Edge

Chapter 1: Missing

November 5, 2012

Saeko Kuriyama awoke with a start, her heart thumping wildly. Almost as if her heart had taken over her entire body, its pounding emanated outwards, causing her breasts to twitch with its surging pulsations. Today, yet again, Saeko was unable to get up for several moments after awakening.

When she opened her eyes, the shapes around her were still dark. She remained motionless at first, trying to catch her breath before she reached for the clock on her bedside table. It read 9:11 a.m. She had overslept by quite a bit. As the details of her room began to come into focus, the darkness she had perceived initially began to fade.

For a full twenty minutes, Saeko remained under the covers and waited for her pulse to stop racing, ignoring both her need to urinate and the dryness in her throat. The refrigerator was only several meters away, but it seemed much farther. The thought of cold mineral water was appealing, but Saeko couldn’t yet bring herself to move.

Life had become so painful, it was unbearable. Lately, Saeko felt the same way each morning. Especially as the seasons shifted from autumn into winter, the wretchedness of living alone grew ever greater, almost tearing her to pieces. Her pent-up misery thrashed about wildly in her searching for an outlet.

Go ahead. Hurt me. Take my life, please.

Death seduced her. She lacked the courage to commit suicide, but if the natural flow of things were to lead her to death, Saeko wouldn’t resist at this point. She felt no attachment to life. Her reasons were indistinct, but they weren’t impossible to pinpoint.

The divorce she had gone through six months ago had done more damage to her, emotionally and physically, than she had ever anticipated. The idea that she was unfit for marriage deeply marred her confidence, intensifying her isolation. It convinced her that she was missing something other people had.

“There’s something deeply off about you. You’re like a transform fault. A human Fossa Magna,” her husband had said once in a fit of exasperation.

“The Fossa Magna is a great rift valley, not a transform fault,” Saeko had corrected him coolly.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

He’d made similar remarks a number of times, though not exactly framed in those terms.

“You’re bizarre. You’re not normal.”

After being told the same thing enough times, Saeko had begun to suppose he might be right.

“Why do you always have to compare people? It’s driving me crazy!”

That was the only accusation that had really struck Saeko to the core; he had managed to hit the nail right on the head. When Saeko and her husband had lived together, Saeko had compared him to her father at every turn. Whenever she observed her husband failing at something her father could have easily done, Saeko deducted points from an imaginary scorecard.

No man on earth could live up to my father.

Even now, it was still true as far as Saeko was concerned. The pain of divorcing her husband of five years was nothing compared to the overwhelming loss she’d experienced when her father had gone missing. The amount of tears she shed now was paltry in comparison. Eighteen years ago, Saeko’s father had vanished suddenly without any explanation. He had been Saeko’s guardian and her only living relative. To this day, she hadn’t the faintest clue what had become of him or whether he was alive or dead.

Saeko’s mother had died thirty-five years ago during Saeko’s birth. From what she understood, there had been some sort of medical mishap, but Saeko’s father said little about the incident.

My loneliness began at birth.

Viewed in that light, it all added up. Saeko had come into the world just as her mother had left it, and her father had showered her with all of his love. But that had only intensified Saeko’s despair when her father had suddenly disappeared. It was as if a lid had been closed on her life, sealing her in darkness.

Perhaps that was why Saeko sometimes found herself seized by the sensation of being trapped in a dark, constrictive space, unable to move. It wasn’t a dream, a hallucination, or sleep paralysis — it was much more real and immediate. It was as if she were enclosed in some sort of gelatinous membrane; she could feel its rubbery walls. She huddled within it like a fetus, blind, unable to move her arms or legs, and in her stillness it was as if she were the last person on earth, wracked by a desolation that made her immobility worse. After a few minutes, Saeko usually recovered her ability to move, and the pounding of her heart gradually receded as well.

Saeko crossed her hands over her chest and took steady breaths, trying to persuade the palpitations to subside. As the fingertips of both hands grazed her breasts, she suddenly became aware of a slight, unfamiliar discrepancy in their symmetry as her fingers encountered a hard, tiny lump on the outer side of her left breast.

She drew her hand away quickly and lay motionless, gazing up at the ceiling. She had a habit of holding perfectly still and focusing inwards when faced with an ominous premonition — a condition she liked to call “going into a quantum superimposition state.” She wove together affirmations and denials both consciously and unconsciously until a single conclusion emerged. Then the message traveled from her mind to her body.

Saeko unfastened two buttons on her pajamas, slipped a hand through the opening, and carefully explored both breasts — breasts that hadn’t been caressed by a man for a year. Beginning at the nipples and making three progressively larger circles, Saeko once more detected the lump on the underside of her left breast. She hadn’t imagined it. It was unmistakable and right where she’d felt it earlier.

Oh, no.

Saeko didn’t know what breast cancer would feel like, but she focused inwards, straining to detect some sort of unfamiliarity. Her digestive system, respiratory system, circulatory system, urinary system, reproductive system, nervous system … She pictured each set of organs in turn, trying to perceive the birth and spread of a malignant tumor. But of course she didn’t feel anything. She gave up and instead tried to remember when she’d last had a check-up.

Two years ago. Maybe three. Her numbers had all been fine. In fact, the data had shown her to be almost too healthy for a woman in her mid-thirties.

At the thought of breast cancer, and the realization that death might lurk just beyond it, a chill ran up Saeko’s spine. Just moments ago, she had denied to herself that she feared death at all, but that fearlessness evaporated with the eerie sensation of discovering an abnormality in her body.

She had never had much libido, but as she stroked her breasts, she imagined her hands as belonging to some faceless man. In an instant, the possibility of death and sex seemed to converge in a single spot in her breasts.

It’s probably mastitis, she told herself. Banishing the fear of breast cancer with a convenient alternative, Saeko rose from her bed. Lying around gave her mind too much freedom to wander. Better to get up quickly and get to work. She had to keep moving if she wanted to forget her torments. Some people worked to make money. Saeko worked to live.

Currently, she was assisting with a television program. She’d debated whether or not to get involved, but before she knew it she’d been drafted into the project as a de facto team member.

Still seated on her bed, Saeko reached for the remote control and turned the TV on. As the sound came on, the words “breast cancer” evaporated from her mind, though her left hand continued unconsciously stroking her breast.

The incident had been featured on a tabloid-style TV special that February. Just like today, she’d been lying around in bed and had switched the TV on with the remote. The screen had lit up with the image of a stately farmhouse set against the vivid greenery of a hillside. Then too, the time had been just after 9:00 a.m.

Saeko remembered the program with astonishing clarity. The house was of a traditional Japanese architectural style, the kind you saw sometimes in mountain villages. The female reporter walked slowly up the gentle incline of the paved road in front of the house as she described the incident to the viewers.

“Two weeks ago, a family of four vanished from this house in the suburbs of Takato.”

Instantly, Saeko was riveted. The words penetrated deeply into her consciousness, rudely stirring up memories of the past: the chirping of cicada a vivid cascade, the steep stone stairs leading up to a shrine, the thick canopy of giant cedars forming a ceiling overhead, beams of blinding summer sun streaming down through the gaps …

Interrupting Saeko’s memories, the female reporter had continued, holding a microphone in her left hand and pointing towards the house with her right, her face a mask of gravity: “The entire Fujimura family of four has disappeared from their home. They left dishes freshly washed in the kitchen, the table set with tea cups, the bathtub full of water, and the laundry machine full of clothes. There are no signs that the house has been ransacked. Everything here is perfectly normal, except that the house’s inhabitants are gone. Nobody has any idea why the Fujimuras would have disappeared. They were well-to-do, as you can see. They had no debts, no ties to any religious cult. Their disappearance is an absolute mystery.”

A relative of the family was shown making the standard remarks: she had no idea why the family had disappeared, and she prayed for their safe return. Then the female reporter reappeared.

“We all hope the Fujimura family is safe.”

From there, the show shifted abruptly into a story about two popular celebrities getting married. Saeko had lost interest and changed the station.

For a while, the disappearance of the Fujimura family was featured on various TV gossip shows and magazine close-ups, but after about a month the media attention had waned. No new developments had come to light, and there simply wasn’t any material to support further coverage, even though public interest in the incident remained high and the entire nation was aware of the story.

Time passed without the investigation making any headway, and before long, nearly ten months had transpired without anyone learning what had become of the Fujimuras.

Saeko had never expected to become involved with the case. But that July, just half a year after the family’s disappearance, she had received a phone call from Maezono, chief editor of the Sea Bird monthly magazine at Azuka Press. Saeko knew Maezono wanted to offer her an assignment even before the meeting. From the tone she picked up on the phone, it was probably a substantial job. Maezono had even hinted at the possibility of serialization.

At the front desk of Azuka Press the next day the receptionist buzzed Maezono’s office. When the large woman came waddling down the stairs, the first words out of her mouth were: “Let’s grab some lunch.”

She invited Saeko to a nearby Italian restaurant. It was a trick of the trade — treat the contractor to a meal, then gently propose a deal over a full stomach. When they had finished eating and were sipping their postprandial coffees, Maezono finally got down to business.

“It’s about the Fujimura family’s disappearance. You’ve heard of it, I assume?”

“Of course.” Saeko’s response was immediate.

“Well? Are you interested?” Maezono probed, not skipping a beat.

Was she interested? To Saeko, nothing was as critical as a missing person case, and Maezono knew it.

In response to Saeko’s silent stare, Maezono passed her a sheaf of papers. “If you don’t want to do it, just say so. But I don’t know anyone more qualified for this assignment.”

“You want me to do an investigative report on the incident?”

“Yes.”

“I’m interested in the case.”

It was definitely an issue that Saeko cared about. But considering her own emotional health, perhaps it was one she needed to avoid. If she wrote about a missing persons case, it was bound to stir up memories of her father’s disappearance.

Saeko had conducted an exhaustive search for her father, so she knew a thing or two about looking for missing people. It seemed Maezono was scheming to add such cases to Saeko’s fields of expertise as a reporter.

“Will you do it? I realize this is a sensitive topic for you. But sometimes confronting an issue head-on is the best way to overcome it. Like that article you did on your divorce.”

That May, just after her divorce, Saeko had been offered an opportunity to publish a humorous account of the experience in a sports tabloid. Upon marrying, Saeko had quit her job as editor of a science magazine to pursue an independent career as a freelance reporter. The offer couldn’t have come at a better time, since she needed to establish a broader base as a writer, and writing a tongue-in-cheek story about divorce was definitely a foray into new terrain.

At the time, Maezono and Saeko had never met. But when the article came out, Maezono read it and immediately contacted Saeko. Maezono was forty-two and also divorced. She told Saeko that the article had resonated with her.

I liked how you used humor to weather your pain and suffering.

Having tasted the same bitter fruit, the two women hit it off from the moment they met, laughing it up over their ex-husbands’ foibles and idiosyncrasies. Immediately, Maezono had begun to assign Saeko writing jobs, motivated less by her desire to help Saeko survive economically as a single woman than by her appreciation of Saeko’s work ethic and meticulous research.

At the time, Maezono had just recently been appointed editor-in-chief and was striving so zealously to increase readership as to raise a few eyebrows. If she succeeded, Maezono felt she would validate the board’s decision to select her for the job. If she failed, not only did she stand to lose her job, it would also compromise the standing of the board members who had supported her.

In order to sell more subscriptions, Maezono came up with the idea of giving the magazine’s soap-box tone a makeover. There was a limit to how many copies they could sell with pages primarily designed to appeal to male readers. The fastest way to increase readership was to conquer a broader demographic. Maezono’s battle plan was to engage the interest of female readers by publishing detailed investigative reports of the type of incidents featured on the local news pages.

The plan worked. The magazine’s subscription rate rose sharply, and Maezono’s performance as editor-in-chief was highly lauded. Her talents were also evident in the way she leveraged and further honed Saeko’s scientific approach to investigative reporting.

Meanwhile, Saeko derived new opportunities to define herself as a writer through her work with Maezono, and the two divorcées developed a relationship of mutual support.

Maezono eyed Saeko while simultaneously browsing the dessert menu. “Besides, it would be such a waste not to apply your unique skills here. Of course, if you think it would be traumatic for you …”

Recounting the details of her divorce had been difficult for Saeko, even though the tone of the article had been lighthearted. At first, it was hard to comprehend why the topic was so painful — she certainly wasn’t still in love with her ex. But in the process of writing, Saeko was forced to face a new realization: her husband had been right about her unresolved feelings towards her father. She was forced to finally admit to herself that she had always compared any man in her life — her lovers, her husband — to her father. She glorified her father in his absence, building up an idealized image of him in her subconscious against which all other men paled. More evidence that she was unfit for marriage.

But Maezono was right. Writing the comedic account of her divorce had helped Saeko to contend with those messy emotions.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked.

Maezono went on to propose a project spanning six months to a year, possibly longer. Saeko would explore various missing persons incidents, beginning with a detailed investigative report on the disappearance of the Fujimura family from their home near Takato.

Saeko went home that day without explicitly committing to the project, but she took the file home. It mainly contained clippings from previous articles about the incident. There were no new leads. Saeko would need to begin by acquiring accurate information on every aspect of the case.

She needed to know when, where, and how the Fujimura family had disappeared, who the members of the family were, their ages and occupations, what problems they did and didn’t have, and whether or not there was any discord within the family. When Saeko had an almost complete understanding of the circumstances, she came up with a few theories, which she tested through trial and error.

The number of missing persons cases in Japan each year was close to 100,000, but roughly one half to two thirds of those people eventually came home of their own accord. The remaining 30,000 or so remained missing, but the majority of these owed large sums of money and were probably fleeing their debtors. The number of cases in which the reason for the disappearance remained mysterious was approximately 10,000.

When a person ran away to wipe the ledger clean and make a fresh start, the disappearance could be categorized as voluntary. But when a person was abducted or coerced in some way, in the worst-case scenarios they often wound up murdered. Taking into account recent examples, there was even the possibility of involvement of religious cults or the intelligence agency of a despotic nation.

If Saeko were to write this article, she would focus on investigating the cause of the family’s disappearance. The police had determined that there was no sign of criminal activity. After searching the nearby mountains, rivers, lakes, and marshes, the investigation was dropped. The only further inquiries were conducted by various media outlets and freelance reporters. Despite detailed investigations by all of these parties, none of them had made any headway towards solving the case. The family had no debt, and none of its members had any serious problems. Their neighbors all testified that they couldn’t imagine anyone having any sort of grudge against the Fujimura family. Needless to say, none of the neighbors had any bad blood with the Fujimuras. As if to corroborate those statements, there was no sign of a struggle in the house, and Luminol tests revealed no traces of blood in the residence.

Based on these reports, Saeko didn’t have the slightest clue why the Fujimuras had disappeared. How could it be? she wondered. By the time Saeko had read through every page of the dossier, she was incredulous. I must be overlooking something, she concluded. There was no way a family of four could simply vanish overnight for no reason whatsoever.

Once, in elementary school, Saeko had read a book about the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries. One of the stories was about the Marie Celeste incident, a bizarre group disappearance that took place in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. The incident was presented as a true story reported by sailors aboard another vessel that had discovered the abandoned ship.

On December 4, 1872, on a voyage across the Atlantic, the Dei Gratia brigantine discovered the Marie Celeste seemingly adrift at sea. The seamen’s code of ethics required that they assist fellow seamen in peril, so they signaled the Marie Celeste but received no response. They drew alongside the vessel, and the captain of the Dei Gratia and several of his men boarded the Marie Celeste, only to find it abandoned. The ship was unmanned, its cargo intact but its crew missing.

Further investigation of the vessel only uncovered more mysteries as if to prove the Marie Celeste a true ghost ship.

The Marie Celeste had set sail from New York with a crew of nine on November 7th and was discovered adrift on the morning of December 4th. The description of its condition when discovered was as follows:

The captain’s breakfast was found on the table in his quarters, half eaten. There was bread and coffee, and even a baby’s milk pot on a corner of the table. The captain’s logbook was found abandoned nearby, with the words “December 4th, my wife, Marie” inscribed in a scrawling hand.

There was a pot over the fire in the kitchen, and in the crew’s quarters a roasted chicken stew had been left unfinished.

In the ship’s washroom, there was evidence that someone had been shaving, and in the next cabin over they found a knife with blood on it.

The ship’s cargo was found untouched, so there was no possibility of a pirate attack. The ship was undamaged, and there were no indications that the crew had deliberately fled the ship due to the outbreak of a contagious disease or similar reason. Food and water remained in abundance, and the lifeboat was still tethered securely to the deck.

What on earth had happened to the crew? To this day, that question remained unanswered.

The story had sent chills up Saeko’s spine when she’d read it as a child. It was the first incident that always came to mind whenever she heard of a group disappearance.

But at the age of thirty-five, Saeko no longer harbored a child’s innocent acceptance of the world’s mysteries. She was sure there was an explanation, and she was determined to figure it out through rational analysis. The cause of the crew’s disappearance could be surprisingly mundane.

For example, perhaps one of the sailors had fallen overboard during breakfast. The other members might have jumped in to save him, one after another, until none remained. Perhaps it was as simple as that. But with all of the relevant parties gone, the incident remained a mystery.

In investigating the Fujimura family’s disappearance, Saeko resolved to ignore outlandish possibilities and focus on the simplest possible scenarios. She took out a memo pad and drew a chart, dividing the page into two main categories, voluntary causes and coercive causes such as abduction. The former category included fleeing from debtors or group suicide. There was also the possibility that the entire family had fallen into a river or lake and drowned.

For the latter category to apply, there had to be some sort of impetus for the abduction. Compared to cases in the former category, this type of incident was likely to be fairly obvious. It would require meticulous planning and professional involvement to abduct a family of four without leaving any discernible traces.

It just doesn’t seem possible, she concluded.

Saeko decided to scratch abduction off her list for the time being. That left the possibility that the family had disappeared either by their collective will or by the will of one of the family members. Perhaps there had been an accident. To involve the entire family required it to be a car accident. But other investigators had already determined that the Fujimuras’ car was parked in their garage even now.

How else could all four of them disappear simultaneously? Back to the basics. The most important thing to consider was the Fujimuras’ personal affairs. Saeko would need to thoroughly investigate any and all of their relationships. A lot of reporters had already looked into the matter, but Saeko was sure they had missed something.

Having determined her general course of action, she discussed the matter in detail with Kikuchi, the editor assigned to the project. She made two week-long visits to the Fujimuras’ neighborhood and put together a thirty-page article.

But even after all of that, Saeko was unable to crack the case. She still didn’t know what had happened to the Fujimuras. If they had been the victims of a crime, there was no solid evidence as to who had committed it.

More and more, it seemed to Saeko as if the Fujimura family had simply vanished into thin air.

Saeko turned off the TV, crawled out of bed, and opened her planner to check the time of her meeting today with the TV station. One p.m., in a meeting room at the station. There was still plenty of time.

She had breakfast and took a leisurely shower. As she stepped into a tight skirt and zipped it up — she hadn’t worn one of these in a while — she felt her body tense slightly in anticipation. This was the first time Saeko had ever been involved in a television show. She relished the idea of undertaking a job far more grueling than anything she’d ever done. She wanted to lose herself in work that would exhaust her mentally and physically, without sacrificing pride or self-respect.

She knew that by pursuing novel experiences she could maintain a certain degree of tension in her life that would help her forget the pain. At the same time, she had a tendency to imagine failure around every corner and was often afraid to take the initiative. Instead, she found herself always passively going with the flow, letting herself get caught up in whatever work happened to come her way.

Even though her father had advised her to do just the opposite.

