Shiki: Volume 2

by Fuyumi Ono

  She trotted out of the shop towards Kami-Sotoba. On the way she passed by the front of the psot office. For some reason, Kazuko's feet stopped, looking up to the second story that was the residence.

  (...That was the face of a dead man.)

  No matter what she couldn't shake that impression. As Kazuko thought to go into the post office, she realized the shutter door was still drawn down. Bewildered that there wasn't even a sign, Kazuko looked around. Her eyes met with Kumi from the Gotouda Clothing Shop across the street. Before she could enter the shop, Kumi came out herself.

  "Say, what's going on, here?"

  Kazuko pointed to the post office and Kumi tilted her head. Kumi's aged face seemed colored with surprise.

  "About that, they've moved, don't you know. The Ohsawa-sans."

  That can't be, Kazuko murmured. "That shouldn't be. Just last night I'd met with them."

  "It was last night. In the middle of the night just past two, I suppose? A truck stopped out front, it was so loud I was woken up. When I got up, they were carrying their luggage out, it was a real surprise."

  "That's---but, the husband was sick!"

  Kumi gave a serious nod. "The moving company staff had to carry him into the carT He was wrapped all up in a blanket. I hurried out and caught the missus to ask what on earth was happening but she just said 'we have to move, so' and with just that and not neighborly word, she rode off in the truck!"

  "My.... that's!"

  "Nagata-san and the family weren't even contacted, it seems like. This morning he came to go to work as usual and lingered in front of the shutter. Why, I never new Ohsawa-san was the type of person to do something this outrageous!"

  Me neither, Kazuko nodded. Ohsawa's half-lidded sleeping face (...a face that appeared dead) flashed before her eyes. A fluttering of fear bubbled up in her stomach. What could it have been, that unknown, terrible feeling?

  4

  On Tuesday at the end of the work day the band saw's roar was still echoing through the Ohtsuka Sawmill. Seishin looked at spectacle with deep emotion. The belt like band saw formed a bridge towards the rood of the sawmill building, sawdust falling and gathering from there; when he was small he would go into the Yasumori Sawmill and play, crawling under such gatherings. The pool of sawdust was more fascinating to children than a sand pit, and at the bottom of that pit were rhinoceros beetle and stag beetle larvae and pupa to be found.

  There would be sawdust all over their bodies and of course they'd be scolded by their mothers, and the saw dust would get in beneath their clothing often, a feeling that was insufferably uncomfortable to a child, but it just meant that it held enough to be worth paying that price.

  Gazing nostalgically at the sawmill, he didn't realize that Ohstuka Takayuki was nearby until he called out to him.

  "If it isn't the Junior Monk!"

  Called out to, at last Seishin returned to his senses. Meeting eyes with Takayuki who was still clad in work clothes, he hastily bowed his head.

  "It has been a while."

  When he raised his head, his eyes met with those of Ohtsuka Kichigorou who was supervising the saw. Kichigorou made an unpleasant face and averted his gaze.

  The Ohtsuka Sawmill was a rival to the Maruyasu Sawmill. In the village there were several sawmill families but out of all of them it was these two who stood out from the rest in size. They had once been a parish family and he had heard they were even involved in the Parish Representative Committee but when Seishin went to college and returned from his ascetic training at the head temple to help here, they had already been extracted from the parish. Kichigorou's wife had entered a new religion, and Kichigorou had likewise joined into it. Seishni's father Shinmei apparently tried coming many times on foot attempting to pursued them. It was probably due to the antagonism from that time that Kichigorou didn't get on well with those of the temple.

  In regards to that his son Takayuki was either unaware of the antagonism from those days or he knew about it but didn't think of it as anything to be effected by, as he didn't get along with him exceptionally poorly. Even though he'd seen him about the village here and there, he'd never made a particularly sour face at him.

  "It has been a while, hasn't it."

  Takayuki showed a smile.

  "It has been some time since we have made contact. I apologize for intruding while you're working."

  "What might be the matter?"

  "Just recently, I had overheard that Yasuyuki-san had passed away, you see."

  Yeah, Takayuki said, showing an expression as if he had thrust into a sore spot. "For that, you came all the way out. ---Thank you very much."

  Takayuki took off his work gloves and put them in the pocket of his work suit. While wiping his sweat he motioned to the office. "Well, come in. We don't have anything to offer beyond tea, though."

  "Are not you in the middle of work? I had only thought to come to offer incense."

  "It's all right. I was just thinking of wrapping up for the day."

  Takayuki smiled and conveyed something to someone nearby, then went to the previously gestured office. Entering the office at the edge of the sawmill, Takayuki's wife Hiroko was at office desk with an open account book. Noticing Seishin, she stood and bowed a salutation to him.

  "Oh my, it has been a while!"

  "He says he's come to offer condolences for Yasuyuki."

