Shiki: Volume 2

by Fuyumi Ono

  ".....Wouldn't it be the water?"

  "If you think about the contracting firm and Maruyasu, the odds are probably pretty low. The odds of it being something or another polluting the water or some kind of poisoning or contagion have pretty much been whittled down I think. There's still a chance that it might have first gotten to the person through water but water isn't the source of the contamination."

  "So for example, the water in Yamairi may have been contaminated, and from there the three in Yamairi were infected, and after that, direct transmission?"

  Toshio nodded. "If we say water was the cause, that's what it'd come to but Megumi-chan and Giichi-san are the bottleneck. Thinking of the obvious, I can't think of how Megumi-chan would make contact with Yamairi or the three from there or Shuuji-san. It's just I can't say that for certain."

  Seishin nodded. Megumi lived in Shimo-Sotoba but, as they knew from the day she had gone missing, here sphere of activity spanned the upper communities. It wasn't impossible that she met with the three from Yamairi or Shuuji by chance.

  "Moreover the one who becomes a problem is Giichi-san. If Nao-san's case is the same thing, I can't think the source was anyone other than Giichi-san. If she was infected in the middle of august, this is right during the time when Giichi-san had died. According to Mikiyasu, Nao-san was always coming and going from the Maruyasu sawmill. She visited Giichi-san for a get-well visit three times or so, and on Bon the whole family was gathered at Maruyasu. Indeed smack in the middle of August. It wouldn't be strange at all for her to have caught it from Giichi-san. But, where Giichi-san would have caught it from I don't know. Giichi-san's sphere pf activity was just about nonexistent. He was totally bed ridden, after all. All I can think of is that it's possible one of the three from Yamairi or Shuuji-san had come to meet with Giichi-san but---"

  "It doesn't seem so," Seishin shook his head and turned his eye to his notes. "I tried asking Atsuko-san from Maruyasu but it seems Shuuji-san and Giichi-san had no relations whatsoever. It seems he never set food in Maruyasu. It wasn't as if the three from Yamairi had no connection to Yamairi at all. Giichi-san did know them but, they weren't especially close. It seems they didn't take the trouble to come visit Giichi-san. If they had business with Maruyasu, they would incidentally pay Giichi-san a sick visit, incidents like that may have happened before, but Giichi-san was sick for a long time. Before, there had been customers who would visit Giichi-san but lately that had petered out, in current times, it seems."

  "Seems so. That person'd been stuck in bed for six years or so now. When I came back, he was already bedridden and all."

  Seishin nodded. "So, the ones who met with Giichi-san were largely only family members. Particularly the people from the contractors. Also, people from the main Tamo family. Sadaichi-san seemed particularly close to Giichi-san. Then there were a few people he in his inner circle."

  "No connection point then.... Is it impossible that it spreads directly after all?" Toshio sighed as if fed up. "---And the others?"

  As he was being urged, Seishin opened the folded up notes and presented them.

  "For the three in Yamairi and the Gotouda household, their families are spread out and I don't know the specifics. .... But." Seishin repeated the story he'd heard at Chigusa. That the day before Shuuji fell ill, he'd gone to Yamairi and Gigorou had left Sotoba, that when he'd come back he'd seemed off.

  "Shuuji-san went to Yamairi on the second, huh..." Toshio made a sullen face. "That's certainly something. If it was the second, Hidemasa-san should have been dead. Shuuji-san shouldn't have seen a dead body, if he did, he would have called somebody. That he didn't means he visited but didn't see them, but."

  "That's right."

  "But Mieko-san was there wasn't she? She wasn't doing well and her husband was dead next to her. If she was having a lapse in consciousness due to liver failure, she might have ignored that someone came to visit. It's possible she might have just been asleep, and not noticed that Shuuji-san had come but..."

  "Then there's Gigorou-san. ---Say, couldn't we think that Gigorou-san brought something in from outside of Sotoba? And then it was something that Shuuji-san caught in Yamairi."

  "I wonder." Toshio twisted his neck. "Of course, there's the incubation period to consider too. For influenza the average time is two days, for cholera, it usually breaks out in a day or two too but. Still, thinking of it like that, where Fuki-san caught it, I wouldn't know."

  "That's true. Did Fuki-san catch it from Shuuji-san...."

  "I can't say for sure, but. it might be like Japanese encephalitis." When Seishin tilted his head, he continued. "Japanese encephalitis is carried by mosquitoes. It doesn't spread from person to person. If that's the case, there might be that possibility, too."

  "Actually," Toshio said poking a finger down on the medical records. "Thinking about it from the end, when the organs all start to break down, it's like something starts in the blood and effects all the other organs. If it comes in through the digestive tracts or the respiratory system, it wouldn't be impossible for the pathogen to invade through the blood, and if that's the case, then at first it may seem to appear as a response to something foreign in the digestive or respiratory systems. But, there's no symptoms of vomiting or diarrhea. If we think of it like this, we can reason that it's a point blank blood-based infection."