Whenever Saeko struggled with her schoolwork, her father never simply gave her the answers. Instead, he offered subtle hints, guiding Saeko to find the answers on her own.

When Saeko was in sixth grade, her science teacher assigned a difficult problem as homework, and the answer was nowhere to be found in her books. It required a spatial understanding of astronomical bodies to work out the answer, and the teacher hadn’t expected any of the students to actually solve it. He had simply intended for the assignment to stimulate deep inquiry in the students by way of forcing them to think about a difficult problem.

Saeko had thought about the problem to the best of her abilities, but the answer was beyond her. Eventually, she consulted her father.

Her father began by drawing an illustration and explaining how the planets orbited the sun. With gestures and humor, he offered an animated account of the resulting interplay of light and darkness, the waxing and waning of the moon, lunar and solar eclipses, the relationship between the positions of Venus and Mars, the directionality and volume of light received from the sun, and so forth. By helping Saeko visualize the relationships between the sun, the planets, and the moon and how we perceive them from the Earth’s surface, he gave her an important hint as to how to solve the difficult assignment.

“Close your eyes and picture it …”

Her father’s gentle guidance worked like a charm. Saeko thought long and hard, and suddenly found herself able to visualize the planets orbiting the sun. The light that radiated out from the Sun in every direction and the resulting shadows made the Moon and Venus and Mars sparkle all the more fantastically in her imagination. She grasped the planets’ orbits perfectly and absorbed with ease the principles behind the phenomena. It was the moment that gave rise to Saeko’s passion for science and her ability to close her eyes at any time and witness the incredible astronomical spectacle wrought by the play of light on the objects of the solar system.

When Saeko’s father disappeared during Saeko’s second year of high school, her ability to visualize celestial motion also departed. When she did manage to conjure up lifeless, mineral objects revolving in a dark vacuum, there was no beauty in the image. At the same time, she lost interest in physics, mathematics, the ability to grasp spatial relationships — and the courage to explore new territory.

Saeko’s thoughts shifted back to the present. The memory of receiving hints from her father had brought to mind his postcard.

Where did I put it? she wondered. With the sudden realization that she’d forgotten something important for many years, her movements quickened. She pulled open drawers all over the apartment, hunting for the lost item.

She finally found the postcard in the file of records pertaining to her father’s disappearance. The card’s edges were tattered and frayed; after it had arrived, she had carried it with her at all times, touching it frequently and staring at it with intense longing. She had probably tucked it away in the file a few years before getting married. Now, more than ten years had passed since she’d last handled it.

It was a run-of-the-mill picture postcard, but the postmark was somewhat unusual. It had been sent from La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. The picture was of the ruins of Tiwanaku, which were not far from La Paz.

On the back of the postcard was Saeko’s father’s familiar handwriting. His letters and postcards were always written horizontally in Western style since he made frequent use of numbers and English words in his correspondence.

The postcard was dated August 19, 1994, and the postmark bore the same date. He must have written it the morning of the nineteenth and posted it just after checking out of his hotel. After leaving the hotel he had flown from the El Alto International Airport in La Paz to Houston, and the next day to Narita. He’d arrived at Narita on August 21st, checked in at a hotel near the airport, and called Saeko to let her know that he would be heading for Shikoku the next day.

She never heard from him again.

The postcard had arrived on August 25th, when Saeko’s father’s disappearance had already robbed her of all vitality, leaving her dazed and lost. Even though she knew it had been written a week earlier, when the postcard arrived it convinced Saeko somehow that she would see her father again one day. It had given her the strength to go on living.

How are you, Saeko? I’m headed back to Narita now by way of Houston. Coming here has led me to realize a number of things.

Life, eyes, black holes, language …

The extinction of the dinosaurs, the extinction of the Neanderthals …

Life and death. Opposing concepts. In terms of information theory, the mechanisms of life and death are the same. The interplay of light. The interplay with the brain and consciousness maintains the structure of the cosmos. The important thing is the network of relationships. If these relationships break down, “the sun will not rise tomorrow.”

August 19, 1994, La Paz

When the 17-year-old Saeko had received this postcard, she had no clue what her father was driving at. In fact, it wasn’t until she became a philosophy major in college that she recognized that “the sun may not rise tomorrow” was a reference to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Saeko’s father always put his references in quotation marks to avoid confusion. The full quotation from Wittgenstein was, “It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.”

The Internet and e-mail were not yet ubiquitous when her father had written the postcard, and Saeko suspected that he had intended it to serve both as a message to his daughter and a memo to himself.

But what on earth had he meant? Saeko had been so preoccupied by his disappearance that she had neglected to devote herself to deciphering the postcard’s message. There was something ominous in the mention of extinction and a denial of the future in that clause “the sun will not rise tomorrow.”

Was it pure coincidence that Saeko had remembered the postcard her father had written her eighteen years ago on the same morning she was scheduled to attend a meeting at a television station, on the strength of an article she had written about a missing persons case? Her father had always counseled her to take flashes of inspiration seriously.

It hadn’t occurred to Saeko at the time, but perhaps there was some connection between her father’s disappearance and whatever he had been trying to tell her with this postcard.

Saeko decided to stop in at the library after her meeting that afternoon. The library was on the way home from the TV station, and she had spent a great deal of time studying there as a child. She wanted to have another crack at decoding the hints in her father’s cryptic message. Even if she got nowhere, for a time it would distract her from the pain of being alive.

It was Saeko’s first planning meeting at a television station. The only person she knew would be Hashiba, the director of the program. She’d be meeting the rest of the team for the first time.

Saeko got out of her cab at the building’s entrance and had the receptionist at the front desk call Hashiba. The receptionist spoke a few words into the intercom then stated, “Please have a seat on the sofa.” Obligingly, Saeko took a seat on the empty sofa on the other side of the lobby.

Glancing around the room, she noticed a female celebrity that she recognized from TV also waiting. Saeko couldn’t remember the actress’ name off the top of her head, but she was the sidekick on a Friday night variety show. Trying not to stare, Saeko averted her gaze, only to spot a world-famous director chatting with a staff member as he walked by.

Saeko experienced a slight wave of nervousness, accompanied by the vague realization that she was out of place in this environment.

Honestly, she couldn’t understand why the station wanted to make a new program about the missing family in Takato at this late date. As far as she knew, there had been no new developments connected to the case.

The director from the TV station, a man by the name of Hashiba, had contacted her in roughly the middle of the last month. He’d read Saeko’s article about the missing family in Takato and wanted to speak with her.

“What is this in reference to?” Saeko asked cautiously.

“Well, it’s like this …” Hashiba explained that the TV station wanted to do a show on the missing family and were hoping that Saeko could help.

Saeko had put her heart and soul into investigating the Takato incident, but she’d been unable to unearth any new leads. The reaction to her article had been mostly benign. But Saeko’s editor had informed her that her detailed reporting had garnered high regard in media circles. Hashiba’s phone call was direct evidence of that fact.

“Why me?” Saeko was still fairly inexperienced as a reporter and wasn’t sure what to make of the offer. It could be an opportunity to open new doors professionally, or it could just be a big headache.

“The writing and the content was excellent, but most of all, we were deeply impressed with the research,” Hashiba gushed. Then he laid his cards on the table. “Honestly, we came to the conclusion that it would be quicker and easier to use what you know than for us to go to Takato and conduct our own investigation. If you don’t mind my asking, was this the first time you’ve reported on a missing persons case?”

“Well, yes,” Saeko responded.

It was true. It was the first time she’d done an article about a missing persons case. She refrained from mentioning that she’d performed a similar investigation in the past and was well equipped with the relevant skills and contacts.

The thorough investigation of the Fujimuras and their two children that Saeko had conducted during two week-long visits to Takato had been more or less textbook. She had gone to see a local judicial scrivener and acquired the Fujimuras’ residency card, family registry, and appendices — the three fundamentals of a missing persons case. She’d familiarized herself with three generations of their family tree, thoroughly examined their financial obligations and collateral, and the possibility of any extramarital affairs. She’d visited the children’s schools, spoken to their friends to see if the children had had any special issues, and followed up on every possible lead.

All told, Saeko had easily devoted over a hundred hours to the investigation. For the director to redo the same work would take him even longer, given that he lacked Saeko’s experience. From that perspective, it would be a lot more economical to use Saeko’s information, not to mention a lot quicker. Shows like these usually didn’t have a moment of production time to waste.

A man in his thirties emerged into the lobby, holding a cell phone to his ear as he glanced about. It was Hashiba, the director. Saeko got up from the sofa and walked over to meet him. As soon as Hashiba saw her, he ended his phone call, smiled, and bowed.

“Thank you for waiting.”

He was dressed casually, in slim jeans and a denim shirt, and Saeko noticed that he had perfectly flat abs. Somehow he gave off a more innocent vibe than he had at their first meeting.

Was he this good looking? Saeko cocked her head with uncertainty as she followed Hashiba inside.

There were seven people in the meeting room, including Saeko. Oki the producer and chief director Hashiba sat at the head of the table, with directors Kagayama and Nakamura on the left and writers Shigeta and Satoyama on the right. Saeko was the only woman in the group.

“Thank you for coming all this way,” Oki said by way of greeting. Then he got straight to the point, explaining the goal of the project. “Here’s the concept. We want to zero in on the pathological phenomenon in modern Japan — the disappearance of 100,000 people each year — incorporating a sort of public investigation element. Ideally, the show would lead to the resolution of some cases.”

Saeko wanted the same thing. She had hoped her reporting would at least bring the investigation closer to the truth. She’d love to have discovered the clue that would lead to the answer — she needed the catharsis that would come with cracking the case. But reality hadn’t conformed to her wishes.

When Saeko made no response, Oki continued. “By the way, Ms. Kuriyama, I’m sure there are things you found out that didn’t make it into your article. Could you please give us a general explanation once more of everything you’ve found out about the case?”

Saeko opened the file in front of her, trying not to make eye contact with any of the men. “As you all know, the four members of the Fujimura family disappeared suddenly on the night of January 22nd of this year.”

“Can we be sure they disappeared on the night of January 22nd?” Hashiba asked promptly.

“To be precise, it was sometime between 10 p.m. that evening and 7 a.m. the next morning.”

“You have a specific time frame?”

“Yes. At around 10 p.m. that evening, a friend of Haruko’s called the house and spoke with her.”

“Haruko?”

“Here. Let’s go over the family tree once more,” Saeko replied, passing out copies of a diagram that showed the Fujimuras’ familial relationships at a glance. “There you have the four members of the Fujimura household. Kota, the husband, age 49, an employee of the local Japan Agricultural Cooperative; his wife Haruko, age 45, a high school teacher in Ina City; daughter Fumi, a first year student at Takato High School; and son Keisuke, a second year student at Takato Junior High. We know that all four were at home at 10 p.m. on the 22nd.”

“This was confirmed by Haruko’s friend who called?” Hashiba wanted to know.

“Of course she didn’t talk to each individual family member,” Saeko replied. “But Haruko’s friend has stated that when she spoke to Haruko, everything seemed normal, and she could hear the voices of the other family members in the living room over the line.”

“I see. But couldn’t it be possible that one or two of the family members could already have been missing at that point?” Hashiba pressed.

“It’s possible. But it’s hard to imagine that anything abnormal was going on at that point based on the impression Haruko’s friend had when she called.”

“What did they talk about?” Oki asked.

“Haruko and her friend, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“The two of them were friends from high school, and a mutual friend was returning to Japan from the U.S., so they discussed the three of them getting together for a drink.”

“When was their friend going to return to Japan?”

“January 24th.”

“Two days after the family’s disappearance. It’s hard to imagine someone disappearing of their own volition the same night she’d made plans to go drinking with friends two days later,” Hashiba murmured, seemingly to himself. He had a habit of tapping the tip of his ballpoint pen against his notepad while he thought.

“That’s right. At least, I couldn’t uncover a single reason why Haruko would want to disappear,” Saeko confirmed.

“All right. Now, can you tell us how you know the family had gone missing by 7 a.m. the next morning?” Oki prompted, bringing them back to the timeframe issue.

“Another phone call. Haruko’s older sister Junko called at that hour, and there was no answer. Normally, someone would definitely have been home to answer the phone on a weekday morning at seven. Kota left for work at nine-thirty, the children left for school just a little before eight, and Haruko left for work earliest, at seven-thirty.”

“Who was the first person to notice that something unusual was going on with the Fujimuras?”

“Keisuke’s homeroom teacher at Takato Junior High.”

“Because he didn’t show up at school?”

“Right. The teacher called the Fujimuras immediately, but there was no answer. Given that Haruko was a fellow teacher, Keisuke’s teacher obtained her contact details through a mutual friend and tried her workplace, but her coworkers informed him that she hadn’t shown up. That afternoon, the teacher called a relative of the Fujimuras and explained the circumstances.”

“And who was the first person to check their home?”

“Junko, Haruko’s older sister.”

“The woman who had phoned that morning.”

“Yes.”

“And what did Junko find?”

“Basically, the house looked as if the Fujimuras had just popped out momentarily and then never returned.” Saeko stopped here, and she somehow felt compelled to look each of the six men in the face.

But how could that be? their eyes seemed to say.

“Specifically, what did she find?” Kagayama asked, speaking up for the first time. The whole group was listening intently, but Kagayama alone betrayed a hint of fear in his expression.

“It was like any other day at the Fujimura house. The bathtub was full of water … Of course, it was cold by the time they found it. But there were signs that the children had already bathed; they may have been in their pajamas when they disappeared. In the kitchen, the dishes had been washed, and on the living room table there were two tea cups with tea still in them, plus an empty beer can next to a glass still half-full of beer. There were a few tissues and a banana peel in the wastebasket, and the radio was on in one of the children’s rooms.”

“And the lights?”

“They were on.”

“Did Junko go in through the front door?”

“No. It was locked, so she went around the back and came in through the kitchen.”

“I see. And she discovered the house looking as if everything was wrapped up for the day and the family was ready for bed, hmm? Yet, for some reason, the family was gone. Tell me, Ms. Kuriyama, what was the first explanation that came to mind? Did you have any theories as to how the Fujimuras vanished?”

“I went through the standard scenarios and ruled them out one by one. As I noted in my report, the majority of missing persons incidents in Japan involve debt. So that was the first possibility I examined. There are innumerable examples in which the missing party gave the appearance of leading a perfectly stable life despite actually being deeply in debt.”

“So you looked into their finances.”

“Thorougly.”

“And there was no debt?”

“Let me give you the specific numbers. Their bank accounts held 25 million yen in Kota’s name and 9.5 million in Haruko’s. The children aside, that’s a total of almost 35 million yen. On top of that, their house was all paid off — no mortgage. The only thing they owed was their auto loan, with a balance of less than a million yen. The Fujimuras owned other real estate as well, but it wasn’t under mortgage either. In other words, the family was essentially debt-free, with nearly 35 million yen in the bank. And not a drop of that money has been withdrawn since they’ve gone missing.”

“In other words, we can rule out debt as the reason for their disappearance.”

“Right. It’s just not possible.”

With specific numbers provided, the group had to agree with Saeko’s conclusion. The Fujimuras definitely hadn’t run off in the night to escape their debtors.

“So what does that leave?”

“Beyond debt, the next most likely possibility is a crime of passion. Kota was clean as a whistle, with no shadow of any rumors of adultery. He was never very social and he didn’t have a lot of friends. Haruko, on the other hand, was a very attractive woman, and there was some talk of a possible relationship between her and another man.”

“Ah-ha! Did the husband know?” Oki asked quickly. He seemed to be already imagining the set-up: husband learns of wife’s affair and in a blind rage kills his family before taking his own life. Naturally, Saeko had entertained the same possibility.

“I looked into it, but it seems the rumors about Haruko hadn’t reached Kota. They were baseless to begin with and never went any further than Haruko’s workplace. For that reason, the jealous husband scenario doesn’t seem like a possibility, either.”

In a sweeping motion, Oki the producer reclined in his seat and leaned back all the way. “Mm-hmm. So I guess that only leaves one possibility.”

“Abduction, you mean?”

“Yes. What’s your take?”

“I think the possibility of a foreign government being involved is slim, but the most likely remaining explanation is that they were abducted.”

“Ah-ha!” Oki’s reaction seemed vaguely excited as he sat back up in his chair, leaning forwards across the table.

“Nothing else fits. The chances that a group of criminals broke into the Fujimuras’ home and kidnapped them is basically nil. There was no evidence whatsoever of a struggle. The family’s car is still parked in their garage, so we know they didn’t go for a drive and get into an accident. The only possible explanation is that someone very close to the Fujimuras lured the whole family out of the house and that they were taken away in a van or similar vehicle.”

“I see. Does anyone else have any ideas?” Oki turned to the other members of the group.

“Well, perhaps we should consider the possibility of a UFO abduction,” suggested writer Satoyama with a wide-eyed expression. Immediately the tension in the room slackened, and a few members of the group let out guffaws. Saeko wasn’t sure whether Satoyama was kidding or not. He looked like a typical occult-obsessed reclusive type, and it seemed possible that he genuinely believed aliens might be involved.

Saeko smiled and refrained from commenting. Then she revealed the hypothesis she’d left out of her report.

“Between you and me, when I began my investigation, I suspected Koji’s older brother Seiji.” Without clear evidence, Saeko could have been sued for slander if she’d publicly implicated a specific individual in her report. It wasn’t the sort of thing a writer could publish without any proof.

“Why?” Both Oki and Hashiba simultaneously voiced their interest.

“Because Seiji does have debt,” Saeko replied.

Immediately, the expressions of the entire group turned grave. Only Satoyama looked vaguely disappointed.

“How much does he owe?” Oki inquired.

“Approximately two million yen. And not because his business went bankrupt. He just spent himself deeper and deeper into debt.”

“Well, that’s not uncommon.”

“But Seiji has no prospects for paying his debts off.”

“If the entire Fujimura family were to disappear, would Seiji inherit everything they had?” Hashiba probed.

Saeko nodded. “Exactly. He’s Koji’s only sibling. If the Fujimuras never reappear, Seiji is the legal heir to their estate. As I mentioned earlier, the Fujimuras had almost 35 million yen just in savings. When you factor in their home, the lot, and their other property, they were easily worth more than 50 million.”

“And if Seiji wanted to inherit that money, he would have to get rid of the entire family, right?”

“Do you know what he asked me?”

“What?”

Saeko lowered her voice and imitated Seiji’s throaty growl. “Say, does it really take seven years to close a missing persons case?”

Hashiba gave her a startled look. Up until now, Saeko had responded to the men’s questions with a perfectly sober demeanor. Then, all of a sudden, she’d launched into an uncanny impression of a brazenly greedy middle-aged man. He was so taken off guard that he didn’t have time to laugh, but it made him take a fresh look at Saeko. Delight registered on his face as on a boy’s discovering an appealing toy.

“I get it. The case has to be closed for him to inherit their estate, huh?” Oki’s speech, too, dropped into an informal, more familiar register.

“What do you think, Ms. Kuriyama? You’ve met this Seiji, right?” Hashiba asked.

“Yes.”

“Well? Is he behind this?”

The six men gazed at Saeko in tense anticipation.

“No.” Saeko delivered her verdict with an off-hand shrug.

“What? He’s not?” All at once, the six men clamored to know why Saeko could be so sure of Seiji’s innocence.

“On paper, he looks pretty suspicious. But the moment I met him, I knew he couldn’t have done it. He’s clean, all right. He doesn’t have the balls to pull off something this big.”

This was too much for Hashiba. He grimaced, barely holding in his laughter. “He’s not the criminal type, you mean?”

