by Fuyumi Ono
Mm, Toshio nodded.
6
While fighting with a strange sense of intimidation, Natsuno quietly filled his notebook. He'd long since given up studying vocab or tangling with math drills. With that something outside the window putting a strange pressure of sorts on him, he couldn't focus on his work. Like this with his attention focused outside the window, he had just been absently transcribing the names of historical words and names.
It his hand were able to remember what it was writing that'd be fine. He thought that while moving his hand, suddenly noticing that in the sidelines of his notebook the words "Tohru" and "Shimizu" appeared. He erased them each time but the name that appeared more frequently was overwhelmingly "Shimizu." And as time stretched on, the difference grew more pronounced.
He remembered feeling like this---like he currently did, like he was under a bizarre surveillance. He also thought he knew the source of it. But, Megumi should have been dead. That she was sealed away in a coffin wasn't something Natsuno confirmed with his own eyes but she should have been made up like Tohru and buried in the ground.
But, someone was outside the window. From the darkness they were looking at the window---at Natsuno. Through the curtain, at Natsuno's shadow, fixedly staring at that.
After erasing "Shimizu" who knew how many times, he gave up on that and took out the post card from his holder case. Natsuno had an emotion he couldn't understand. The letters and the picture, all of it looked like it was trying not to be self-serving while contrastingly overflowing with self-appeal. It looked to maintain an appropriately formal distance but it was blatantly getting closer. There was nothing written aside from words about the lingering summer heat. Nonetheless, there was an all too clear intent of the sender there even if unwrit, so clear that it betrayed her true feelings. ---That defined Megumi, he realized.
It was the same now. Obvious surveillance. But the observer hid themselves, it was clear they were trying to hide themselves. That much was just too obvious, so instead it only made him more certain he was being watched.
(......Shimizu.)
But, there was no way.
Natsuno stood up. He opened the curtain and the window. The light from within the room flowed outside but the darkness between the tree trunks and thickets only grew darker. And an obvious gaze. Someone was in that darkness---and he was confident he was being watched from somewhere not far off.
Natsuno surveyed the darkness. He couldn't see anyone. It's not that no one was there but just that he couldn't see them. The other could see Natsuno. Without a doubt they were watching.
He didn't turn towards the darkness and demand who they were, nor did he have a mind to. Staying silent, Natsuno held out the post card in one hand. To be sure it was visible in the light, he slowly turned it over with his fingertips several times. He had the feeling he could hear someone nearby gasping for breath. And, the faint sound of someone moving about.
The gaze was strong. He had such a feeling. Thinking such he moved the post card from the right hand holding it to the left. Slowly, doing it so that his observer could see, he tore at the corner of it. Again, a faint noise.
With both hands he tore the postcard a second time and a third. Once it was in tiny scraps, he threw them outside of the window. The white scraps of paper danced, literal confetti, raining down in the darkness.
Surveying the darkness--their hiding place, Natsuno closed the window. Closing the curtain he returned to his desk and listened intently. There was a faint noise. This time it was too obvious. The sound of underbrush swaying, someone's footsteps. They were coming directly closer to the window.
---Here.
Someone was there outside the window, and that somebody let out a soft voice. The voice that didn't convey any meaning sounded both like a very faint wail, and like a muffled outburst of a sob.
The soft sounds continued. Almost like a small animal was scurrying about on the earth. Right now if he stood up, if he opened the curtain, he had the feeling he would see them. They wouldn't be able to hide themselves fast enough, he felt. Natsuno bore out the temptation to do it. He didn't know why. He had a feeling he must not see it. He must not peek outside.
That may have been because he thought there was something forbidden that existed outside of that window, or possibliy that he was just plain afraid of what he would see. He had the feeling if he saw it he couldn't go back, and at the same time if he saw it he would be disappointed. And in his depths, what Natsuno truly feared was that he wouldn't see anything at all.
And if he were to throw open the curtain so quickly they would have no chance to hide? He didn't think that it would have any immediate impact. What was scary was being suspended between recognizing that there was something there he couldn't see and the recognizing it as something merely hiding.
He listened closely and bore it. The presence outside of the window crept about in the area and at last passed. Natsuno returned to the tasks in his notebook but as expected his hand kept bringing about the word "Shimizu" when he wasn't attentive.
The next morning, not having gotten much sleep, Natsuno went out into the back yard. In the faint blue light, the earth with sparse weeds was black. There there were two or three white droppings. When he picked them up, they were pieces of the postcard.
He could only find three fragments. Any fragments beyond that were nowhere to be seen.
7
First thing on the morning of the seventh, there was a call from the Murasako household. That morning when they tried to awaken their third son, Masao, he was dead, they said. That put Toshio in a somber mood. The Murasako household's Hiromi had just died. During the over-night vigil, the funeral, while the household was rushing about, the young man suffered quietly in illness and died with nobody tending to him.