  When told that by Takayuki, she had a seemingly troubled smile as she said her thanks.

  "I'm sorry for being so sudden. I had thought that it might be to forward of me, but."

  "It's quite all right. Thank you very much. To think that you would take the trouble to come all this way--"

  Hiroko smiled, though she looked to be the definitive picture of someone crying, something that Seishin secretly felt with a pain in his conscience.

  "For the time being, please enjoy the tea," Takayuki said, taking the pitcher of cold barley tea from the corner of the office and presenting him with a cup of it. He motioned towards an open seat.

  "Truly, the occasion was very sudden...."

  You've said it, Takayuki said with a forced smile. "He was a guy whose only good point was his heath, I couldn't imagine that he would go before me."

  I'm certain, Seishin replied quietly. Going by what Takayuki and Hiroko said, as expected Yasuyuki was suddenly bedridden. It was probably a cold, and such stereotypical lines were heard around here as well. They took it lightly, not thinking that it could possibly come to this. In the middle of the night suddenly he thought he had heard groaning sounds, and he was convulsing, Takayuki puzzled. "We called an ambulance and had him brought to the national hospital. Our hearts were in our stomachs. He was rushed immediately into surgery but he did not come out alive. It seems we didn't make it in time."

  "Is that so......"

  "It seems there were problems with his liver. His jaundice was so faint, we didn't notice it ourselves, either. He wasn't a particularly heavy drinker, I didn't think there was any reason for there to be problems there. Really, this is what they mean when they say something is a complete surprise."

  "This has been, I am most certain, a terribly difficult time. ....Have matters calmed?"

  Yes they have, Takayuki said with a lonely smile. "When he first died, it was nothing but marital fights, though. I blamed his mother asking why she idn't notice anything, I was working with him, why didn't I notice, she said blaming me. On top of that, Father being Father said that it was because we didn't have enough faith, then the people around were blaming it on the new aged religion, we'd heard them saying showily, which didn't help."

  That's, Seishin said, frowning. "That sort of thing isn't relevant at all, is it?"

  "To have the Junior Monk say as much is, if I can speak honestly, very gratifying," Takayki said as if deriding himself. "The bunch in the village---Ah, please do not take this as criticism of the temple---they're, as expected, critical of withdrawing from the parish. The temple and the village really are monolithic, a
nd all. Actually, here and there, you know, people have been dragging away from us.We're like exiled outsiders, so I've thought before!"

  Hiroko gave an interceding smile.

  "Especially when, you remember, the old man was taken out of his position as the ward chief, wasn't he? It wasn't because of anything our household did, it was just that the old man was at that age but he'd gotten his belly button in a twist and said some unfortunate things, so things became unnecessarily complicated."

  "Is that so...."

  "For a while there, we got into nothing but fights everywhere." Takayukii forced a smile. "It was bleak inside the home, we were trying to have proper faith in our own way. Yet whenever we thought about why this happened to us, we thought, maybe we should lower our heads to the temple and return to the parish, or something."

  "You musn't," Seishin promptly interjected. "It is not good for you to begin thinking in such a way. Faith is something organic, it is not something that can be coerced. It is the fulcrum of one's personal freedom, and so we must not distort it unnaturally."

  Takayuki gave a surprised seeming blink. Seishin returned to himself and unintentionally hung his head in shame.

  "Pardon me. .... For speaking strangely."

  No, Takayuki laughed. "To have you say as much is a relief. ---Yeah?"

  Takayuki smiled and turned to Hiroko. Hiroko also nodded.

  "Yes.... Really."

  He imagined just how harshly condemned such a manner of speaking would be. Certainly the village was united around the temple. A firm sense of unity was built upon a firmly enforced exclusion principle. And of all things the Ohtsuka Sawmill had always served on the Parish Representative Committee. A so-called pillar of the temple to suddenly become estranged from the temple, so he could imagine how the parishioners would perceive that.

  "....At the beginning it was like that, really, nothing but fights everywhere. Our successor had died, and we even talked about how we might as well close up the sawmill and move, but. When we said that, our second son who had gone to the city said he would inherit it for us. Ah, we really musn't give ourselves up to despair."

  "That is truly so." As Seishin answered, he remembered the unpleasant face his gentle father had shown so many times. His father who had rarely made a displeased expression made a clear one whenever the conversation turned to the Ohtsuka Sawmill. He didn't particularly find fault with them but it was clear Shinmei had no patience when it came to this for the people around them. At those times Seishin, unable to comprehend why his father was angry, could not help feeling the faintest sense of something like despondency towards his father. Despondency may be too deep a word for it but he remembered thinking that he didn't need to make that face. Looking at the current case, it may have been precisely because Shinmei was so flagrantly unpleasant that the parishioners followed the head monk's will to criticize Takayuki and his family. When he thought of that, Seishin felt it inexcusable.