“Oh, he’s rotten to the core. He’s the kind who would do anything for money. But if he did, he’d be bound to screw something up. He’s that type. We’re talking about making an entire family disappear overnight without a trace, as if by magic. Seiji could never pull a stunt like that singlehandedly.”

“But we can’t be sure it was a solo job, right? Maybe he had accomplices,” Oki offered.

“Even more impossible.”

When Saeko shot down his suggestion, Oki looked slightly taken aback, slumping one shoulder dramatically. “How do you know?” he asked.

“No decent human being — or an indecent one for that matter — would ever consider partnering up with Seiji.”

The rest of the group eyed Saeko dubiously, as if wondering how she could be so sure just through her limited contact with Seiji. “Can you guarantee that?” one of the men ventured.

“He’s a little out of the ordinary. Very out of the ordinary, I should say. He hops from job to job and has virtually no social skills. He’s the black sheep of the family, and the Fujimuras didn’t have much to do with him. He lives in a shack in their neighborhood but he’s basically a hobo, frequently disappearing for a month or two, even a year at times. It would be perfectly obvious to anyone who met him. A group of kidnappers capable of abducting a family wouldn’t want to collaborate with a man like him.”

Saeko obviously held Seiji in the lowest possible regard. Hashiba gazed towards the ceiling with a vague look of satisfaction on his face, as if savoring Saeko’s vitriol. Perhaps he was imagining what unpleasantness had taken place between Saeko and Seiji when she was gathering information.

In contrast, Oki’s expression was faintly sour. “But this Seiji has the key to the Fujimuras’ home, right?” He was literally referring to the front door key to the Fujimuras’ now empty home.

“That’s right. Unfortunately, Seiji is now the caretaker of the Fujimura residence.”

“In other words, nobody can enter the house without Seiji’s permission?”

“That’s right.”

“But from what you wrote, it seems like you’ve been in the house.”

“I believe I’m one of very few journalists who have been inside.”

“Did money change hands?”

“No. Money played no part. Seiji rarely allows any journalists inside. Perhaps he only lends the key to those he perceives as allies.”

This had truly been the selling point of Saeko’s story. Her coverage was unique in providing vivid descriptions of the interior of the Fujimura home. The beer bottle on the table, the-old fashioned radio on the desk in the children’s room, the hardened banana peel in the trash can, the laundry hamper full of clothes in the bathroom … Her detached portrayal of the Fujimuras’ material belongings in the absence of their owners elicited a sort of ominous mood that made her article gripping.

“The other journalists?”

“He didn’t let them in.”

“Why did he let you in, if he turned the others away?”

“I don’t know. I think … I guess … he took a shine to me.” She said the words with such distaste that Hashiba couldn’t hold back a chuckle.

“Sorry. I can certainly understand why Seiji would like you, but I can also understand why you don’t feel the same way,” he commented.

In contrast to Hashiba’s amusement, Oki’s face was a mask of seriousness. “Actually, we’re going to need footage of the inside of the house to do this program.”

Naturally. They could hardly do a thirty-minute show about a family’s disappearance with no footage from inside their home. Saeko didn’t know much about television production, but she understood that much.

“Of course,” she agreed.

Oki laid his hands, half hidden by his sleeves, on the table top and interlaced his fingers. “Ms. Kuriyama, let me ask you something. Do you think you could persuade Seiji to let our team into the house?”

Saeko could almost hear the gears snap together in her mind. She finally understood why they had selected her from among the myriad reporters who had covered the Fujimura story to collaborate on the show. The chief director and the producer needed the key to the Fujimura home.

And they need me to get it. Lucky me, Seiji’s favorite reporter.

And here she had thought it was because her coverage had been superior. Saeko felt her ego deflate like a punctured balloon.

“I’ll walk you to the door,” Hashiba offered as they exited the conference room after the meeting’s conclusion. They took the elevator down to the lobby and had just emerged when Hashiba stopped and glanced at his watch.

“Do you have a bit more time?” he asked, and proposed coffee. Saeko wasn’t in a hurry. She had planned to stop at the library on the way home, but only for personal reasons. She was under no obligation to be anywhere.

“Certainly,” she told him.

“Good. The cafeteria then?” Hashiba stood up and led the way, genuinely giving the impression that there was more he wanted to say to Saeko.

When they were seated opposite each other at a table, Hashiba bowed deeply.

“I’m so sorry,” he said contritely.

Saeko was baffled. “For what?” she asked.

“We didn’t ask you to collaborate on this project just to get the key to the Fujimuras’ home.”

Saeko’s cheeks flushed. Her face must have shown her annoyance in the meeting room. She was impressed that Hashiba had picked up on it.

Saeko’s ex-husband had driven her crazy the way he’d always misread her signals. When she was annoyed at some thoughtless comment he’d made, he’d attribute her bad mood to hunger and try to force her to eat. When her eyes suddenly filled with tears, he’d lecture her with hackneyed advice about how she had to “get over the past,” making her ever conscious of how they were somehow always misaligned.

The schism between them never closed. Instead, little incidents piled up until they were so great as to lead to divorce. In the beginning, it was just minor things that had made Saeko think, Somehow he isn’t quite right for me. In fact, Saeko’s ex-husband never once intuited her feelings correctly.

“Did you invite me to coffee just to tell me that?” Saeko smiled warmly so as not to give the impression that she resented the invitation.

“There’s one other thing too. I wanted to explain why the focus of the show turned out the way it did. Don’t think I missed the expression on your face when the producer mentioned bringing a psychic into the Fujimuras’ home. That was a look of scorn, wasn’t it?”

“Of course not!”

“What a typical, obvious, trite, overdone approach. That’s what you were thinking, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t put it in those terms, exactly …”

Actually, Hashiba had hit the nail on the head. The moment Producer Oki had begun explaining their plans to bring a psychic into the Fujimuras’ home to intuit their whereabouts, Saeko’s shoulders had slumped at the predictability of it. Was this the kind of project she was going to wind up supporting?

“But that’s what you thought, right?”

“Honestly, it wasn’t what I was expecting.” Saeko held up both palms towards Hashiba and gave him a surprised look. It seemed almost childish of Hashiba to exhibit concern over such a thing, and Saeko found it somewhat endearing. He was playing the long-suffering director forced into creating a hackneyed show.

“Sometimes the most random things end up leading to the concept behind a show. That’s definitely true in this case. Satoyama, Shigeta, and I were having lunch together and someone brought up the topic of the family who’d disappeared in Takato. We were mulling over how confounding it was and what possibly could have caused them to go missing, wondering if there was an idea for a show in there somewhere. As dumb luck would have it, that was when Oki showed up and informed us that Shigeko Torii, the famous psychic, was interested in the case. It was all downhill from there, and the idea rammed right through the planning committee. In other words, the whole project was predicated on Shigeta Torii’s involvement from the start.”

The flow Hashiba described made perfect sense. Besides, what sort of show would Saeko have planned if it had been up to her? They could put together a hard-nosed informational broadcast that simply reviewed the known facts of the case, but it was questionable whether such a show would attract much of an audience. On commercial television, ratings were everything. For a show to work, broadcasters had to use whatever tricks and gimmicks they could to attract viewers. Besides, the Takato disappearance was being characterized as one of the world’s most bizarre mysteries. Perhaps it was inevitable that a psychic was being thrown into the mix for color.

“Please don’t worry. I have no objection to the idea whatsoever. I think it’s going to be an interesting show.”

At Saeko’s kind words, Hashiba’s face crinkled with relief. “You’re pretty interesting yourself,” he remarked, sipping his coffee.

From his tone of voice, it was clear he didn’t mean it as an insult. Still, Saeko wondered what he meant exactly. “How’s that?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

“The way you talk and the things you say are weird.”

By any standard, it was a rude comment coming from someone Saeko had only met twice. Still, Saeko didn’t feel angry.

“Well, at least you’re honest. What’s so weird about me?” she asked serenely.

“You’re young, but the expressions you use are like an older person’s.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Your late twenties, I guess.”

“Plus ten.”

At this, Hashiba pulled dramatically back away from the table, then leaned slowly back in, inspecting Saeko from different angles and distances as if trying to reconcile her actual age with how she looked.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’ll be thirty-six next year.”

“Unbelievable. You’re the same age as me, then.”

Now it was Saeko’s turn to be surprised. She had assumed Hashiba was younger than her.

“We would have been in the same grade in school?” Suddenly, Saeko felt more comfortable with Hashiba. She let the formality melt from her speech.

Hashiba began bringing up epoch-making events from their elementary, junior high, and senior high school years, trying to establish common ground. Saeko played along with the conversation, but inside she was beginning to wonder if Hashiba was married. She found herself imagining what it would be like to be alone in a room with him. For some reason his presence was comforting, and she felt her muscles relax. Maybe it was his robust build that made her feel secure, and she sensed a tough core behind his polite manner. The only thing that bothered her about him was the hint of an immature tendency to play up his abilities. But if that were merely a product of his efforts to make a good almost-first impression on Saeko, she supposed it was forgivable. Welcome, even.

Saeko didn’t explicitly avoid the subject of her schoolgirl years, but she had a vague distaste for discussing that period. As Hashiba began to pick up on Saeko’s lukewarm responses, he shifted the topic of conversation back towards their project.

“It’s being peddled as modern-day kamikakushi—the idea of people being spirited away by angry gods — but it could very well just be a series of coincidences. A cut-and-dry accident of some kind. If somehow the case gets solved before we air the show, that’ll be the end of that.” Hashiba laughed weakly.

But Saeko had a different perspective. “The concept of kamikakushi has existed since olden days in Japan, whenever people have disappeared mysteriously. When someone vanishes in the mountains we attribute it to ogres or the long-nosed demons, tengu. When they disappear near a river we blame it on kappa, water imps. There are various commonalities in the folklore pertaining to supernatural disappearances. For example, kamikakushi most often takes place in the springtime, usually at dusk. Before the disappearance takes place, a strong wind always blows. If the person who is spirited away is lucky enough to return home, he or she never retains any memory of where he or she has been. Naturally, that leads people to concoct all sorts of explanations for the mysterious experiences. The missing person is said to be abducted by a tengu, or tricked by a fox … But in my opinion, most of the time the person disappeared of their own accord or met with some kind of accident. When young brides vanished on the eve of their wedding day, they probably just ran away to avoid marriage. Sometimes the missing are believed to have vanished into some sort of utopia. Take the Taro Urashima folktale, for example.”

Hashiba shifted into the role of the attentive listener, encouraging Saeko here and there with questions as she proceeded to regale him with detailed analyses of everything from world folklore regarding abductions to modern-day group disappearances, as well as specific methodologies pertaining to the pursuit of missing persons.

“But this case doesn’t abide by any previously evident patterns,” Saeko concluded.

“The locals in the area are calling it a modern-day case of kamikakushi.”

“Of course. Whenever there’s a mysterious disappearance, people always call it that.”

“How does it differ from existing patterns?”

“How can I put this? It reminds me of some sort of magic trick. Some sort of grand illusion …”

“An illusion? Like when a magician makes a person vanish on stage?”

“Right. I saw the inside of the Fujimuras’ home, after all. It was perfectly clear that the Fujimuras vanished from their home in the blink of an eye.”

“But in magic shows, there’s always some sort of trick at work.”

“Yes. I don’t know what it was. After having conducted a thorough investigation, the only conclusion I can draw is that I don’t get it.”

Hashiba listened intently to Saeko. It was obvious that she knew a great deal about missing persons cases and that her knowledge was grounded in experience.

“And you don’t specialize in missing persons cases as a writer?” he inquired.

“Not at all. This is the first one I’ve covered.”

“You seem unusually well-informed.”

“I’ve been down this road before. That’s why the chips fell to me to take this on.”

Hashiba cocked his head, unsure what Saeko meant. But she lowered her lids and ignored his quizzical expression. She felt no desire to discuss the traumatic events of her teenage years. Even now, it took all the control she could muster to keep the lump of sorrow in her chest from driving her out of her senses. Even after eighteen years, the pain was quick to well back up in her heart.

This time, Hashiba failed to notice the expression on Saeko’s face. “Don’t tell me you plotted to run away as a kid or something?” he joked.

Saeko couldn’t bring herself to smile — running away from home meant being separated from loved ones. How could she ever contemplate such a thing? It was paramount to deliberately plunging into heartrending loneliness.

Saeko felt her emotions begin to form a familiar shape. A voice in her head urged her to turn forward, but wave after wave of feeling wrenched her consciousness away from the present. She was no longer in any state to maintain a conversation. It was as if she were sinking into a dark abyss, cut off from the rest of the world. Hashiba’s words traveled straight through her without depositing any meaning in her mind as they drifted past.

Hashiba was baffled by Saeko’s sudden transformation. Clearly, something he had said had hurt her somehow, and he struggled to get the conversation back on track by informing Saeko of the dates scheduled for filming the project.

Saeko felt his voice go in one ear and out the other. Only a few words lingered in the pit of her mind.

“Ten days from now … The film crew … Script … Shigeko Torii …”

She didn’t respond.

Here it comes.

She felt the present fade away and the past come flooding back. Countless words her father had spoken to her in childhood reverberated in her mind, their warmth intact, before fading into oblivion. As grief flooded her body, the scenery around her began to fade into obscurity. She wanted to cry out for help, but her body was beyond her control.

But just as she felt herself about to plummet into nothingness, Saeko found herself pulled back into the present. A feeling of warmth registered on the back of her left hand, and her eyes opened to the sight of Hashiba’s worried face peering into hers. He was clasping her hand.

“Are you all right?”

There was no falseness in his look of concern. She felt a gentle glow of reassurance flow into her body through his touch. Her recovery was swift. In the blink of an eye, Saeko came back into her body and recovered the thread of conversation. “Sorry about that. A touch of anemia.”

Hashiba’s face relaxed slightly and he nodded once, but he made no move to let go of her hand.

Saeko was mildly astonished that an act by another person had warded off the onset of her affliction.

The library didn’t allow books to be checked out, and visitors were only allowed to bring in notebooks and writing utensils. The only items Saeko needed were a notebook, a ballpoint pen, and the postcard from her father. Each floor was organized by subject. Saeko climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, where the science books were kept.

She had studied here frequently during junior high and high school, but after her father’s disappearance she had completely stopped coming. The familiar smell of the library brought on a rush of nostalgic childhood memories. She’d come here a number of times at the end of one spring vacation to work on “homework” after returning from her grandparents’ home in Atami. She had been given the assignment at a cycling park in Izu she’d visited with her father.

Saeko’s father had been extremely busy in those days and was often away on overseas business trips. He regretted not being able to spend more time with his daughter and decided it would be best for everyone if Saeko spent the vacation with her grandparents in Atami. Saeko was perfectly happy with the plan — it would be more fun to spend spring break being spoiled by her grandparents.

Saeko’s grandparents had lavished her with affection, almost as if they knew they would pass away the following year. By early April when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, just as her grandparents’ doting attentions were beginning to wear on Saeko, her father’s trip overseas was unexpectedly cut short, and he took advantage of the down time to return to his parents’ home in Atami. He arrived early in the morning and crept up to whisper in his sleeping daughter’s ear, “Sae, wake up! It’s Daddy.”

When she opened her eyes to the sight of her father’s face, Saeko was flooded with relief. She sat up quickly, elated to see him. She was staying in a ten-mat tatami room that looked out over a large veranda, and it was far too much space for one person. Sitting cross-legged in the faint morning light, Saeko’s father made the room seem less gaping and empty, and his warmth drove away the early morning chill. She leaned forward over the covers, savoring the softness of the blankets. She was tempted to go back to sleep, confident that if she did, her dreams would be trouble-free.

Did nightmares feed on anxiety? When Saeko’s father was away, she often dreamed of his death. She would awaken with a start, her pulse still racing, anxious to see her father and make sure he was all right. But if he wasn’t there, a lingering apprehension plagued her until his return. And when he was traveling on business, she didn’t feel better until he made it home safe and sound. Saeko’s father knew this and made a point of calling her every night at eight o’clock whenever he was away.

Saeko’s fear of losing her sole protector was intense. Her grandparents gave her plenty of affection, but they could never replace her father. His unconditional love for her flooded her heart. Her sensitive nature made her vivid imaginings of his death all the more overwhelming, and she had cried herself to sleep on countless occasions just imagining the sadness of a world without her father. When she visited a shrine at New Year’s or other occasions, she always prayed that her father lead a long life.

That early morning in spring, Saeko’s father had rubbed his daughter’s back as she slumped face down on her futon.

“I want to go for a drive, Sae. Will you come with me?” he asked. Despite his all-nighter, his voice was full of energy.

In the end, they went to Cycle Park in Izu, quite a distance from Atami. After Saeko’s father had taken a quick two-hour nap, they zipped merrily towards the Izu skyline.

True to its name, Cycle Park was a theme park dedicated to attractions related to bicycling, organized into a number of zones. There was a zone featuring activities like the Cycle Coaster and Cycle Monorail, a water zone with a swimming pool that opened in the summer, a hot spring area, restaurants, and even a miniature golf course. But the main features of the park were the five-kilometer road bike and two-kilometer off-road mountain bike courses.

The park was full of families enjoying the break.

Saeko’s father scampered about in his casual jeans and jacket, doing his best to accommodate Saeko’s every wish.

“What do you want to do next, Sae?”

He seemed determined to take advantage of the limited time they had together to make up for his absence, and his enthusiasm eclipsed his daughter’s. It was almost exhausting just watching him.

But Saeko loved theme parks, too. The two of them rode the Cycle Coaster, Cycle Helicopter, and Cycle Monorail together before taking on the two-kilometer bike course. By the time they were done, even Saeko’s father was exhausted. In addition to being overworked and having been up all night, he didn’t get much exercise. Finally completely enervated, he sank down onto a bench and slumped his shoulders.

“I guess I’m getting old,” he said with a grimace, regretting his overexertion. For a few minutes he simply sat and rested, but before long his attention focused on the various types of cycles in the plaza in front of them. “Right!” he nodded with conviction, quickly recovering his liveliness.

They were sitting on the edge of what could have been called a bike rink. Ringed with trees, the space was filled with cycles of all sizes and shapes for children to ride as they pleased. Every one of the cycles was unusual in some way, and the children grappled intently with the challenge of riding them.

Compared to standard issue bicycles, the contraptions that populated the rink were almost monstrous. There were bikes with huge front wheels and tiny rear wheels and others that required the rider to pump their entire body up and down over a platform to move forward. There were unicycles, bicycles, tricycles and quadricycles, as well as bikes with oddly shaped handlebars.

Saeko’s father’s eyes lit up, and she could see that he had been seized with a flash of insight. His body incapacitated by exhaustion, he shifted into using his mental powers to stoke his daughter’s imagination.

“Know what, Sae? All those cycles out there are like extinct species.”

Saeko had yet to begin junior high school at the time, and she didn’t fully comprehend what her father meant. But he continued, undeterred.

“When human beings invented the first bicycle, it involved a lot of trial and error. It must have been hard for them to figure out how to build a device that would function well: be efficient, fast, and easy to ride. So they tried out all sorts of ideas. Like that one over there, the one with the giant wheel in front and the tiny one in the back. There’s no chain, and the pedals attach directly to the front wheel. But whenever someone managed to build a new, better-functioning model, the older types were abandoned. These earlier versions were never mass-produced. Now they’re nothing but toys for children to play on in places like this. You might say they’re bicycle fossils, like extinct species whose remains can now only be found in museums. See what I mean?”

Saeko listened intently, drawn by the idea of bicycles as fossils.