  "From a wound?"

  "Right. Actually, when Megumi-chan fell in the mountains, she had countless little scrapes and scratches. Nao-san didn't have any particular injuries but she had countless mosquito bites. I think there's a possibility it spreads through an animal as an intermediary like Japanese encephalitis. Not person to person, but moquitos or fleas, or ticks as intermediaries. If we consider that, it explains the lack of contact between Megumi-chan and Giichi-san."

  That said, Toshio pointed at Seishin. "I can't deny that possibility. You be careful."

  "Why?"

  "Why?" Toshio said eyes wide in frustration. "Yamairi, right? Megumi-chan was found around the mountains in the Maruyasu back yard. Nao-san's house is a little separated from there but she came and went from the Maruyasu Sawmill. The Maruyasu Sawmill is at the foot of your guys' mountain."

  "That.... is true, but?"

  "It's all around the northern mountain. There's a chance the intermediary carriers are coming from the northern mountain and spreading out. Yamairi's on the other side of the northern mountain, and Megumi-chan was found just at the place where the northern mountain and western mountain meet up."

  Seishin nodded. Certainly in that area the mountain stream flowed towards Yamairi in a loophole shape. When Seishin was small, there was a direct wire line down between the Maruyasu sawmill from Yamairi, a lumber path. As forestry declined, now there wasn't anybody elft who used it, and already the path was grown over with underbrush but that path that followed the mountain stream was still plenty cleared enough for animals to use it. ---For example, wild dogs and the like.

  Seishin remembered the disastrous scene at Yamairi. "Wild dogs?"

  "We could think that way. The dead didn't have any bite wounds while they were alive, so it can't be that the wild dogs are transmitting it but it is possible that the wild dogs have fleas or ticks that do. Just earlier, the Ohkawa Liquor shop's son was bitten by a wild dog. Before that, the Inoda's Motosaburou-san I think it was was attacked by a wild dog. It is true that the wild dogs in the surrounding mountains are multiplying. Those who go into the mountains seem to be tremblingly afraid of it. From the gossip the people who come in for exams say, they've been multiplying in Yamairi and coming down south, it sounds like. There was a patient just recently who mentioned seeing three wild dogs just above the shrine area and all."

  "Do you think there's a need to hunt for wild dogs?"

  Toshio pondered. "There is a chance the wild dogs are carrying a disease. I'd need to do research..." That said, Toshio let out a huge sigh. "But, the hell'm I supposed to research? If I'm supposed to catch a wild dog and see if it's housing a p
athogen or not, then not even knowing what that pathogen is is kinda, well."

  "That's true."

  "Well, rounding up the wild dogs in the area just in case wouldn't hurt anything but the problem's what kind of reason to give. If we do it carelessly, we might just be stirring the pot but the cause isn't limited to dogs. It's pretty risky."

  Seishin nodded. He couldn't deny that the chance to use Ohkawa Atsushi and Inoda Motosaburou's cases as an impetus was long passed. Using those as the reason would seem out of place more than likely.

  "This isn't something we can push using the next time someone's attacked as a chance, either."

  "But..."

  "This isn't just about exposing that there's an plague. It's easy for you to say wild dog hunting but how do you assure the safety of the people actually doing it? The people who go out to round the wild dogs up might be prepared for their teeth but they're not going to be ready for the ticks and fleas are they? If we're going to have them doing that, then we'd need to give them detailed instructions about the plague from the start."

  "What about poison bait?"

  "That's just changing which part's risky. Let's say the intermediary's fleas. But, once the dog dies, they'll leave its corpse. While we're doing that kind of extermination, unless we have a way to wipe them out too, then instead we won't be able to stop the spread of fleas."

  "Is that right," said Seishin, biting his lip.

  "Well... the wild dogs might be the ones carrying the disease but, there's the possibility that it's not just them, too. Rats and rabbits, maybe even wild birds. And the fleas and ticks attached to them.

  If that's the case," said Toshio, his voice low, "we're going to have a hard time."

  Chapter Three

  1

  On the morning of August 29th, three days from the end of that cursed August, news of another death came before Seishin. Ohta Kenji who lived in Sotoba had died. Ohta was 53 years old, a high school teacher. He collapsed at school, then taken to the municipal hospital and put on a respirator.

  "Somehow, things just hadn't been going well for him," said Sotoba's care manager, Murasako Munehide on the phone. "The man himself had been saying his body was sore and he was wanting to retire. But, it was in the middle of the school year, wasn't it? So they convinced him to hold off on retirement, and suddenly away he goes. It seems his liver had gone bad."

  Is that so, answered Seishin as his thoughts ran in circles. Was this another case of that? Anyway for the time being he made funeral arrangements with Munehide, then Seishin contacted Toshio.

  "I think that Ishida-san will be copying the medical certificate but Sotoba's Ohta Kenji died."

  That right, Toshio said, his reply short. With Nao having died the day before yesterday, this made twelve dead. Seishin hung up the phone and went to visit his father in the separate building.