  "Lately it's calmed down. It's a shame about Yasuyuki but, I have the feeling that the family can somehow get through this, you know? ....It is true that we miss him, but."

  "I'm sure you must."

  But somehow, you know, said Takayui looking out the window. "Maybe it's my age, but I've been missing a lot lately. A disheartened feeling or something. It might be the season, too."

  Seishin, for some reason or other, nodded.

  "The old man is getting to that age and all, I start to think he won't live forever, or things like that. A girl from the neighborhood had died on Bon, hadn't she?"

  "Shimizu--Megumi-chan, you mean?"

  "Yes, that's right. Shimizu-san's place's daughter. She was such a young little thing, too. Maybe it's because my own house has had a funeral; whenever I go walking in the village these days, I get the feeling I'm seeing too many funerals really. Thinking about it, the people of the village are mostly old people you know. The heat is hard on the elderly, and there must be many of them who are feeling down. A young one from the sawmill suddenly ran away from home and quit her job, too. The elderly in the neighborhood are disappearing before you know it too."

  At Takayuki's recollection, Seishin's brows knit together.

  "Now that you mention it," Hiroko interrupted. "Suzuki-san? He left, didn't he. He was the same age as Yasuyuki. The family moved, they said. Lately, there are a lot of stories like that."

  Seishin blinked. Hiroko gave a lonely seeming smile.

  "Has everyone come to hate Sotoba, I wonder?"

  That might be the case, Seishin thought.

  ---Therefore thou art cursed, no longer one of the land, an eternal vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.

  The village was like the hill, removing foreign substances.

  (...It wouldn't be strange to come to hate it.)

  5

  Seishin spread out his manuscript in the office.His eyes ran over the rewritten characters of the revised draft. In the silence of the night, the fading sound of God turning the pages echoed.

  The older brother, ostracized from the hill for the sin of killing his little brother, roamed the wasteland. The little brother became a Shiki and followed him. The older brother didn't know why he went so far as to become that to follow him. Trying to look back on how his brother had been in life, as expected, he couldn't deduce his little brother's intentions. Far from deducing it, he couldn't even clearly recall his little brother before he was a Shiki. Nor himself the moment he killed his little brother, nor his sentiments at that time.

  And, thought Seishin as he lowered the sharpened tip of the pencil to the paper like the tip of a sword. He

  had to give up on surmising his little brother's true feelings again today. Whenever he tried to gauge his little brother's intent, without fail he would be obstructed in his groping quest for answers by his own confusion; while staring at him without any other means, regret gradually build up in his chest, and he declined to think any more beyond that.

  Hanging his head in shame, gazing at the shadow the color of his own sin at his feet and then turning back, his eyes turned to the hill that, as he'd become accustomed to by now, didn't seem to be growing further away at all. Actually, his little brother was not chasing after him from behind. His little brother was surely waiting in front of him to receive him.

  Above the hill the clouds parted, golden afterglow raining down incessantly. Within it was the white, clear, clear splendor. Enshrined at the top of the town, the unforgiving light shone towards him.

  He had always, or at least for the time he had been on the hill, been taught that to the east of that garden was a vast wasteland but actually standing in the wasteland looking at the hill, the hill was enclosed from all for directions by the wasteland. The reason that this land was said to be to the east may have only been because that was where the gate was.

  The sterile and desolate lands fallen from God's hand was supposedly this place where he wandered but, in actuality, the greenery of the hill that existed in the middle of this sterile and desolate land was seen as a miracle of God, that hill beautifully arranged and placed in this wilderness.

  Now he thought on it as mysterious. Did the wasteland exist around the hill or did the hill exist within the wasteland? Did the high ramparts enclosing the foot of the hill denote the terminus of God's order, or instead did it note the boundaries of God's miracle?

  In either case, the hill was beautiful.

  Seishin stopped for a bit and tilted his head. He was being chased by the hill. Would the hill he saw when turning back to look over the wilderness be seen as beautiful after all? Far from having any killing intent towards his brother, he didn't know the source of his own impulse.

  That should have been to him a very shocking tragedy. In judgement for that, he was cursed and chased. That order that pressured him, the hill that he had been shut out of, was it something that he could praise so impartially?

  (Of course, he could...)

  He even now yearned for the hill he had been expelled from. From th
e beginning, that had been what he had intended.

  In either case, the hill was beautiful. If he closed his eyes, he could remember how it looked to him.

  Green fields drew gentle undulations, there white sheep herded, feeding in peace on the grass that spread out to the green forests. The houses that dotted it were lined together by a red stoned path, rising up towards the street where the sage lived, levying heavy taxes. The spire stood tall in the center of the town, at the top of which was the seat of God. None but the one chosen as the sage were allowed to climb it, and were they to climb it there would be not but the downpour of splendorous light; it had no form of which to speak but clearly there existed a will there.