“There are strange similarities between the things mankind has created and the living organisms born on this planet. I won’t get into the mechanisms that governed the dawn of early life, but I find it unimaginable that they simply arose by coincidence from the stirrings of a thick soup of amino acids. Someday, when you’re older, Sae, I’ll tell you my thoughts on the matter. But for now, just know that we don’t know how it happened.

“Roughly 3.9 billion years ago — less than a billion years after the earth was formed — the first life forms were born. They were prokaryotes, life forms that lacked a cell nucleus, similar to bacteria. They were extremely simple in form, but they were alive nonetheless. For about two billion years after that, these extremely primitive life forms continued to exist with no progress whatsoever. Can you imagine that? No progress at all, for two billion years! That’s a mind-bogglingly long time span! The first life form to finally develop a cell nucleus came into being around 1.5 billion years ago. And then, roughly 600 million years ago came the great explosion of life known as the Cambrian Period. Suddenly, everything changed, and life took on all sorts of diverse forms. The life forms that were born in this period were totally different from anything that had existed previously. They were absolutely hideous by modern-day standards — often you couldn’t tell their tops from their bottoms or their heads from their tails. Around 400 million years ago, the first plants began to grow on land. Amphibians evolved and emerged from the water, the dinosaurs were born and then birds. Then came the mammals, and finally human beings capable of speech. They had a whole animal kingdom similar to the one we have today. But along the way, the overwhelming majority of species didn’t survive. They say that around 99 percent of emergent species are weeded out by natural selection. You’ve heard of the most famous ones, of course.”

Saeko had discussed the topic with her friends at school. The dinosaurs were famous for emerging during the Triassic Period, flourishing during the Jurassic and dying out at the end of the Cretaceous, roughly 65 million years ago. There was no end of speculation as to the cause of their extinction, with various theories attributing their demise to a huge meteor impact, a massive molecular cloud, geological changes, or even continental shifts caused by plate tectonics. But ultimately nobody knew what really happened to them.

“Now, about the tools humankind has invented. Cro-Magnon man was the earliest modern human species, but even before that, simple stone tools were used by paleoanthropic man and primitive man. For example, the first tool created by primitive man was a hand axe made of stone, a little over a million years ago. For about a million years, the hand axe remained in use with no significant advancements. From our modern-day perspective, it’s an unfathomably long time span. Well? Doesn’t it remind you of how the first prokaryotes didn’t evolve at all for 2 billion years? But once civilizations began to emerge in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the banks of the Yellow River, mankind began to produce a vast variety of tools. It’s just like when the prokaryotes finally developed the cell nucleus and began to develop into multicellular organisms, though they still didn’t develop the ability to obtain energy by feeding on other organisms. There was no food chain yet. They were like the plant world. None of them consumed energy in order to move about.

“In the seventeenth century, after Ancient Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance, Newton brought classical mechanics to completion, and then we had the Industrial Revolution in Britain. It’s just like that great explosion of life during the Cambrian when all sorts of animals emerged. Afterwards, the process of mechanization and automation picked up speed, and before you knew it man was making all manner of devices. Take Japan. From the Yayoi Period to the Edo Period, there was very little change in the things people made. Everything really took off in the Meiji Period. Man’s creations don’t continuously evolve. They undergo a long latency period, and when the right time comes, there’s an explosion of variation. And the length of that latency period gets shorter and shorter as we move through time. The advances human civilization made during the nineteenth century don’t even compare to those of the twentieth century in terms of speed.

“Another similarity between the evolution of life and that of manmade technology is extinctions. Look at Japan. The palanquins and rickshaws used for transport in the Edo Period died out with the advent of automobiles and trains. When a more advanced technology is developed, the older technology with the same function fades from existence. And yet there are some that survive. The steel axes we use today are more refined than their stone predecessors, but other than that they’re more or less identical. Knives, forks, spoons, and chopsticks maintain pretty much the same form they’ve always taken, and they’re unlikely to ever change. Examples in the organic world include archaebacteria — strains that have persisted since primordial times — and other life forms that have changed very little over the ages, like jellyfish, sea lilies, and coral.

“But what causes manmade technologies to go extinct? There’s a major difference between manmade objects and natural organisms. Manmade objects are created with a specific purpose in mind. Man didn’t just shake a toolbox and suddenly pull out a television. The drive begins deep in the human psyche and is then expressed in language. When a new object emerges that satisfies the same purpose as an older one, the older one falls into obsolescence. To put it simply, when man created the bicycle, rickshaws went extinct. To put it in terms of information theory, the new technology overwrites the old one. The technology saved under a new file name survives as a new species.

“Now, here’s a question. Was the first life on earth male or female? Single-celled organisms don’t actually have a gender, but if we were to assign them one, what do you think it would be?” Saeko’s father paused, waiting for his daughter’s response.

Saeko didn’t have to think for long. She knew which gender was the one capable of producing offspring, even in the case of single-celled organisms. The answer that immediately came to mind was “female.”

“I would say female.”

“Right,” Saeko’s father clapped his hands lightly. “The early prokaryotes would have to have been female. The actual distinctions between male and female probably emerged during the great explosion of life in the Cambrian, in tandem with the ability to feed off of other organisms. Perhaps sexual reproduction can be seen as a spin-off of the eat-or-be-eaten paradigm. Of the two sexes, the female is really the fundamental one that remains ever constant. It has the longer history, after all.

“There’s a parallel to that in the world of technology as well. Basic essentials such as hand axes, knives, spoons, and chopsticks have a long, stable history. Technologies that consume energy emerged much later and can be associated with the male sex, or with carnivorism perhaps. The male gender, animals, technologies that consume energy. The female gender, plants, technologies that don’t consume energy. Don’t you think they fit nicely into two general categories? The female category is the one that’s unwaveringly stable. But add an engine and you’ve got a male technology. It seems to me that masculinity was an offshoot of femininity. The male gender is always unstable, always striving to return somehow to its point of origin. But why is that? Why is the natural world so full of opposing categories?”

Saeko had always taken for granted the abundance of opposites in life, but it wasn’t an easy question to answer. Clearly the male and female genders existed to enable organisms to combine their genes in order to leave behind more diverse descendants.

Her father explained that principle once as they played a game that involved stabbing tiny plastic knives into toy barrels where the player who let the toy pirate leap out of the barrel lost. The game was called “Pop-Up Pirate” and Saeko had gotten it in a New Year’s lucky grab bag at a department store. Saeko and her father played the game instead of doing rock-paper-scissors to decide whose turn it would be to scrub out the bathtub.

“Actually, worker bees and worker ants live by a fairly similar system. We could just as easily apply these methods to procreation. Pretend this brown barrel is a female — a single, enormous female! And this tiny plastic knife is a pathetic little male. A dozen or so males surround the female, stabbing her with their sex organs and injecting their sperm. There’s a plentiful blend of genetic information from more than a dozen individuals, not just two, and if everything works out well, a new life pops out — this pirate.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than her father’s knife activated the gimmick and the little pirate with a black cartoonish eye-patch sprung from the barrel and landed on the table. Saeko let out a cheer. The pirate represented a baby!

“The universe is composed of various opposing concepts. I want you to try to identify them, Sae. For example, some obvious ones would be the positive and negative poles of a magnet, or the north and south poles of the Earth. I want you to see how many pairs of opposites you can think of, and consider the mechanisms and origins that pertain to them.”

Saeko remembered what she had come to this library to find out at the beginning of junior high. She’d been trying to identify as many opposing concepts as she could. Her father seemed to believe that these pairs of opposites served to sustain the fundamental structure of the universe.

There were a number of connections between the message on her father’s postcard and the things he’d said about extinct species of bicycles twenty-two years ago on that spring day at Cycle Park in Izu.

The birth of life, the extinction of the dinosaurs, information theory, opposing concepts …

The young Saeko had opened her notebook at a table in the reading room and set about jotting down as many opposing concepts as she could think of.

Positive and negative, male and female, left and right, the North Pole and the South Pole, good and bad, progress and regression, light and darkness, life and death, war and peace.

Those were the pairs she had come up with in junior high and inscribed in her notebook. Now that she was thirty-five years old and held a degree in the philosophy of science, she would have to do better than that.

Saeko began to write.

Objectivity and subjectivity, real numbers and imaginary numbers, logic and emotion, animate and inanimate, attraction and repulsion, waves and particles, matter and antimatter, chaos and order, bosons and fermions, relativity and quantum theory, material particles and virtual particles.

Saeko wrote the word “brain” and her pen came to a stop for a moment as she tried to think of its counterpart. What part of the body functioned in opposition to the brain? The answer that occurred to her was “genes.” They were like a partner to the brain, and yet at times they acted in conflict, as when they dictated survival while the brain chose suicide.

The next item Saeko wrote down was “zero.” Computer bits were comprised of “ones” and “zeros” that represented the concepts of “on” and “off.” Did that mean that one was the opposite of zero? No. If zero were interpreted as inexistence or nothingness, its opposite would be existence or being. But the mathematical interpretation was also different. The opposite of “zero” was “infinity.”

The number zero was in fact a dangerous quantity that had been considered a heretical concept for a long period of mathematical history. It was different from every other rational or irrational number and could bring about drastic consequences if not handled with proper care. Dividing a number by zero resulted in an infinite singularity, an impossible calculation. Zero could easily wreak havoc on the ordered structure of mathematics, greedily swallowing up all else. For these reasons, it was feared like the devil in the Christian world of the Middle Ages. There was one phenomenon in the universe that married the magic of the twin concepts of zero and infinity. A black hole.

Suddenly, Saeko hit upon a well-known pair of opposites that should have occurred to her in junior high school.

God and the Devil.

Just as Saeko’s father had explained how males had split off from females, Saeko realized that the devil was said to originally have been a fallen angel. The mechanism by which a fallen angel became the devil resembled the way males derived from females. Both had originally emerged from their counterparts.

Perhaps the same could be said of the relationship between zero and infinity. The universe with its infinite sparkling stars was said to have emerged from nothingness a mere 14 billion years ago. In this case, too, one thing had bifurcated to spawn opposing concepts.

God and the Devil, zero and infinity … God gave rise to the Devil, zero gave rise to infinity. Moreover, the number zero was said to contain infinite energy. Black holes swallowed up all matter, allowing not even light to escape.

What was he trying to tell me?

If her father’s message had anything to do with his disappearance, she was determined to crack the riddle.

Having a goal to pursue gave Saeko the energy to go on living. It was thrilling to use her mind and push forward in her thoughts. But there was a limit to what she could achieve alone. She needed someone who could give her objective feedback on her ideas to give her thoughts more solid direction.

Two faces, father and son, popped into Saeko’s mind. It had been years since she had seen Kitazawa, but now he seemed to call her name.

Saeko meant to call Hideaki Kitazawa the next morning and visit his office in the afternoon, but she didn’t act quickly enough and ended up being called in for a meeting by editor-in-chief Maezono. When she showed up at the publishing house as requested, Maezono offered her another assignment.

Saeko’s story on the missing Fujimura family had been so widely noticed that the office now wanted to do a regular feature on current missing persons cases of a similar nature on a monthly basis. Without giving Saeko a chance to refuse, Maezono handed her a file detailing the serial disappearances of two young men from Itoigawa City.

“Please. You’re the only person for the job,” Maezono begged. When she went on to inform Saeko that at the end of the series, the articles would be collected and published in book form, Saeko was unable to refuse. Getting a book published through a major publishing house was currently her number-one professional goal.

Although these were also missing persons cases, they differed from the Fujimura incident in that the subjects had vanished individually. Both were young men around the age of twenty. There was still plenty of time before the deadline, but Saeko would have to figure out where to start her investigation.

The information on the two missing men was summarized as follows:

Tomoaki Nishimura, age 20. Worked at a convenience store. Last seen September 13, 2011.

While on the job at an S Mart outlet near the mouth of the Himekawa River in Itoigawa, Nishimura disappeared suddenly at around 6:30 p.m. in the evening. The first person to notice his absence was the manager of the convenience store. The manager was in the process of moving some boxes into the warehouse when an earthquake with a magnitude of 4 on the Japanese scale struck Itoigawa. He got down low to the ground and wasn’t hurt, but when he returned to the store premises Nishimura had vanished from behind the counter. At first the manager assumed that Nishimura had been startled by the tremor and left to take refuge somewhere. But after some time had passed without Nishimura’s return, the manager grew concerned and called Nishimura’s parents. His parents hadn’t seen their son since he’d left for work. His current whereabouts remain a mystery.

Nobuhisa Igarashi, age 19. Vocational school student. Missing since mid-September, 2011.

Originally from Namerikawa City, Toyama Prefecture, Igarashi had moved to Itoigawa to attend culinary school. His parents in Namerikawa lost contact with him in mid-September.

The attendance records at the culinary institute suggested that Igarashi had run into some sort of trouble between September 13th and 15th, but Igarashi’s attendance had always been spotty, so it was difficult to be sure. Igarashi didn’t have many close friends, so nobody had taken much notice of his absence from school.

Unable to reach her son by phone for several days, his mother grew concerned and paid a visit to his boarding house. The state of his room suggested that its inhabitant hadn’t been home for several days.

The missing persons report was filed with the police on September 19th.

Nishimura and Igarashi hadn’t known each other, but they both lived in Itoigawa City and Igarashi’s boarding house was extremely close to S Mart, suggesting a link between the two cases.

The obvious explanation was that they had both been involved in some sort of incident. Perhaps they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and gotten into an altercation with a group of bikers or such. The first step would be to search for potential witnesses, but if the police were already investigating the cases, they would have long taken such measures.

Saeko wanted to establish a hypothesis and then launch an investigation accordingly, but she wasn’t sure of herself based on how the Fujimura case had turned out. At the time, Saeko had pored over the documents and identified Kota Fujimura’s older brother Seiji as a shady character. She had pursued that line of investigation in her research but had found her expectations dashed upon meeting Seiji in person. As a result, her report had lacked a central focus. Even so, it had been fairly well received. Saeko should have derived more confidence from that fact, but she was a perfectionist, and it was hard for her to take the first step towards anything without establishing a clear roadmap.

As Saeko pondered where to start, the image of Kitazawa’s face in the back of her mind grew even stronger. What had been a mild impulse to visit his office grew into an irresistible need. It seemed like an unbelievable coincidence that Kitazawa’s image had popped into her mind just yesterday at the library; today she had been handed another missing persons assignment.

Kitazawa was a private detective who ran his own investigations agency specializing in missing persons. He’d been in the business forty years and had an extensive network of contacts, not just in Japan but worldwide. When it came to tracking down missing people, he was an unrivaled expert.

Kitazawa wasn’t an inconspicuous man — he weighed in at around a hundred kilos. At the same time, he had an incongruously high voice and his speech was often peppered with childish expressions. The effect was bizarre, and people who weren’t used to him often assumed he was having a laugh at them. But once you got to know him, it didn’t matter. He was a loveable character, and Saeko owed him a tremendous debt of gratitude. And now, she very much needed his help with this new assignment from her editor. After taking leave of Maezono, Saeko headed straight for Kitazawa’s office.

From the Yotsuya Sanchome intersection, Saeko turned up a side street and found the building she was looking for. As before, the office bore a sign that read “Man Search” in English letters, though the sign itself was new since her last visit.

At the age of seventeen, a desperate Saeko had gazed up at the same building.

Whenever her father was away on business, he called home at eight o’clock every night. On August 21, 1994, he had called from his hotel in Narita after returning from Bolivia and informed her that he would head out to Takamatsu, Shikoku the next day. But at eight o’clock the next evening there was no call. As far as Saeko could remember, her father had never failed to call when he was away on a trip. Even if he was on the opposite side of the earth, he always called promptly at 8 p.m. Japan time to check in with his daughter. No matter where he went, he was always concerned about his only daughter’s well-being, and the act of calling at eight every night seemed a compulsive habit.

That was why Saeko had been deeply perplexed on the evening of August 22nd when her father never called despite being back in Japan. When she didn’t hear from him the next night or the night after that, she quickly went to the police and reported that something had happened to her father. Of course, the police weren’t about to make a move just because a traveler had failed to call home. They maintained that it was too soon to launch an investigation and suggested that Saeko sit tight and wait a bit longer.

With no help from the police, Saeko had no choice but to take matters into her own hands.

She had never met Hideaki Kitazawa before. He was a total stranger. She found him in the phone book under the listings for detective agencies. A tag line in his business-card-sized ad read “specializes in missing persons.” There were lots of other detective agencies listed, but they all seemed to specialize in background checks and adultery investigations. Saeko came to the conclusion that Detective Kitazawa of Man Search was the only person who could provide the help she needed, and she decided to visit the agency directly without even calling for an appointment.

But as she got closer to the address and found herself surrounded by grimy businesses staffed by thugs specializing in debt-collection services, Saeko’s knees began to wobble. Would the detective agency even take an unaccompanied teenage girl seriously? If not, at best they might turn her away, but what if she wound up getting taken advantage of in the process?

She found the building she was looking for, confirmed that its address matched the note she had jotted down, and rode the elevator up to the third floor. When she arrived, however, she couldn’t quite bring herself to open the door of the office.

As the elevator doors closed behind her, she began to sweat in rivulets, and her t-shirt felt clammy. During the short walk from the subway station she had been almost too nervous to sweat, but all of a sudden she found herself streaming with perspiration.

In the bag she clutched to her chest was a bankbook with her father’s account balance. She had no idea how much it would cost to hire a detective to find her father. Even if they overcharged her, Saeko was prepared to pay whatever it took. It had seemed like a good idea to bring her father’s bankbook. Now, however, she realized what a sitting duck she would make in the eyes of the wrong sort of person.

The door directly opposite the apprehensive young woman was marked “Man Search”—the office was just across from the elevator. The wooden door with its frosted glass window offered little basis for Saeko to decide whether to enter or to go home. She moved closer to the door, leaning in with one ear. Just the sound of a voice inside might give her some idea as to what sort of people might await her on the other side.

But when her cheek touched the door, it began to swing open.

“Oh!” Saeko barely had a chance to exclaim before she caught sight of a woman at a desk intensely absorbed in a book. The presence of a woman was an immediate relief.

“Hello,” Saeko managed to say in a perfectly normal voice.

The petite middle-aged woman looked up from her volume and grinned. Her smile was so warm, it almost seemed as if she’d been expecting Saeko’s arrival. Saeko felt her apprehension melt away.

The woman’s name was Chieko Kitazawa, and she was Hideaki Kitazawa’s wife and business partner. The couple ran the detective agency together.

The office had changed dramatically in eighteen years’ time. The room had been renovated with modern updates, with several computers stationed conveniently in the center of the room. A visitor who didn’t know any better would never suspect that it was a detective agency.

Before, the agency had existed in a single room on the building’s third floor, but it had grown to occupy the entire floor; apparently, business had been good in recent years. In addition to Kitazawa, there were six other detectives and three female clerks. The office was connected to a nationwide network of experts in various fields and also provided services such as a detective training program, corporate research services, and the sale of other types of information. From an agency specializing exclusively in missing persons cases, the business had evolved into a purveyor of information of all different sorts.

But Chieko Kitazawa was gone; four years earlier, she had died of an illness. She and her husband had both been tremendous benefactors to Saeko. That summer when she was seventeen, if Saeko had encountered not Chieko but Hideaki Kitazawa’s intimidating glower behind the desk, she probably would have beat a hasty retreat without stating her business. It was Chieko who had taken command that day and inquired into Saeko’s situation.

