko probably needed to go to Kagayama.

  She called the room where Kagayama was staying. When he came to the phone, she explained what she’d witnessed in terse phrases.

  “Y-You mean …” he stammered, trailing off in mid-sentence.

  “What should we do?” Cursing herself for asking such a juvenile question, she clutched the receiver.

  “I guess we should check Ms. Torii’s room,” Kagayama proposed.

  Saeko hung up and dragged herself out to the corridor and stood waiting in front of the room. She knocked once and waited, not expecting an answer, not after what she had just seen. Shigeko had jumped to her death from the top of the Nishikigaura Cliffs. Right now, her lifeless body would be tossed around in the waves, mangled against the jagged rocks at the base.

  Saeko w
as soon joined by Kagayama, Kato, and Hosokawa. Kagayama stepped forward and banged his fist against the door.

  “Ms. Torii? Are you awake?”

  It wasn’t that Kagayama didn’t trust Saeko’s words. He was obviously trying to keep his voice down, but it still echoed through the empty corridor. When he stopped knocking and put his ear against the door, there was nary a sound.

  He turned to Kato. “Can you call the hotel manager?”

  Kato nodded and started to run down the corridor. Saeko, Kagayama, and Hosokawa stood in heavy silence for the few minutes it took for Kato to come back. They all realized that this could mean the end for the program and looked gloomy.

  Accompanied by Kato, the manager walked up to the door and pulled out a master key. He knocked once more to confirm that there was no answer. Then, without further hesitation, he inserted the key in the lock and opened the door.

  The room was the same size as Saeko’s, with the bathroom on the opposite side. The manager flipped on the lights and walked into the room. There was a thin lump under the bedclothes, and on the pillow lay Shigeko’s wrinkled face. There were no signs of disorder, the bed sheets were pulled up to the old woman’s shoulders, and her body traced a straight line under the sheets. When Saeko walked to the side of the bed and confirmed that the person was Shigeko, she could not but cover her own mouth. Then, steadying herself against the wall, she struggled to gather her thoughts.

  Shigeko’s face looked sunken and pale under the stark, fluorescent lights of the room. The manager looked dejected as he bent forward and spoke into the old woman’s ear. He called out to her a couple of times, but not only was there no reply, she also wasn’t breathing. He put a hand to her neck to check for a pulse, and shook his head.