When the reception desk opened, the contractor's Yasumori Setsuko entered. He could tell by looking at her face. It was that. Calamity was steadily falling upon the contractors. That afternoon a young man living in Sotoba called Shimizu Yuu was brought in. This was another outbreak, as expected. His condition was even worse than Setsuko's but not bad enough to call for an ambulance. There was no longer any reason to fear rousing suspicion at the hospital that received him, so he advised him to go if he wanted to, but that was it. Going to the National Hospital wouldn't change the result. If he went to Mizobe to be hospitalized for analysis, it just meant that he would die there without ever returning home again. Of course that couldn't be said to the patient himself so that was all the more reason to hesitate in recommending it.
When he returned to the waiting room, while he was just drawing into the graph, there was a call from Seishin. Seishin's voice was stiff.
"Ishida is gone."
Toshio's eyes remained on the graph as he responded. "That's..."
"He disappeared, last night. Talking with his family, that's all that she can say."
Toshio was on the verge of dropping his pen. "Ridiculous."
"According to his wife, at night, when shehad gone to bed, he was definitely awake in the living room, she says. From there, when she woke up in the morning, he was nowhere in the home. The car was left in the garage. Thinking he could not have gone far, they've been searching for him since this morning but they haven't yet found him."
(Disappearance--moving.)
Toshio stood up. "I'll try going to Ishida-san's place."
"I will go too."
They made plans to meet up at Ishida's house, hurrying with the things they were to bring. Ishida's wife Chie's color was drained.
"What could have happened. ---For him to go missing, that's just...."
"Calm down. Last night, was anything strange about Ishida-san's behavior? Or for example was he pale, was he not very talkative?"
"No.... Not really. It was the same as usual."
"Did he eat dinner?"
"He ate as much as usual. The day before yesterday was busy it seemed, he had brought his work home. Yesterday he took off from work in
the morning to finish it, too. But, it seems he finished with that and in the afternoon he went to the office, and had a relaxing evening drink. If anything, he was more cheerful than usual!"
Then, Toshio and Seishin understood exchanging looks. It wasn't as if Ishida had an outbreak. But, if not then why did Ishida suddenly go missing. And was there any reason forhim to leave the house after his wife had gone to sleep?
"Uhm," Seishin started to speak with Chie. "Pardon me but, we were to receive a few documents from Ishida-san; might you know of them?"
"Documents... you say?"
"Yes. You said that he had brought work home the day before yesterday, I believe that would have been them."
Ah, Chie nodded. "Then that would be in my husband's room. I saw him put the envelope in his desk drawer. ---Yes, those must have been for you, Junior Monk. I thought it was strange that he didn't bring it to the town hall when he went back to work yesterday."
Chie stood before them and guided them to the room on the second story. The room upon immediately going upstairs was probably formerly used by Ishida's child. There was a word processor set on the writing desk, and furniture in place that no longer seemed used, and two or three cardboard boxes piled up with unnecessary items.
"This is my son's room---now it is used as a storage room," Chie said with a seemingly embarrassed smile, opening the drawer on the writing desk."It's right---what's this?"
Chie searched within the drawer. "Now that's strange. I thought I had saw him put it in here, but..." Chie murmured while opening another drawer. "How odd. I wonder if he had brought it to the office after all?"
"Pardon me," Toshio said nudging Chie aside. "Would you mind if I looked? It's an important document."
"Yes... Help yourself."
Toshio searched the drawer. It was mostly filled with stationary and memo note pads with things written down, but there wasn't anything anywhere that looked like a properly written up document. It wasn't just the written report that he couldn't find but the memos and copies and data he would have used were nowhere to be found.
"The data shouldn't have been..."
Hearing Toshio's voice, Seishin pulled the word processor towards himself. Ishida should have been using this. He looked but there didn't appear to be a disk in it. He tested the eject button but as expected there was no disk inside of it. Opening the lid, he pressed the switch and started it up.
"Toshio, is there a disk anywhere?"
"There is. Just three. Two of them have labels. One's New Years Cards, one's an address book.
Seishin accepted the disk from Toshio. They tried the third one with no label but they didn't find the document they were looking for. Nor was it saved on the Word Processor itself. Just to be sure they checked the other two disks but, just as labeled, there were only New Years cards and an address book on them; the report was nowhere to be found.
"It's not here... not anywhere."
Toshio turned to face Chie. "He didn't take the documents to another location? He didn't save it to a disk or anything?"
"No. My husband was a very orderly person, he wouldn't scatter things about. If it isn't there, I don't think it is in the house."
"This is ridiculous."