In the four years since they had last met, Hideaki Kitazawa had aged noticeably. He had reached the age of sixty, and decades of hard living had taken their toll. Yet, not surprisingly, his weight didn’t seem to have declined from the hundred-kilo mark.

Kitazawa approached Saeko, his looming form lilting from side to side. “Hello there, young lady. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Kitazawa grinned from ear to ear and motioned for Saeko to have a seat at the sofa.

“You look well,” Saeko stated, trying to dissemble her surprise at how he had aged. She had last seen Kitazawa at Chieko’s funeral. Then, he’d looked so lost, it was almost unbearable to look at him.

A surge of regret flooded Saeko. When she had been overcome with grief at the loss of her father, Kitazawa’s support had given her the strength to go on. But when Kitazawa had been devastated by the loss of his wife, Saeko had done nothing to comfort him. She wished now that she had come back to talk with Kitazawa.

Come to think of it, Saeko’s life had been in such a state of flux over the last few years, with her impending divorce, quitting her job, and foray into a new career, that she had been too preoccupied to give much thought to other people.

“I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch,” she told him.

Kitazawa seemed confused by Saeko’s apology. “You really think I look well?” he asked, backtracking.

“You really do,” Saeko maintained.

“Well, I’ve aged quite a bit.”

“You did turn sixty. What do you expect? You know, instead of leaving those last pathetic strands of hair up on top, why don’t you just shave it clean? I think it would go well with your gangster look.”

When Kitazawa walked down the street, passers-by either avoided his gaze or quickly moved out of the way. Virtually everything about him was thuggish — his build, his hair, and the vibe he gave off.

In fact, when he had first landed a job at a nonbank lender, its administration had leveraged his intimidating features by assigning him a job much like a gangster’s: locating derelict borrowers. Kitazawa had worked with a partner, tracking down debtors by word-of-mouth and mercilessly shaking them down for cash. The experience had served as a foundation for his current missing persons services.

Weary of chasing after the weak, Kitazawa had left the company for a job in real estate, but once again he found himself assigned to debt-collection duties. Eventually, after a debtor he had tracked down committed suicide in his presence, Kitazawa could take no more of preying upon such miserable souls and resolved to pursue a different career path. Given that the only professional skill he had acquired was that of locating people, he decided to apply that ability towards a more welcome service — private detective work.

Initially, Kitazawa had found a position at a large detective agency, but after marrying a fellow detective from the company, Chieko, the couple decided to open their own outfit specializing exclusively in locating missing persons.

Kitazawa could never have done it alone. One of the cornerstones of detective work was approaching people for information, but any source he accosted would run terrified from his hulking form. Instead, Chieko became the face of the agency. She had the uncanny ability to put almost anyone at ease. Her magic even worked on animals — guard dogs wagged their tails at Chieko and neglected to bark.

They were quite the pair. Chieko got the ball rolling, encouraging clients to open up. Once they found themselves speaking with Kitazawa, they realized he was a genuinely good man. The impression was all the stronger after overcoming the initial fear.

Saeko had recognized Kitazawa’s heart of gold almost immediately.

“You know, I’ve always wondered something. How come you’re so formal and polite with other people, and so rude to me?” Kitazawa demanded.

“Because that’s what you deserve,” Saeko shot back, instantly overcoming the four-year blank in their relationship. It was something of a mystery to her that she could always relax so completely and speak her mind so openly with Kitazawa.

“The first time you showed up here, you brought your daddy’s bankbook, didn’t you? When my wife got a load of the account balance, she was completely dumbstruck, remember? Oh, the look on the old lady’s face when she saw those numbers!” Kitazawa opened his eyes wide and puffed out his cheeks in an imitation of Chieko.

Saeko burst out laughing. Chieko had been five years older than Kitazawa, and he’d frequently referred to her as “the old lady.”

“Excuse me for being so naïve,” Saeko laughed.

“You gave us a bit of a shock, that’s for sure. We figured we’d better look out for you or you’d be in big trouble.”

The first thing Kitazawa had done eighteen years ago when Saeko had hired him was to create a file containing the basic details of Shinichiro Kuriyama, the missing person. Name, age, date of birth, blood type, family tree, registered address, current address, educational history, employment history, physical description, social ties, driver’s license, passport, overseas travel history, hobbies, spending habits, religion, health insurance, frequent haunts, usual hospital, health condition, attire and possessions at time of disappearance …

Kitazawa and his wife weren’t the only detectives who worked on the case. They had deemed it necessary to hire three other detectives they sometimes employed, and the team of five had traveled to Takamatsu to conduct a thorough canvassing and to distribute flyers emblazoned with Saeko’s father’s picture and characteristics.

They had vetted the passenger lists at nearby airports and the ferry that served the nearest port, but Shinichiro Kuriyama’s name was nowhere to be found. He could have used an alias, so they combed over every facility where he might have stayed, including all of the hotels and motels in Takamatsu City and neighboring hot springs resorts. They found nothing. They questioned the staff at restaurants and department stores he might have visited, but to no avail. The entire search failed to unearth even the tiniest shred of information.

After returning to Tokyo, the team looked into other areas, tracing every destination reachable from Narita and gathering updated information at regular intervals. But in the end, Saeko’s father’s trail had gone cold on August 21, 1994.

In early September, eighteen years ago, Kitazawa had sat at the sofa across the table from Saeko and shown her the report based on the team’s ten-day investigation. It was the same office where they sat now, though the ashtray that had once occupied the table had outlived its usefulness.

The content of the report had been straightforward: Kitazawa was throwing in the towel. It pained him deeply, but the scenario of a lone traveler vanishing mysteriously for no apparent reason presented more difficulties than any other type of missing persons case.

The investigators had confirmed only that Shinichiro Kuriyama had stayed in the N Hotel at Narita Airport on the night of August 21st. Beyond that, they were completely unable to determine whether he had actually reached Takamatsu or gone elsewhere. The word “unknown” appeared repeatedly in the report.

He was loath to say so to Saeko, but Kitazawa had a strong feeling, based on his many years of experience in the business, that Shinichiro Kuriyama was no longer among the living. When he worked on a case, Kitazawa sometimes experienced a flash of inspiration that told him the person he was looking for had ceased to be. And often, it wasn’t long before those subjects’ bodies turned up. Accidents aside, the vast majority of these cases were suicides. In such cases, the client was usually frantic to locate the missing person as quickly as possible to avert the tragedy.

Five years into his private detective concern, Kitazawa had been hired to locate a man who had been wracked with shame after a blunder he’d made at work caused major problems for his company. On a whim, the man had failed to show up at work one day and flitted hither and thither before randomly boarding a northbound train.

The man had left behind a wife and two small children. Those who knew him reported he’d always had a meek, retiring personality. Kitazawa couldn’t help but think that the man’s inability to get over his mistake exceeded the bounds of earnestness into the realm of cowardice.

With the family’s breadwinner gone, the man’s wife had found her way to Kitazawa’s office and tearfully pleaded for help. “Please, find my husband. If you don’t find him soon, he’ll take his own life!” After hitting the road, the man had left a message on the family’s answering machine hinting at the possibility of suicide.

By the seventh day of his investigation, Kitazawa had tracked his target down in Sendai City. The man’s funds were almost depleted and he was wandering about in search of a place to kill himself. Using strong-arm tactics, Kitazawa escorted the man home to a tearfully overjoyed wife. She was so appreciative that Kitazawa was moved to shed tears of his own.

The satisfaction of being a private detective varied dramatically based on whether or not the investigations were successful, even though the fees were more or less the same. That was all part of the game.

When he’d set about to find Saeko’s father, Kitazawa imagined her joy should he succeed, and it drove him to do everything he could. But the case was simply unsolvable. Oddly, the circumstances of the case were different from anything he had seen before.

The subject had none of the usual involvements associated with a missing persons case — debt, a love affair, ties to illicit activities — that might serve as the motive of an intentional disappearance. Kitazawa could only imagine that Saeko’s father had wound up at the bottom of a river or steep cliff through some sort of freak accident or perhaps fallen victim to a random criminal act. In either case, the implications were the same. Unless Saeko’s father was being held captive somewhere, it was unlikely that he was still alive.

On top of everything else, Shinichiro Kuriyama was completely devoted to Saeko, his only child. The closeness of their relationship was the reason Saeko had been aware of his disappearance at such an early stage.

Based on Saeko’s own account, her determination to find her father, and the testimony of her father’s friends and acquaintances, Kitazawa was positive that Saeko had meant the world to Shinichiro and that the man would never have dreamed of abandoning her. The more clear it became that Shinichiro had no motivation to disappear, the more likely it seemed that he had met with an accident and that his body merely remained to be recovered. Kitazawa knew the possibility was absolutely unacceptable to Saeko, but he couldn’t convince himself otherwise.

Eighteen years ago, when he had informed Saeko that he was calling off the search, she had been absolutely furious.

“He’s alive!” she had raged at him. “I can feel his pulse. Maybe he’s lost his memory. Maybe he’s out there somewhere and doesn’t know where his home is …”

Of course, Kitazawa had considered that possibility. He had inquired at hospitals and with the police, but there had been no profiles that fit the bill. Kitazawa shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Fine,” Saeko had declared. “I won’t ask you to go on searching for him. You can teach me how to do it instead. From this day onward, I want to be your apprentice.”

And sure enough, she had trailed after Kitazawa unrelentingly until he finally caved. How could he accomplish any sleuthing with a teenage girl constantly at his heels? He had no choice but to devote his spare time to teaching Saeko the ropes, and in the process they had forged a strong bond. It was this experience that had planted the seed for his detective school in Kitazawa’s mind, a project that later brought him quite a bit of success. And Saeko had wound up applying her investigative skills to her career as a journalist. You never knew where things led you in life.

With the file Saeko had handed him balanced on his knees, Kitazawa smiled wryly as he sipped his weight-loss tea. His wife had turned him on to it a decade ago, but it didn’t seem to have had any effect.

Saeko was now thirty-five years old and had been through both a marriage and a divorce. But had she ever really come to terms with the loss of her father? Kitazawa wondered. Even if it was her editor’s idea, the fact that Saeko was still walking around with a missing persons file after all this time led Kitazawa to suspect that she had never truly given up on her father, and the realization pained him.

Oblivious to Kitazawa’s concern, Saeko glanced hesitantly over her shoulder. “By the way, is Toshiya around?”

“Of course he is. He can’t wait to see you!” Kitazawa hit the button on his intercom, announcing, “Saeko’s here!”

Immediately, the door swung open and a younger man bounced into the room. His face was the spitting image of Kitazawa’s, but his frame was a size smaller and the energy he gave off was completely different.

“Sensei! Long time no see!” Toshiya greeted Saeko breathlessly, grinning from ear to ear. But the moment his eyes met Saeko’s, he averted them awkwardly, his gaze wandering off into space.

“It has been a long time, Toshiya. You’ve slimmed down, haven’t you?”

Kitazawa’s only child, Toshiya, was six years younger than Saeko. At twenty-nine, his entire being seemed to exude that odor of childishness of those who fled from reality. Saeko hadn’t seen him since Chieko’s funeral, but Kitazawa had brought her up to speed over the phone as to Toshiya’s recent activities.

An image flashed through the back of Saeko’s mind of Toshiya’s penis, half buried in foreskin, withering like a deflating balloon — evidence, surely, that the exact same image was flashing through Toshiya’s mind. Saeko retreated a half-pace, gazing off to the side to avoid looking Toshiya in the face.

Saeko, Kitazawa, and Toshiya. The three had been linked by student-teacher relationships. Kitazawa had schooled Saeko in the fundamentals of tracking down missing persons, and Saeko had worked as Toshiya’s private tutor.

Toshiya had been a roly-poly little sixth grader when they had first met. In time, at Kitazawa’s request, Saeko helped the boy prepare for his high school entrance exams, and Toshiya ended up successfully testing into his first-choice school.

Saeko was in college at the time. She based her approach on how her father had taught her, with special emphasis on the subjects of English, math, and physics. Thanks partly to that history, Toshiya eventually got into the engineering program at a national university where he went on to study information theory. Saeko hadn’t helped Toshiya prepare for his university entrance exams, though she did help him achieve top marks in math and physics.

When Toshiya was in his second year of high school, a year before he took his tests, she stepped down as his tutor. To Kitazawa senior, she claimed to be too busy job hunting. But the real reason was that during winter vacation that year, Toshiya had attempted to rape her.

Toshiya’s parents had been away, traveling on business. Saeko had lined up two chairs in Toshiya’s warm, cozy room and sat down with a page of physics problems for him to solve, oblivious to the fact that his thoughts were elsewhere and that he was in no state to study.

His expression distracted, Toshiya’s mind seemed to be churning over something. Muttering incomprehensively, he looked up from the page frequently to take a deep breath and let it out. Then his lips began to tremble, and he shook himself violently several times like a dog emerging from a river and shaking himself dry. It was then that Saeko began to notice the change that had come over Toshiya. Even from the side, she could see that his whole body was rigid with tension. He seemed to vacillate between hesitation and intention. Just as he seemed about to reach a decision, Saeko experienced a flash of wariness and suddenly drew back in her chair. At that moment, something seemed to well over in Toshiya, and he looked up with bloodshot eyes brimming with intensity and seized her shoulders with both hands.

“I’m sorry, sensei … I can’t take it any longer.”

What?!

Saeko tried to pull away, but it was too late. Toshiya pushed her down onto the bed behind her and climbed on top of her.

With close to eighty kilograms of body weight suddenly crushing her chest and stomach, Saeko’s breathing froze. Normally sluggish, Toshiya’s movements were uncharacteristically swift, and for a moment Saeko was too baffled by what was going on to even cry out.

Toshiya brought his mouth up to Saeko’s ear and whispered, “Sensei … I just can’t take it anymore. I’m so crazy about you. It’s okay, right?”

“W-Wait …”

But of course, Toshiya wasn’t about to wait. He pushed up Saeko’s skirt and tugged at her panties.

A fuse blew in Saeko’s mind, and all of the colors in the room ceased to exist. The fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling was a glowing ring on the back of her eyelids, but its light grew fainter and fainter. An intense urge to escape flooded her. The desire to free herself surged within her stronger than any feelings of fear or anger. If she couldn’t somehow escape from this big hunk of meat that was holding her down, she would be stripped of all human dignity. Saeko curled her body like a shrimp, flipped over, and tried to straighten herself again. But Toshiya’s soft body weighed her down, inhibiting her movements. Pushed down, immobilized, insulted, this was no time to bite back on her anger. Saeko gave full vent to her rage. Gritting her teeth, she tried to ram her chin into Toshiya’s head, but it was just beyond reach. When she finally wrenched one hand free from under his body, she clawed at his exposed skin and sank her teeth into his upper arm.

Toshiya howled and his upper body jerked away, creating room between their bodies and a momentary reprieve for Saeko. She seized the opportunity to twist herself sideways, channeling the momentum to drive a fist into Toshiya’s chin. Already unbalanced, the direct hit sent Toshiya tumbling off the bed. He landed with a dull thud.

As soon as she was free, Saeko yanked her panties back up and fixed her skirt. Then she kneeled on the bed and glared down at Toshiya. Roiling now with anger, indignity, and fear, she was unable to scream at him for a lack of words. Instead, she simply fixed him with a look of pure reproach. Then, all at once, she burst into tears.

“Was it something I did?” she sobbed. Her first thought was that somehow, she was to blame.

Toshiya rolled over on the carpet, rubbing his jaw with an expression of incomprehension. His white briefs were bunched at his knees along with his track pants, and his erect penis peeked out, still half-shrouded in foreskin. But it was visibly withering, like a separate organism cut off from its main body. Toshiya began to weep. Of course Saeko was upset, but Toshiya, too, was overcome with tremendous regret.

“I’m sorry, sensei …” he choked, coughing and burying his face in his hands. Pathetically, his need to hide his face was greater than that of hiding his groin. Saeko’s intense rebuttal had shattered his naïve, self-serving delusions.

Toshiya’s good-for-nothing teenage friends had probably filled his head with garbage about how women responded well to men who took forceful action. With no experience of the opposite sex, he had based his warped ideas of how women functioned solely on the misguided theories of his equally ignorant pals. Or perhaps they had ridiculed him for being a virgin and he felt unable to back down. Teenagers’ most outrageous actions were usually motivated by the need to impress their peers.

Already a young adult, Saeko was out of touch with the unbalanced emotional state of adolescence. She still saw Toshiya as the sixth grader he’d been when they’d first met. She had never imagined that the maturing Toshiya harbored romantic feelings for her. Surely there had been indications, but her persisting image of Toshiya as a child had prevented her from recognizing them. If only she had, she might have been able to avert the crisis at an earlier stage without driving Toshiya to utter humiliation.

Even though both of them could have made better choices, it didn’t change the fact that their sibling-like relationship had been completely destroyed. Even after Toshiya’s apology, the mood between them remained strained.

If Saeko knew how Toshiya had overcome his humiliation and used it as a fodder for growth, perhaps she could rebuild her relationship with him. Toshiya was no taller than he had been in high school, and his weight hadn’t changed much either. Even at the age of twenty-nine, his skin was still as smooth as a child’s. His sex appeal was still nil — it was possible that he remained a virgin even now.

Without meaning to, Saeko found herself comparing Toshiya to her ex-husband. Unlike Toshiya, her ex had actually been something of a ladies’ man, but Saeko’s relationship with both of them had not ended well. Having recently analyzed the root cause of her marriage’s failure, whether or not a damaged relationship could ever be repaired loomed large in her mind once again.

“How’s your dissertation coming, Toshiya?” Saeko inquired, shaking away the lingering image in her mind.

“It’s coming along.”

Saeko had heard from Kitazawa that Toshiya had completed his graduate coursework at the same university. He was working at the detective agency while he wrote his dissertation. He hoped to land a post at the university, but there were a number of other post-docs as well, and competition was steep even for non-tenure-track positions. Meanwhile, as a specialist in information theory, his skills were in high demand at Man Search. There’s no information my boy can’t find, Kitazawa boasted.

“Speaking of which, there’s something I wanted to ask you,” Saeko said. “What’s the connection between information theory and black holes?”

Both were major themes in Saeko’s father’s postcard. He’d jotted those notes in 1994, and science had advanced quite a bit over the last eighteen years. Though schooled in both science and philosophy, Saeko’s absence from the halls of academia had left her behind the times.

“What brought that on?” Toshiya widened his eyes dramatically, using exaggerated surprise to conceal his delight that Saeko would consult him about his field of expertise.

“Well, I’m working on a science-related article at the moment, and I was just wondering …” Saeko replied evasively.

“Is that so? Black holes and information theory? That’s easy! They have a lot to do with each other!” Toshiya tapped his head with his finger and made thinking sounds. “Hmm … Hmm … Please excuse me for a moment.”

He ducked out of the room. After about ten minutes, he returned with a document in English, printed in full color.

“Here, read this. It’s an article that appeared in Scientific American last year, by the renowned physicist Jack Thorne. It specifically addresses the relationship between information theory and black holes.”

Accepting the article, Saeko was unable to conceal her amazement at Toshiya’s ability to instantly produce the exact information she was looking for.

Kitazawa had been observing the exchange. “That looks like some complicated material there, little lady.” He squinted at the article.

Right now, Saeko needed help from both father and son. She needed Kitazawa’s support for her missing persons search and Toshiya’s assistance in deciphering the meaning behind her father’s message. Clearly, she stood a much better chance at success if she had help. Toshiya was the perfect person to provide objective analysis of Saeko’s approach — something she desperately needed.

It was a pleasure to witness a former pupil’s progress, even if solely in academic terms. No doubt her father would have liked to see the same in her, Saeko mused.