  Watching Seishin leave the temple office, Ikebe looked up at the blackboard.

  "Say, Tsurumi-san." At Ikebe's voice, Tsurumi lifted his face from the accounting book spread open on the desk. "About this Ohta-san, what kind of person was he?"

  "What kind? If I recall, I think he was a high school teacher. I get the feeling I'd heard somewhere that he was a vice principal but."

  "In other words, still before retirement age, correct?"

  "That'd be right."

  Not an old man, thought Ikebe. Not an old man to whom it wouldn't be strange for something to happen. Just yesterday, Yasumori Nao's funeral had just concluded, and Ikebe himself couldn't keep track of just how many houses they'd done funerals for since the month had started.

  "Don't you think it's kinda strange?"

  Mm, was Tsurumi's vague reply.

  "Do you think someone like that person would die like that?"

  Tsurumi's sturdy shoulder shrugged faintly. These things do happen, he said lowly but, his voice was dyed with an uncertainty. On that note they fell to silence, Ikebe losing his means of continuing the conversation and also falling into silence. Into the strange silence that had settled over the temple office came Mitsuo, morning dutied finished and a pot of barley tea in hand.

  "---? What's this, are things busy?"

  No, Ikebe answered. "There was just a call, it seems there will be another funeral in Sotoba. Ohta-san's."

  Mitsuo blinked.

  "Ohta---Gousou-san, was it?"

  "No, it seems that it was Kenji-san, they are saying."

  "Then, his son, was it. ...Whats the world coming to." Mitsuo shook his head and set down the pot.

  "There are a lot this year, aren't there?" Ikebe said, earning a large sigh from Mitsuo.

  "You said it. Just yesterday, we just finished having the Yasumori's wife's funeral, then today we're having another vigil with another funeral tomorrow. While we're hustling with all this, the fourty-ninth day anniversaries and equinoctial weeks are next. It's this heat, just thinking about it makes me dizzy."

  "How long to you think this will go on?"

  "Who can say? Halfway through next month it'll cool off and things should become a little easier."

  "No, that's not what I...."

  From Ikebe's side as he corrected, Tsurumi's low voice rose up.

  "How long will the deaths continue is what he's trying to say, Ikebe-kun here. ---Rght?"

  Mitsuo turned to look at the two of them, Ikebe looking uncomfortably at Tsurumi and nodding.

  "Since August started, don't you think something's odd, Mitsuo-san? Indeed, it is as Ikebe-kun says. I wonder how long this will carry on?"

  Aa, Mitsuo said vaguely voicing unpleasant thoughts.

  "At the start of August the Gotouda's son died, and then there was the incident in Yamairi. Even if they were old people, it was three at once. From there, there was the Missy from Shimizu-san's place and Maruyasu's Giichi-san, the old woman from Gotouda and the wide of the contractors. On top of that, another---"

  "I definitely think there's a lot, but. After all since August there've been seven funerals. Nine dead. It feels like this isn't normal, doesn't it?"

  "Feels like? Mitsuo-san, this's, well, really not normal. Isn't that right? In one month, nine people. Sure, this year it's been, like, hot. But hot summers cold winters, it isn't like we've never had them like this before. All the same nine people in one month, is that something you can remember happening?"

  That's, Mitsuo said, caught up in his words. To tell the truth, Mitsuo himself realized something was strange. Deaths were things that came in mysterious successions but, he couldn't remember any that continued to this extent.

  "Certainly, there aren't any that come to mind until now that have gone on like this."

  "Right? But, lately I'd been thinking, you know? And I remembered something similar to this."

  Eh, said Mitsuo turning to look back at Tsurumi.

  "Mitsuo-san, do not you remember too? My father and yours were temple monks, so we've been coming to the temple since we were kids. One funeral set up after another, the temple dancing with activity, had happened a long, long time ago."

  Mitsuo held in a small breath. Yes, certainly he had said. It was the season when Mitsuo had only just graduated from elementary school. At first he was happy when his dad kept coming home with packed leftovers from meals exchanged between parishioners and the priests, but he remembered becoming gradually disconcerted.

  "But even then there weren't this many. ---No, remembering it now, I seem to think it felt like tt was about this much, but actually wasn't it far fewer?"

  "Aa... That's right, isn't it? It was."

  Hearing that, Ikebe's mouth crumpled as if in relief. "What? Even if it's rare, these things do happen, don't they?"

  Tsurumi nodded with a melancholy expression at Ikebe who had spoke as if relieved.

  "Yes,.... it was during the Asia Flu season."

  Ikebe's face became stuff just then. "Asia Flu... the mass spread of the flu?"

  "Aa. It was terrible then. People were dropping like flies. There were few enough de
ad that you could still keep track of it, but back then the temple felt about like it does now, at least to me."

  Mitsuo nodded.

  Then, said Ikebe, his pallor changing. "It can't be that this time, too---an epidemic?"

  Tsurumi had no answer to this, crossing his arms and looking to Mitsuo.