Chie shook her head, seeming bewildered. "If it isn't in the desk, it is not here. ... Yes, I am certain that yesterday he was empty handed. Even though he was going to the office, there was nothing in his hand. He usually does go empty-handed."
"Are you certain? He did not take anything from the entryway before going out?"
"Nothing. He asked for me to make onigiri for lunch. I was told that in the morning and so when I came here to bring him tea and onigiri, my husband was just then putting the document into the envelope. He put it into the envelope, took out the disk and tidied up, and all of it was placed into that drawer. Since he was finished, he came down to eat." Chie said, looking between Toshio and Seishin. "Was it.... that important of a document?"
"Well," Toshio prevaricated.
"I went down with my husband. Since you'd come through all the trouble of bringing it up, he had said to me, he would bring it back down, he said. So we went back down to the first floor, ate lunch, and from there he said he was going to the office. He changed in the bedroom---the bedroom is on the first floor. He changed clothes there and then went out. I tended to him until he went out, so there's no mistake. He was definitely empty handed. He didn't come back to the second story."
"It's all right," Seishin interposed. "We were simply surprised. It is all right. There is a spare."
Is that so, said Chie sounding half relieved, but have unsatisfied and still confused. "Uhm, I will try to look for it."
"Please do. If there is any word from Ishida-san, if you could tell him to contact the temple or the hospital urgently."
Yes, nodded Chie once again becoming uneasy about her husband's whereabouts. "But... Where could he have gone. This is ridiculous."
Comforting Chie, Toshio and Seishin left the Ishida household. Toshio asked if Seishin wanted to swing by the hospital but Seishin looked to his wrist watch and shook hishead.
"No... I have to get back. There's a vigil tonight."
Those words seemed to get Toshio in the heart. "I see...."
"Ishida-san----"
"No matter how you look at it, it's strange. He shouldn't have suddenly gone missing. At least going by his wife's story, it doesn't seem like he suffered an outbreak. But still, he hid where he was going, going out in the middle of the night. And on top of that, probably bringing the document and all its materials with him."
As for the data, Toshio had it on hand himself. Seishin's notes were also on hand, so the document itself could be made again. But why did Ishida have to completely disappear with them?
The village is surrounded by death.
This was like, yes--like being surrounded. Moves, retirements, the feeling that something was intentionally isolating them. Toshio and Seishin were being seiied, plucked off---interfered with.
(Ridiculous...)
That in itself was a ridiculous prospect. Who would be doing something like that and for what purpose? Was he planning to cook up his own ridiculous conspiracy theories now?
"Something is strange..." Seishin murmured behind Toshio whose hand lingered on the car door as he thought. Toshio nodded.
"....It's possible this isn't just a disease."
Seishin nodded too, and with that turned towards his own car.
(The vigil... At the Murasako house.)
They had two with an outbreak, and the disappearances---.
While returning to the hospital, that repeated in Toshio's head. One death, two outbreaks, one disappearance. Chanting it like a magic spell, he returned to the hospital, there was a young boy about high school age standing before the entryway's closed curtain peering in. He must have noticed the car as he turned around, coming jogging towards Toshio as he pulled into the parking lot.
"What is it? An emergency case?" Toshio asked while getting out of the car. He'd seen that face somewhere before. He'd given a few medical exams to him.
"It isn't an emergency case, but... You are Doctor Ozaki, sir?" The young man said. Hearing that, Tosio remembered. A long while back, he was the patient who had been brought in for a knot on his shinbone.
"You were, if I remember, Yuuki-san's place's son, weren't you?"
"That's right," the boy nodded. He had said his first name was Natsuno, if he remembered. "I have something I would like to ask you, Doctor; may I?"
"By all means. By the way, you were called Yuuki-kun, I guess? Or was it Koide-kun?"
Natsuno shrugged his shoulders. "Either one is fine. My name in the family register is Koide but normally it is Yuuki."
"Then, Yuuki-kun it is. ---Yuuki-kun, what did you want to ask?"
"It is about Shimizu-san. Shimizu, Megumi-san. You were the doctor who did her medical examination, weren't you?"
"I examined her, and I was the one who did her death cert
ificate, too."
"What did she die of?"
"Acute anemia, wasn't it?"
Natsuno hesitated to speak, looking to Toshio with upturned eyes.
"She was definitely dead? ---See, there's a lot of things like brain death it could be, right?"
Toshio gave a light laugh. In his depths, he could feel something unfamiliar vaguely stirring. "Even if there are doctors who might call a patient with brain death not dead, there aren't any who'd say a patient whose heart's dead isn't dead." Toshio said with a laugh. For no particular reason he switched his car keys to his other hand. "Her breathing and heart rate stopped, her blood pressure was zero, and her pupillary response was gone. She was dead. No room for doubt."