Saeko made her way down the corridor of Car 5 of the Super Azusa express train for Matsumoto, checking once more the number on her ticket and scanning the rows for her business-class seat. There it was — but Saeko froze when she recognized the face of the elderly woman in the seat next to hers. Immediately, she began to regret not having ridden with the caravan of vehicles that had departed Tokyo the night before.

Originally, Saeko had been scheduled to ride out with the crew. But due to a looming deadline, she’d arranged to delay her departure by a day, pulling an all-nighter and rushing to catch the express train this morning. The assistant director, Sakai, had purchased her a reserved seat and handed her the ticket on the platform. But Saeko had never been warned that she was to be seated next to Shigeko Torii, the famous psychic.

She’s tiny …

That was Saeko’s first impression. Saeko was an average-sized woman, but she was still a whole head taller than Shigeko Torii. The woman was so petite that a business-class ticket seemed almost pointless; no doubt she would have been perfectly comfortable in an ordinary seat. Also, Saeko seemed to remember Shigeko Torii being younger, but in person her face was puckered with deep wrinkles, her hair was white with thin patches here and there, and the skin underneath was mottled with dark blotches. She looked about eighty years old.

“Excuse me.” Saeko bowed politely as she sat down.

“I’m Shigeko Torii,” the old woman responded, twisting her upper body to face Saeko. Assistant Director Sakai must have informed her that they would be sitting together.

“Pleased to meet you. My name is Kuriyama. I’m a reporter.”

Saeko retrieved a business card from her bag and passed it to Shigeko Torii. The old woman accepted it politely with both hands, like a child being presented with an award certificate. She stared at the card for almost a full minute, even though it was printed only with Saeko’s name and contact details without so much as a job title.

Shigeko Torii’s hands trembled as she held the card, but Saeko wasn’t sure why. On the one hand, the elderly woman looked like an alcoholic experiencing DTs. Then again, it could have been some sort of minor nervous disorder. Not just her fingertips, but her jaw trembled slightly as well. On television the psychic seemed much more bold; in person she was so tiny and unsure.

Saeko didn’t relish traveling all the way to Ina next to this woman. She couldn’t relax; the old woman gave her goose bumps. It was as if Shigeko Torii’s entire body radiated some sort of unique energy.

Saeko found herself wondering if the assistant director had deliberately chosen to travel economy class. When a television crew traveled by train to cover a story, it was customary for the talent to travel business class while the rest of the staff rode in economy. As a collaborator on the project, it would have made sense for Saeko to travel economy too, but for some reason Sakai had bought her a business-class seat. Perhaps Shigeko Torii had asked him to. Perhaps she’d wanted someone to talk with, and Sakai had offered up Saeko as a human sacrifice.

Torii looked up from the business card and looked into Saeko’s eyes, first one and then the other. She exhaled sharply through her nose and retrieved her bag from the floor, setting it atop her knees.

“It must be very hard for you, all alone.”

The comment was cryptic, but it made Saeko gasp. It was as if the old woman had used Saeko’s card as a window to peer into her heart.

Biting solitude … The summer eighteen years ago when Saeko’s life had changed forever …

Or was it just a lucky guess?

In either case, Saeko didn’t appreciate having her past dredged up. The thought of enduring two hours of unsolicited mind-reading made her shudder. And even though she was exhausted from her all-nighter, she could hardly abandon the old lady to take a nap.

Saeko foundered, uncertain of how to respond. Meanwhile, Torii extracted a travel cup of sake from her purse and opened the lid. She slurped it loudly, and the scent of sake filled the air. Immediately, the old woman’s fingers stopped shaking. It was DTs after all.

“Would you like some?” Torii offered Saeko the cup she’d just sipped from.

“No, thank you. I don’t drink.”

“Liar,” Torii shot back with a mischievous smile.

It was true. Saeko did drink. In fact, for a woman, she had a fairly high tolerance. Lately, she couldn’t sleep at night without a drink.

Once again, Saeko was at a loss for words, and she felt her body grow stiffer. She wanted to diffuse the tension somehow but was unsure of how to begin.

True to her profession, Saeko had done her homework on Shigeko Torii as soon as she’d learned that the psychic would be involved in the project. Born in 1944—a moment ago, Saeko had perceived the old lady to be over eighty, but in fact she was sixty-eight.

Torii was fifty when she’d risen to prominence as a psychic, a year after she’d acquired her powers through a painful event. She had witnessed the tragic death of her only child — a son who had been born to her at the somewhat late age of thirty-eight — in an accident at a railway crossing.

Torii and her son, who had just turned ten at the time, were both on bicycles at a railway crossing in their local shopping district. Just as they were crossing the tracks, the chimes rang to announce that a train was on its way. Torii was certain that her son was following her; she could hear him behind her on his bicycle, she later said. But as the boy scrambled to keep up with his mother, the wheel of his bicycle slid on the tracks and he fell off.

When Torii noticed there was nobody behind her, she doubled back towards the tracks just as a red train whizzed past. Right before her eyes, all four of the boy’s limbs were torn from his body and launched through the air. Torii let out a piercing shriek as she witnessed her son’s instant death.

A witness later testified that Torii’s scream hadn’t been that of a human being. Kwaah! The piercing, sharp cry had echoed forth and seemed to rise up into the heavens, skewering a fast-moving cloud on its way.

Foaming at the mouth, Torii had fallen to her knees on the asphalt. She lost consciousness and was transported to the hospital, where she awakened three days later.

It was then that Torii’s hair turned white and fell out in clumps. She also took to drinking each day from morning until night.

After the funeral, Torii insisted that her son was still near and refused to acknowledge his death no matter what her family said. She could still hear his voice. If only everyone else could hear it too, they would believe her, Torii decided. So she consulted with an itako of Mt. Osore — blind female shamans reputed to have the power to commune with the dead. Much to Torii’s surprise, when she reached Mt. Osore, the itako informed her that Torii herself had come into possession of unusual powers. She could see into a person’s past merely by touching an object that belonged to them.

It didn’t take long for word of her powers to spread. Disbelievingly, the director of a TV station approached Torii for an interview and brought with him an old pair of glasses. Torii touched the frames lightly before responding with three impressions of their owner.

The glasses had belonged to an elderly woman who was now dead. The woman had done work related to Noh or Kyogen theater. She had undergone cataract surgery once and had been wearing the glasses when she died.

All three conjectures were right on the mark. The glasses had belonged to the director’s late grandmother to whom he had been very close. A year earlier, she had suffered a heart attack at home in her bathroom, and by the time help reached her it had been too late. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, still wearing her glasses. Her husband was a critic of the traditional Japanese theater arts, and she had often attended performances with him and aided him in reviewing Noh and Kyogen performances. Finally, she had undergone an operation once for cataracts.

The first statement about the owner being an older woman who had already passed away could have been a lucky guess based on the old-fashioned style of the glasses and their convex bifocal lenses. But it was hard to explain how she might possibly have assessed the other two points. In particular, the part about doing work related to Noh or Kyogen theater seemed like such an unlikely idea for someone to come up with on the fly that the director came away quite strongly convinced of Torii’s psychic abilities.

The encounter led to Torii’s first television appearance, in which she performed similarly accurate readings. The show involved audience participation, Torii revealing audience members’ pasts based on personal objects they provided.

More than anything, her reputation was cemented when she gave a reading on the perpetrator of an unsolved murder case, who went on to turn himself in. Based on a hat found at the crime scene, Torii had described the owner’s job, age, and place of residence so accurately that the murderer, who happened to be watching the show, gave himself up to the police in fear.

These mysterious powers seemed to derive from the psychological blow Torii experienced when she witnessed her son’s death.

As the old woman sipped her cup of sake, her sight wandered across the floor vacantly. Her eyelids drooped, but the rapid movements of her pupils betrayed fluid mental processes in spite of her sluggish outward appearance.

As Saeko reflected on Shigeko Torii’s past, she felt a deep sympathy for the woman’s misfortune. What principles governed the workings of the human soul? How did unbearable sadness give birth to abnormal abilities? Had those abilities done anything to mitigate the old woman’s pain? Did Torii still have conversations with her son’s spirit?

As if she could read Saeko’s thoughts, Torii transferred her cup of sake into her left hand and softly laid her right hand over Saeko’s. The skin of her hand was dry and surprisingly cool.

“It’s always hard when we lose a loved one.”

As fumes of alcohol carried Torii’s voice to Saeko’s ears, Saeko felt the old woman’s sadness at losing her son flood her own body as if through the contact of their hands. Feeling another person’s sadness usually involved a sense of being removed, one’s stance as observer intact, but Saeko had experienced a comparable loss. The deep sorrow conveyed by Torii’s touch triggered a vivid memory of the tragedy she had experienced in high school, almost exactly as she had experienced it at the time.

Overcome by emotion, Saeko doubled over, laying her forehead against Torii’s arm. Her eyes closed, Saeko longed intensely for her father’s return. The image she saw was that of her father at forty-four just as he had been at the time of his disappearance.

Torii seemed to fully comprehend Saeko’s emotional state. With her free hand, she gently stroked Saeko’s head, whispering softly, “It’s all right. I’m sure you’ll find that special person.”

If Torii’s pronouncement meant that Saeko’s most fervent wish of the past eighteen years was to come true, it was welcome news.

Even full of tears, however, Saeko’s eyes were sharp. She noticed that Torii’s hands had once again begun to tremble. The minute tremors in both hands were more violent than before, causing her fingernails to rattle against the cup holder of the armrest. Their rhythm reminded Saeko of the sound of a mouse gnawing away at something hard.

They got off the Matsumoto express train at Chino. As they passed slowly through the ticket gate, Saeko scanned the crowd. But before she caught sight of him, Hashiba was already running towards her.

“Thank you so much for coming all this way.” He bowed politely to Torii and flashed Saeko a more familiar smile. “You must be tired,” he added considerately.

Out of the corner of her eye, Saeko noticed that Hashiba’s sleeves were rolled up to the elbow, revealing muscular arms. She felt a flood of relief. Never had she been so glad to have someone come to meet her.

Saeko’s emotional reserves were drained after her ride next to Torii. Not that the old woman was unkind. The two-hour ride had been more than enough time for Saeko to see that the psychic was a generous soul. But being with someone who could see straight into your heart was deeply exhausting. In the time they spent together, Saeko saw clearly that as long as Torii retained her unusual powers, she was fated to suffer perpetual loneliness.

Saeko noticed that Hashiba was carrying both women’s suitcases. He had relieved them of their heavy bags so naturally that she hadn’t even noticed.

The women were to ride with Hashiba in the van while Kagayama and the others traveled in a separate vehicle. The latter group needed to buy a few things but would meet them at the destination.

The two women sat side by side in the second row of seats and were buffeted by the sharp turns of the steep mountain road through the Tsuetsuki Peak pass.

When Saeko had come to research her report, she had taken the Iida line to North Ina Station and driven from there to Takato in a rental car. It had been summertime then, and the mountains had seemed different somehow. On a November afternoon, with the daylight hours growing shorter, the air was dry. Even though the forecast had been for the coldest temperatures yet this year, the sunlight was strong, even hot. Inside the van, it was actually warm enough for air-conditioning. But when the sun set, the temperature would probably drop quickly.

After exiting Highway 152, as they climbed the slope towards the Fujimura residence, Saeko spotted a familiar figure. He wore a track suit with a hand-towel around his neck in lieu of a scarf. He stood off to the side as the camera and sound technicians set up their equipment. When the van approached, he followed it with his eyes.

Seiji Fujimura. He was the older brother of Kota Fujimura, the owner of the Fujimura residence. Now the designated caretaker of the home, Seiji stood to inherit the Fujimuras’ entire estate if the family’s whereabouts remained a mystery seven years later. Saeko had arranged with Seiji to lend her the key to the Fujimuras’ house that day.

Her chest filled with an opposite emotion from the relief she’d felt at the sight of Hashiba. The wave of inexplicable aversion reminded her of turning on the light in a dark room and discovering a cockroach. More revulsion than fear, it was pure instinct.

When the van reached the front of the house, Seiji grinned from ear to ear and approached the vehicle, rapping his knuckles against Saeko’s window. It was a signal for her to roll down the window, it seemed, but the side windows of a van didn’t open. Saeko raised both palms to the glass, then gave a light bow in way of greeting. Seiji leaned in closer towards the window, peering inside and letting his gaze wander over Saeko’s legs.

Saeko pressed both legs together firmly and looked the other way as she gathered her belongings. Even with a window between them, Saeko was in a hurry to get away from Seiji.

Ugh. Why did he have to take a shine to me?

Hurriedly, Saeko moved to follow Torii out of the van. As she did so, Seiji sprinted quickly around and, ignoring Torii, offered Saeko his hand. No doubt it was an attempt to play the chivalrous gentleman, but his obliviousness to the older woman who was undoubtedly in need of help was painfully transparent, and Saeko had no desire to accept the gesture.

Despite herself, however, Saeko gave Seiji a smile. She didn’t like being two-faced, but she did her best to feign happiness to see him. She knew it was a look that was likely to mislead a susceptible member of the opposite sex, but her calculating instincts as a journalist reminded her that Seiji was critical to the success of the project. If anything provoked his ire, the entire project might have to be scrapped.

Saeko tossed her hair, trying to shake off a wave of self-loathing.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Seiji greeted her.

“We appreciate your consenting to work with us,” Saeko responded formally, setting the tone at a professional level.

Seiji waved his hand dismissively, as if to negate the need for such politeness. “Oh, pshaw!” he spat. Loudly, he continued to engage Saeko in friendly conversation as if to show off to the others what good friends they were.

“Ms. Kuriyama, could I have a word with you?” Hashiba intervened just in time with a request for a quick meeting with Torii and the rest of the team. The five staff members gathered around Shigeko Torii as Hashiba briefed them on the agenda.

Hashiba wanted to be very careful in his approach to filming Torii. He wanted the footage to be as genuine as possible, with no element of “staging.” Of course it would help the process if they showed the psychic the interior of the house in advance and went over what she would say. But they would lose all spontaneity through that approach, and Hashiba wanted to get Torii’s first impressions on camera. He wanted to capture her psychological reactions at the moment she first touched the Fujimuras’ belongings. He knew his audience would want to see the exact impact the Fujimura residence had on the psychic.

Torii listened as Hashiba explained his preference.

“Yes. I feel the same way,” she agreed.

“If possible, I’d like to go ahead and film the inside of the house today,” Hashiba ventured, shooting Saeko a quick glance. Seiji had sidled up so close to her that she could feel his breath on her hair. She shivered and took a small step forward, but to no avail — Seiji moved with her.

Hashiba seemed to be suggesting that if Torii was tired from the journey, she could rest up at the hotel and they could start filming tomorrow. But if possible, he preferred to try to capture the main footage they needed today. There was no guarantee that Seiji wouldn’t change his mind. Saeko felt the same way. The longer she spent with Seiji, the more likely she was to end up angering him. The sooner they could film the inside of the house, the better.

Saeko watched Torii hopefully.

“That will be fine,” the old woman assented.

Hashiba passed Torii a copy of the plans for the two-story house to give her an idea of the layout. In order for the video crew to capture her movements as she walked through discovering things in the home, they at least needed a general idea of the path she would take.

The layout of the home was typical. The two upstairs rooms were the children’s bedrooms. The kitchen and dining area came combined with the living room on the first floor, with the master bedroom and a guest room across the hallway. A standard four-bedroom home, it would have been ample space for a four-person family.

“Would you mind giving us an idea of how you’d like to move through the home?” Hashiba requested. “We’ll have two cameras accompanying you. One will focus on your face, while the other shoots what you’re seeing from the same angle as your point of view. Does that make sense?”

“Does that mean one camera will be ahead of me?” Torii asked. “I will move through the house in accordance with what sparks my interest.” She spoke slowly, enunciating each word.

Hashiba looked up at the sky and thought for a moment. “All right. If you see something that intrigues you, though, please don’t move too quickly. Can you be sure to give the cameras a chance to keep up with you?”

“Certainly. I’ll bear that in mind as I proceed.”

“I appreciate that.”

With those arrangements sorted out, Hashiba gave the camera and sound technicians their instructions.

As Saeko watched the exchange between Hashiba and Torii, a thought occurred to her.

Torii speaks like me.

Of course, that was neither here nor there. And naturally, Saeko wasn’t sure exactly how she sounded to other people. But various acquaintances, including Hashiba, had often remarked that Saeko’s manner of speech resembled that of someone far beyond her years.

“There’s a place in my neighborhood that serves really good Shinshu soba noodles,” Seiji whispered suddenly, interrupting Saeko’s thoughts. “I’ll take you there, tonight. My treat. Just you and me.”

Surprised, Saeko turned around quickly. Seiji’s face was full of wrinkles even though he was only in his mid-fifties. His small, round eyes peered out at her from his puckered face and blinked frequently. It was clear that he was doing his best to smile, but his eyes conveyed no warmth.

Unbelievable. He’s asking me on a date?

Saeko would have preferred not to eat with Seiji even if the rest of the staff were there too. Needless to say, she had no desire to be alone with him. Besides, she didn’t feel comfortable letting someone who was deeply in debt buy her a meal.

“I’m afraid I have a dinner meeting with the rest of the team tonight,” Saeko gently turned him down. In fact, there was no official plan for that evening, but it was more than likely that things would turn out that way.

Seiji widened his eyes, like a chicken hit by a peashooter. “What time will you finish?”

“Finish …?”

“We can meet up after your dinner meeting.”

Seiji wasn’t taking no for an answer. Saeko shuddered. “I’m not sure exactly what time we’ll be through, but I imagine it might be quite late.”

“I don’t mind. That’s fine. I’ll wait for you if it takes all night.”

“I really couldn’t trouble you to do that.”

“It’s no trouble. You really shouldn’t worry about other people so much. You should do what you want to do, and come and have soba noodles with me. Really, you’re being too formal.” As Seiji spoke, his hand reached for Saeko’s shoulder, but she twisted out of the way.

“I’m afraid it just won’t work out tonight,” she said with an exaggerated grimace. It wasn’t easy to evade a person who interpreted everything the way he wanted.

Seiji’s hand fiddled with the keys in the pocket of his tracksuit pants, and their jangling issued from the area near his crotch. He was probably fingering the key to the front door of the Fujimuras’ house.

It was as if the jingle were meant to say, If you want to get into the house, young lady, you’d better do as I say.

Saeko squinted — the afternoon sunlight was bright. They had been standing in the shade of the house’s eaves, but as the sun sank in the western sky, its rays now shone in her eyes.

She made a visor with her hand, shielding her eyes as she looked up. The days were short at this time of year, and the sun was sinking quickly towards the horizon. She remembered the weather forecast predicting that it would be cold that night. At this rate, it might start getting chilly even before sunset.

The sun’s rays shone on the upper floor of the house too, reflecting in its windows. There were two upstairs rooms, both children’s bedrooms. Inside the windows, the curtains were open, allowing ample sunlight to stream in. From the time she was here before, Saeko remembered the upstairs sash windows being locked, with the lace curtains drawn closed. Today, though, they were tied back at the sides of the windows.

I’ve been in this house before.

When she’d come in the summer, she hadn’t discovered any clues but had been struck by a strange sense of familiarity. For some reason, the entire house had triggered a wave of nostalgia akin to revisiting one’s childhood home.

When I was here last, he guided me through the house.

“Right this way,” Seiji had said, standing extra close to Saeko as he’d escorted her through the curtained rooms.

“Saeko, there’s no need to be formal with me.” Seiji had called her Kuriyama, but now he’d switched to using her first name. As the jangling keys brought her back into the present, she suddenly became aware that Seiji was brandishing a single key in front of her face. The key lay on Seiji’s open palm, which he was now thrusting almost right into her nose. “Here, take it,” he said.

Saeko plucked the key from his hand, taking care not to touch any part of his skin. “I’ll have one of the staff members return it to you later,” she promised.

“Don’t bother. It’s a spare. Go ahead and hold onto it,” Seiji offered.

The mere thought of entertaining the kind of relationship with Seiji that involved him giving her a spare key sent a wave of revulsion through Saeko that almost made her faint. Nonetheless, she wasn’t about to refuse the offer. A spare key to the Fujimura residence was a powerful asset. If they needed to come back and film again, she might be able to get into the house without even dealing with Seiji.

Saeko dropped the key into her purse. She would have preferred to wrap the key in a tissue first, but that wasn’t an option at the moment.

For the second time, Saeko crossed the threshold of the Fujimuras’ home.

As the front door opened, the smell of earth and leather shoes wafted out. All houses have a unique smell, just as people do, but it was especially strong here. Saeko hadn’t noticed it as much the last time, but today when the door opened and the air from inside enveloped them, she found herself covering her nose with her hands.

Shigeko Torii paused in the front entryway, staring at the welcome mat at the threshold where they would step up after removing their shoes. Saeko and Hashiba watched quietly from behind, being careful not to get in the way of the cameras. In the shoe-removal area just inside the door, two pairs of acupressure sandals were arranged neatly side by side in contrast to two pairs of children’s sneakers that lay scattered messily nearby. Just under the ledge, Saeko also spotted two pairs of dusty traditional wooden sandals. There were two pairs of each type of shoe — the acupressure sandals, sneakers, and wooden sandals — but no leather shoes or women’s pumps in sight.

Torii removed her shoes and stepped up into the house, advancing straight down the corridor. The cameras followed her movements. There had been no pre-arrangement of how she would behave or react, and this was her first time in the house. The sun had gone behind a cloud, but it had been clear that day, and the air was dry. Nonetheless, the air in the home had a humid quality, and the flooring gave off a damp creaking sound with each step Torii took.

Now the famous seer’s much-lauded abilities would be put to the test. On the train ride from Tokyo to Chino, Saeko had encountered an aspect of Torii’s unusual powers, and they had made an impression. While the old woman hadn’t exactly penetrated to the very core of the tragedy Saeko had experienced long ago, she had accurately assessed its general provinces. Saeko wasn’t yet 100 percent convinced, but she was halfway there, and ready to see more. If Torii succeeded in intuiting an aspect of this missing persons case that hit the mark, Saeko was likely to be persuaded.

As Torii rounded a corner to the left of the corridor, sandwiched between the two cameras, Hashiba and Saeko removed their shoes, stepped into the house, and followed quietly behind.

Saeko followed Hashiba down the corridor to the entrance of the living room. They stopped in the doorway and peered inside.

Next to the open-counter style kitchen was a table for six, and close to it a corner sofa. The living and dining area was roughly fifteen tatami mats in area, with the sofa serving as a partition between the two spaces. Cabinets and shelving lined the walls with no wasted space. At a glance, it was clear that the members of this household were well-organized and tidy.

Torii sat down on the living room sofa facing the television. The set was off, its screen merely mirroring the room. The reflected image was slightly rounded at the edges and almost monochromatic. Torii would be seeing her own reflection in the screen as well.

The old woman picked up the remote control and made as if to operate it, but then hesitated, fiddling with it for a moment before setting it back down on the table. Instead she picked up one of the glasses that had been left there. There was a tiny bit of white residue at the bottom. Ten months ago, the owner of the home had poured a beer into this glass and left it unfinished on the table. The liquid had evaporated completely, leaving only traces of foam at the very bottom as evidence.

Torii brought the glass to her nose and sniffed.

She cocked her head to the side as if lost in deep contemplation. Then she stood up and traversed the dining room into the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator door.

As Torii leaned forward to peer into the refrigerator, the light from inside illuminated her profile, bathing her thin hair in a cool, pale light that made it look whiter than ever. In response to its door opening, the motor in the back of the refrigerator let out a growling rumble.

Even now, the household’s utility bills continued to be automatically deducted each month from their plentiful bank accounts, and the home’s electricity, gas, water, and telephone services were still operational.

Torii examined the refrigerator’s contents before extracting a Styrofoam container of fermented soybeans, or natto. She carried it over to the dining table and sat down. With a strange look on her face, Torii sat opposite ten-month-old natto, probably purchased at some neighborhood grocery store, and appeared to sink into a deep trance. Earlier she had been muttering incomprehensibly to herself, but now she maintained absolute silence. For a moment, she seemed about to speak. But instead she paused, her face frozen in the expression of a person just about to sneeze, her eyes staring off into space. She remained like that for about half a minute, her mouth hanging open.

Hashiba couldn’t take the suspense any longer. “Do you see something?” he asked. His voice could easily be removed from the footage at the editing stage.

The well-timed question seemed to pull Torii’s consciousness back to reality. “I see a dark abyss,” she responded simply.

“What do you mean, a dark abyss?” Hashiba probed.

“I don’t know how deep it is, but I see the bottom of a valley set between steep cliffs.”

“Are the people who lived in this house at the bottom of that valley?”

“I don’t know. But the valley is moving, like a living thing.”

As Saeko listened to the exchange between Hashiba and Torii, she imagined a bird’s eye view of a valley, dark and writhing like a snake. At the same time, it made her think of Seiji. It occurred to her suddenly that if a snake’s face were covered in wrinkles, it might look a lot like Seiji.

Just then, she heard a soft clapping sound near her ear. It was a signal from Hashiba. “Wait there just a moment,” he directed.

Quickly, Hashiba called Kagayama over and gave him some brief instructions. “Help me gather together some things the family members used in their daily lives. You go upstairs and find something of the children’s. I’ll find something that belonged to the parents downstairs.”

As the director issued his instructions, the two cameras continued to film Torii.

Kagayama looked confused. He seemed unsure of what Hashiba had in mind.

“I want you to find something each member of the family used regularly. Clothes, a comb, whatever. Bring me something that belonged to each of the children,” Hashiba clarified.

“Got it.” Finally comprehending, Kagayama started to sprint off, but Hashiba stopped him.

“Just a minute. When you do, be careful not to mess up their rooms. Just collect the necessary items and do your best not to touch anything else.”

“Understood.”

Kagayama ran swiftly up the stairs.

Hashiba watched him go and then made his way to the bathroom. It would be easy to find something each member of the family used regularly there.

He opened the sliding door between the hallway and the bathroom. The sink was just opposite the door, ivory colored with a three-way mirror that greeted Hashiba with his own reflection. The daylight that poured in through the small window next to the sink was sufficient to illuminate both the changing and bathing area so that there was no need to turn on the lights.

Hashiba opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, revealing four toothbrushes lined up inside. Below, the sink was fairly clean, but there were tiny bits of toothpaste congealed here and there and a few stray hairs tangled in the drain.

Hashiba was about to reach for the four toothbrushes when he hesitated and plucked several tissues from a nearby tissue box. He wrapped the toothbrushes in the tissues so as not to handle them directly. He wasn’t worried about preserving forensic evidence at a potential crime scene; rather, he simply lacked the courage to directly handle toothbrushes that probably still retained traces of their owners’ saliva.

Hashiba stuck the thick wad of tissues containing the four toothbrushes in his pocket. At least now he had something all four family members had used regularly.

There was a laundry machine next to the sink, with a laundry basket sandwiched in between. The basket contained clothes that had been laundered but not yet hung out to dry. They were mostly light things like hand-towels and underwear, and all of the items had dried in a wrinkly mass. When he picked one up, it retained its shape like a pumice stone.

When had these clothes been laundered? It seemed more than likely that the load had been done just before the family’s disappearance.

There was shelving over the laundry machine with a fluorescent light installed underneath. Hashiba switched it on and peered into the machine. Inside, there were a number of items of clothing that still hadn’t been washed. These were heavier items, like jeans and track pants, and a scoop of detergent had already been sprinkled on top. Something must have happened to Mrs. Fujimura after she’d transferred the first load of laundry into the basket and was about to start a second.

Still leaning forward to gaze into the laundry machine, Hashiba took a step backwards. His heel stepped on something thick and soft. He looked down, and what he’d taken for a bathmat in the dim light was actually a stray garment on the floor. Hashiba was standing on the leg of a pair of denim trousers that must have belonged either to Mr. Fujimura or his son.

The polka dot bathmat was in fact hanging on a nearby towel rack, and two pairs of waterproof slippers were propped nearby. All the footwear in this home seemed to come in units of two pairs.

Hashiba turned on the light in the bathing area and opened the inward-facing folding doors that led inside. The tub was pale pink and seemed much newer than the rest of the home. The Fujimuras had probably had the bathroom redone not long ago.

The tub was in a state similar to the beer glass. The bathwater that had been left when the family disappeared ten months ago had cooled and evaporated, leaving behind a film of hair and dead skin. A layer of mold had grown on top in a mottled pattern only to dry up and die.

Hashiba exited the bathroom and crossed through the hallway into the tatami-floored master bedroom.

It opened up onto a southern-facing veranda that was still warm from the rays of the sun. An old-fashioned wicker chair sat on the veranda, with a hand-knit cardigan draped across its back. Hashiba could imagine Haruko, the wife, wearing the cardigan as she sat in the chair, basking in the sun as she gazed out at the garden. He followed her gaze in his imagination and noticed an insect chirping in the grass outside. Its thin, reed-like voice wafted into the room with a scent of soil as Hashiba turned his attention back to the bedroom.

In between two closet doors was a black Buddhist altar, with a half-used-up candle. The shelf in front of it held a teacup and four medicine capsules neatly lined up, and next to them were two long, smooth stones that had been propped up in the shape of the character for “person,” almost like some sort of religious ritual.

The photograph displayed in the altar was probably of the family’s paternal grandfather. It was hard to tell how old he was in the picture, but his face was the shape of a watermelon seed and his head was completely bald. His wrinkled face bore a striking resemblance to Seiji’s. Since they were father and son, perhaps it was to be expected. With his bald head, the man brought to mind the image of a snake in Hashiba’s mind.

Just in front of the photograph of the Fujimura patriarch was something black and shiny. Hashiba picked it up. It was a leather-bound day planner. The year 1994 was printed on its cover in gold foil, and for some reason the dull glint aroused Hashiba’s curiosity. Given its age, function, and location, it seemed like just the thing for Torii to use for her readings.

One of the cameras shot a view of the table from over Shigeko Torii’s shoulder. The dark brown dining table was strewn with various daily necessities belonging to the Fujimuras: the toothbrushes and the hand-towels and undergarments dried in crumpled clumps that Hashiba had collected; the pencil boxes, pajamas, and Walkman that Kagayama had brought down from the children’s bedrooms.

Torii picked up the objects one by one, holding them to her forehead, sniffing them, observing them, and sorting them into categories. Soon there were four small piles on the table. Based on the fact that there was a toothbrush in each pile, it seemed she had divided them according to their owners. Each pile included roughly three items, four at the most.

That was when Saeko noticed a small, black, rectangular object set off to the side, separate from the four piles.

Behind the camera, Saeko craned her neck, trying to see what the lone item was. A cigarette case? No. It looked more like a day planner. Saeko found herself intrigued by that specific object. Somehow, it struck her as familiar. “Please be as specific as you can about their locations,” Hashiba was instructing Torii, but Saeko was oblivious, focused solely on the black day planner.

Hashiba didn’t just want a vague image — he wanted a detailed description that would enable them to pinpoint a location. A river, a bridge, a lake … He realized that it was unlikely that the four Fujimuras were still alive, but as the director, he wanted his project to help resolve the mystery. If the Fujimuras’ bodies had been hidden somewhere, he wanted his program to lead to their recovery. That was the whole point of featuring Shigeo Torii.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to put Torii under undue pressure or stress. “Take your time now, and relax. Could you tell us a bit about the image you’re getting?” he prompted.

Torii’s breath grew suddenly labored. She clutched her chest, tilting her throat towards the ceiling. Her trembling spread from her fingertips to her hands and arms, and then her entire body, making the table rattle.

The psychic’s body lengthened slightly. Suddenly she sprang out of her chair and darted across the room to the kitchen. She flung open one of the cabinets as if she knew exactly what was inside and removed a bottle of sake. Taking a measuring cup from the counter near the sink, she filled it to brimming and downed the liquid. Then she set the bottle down on the counter top and looked up, turning her head this way and that as her eyes scanned the room busily. The rapid movements of her pupils seemed to suggest a corresponding intensity in the images flashing through her mind. After a moment, her gaze quieted, focusing on a single point.

Meanwhile, Saeko found herself increasingly fascinated by the black book on the table. She leaned towards it, trying to get a better look while the cameras were focused elsewhere. Its black cover was worn and tattered, and the leather was peeling at the corners. Near the top of the cover, it bore a logo inscribed in gold foil that was now mostly worn away.

A familiar logo.

Saeko reached for the book, but her hand froze in mid-air. Was it all right for her to touch it? It occurred to her that her touch might somehow compromise Torii’s ability to get a psychic reading from the object.

But Saeko was certain she recognized that logo. The design was clever and appealing, featuring a semi-circle-shaped boat with a sail shaped like the letter K, inscribed in a circle. The year 1994 was printed beneath the logo — the year chronicled in its pages.

Nineteen ninety-four — the year bore special significance for Saeko.

The cameras were following Torii back towards the table. Quickly, before the cameras focused on it, Saeko snatched up the little book and moved back towards the edge of the room.

“If that’s what you want, fine. I won’t stop you!” a man’s voice echoed suddenly in Saeko’s head.

She flinched, looking quickly from side to side. Was a member of the staff reprimanding her for touching things without permission? But nobody was. It had been a completely unfamiliar voice. Each word had rung out clearly, and Saeko had the distinct impression that she had been given permission to take the book.

The voice lingered indelibly in her mind, dark and ominous, leaving an unpleasant feeling that slowly permeated her body. Slowly, Saeko came to the realization that the voice hadn’t come from an external, physical source. It was an imaginary voice that had been somehow triggered by the act of touching the book. Was it a sign that Saeko was coming to possess powers similar to Torii’s? Saeko didn’t welcome the prospect of acquiring Torii’s ability to derive flashes of insight about an object’s history whenever she touched something.

Saeko huddled in the corner of the room, trying to contain her emotions as she gripped the leather-bound book tightly in both hands. Meanwhile, the cameras rolled on without her …

Torii sat absolutely still in her chair, the palms of both hands pressed firmly against the table. Hashiba looked on for quite some time before he felt the need to interrupt. “Ms. Torii, what are you getting? Can you describe it to us?”

Torii raised both of her hands and waved them slowly in the air over the table, her palms facing downwards. She seemed to be trying to pick up psychic energy from the family’s belongings through her palms, but the dramatic movements struck Saeko as phony for the first time since meeting Torii. Waving her hands in the air with her eyes closed, the old woman reminded Saeko of an enraptured conductor directing the final strains of a symphony.

A low growl began to rumble in Torii’s throat. Her exaggerated movements grew smaller and smaller until only her fingertips described a point in the air. The middle fingers of both hands pointed downwards, as if indicating an invisible tube that might serve as a portal into another world.

“On the last night, there was a presence other than the four Fujimuras in this home,” Torii intoned somberly. It was clear that she was now in a trance-like state. Her body seemed to give off a yellowish aura that filled the entire room.

Only Saeko was impervious to the strange atmosphere affecting the rest of the group. Instead, she remained transfixed by the black day planner. She had truly discovered a portal into another world.

She knew exactly what the mark on its cover signified. It was her father’s company’s logo, and the notebook was a day planner produced by her father’s company. He had used a book just like it to keep track of his schedule. Saeko had no idea how many copies the company had produced. Hundreds? Not more than a thousand, she was sure. Each year, they printed them up and distributed them to clients, family, and friends. Perhaps Saeko had discovered one in the Fujimuras’ home simply by coincidence.

Saeko rifled through the book.

Its pages were full of penciled entries inscribed in cramped lettering. As Saeko skimmed through them, she saw that the calendar had been used not just as a schedule book but as a sort of journal as well.

July 25–27, staying at Yamanaka Lake for translation project. Must complete manuscript before Steven Sellers arrives in Japan. Daughter’s summer vacation has begun. She seems quite busy studying for her college entrance exams year after next, won’t have much time for me when I get back to Tokyo.

Just as Saeko had intuited, the book was indeed a window into her past.

A stabbing pain shot through her temples. Unable to stand, she sank to the floor right there, resting the book on her knees. She turned to the last page.

There was a dramatic decrease in the amount of text entered after August 22nd. After that, the planner was used solely as an agenda, with no more journal entries.

It was the day after Saeko’s father had called his daughter in Tokyo from the N Hotel in Narita, just before he had disappeared.

Quickly, Saeko slipped the book into her pocket. Anything that had belonged to her father was rightfully hers, and she had no qualms about taking the book. She was supposed to have it.

The discovery of her father’s agenda book from the year of his disappearance was a tremendous and unbelievable stroke of luck. If she could trace her father’s movements prior to his disappearance, she could reopen the investigation of his whereabouts.

Taking care to remain out of the camera’s view, Hashiba moved towards the side of the table opposite Torii. He had been posing his questions from the doorway behind her, but he was growing frustrated. He wanted to be closer to Torii and see if he could move things along.

“Ms. Torii, would you please tell us more about what you’re seeing?”

“The servant of the gods comes in a snake’s form. It preys on life …” Torii paused, her voice choking up. She trembled violently, and her face seemed to be searching the room, trying to detect something. The skin of her cheek quivered, and her pupils rolled upwards.

“Is something wrong?” Startled by her ghastly expression, Hashiba retreated backwards a step.

“Quiet!” Torii hissed, raising a finger to her lips in an unmistakable gesture.

Instantly, the atmosphere in the room turned to ice. Everyone stood rooted in their spots, absolutely still. Only Torii slowly turned. Her gaze passed over the hallway door and a shelf supporting a fish tank, coming to rest at a windowpane. Then she, too, fell motionless.

“The earth will now shake,” Torii intoned.

Did she mean that there was an earthquake coming?

Crack!

It wasn’t the window shattering. It was as if a chasm had opened in the air itself, sharply but painlessly striking the skin of the room’s occupants.

For almost twenty seconds, everyone waited with bated breath, straining intently to detect the presence in the room.

The sky that had been so clear earlier was now covered in clouds. They moved rapidly across the sky, sending flashes of bluish-white light arcing downwards. Outside, the southern Japanese Alps seemed to press in on them. The mountains communicated with the canopy of clouds overhead through glints of lightning, undulating wildly like scan lines on a CRT screen.

With the window sashes tightly closed, the room should have been sealed off from the wind. Yet, the air in the room circulated wildly — it wasn’t wind. It could only be described as extremely localized air movement, and there was nothing natural about it. A burst of air pressure that blew up out of the earth and through the floor.

The windows began to rattle, just as a dog began baying in the distance. Nearby, another dog answered the call, and soon the noise was deafening. Every dog in the neighborhood seemed to be howling at the sky.

Then suddenly the sound of the beating of countless wings filled the air, like a flock of crows rising up into the sky all at once from a telephone line. They seemed to be fleeing, aware that something was afoot.

Saeko and Hashiba’s eyes met, as if to send a mutual signal that something was about to happen.

Saeko felt a sensation similar to the contents of her stomach lurching upwards. She stumbled, unable to keep her footing.

A cabinet next to her wobbled and fell, spilling its contents. The objects seemed to tumble off of the slanting shelf in slow motion, as if gravity wasn’t working properly.

Then she felt a sharp impact to her skull, and the colors faded from her vision. As her consciousness dwindled, out of the corner of her eye she saw Hashiba running toward her.

When Saeko opened her eyes, she didn’t know where she was. And when was it? Whether someone told her a week had passed while she was unconscious or that it had been only an hour, she wouldn’t be able to refute the claim.

Her gaze traveled from the ceiling down the wall, then took in the person sitting by her bedside. Before she could fully register who it was, a voice said, “Oh! You’re awake!”

The voice was Hashiba’s. Saeko recognized the clothes he was wearing; just as before, he had on a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was close enough that Saeko could see the hairs of his muscular forearms wavering in the fluorescent light.

An image of the last thing she had seen before losing consciousness flashed through Saeko’s mind.

She had felt the ground lurch upwards, and the entire room had rocked in a wave-like motion, causing the objects on the table to slide off the edge and tumble through space. The cameramen had crouched down, shielding their expensive equipment, and Torii had slid to safety under the table, facing upwards the whole time, like a gymnast executing a back hip circle. Only the unlucky Saeko was left standing next to a cabinet, and as she’d reached for it for support, the cabinet itself began to pitch forwards just before her fingers reached it, sending a ceramic vessel on the top crashing down on Saeko’s head.

Hashiba looked overjoyed that Saeko had regained consciousness, and his haggard face flushed with color.

“I’m so glad you’re awake!” He looked almost tearful with relief. Immediately, he hit the call button to summon the nurse. He had been instructed to let the doctors know as soon as Saeko woke up.

It took less than a minute for the nurse to arrive, but as they waited, Hashiba gave Saeko a quick rundown of how an ambulance had picked her up at the Fujimura residence.

At 3:54 that afternoon, an earthquake with an intensity of between four and five on the Japanese scale had struck the Suwa Lake area. Nobody had been killed, but a number of homes right at the epicenter at Suwa Lake had been damaged. A handful of people who had been unluckily struck by falling objects had been injured, including Saeko. The ambulance had taken her to the Emergency Room at the Ina General Hospital. All together, five people who had been injured in the earthquake had been brought here.

In the ambulance, the paramedics had made sure Saeko’s airway was open so that she could breathe. As soon as they arrived at the hospital, they had hooked her up to an IV, measured her blood pressure, and assessed her breathing. With all of the emergency staff working together, it had taken mere minutes. They had proceeded to give Saeko a CT scan, and the entire process was finished in just twenty minutes.

The CT scan revealed that there was no lethal damage to her brain. There was some concern over the fact that she had remained unconscious for two hours. The doctors worried that she might show symptoms of subdural hemorrhage or a cerebral contusion and deemed it necessary to monitor her carefully.

Saeko had been moved into one of the standard hospital rooms, with a curtain that screened off her bed from the other bed. Her breath and heart rate were being recorded by a monitor next to the bed, but she couldn’t read the display from where she lay.

The nurse called in Saeko’s doctor, and Hashiba stood up quickly to make room. The doctor checked the numbers on the monitor and asked Saeko various questions. He seemed satisfied by her responses.

“Yes, yes …” he nodded vigorously.

Encouraged, Saeko asked a question of her own. “Doctor, how much longer do I need to stay here?” The words came out in a tumble.

“If you’d only been unconscious for a few minutes, we would have classified it as a minor concussion. But two hours is rather long. You may feel fine right now, but it’s safest to assume that you’ve experienced some brain damage. We don’t want to run the risk of bringing on serious complications later, so we’ll need you to stick around until we can be sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

With a slight groan, Saeko shut her eyes and conjured up an image of her day planner.

Today and tomorrow are fine because I’m supposed to be working on the TV project. But I need to be in Gifu the day after to report on a different project …

“How long will the tests take?” Saeko asked.

“At least three days, a week at the longest.”

Saeko shuddered at the thought of being shut up in the hospital for a week. After the report in Gifu, she needed to write up her article and send it in to the magazine, and then she was scheduled to head up to Hokkaido for a different project. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way to extend the deadlines.

“Please take it easy. We need to keep an eye on you for a little while.”

With that, the doctor gave the nurse a few words of instruction and they both filed out.

Hashiba disappeared after them but returned moments later, dejectedly taking a seat once more at Saeko’s bedside.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, bowing deeply.

Saeko was startled. Why was he apologizing to her? “For what?” she asked.

“This wouldn’t have happened to you if I hadn’t asked you to come here.” Hashiba’s hands were on his thighs, his elbows bowed out to the side. His head was so low, it was almost right in front of Saeko’s face.

“It was just bad luck. And I should’ve been more careful.”

“But if you hadn’t been there, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Saeko didn’t really care that she’d gotten injured. She wasn’t in pain, and she felt completely normal. The main issue was the trouble it would cause if she had to stay at the hospital for too long. But she bit back on her frustration and asked after the staff instead.

“Was everyone else okay?”

“Yes, fortunately,” Hashiba assured her. Saeko alone had drawn the short straw.

“What about the project? Did you get some good footage?”

When Saeko brought up the show, Hashiba almost leapt to his feet. “Did we ever!” he began, before quickly checking himself. He shook his head, realizing how insensitive it was to get excited about the footage they’d gotten when a member of the team was incapacitated.

“As a collaborator, it would make me glad if you did,” Saeko reassured him.

“I don’t know if you’d call it good footage, but we definitely captured some interesting material. Do you remember what happened? Shigeko Torii predicted the earthquake right before it happened. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day — capturing a prediction, and then having it realized and getting the whole thing on camera.”

“But does that bear any relationship to the missing persons case?”

“Ms. Torii has given us some descriptions that are good hints as to the family’s current whereabouts. We plan to look for places corresponding to her descriptions tomorrow and the next day to get some footage at those locations.”

“I hope you find something.”

“Yes, that would be great. But even if we don’t, we have a perfectly viable show. Thanks to you, Saeko.”

“Not at all. I’m so sorry I wasn’t more helpful …” Saeko had been scheduled to attend the filming tomorrow as well, but that wouldn’t be possible now.

“Don’t worry about that. Just rest and take it easy. And please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. What about your family? Do you want me to call them and explain what happened?”

Saeko looked the other way with a forlorn smile. “I don’t have a family,” she informed him.

“What?”

“There’s no one to contact.”

Hashiba looked disconcerted as he took in this information. If nothing more, at least he knew now that Saeko was single.

“In that case, let me get you whatever you need. The hospital shop has pretty much everything.” Memo pad in hand, Hashiba waited for instructions, but Saeko hesitated.

Even without checking, she could already tell. The nurses had changed her out of the clothes she had been wearing earlier, leaving only her underwear, and dressed her in a hospital gown. The travel bag Saeko had left in the van was by the side of the bed. It had a change of clothes in it, but since Saeko had expected to spend only one night away from home, she hadn’t brought any feminine hygiene products. Psychological duress always made Saeko’s period come early. But she found herself unable to tell Hashiba what she needed most at the moment.

Besides, I can ask the nurse later …

Saeko decided against asking for sanitary products and instead told Hashiba, “I’m thirsty.”

“Fine. I’ll get you some juice or something.”

“Thank you. Just a minute,” she said as Hashiba rose to leave. “What happened to the clothes I was wearing when I got here?” For some reason, talking to Hashiba reminded Saeko of her father, and she’d remembered the old day planner she had been looking at when the earthquake struck.

“Here. It should all be here in this wardrobe.”

“Would you hand me my jacket?” She remembered dropping the day planner into the pocket of her buckskin jacket. Unless it had slipped out when she’d fallen, it should still be there.

Hashiba circled around the foot of the bed and retrieved the jacket from the wardrobe. “Is this it?” he asked, proffering it to Saeko across his forearm.

Please, let it be there, Saeko prayed as she reached into the pocket. Her fingers encountered the texture of smooth leather. It is! Without thinking, Saeko hugged the little book to her chest.

“Your day planner?” Hashiba asked. He didn’t seem to realize that Saeko had taken the book from the Fujimuras’ home. As he stood up with Saeko’s jacket over his arm, his expression was one of innocent curiosity.

Saeko didn’t respond. A thought flashed through her mind: I wonder if he’s married?

It was the second time the question had occurred to her.

Night came early in the hospital wing. The overhead lights were switched off at nine o’clock, and the patients were only allowed to keep their bedside lamps on until ten.

Almost two hours had passed since Hashiba had left at the end of visiting hours.

Normally, Saeko never went to bed at this hour. She usually stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m., and to fall asleep any earlier than that she needed a drink. If she stayed in the hospital a while, Saeko was sure she’d get used to the schedule, but it was going to be a challenge falling asleep this first night.

Determined to make herself go to sleep, Saeko turned off her bedside lamp and set down the manuscript she’d been reading on her bedside table. After skimming through her father’s day planner, she had recalled that the article Toshiya had given her was still in her bag and had pulled it out to pass the time.

Just as Toshiya had said, Jack Thorne’s paper specifically addressed the relationship between black holes and information theory. The thesis was that information was the fundamental component of both matter and life and that black holes were a sort of massive information disposal mechanism.

A black hole came into being when a massive star went extinct and its own powerful gravity caused it to get smaller and smaller until it occupied zero space, becoming a sort of rift in space-time. No particle sucked into the hole could escape, including light, meaning that any information in the vicinity was completely swallowed up.

Terrifying though they sounded, Saeko knew that black holes actually existed. There was one close to the center of the Milky Way, near the Sagittarius Constellation, that was 2.5 million times the mass of the sun.

The more Saeko contemplated the vast reaches of space, the further she felt from sleep. As she lay awake on the hospital bed with her eyes closed, the shuffling of slippers interrupted her thoughts. She opened her eyes slightly to the silhouette of an old woman on the curtain that partitioned off Saeko’s bed on three sides. The old woman’s hair was pulled up in a round bun on the top of her head, and her baggy hospital gown made her distorted shadow look like the paper dolls children made to ward off rain.

Saeko had thought the other woman was asleep, but apparently she’d gone to the bathroom and was just now returning. “All right, everyone. Let’s get some shut-eye now!” the woman declared in an oddly cheerful tone as she made her way to her bed.

It was just the two of them in the room. Saeko had heard that the old woman had undergone surgery for a subarachnoid hemorrhage and had been transferred to the general ward two weeks ago for rehabilitation since she was recovering smoothly. Sometimes she suddenly let out joyful little shouts for no obvious reason — perhaps an effect of the stress her brain had been through. At dinnertime she had raised quite a commotion and startled Hashiba by complaining of a huge purple spider on the ceiling.

“Good night,” Saeko responded in a low voice, closing her eyes once more.

Even after lights out, the ward was full of sounds. The old woman rustled her sheets in the next bed over, humming happily to herself. Oogh, an old man moaned in the six-person room across the hallway, as if in pain or having a bad dream. Here and there bedsprings creaked as patients rolled over, and the footsteps of passers-by drifted in from the outward window along with the hum of traffic and the rumble of passing trains.

Having been brought to the hospital unconscious in an ambulance, Saeko knew very little about her surroundings. She had no idea what part of Ina City she was in, or what the rest of the ward was like. The lack of information was vexing. It made her uneasy to be in a place she knew so little about, in an unfamiliar city.

“Nurse, come here, please! Nurse!”

It was the voice of the old man in the room across the hall. He sobbed for help, his voice trembling, even though pressing the call button next to his pillow would have served the same purpose.

“There he goes again,” another voice lamented.

Next, Saeko heard the footsteps of a nurse coming down the hallway, their rhythm slow, as if she were in no hurry. She was probably used to being called in after lights out. Perhaps the old man just wanted some attention. In any case, the others seemed accustomed to his wails.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Yasuda? How many times do I have to tell you to use the call button?”

Saeko could hear the young woman’s low whisper faintly through the door. The old man seemed oblivious to those around him, but the nurse was at least making an effort to be quiet.

Someone began to wheeze in another room, and a number of other patients began to cough, as if triggered by the first. It reminded Saeko of the dogs baying just before the earthquake. Once the first dog started, every dog in the entire neighborhood had chimed in, like flames spreading across a dry field, filling the sky with their ominous harmony.

It wasn’t the noises that prevented Saeko from sleeping. Each individual noise triggered various associations, sparking unwelcome thoughts. The images the sounds triggered weighed her down, dragging her towards the bottom of a dark abyss. She was in no state to sleep.

Saeko tried to think about something fun. It was a trick she often employed when she was having trouble sleeping. She thought about things she was looking forward to or planned imaginary trips to places she wanted to see. Of course, the ideal travel companion would be a handsome man. If she had to pick from the men she knew, a prime candidate was Hashiba. The chances of a woman meeting a man she wouldn’t mind sleeping with were extremely low. When Saeko had first met her ex-husband, she’d felt that way about him, but by the end of their marriage the mere touch of his hand sparked a wave of loathing in her. Perhaps there was no hope of ever meeting a man she would always want to touch. But right now, Saeko felt like the possibility might exist with Hashiba. The kindness he’d shown in this hospital room had spurred the positive emotions she felt toward him. But the fact that he was thirty-five, like Saeko, was a bad sign. The chances of him being single were slim.

Still, she was free to fantasize. Saeko imagined drawing close to Hashiba. It didn’t excite her so much as inspire a slow, melting feeling. She imagined not the act of love, but the resonance of it, his warmth enveloping her. She relaxed her shoulders, then her back, then her arms and legs all the way to her fingers and toes, letting herself drift in the sweet fantasy.

How many hours had passed since she’d turned off her bedside lamp? Saeko wasn’t sure if she’d nodded off for five minutes or an hour. Both of her eyes were still closed, but her mind had popped back into wakefulness. Something had woken her up, but she didn’t know what it was.

Without opening her eyes, Saeko probed with her other senses to gauge her surroundings. The space was full with a strange presence. There was a wall behind Saeko’s head and the other three sides of the bed were curtained off. To her left, the curtain nearest the hallway was fluttering gently. She could feel the faint breeze caused by its movement against her cheek.

Someone had pushed through the curtain and come inside.

That someone was standing right next to Saeko’s bed, looking down at her. Saeko could sense it clearly even with her eyes shut. The image crystallized in her consciousness and bore down on her.

She tried to raise a hand but couldn’t move, tried to cry out but found her throat constricted. Even her eyelids were paralyzed, and she couldn’t open them. Perhaps this was what it felt like to fall into a black hole — she had lost all control of her body. It was the same intense sleep paralysis that she always suffered.

She could hear the intruder breathing in and out, not in one spot, but slowly crawling across the room, low to the floor. The presence gave off a familiar stench, and Saeko knew exactly whose smell it was. A sour smell, like rancid sweat.

Tsk! a tongue clucked. I waited for you!

The voice didn’t enter through her ears. Instead, its message penetrated directly into her mind. The voice’s owner was angry at her that she hadn’t come. She heard the muffled jingle of a bundle of keys at the level of her mattress.

By now, Saeko was almost sure she knew who was standing next to her bed.

She couldn’t move her arms or legs, open her eyes, or speak. She didn’t even know if this was reality or a nightmare. Her heart pounded wildly, revealing her body’s honest response.

As always, Saeko felt as if she were trapped in a globe of darkness. It’s my mind that’s trapped, not my body, she told herself fervently. If only she could move a finger or a toe ever so slightly, it might free her entire body from whatever was holding it captive. But try as she might, Saeko couldn’t do it. Her fingertips wouldn’t move even a hair.

Help! she screamed, but her voice found no outlet. The scream only resonated inside her body, making her feel all the more suffocated.

The area around her chest felt drafty; the covers must have gotten tangled up somehow. Yes — earlier the blanket had been pulled up over her shoulders, but now it was all bunched up like a snake’s skin at her navel.

Through the thin cotton of the hospital gown, Saeko felt someone’s fingertips grazing her skin. The touch was so light, it felt less like fingers and more like someone breathing on her from close up.

The sensation grazed her nipples and slid between her breasts, slipped through the opening in her hospital garment and across the outside of her left breast. Suddenly, Saeko felt a stabbing pain. The fingertip was no longer barely detectable. It bore down sharply and deliberately into a single spot, digging in with a fingernail.

Ouch!

It wasn’t pain, exactly. The strong sensation startled her more than anything else.

The voice responded immediately. “Keep this up, and you’ll be one of us soon enough.”

With that, the presence was suddenly gone, leaving behind only the dull ache in Saeko’s breast.

The tingling in her breast spread in one direction down her torso and into her lower body, while at the same time crawling up her shoulders and neck. It continued to diverge and spread until shades of the sensation enveloped her entire body and at last she found she could move again — first her fingers and toes, then her hands and feet.

When she could feel beyond a doubt that there was no longer anyone next to her, Saeko slowly opened both eyes. A single miniature bulb glowed over the curtain at the foot of her bed, and there was more light in the room than she had imagined. The curtain nearest the corridor — the one where she had sensed someone standing moments ago — seemed both still and in motion.

Saeko didn’t know what to think. Had an actual person really been next to her? Or had it just been a hallucination brought on by her sleep paralysis?

There was one way to tell. Saeko pressed the palm of her hand to her breast. Trembling with fear, her fingers probed the surface of the sore spot in her left breast. She couldn’t tell by touch alone whether there was a fingernail mark on her breast. But there was no mistaking the spot. Even now, the ache lingered, and she could feel the lump under the skin.

It was round and hard, and roughly a centimeter in diameter — the same lump she’d discovered ten days ago and stubbornly ignored, telling herself it was probably mastitis. Dismissing it as such and denying that it might be breast cancer had enabled her to maintain temporary peace of mind in the midst of her busy work schedule.

And now someone’s finger had pinpointed and pressed down on the spot with complete conviction. Was it just a coincidence? Or had Saeko’s repressed fears reared their heads and given birth to a hallucination by way of warning?

The shiver that ran down Saeko’s spine shook the entire mattress, making the springs creak audibly. She couldn’t control her shaking, which built up into convulsive waves. She crossed her hands across her chest, pressing down to contain the scream that threatened to rise from her throat.

As another convulsion seized her, the old man across the hallway moaned once more. Oogh …

A toilet flushed, and the sound of the tank refilling seemed to go on forever, punctuated by the sound of a light bulb burning out in the hallway.

Saeko twisted her body, reaching for the call button. But what exactly would she say to the nurse when she came?

I was having a sleep paralysis attack, and there was a ghost next to my bed …

Or perhaps she should ask the nurse point blank if there was a man called Seiji Fujimura staying in this hospital. It was the only rational explanation. Before they had started shooting that day at the Fujimuras’ house, Seiji had hovered so close to Saeko he was practically touching her. As soon as they’d started filming, he had made himself scarce, and Saeko hadn’t seen him since. But he could still have been lurking nearby when the earthquake struck, and it was entirely possible that he too had been injured and brought to the same hospital. What if he’d learned that Saeko was staying here and had snuck into her room in the middle of the night? But even if he had, that didn’t explain how he could have known exactly where to find the lump in her breast.

The possibility that he had zeroed in on a fear Saeko had locked away inside chilled her more than anything.

Before she pressed the call button, Saeko checked the clock: 11:55 p.m. Morning was still a long ways away; the night was only just beginning. What if he came back again in the night? She was far too frightened to sleep.

She needed to talk to another human being. Anyone. She needed that reassurance. Without another moment’s hesitation, Saeko pressed the call button.

Please, come!

She understood only too well how the sobbing old man across the hallway must feel.