Chapter 14

—When he came to, Naoya was running through the dark mountains, being led by the hand. Or maybe it was a forest, and not a mountain? Why he was there, he hadn’t the faintest idea. All he could make out were pitch-black rows of trees looming in the night. The underbrush rustled with every stride he took. Almost tripping over protruding tree roots time and again, he kept running. Naoya didn’t know why he was in such a place; he only knew why he had to keep moving. They were running away—the two of them. He could sense the presence of their pursuers. If they caught him, there would be no getting away. Of that, he was keenly aware. Despite his maddening fear and anxiety, there was reassurance in the hand firmly gripping his. His gaze followed the flow of that hand up its arm to a familiar back—Takatsuki’s. Pulling Naoya along, he ran at an incredible speed, as if the darkness was no obstacle. Ah, Naoya thought. As long as I’m with Takatsuki, I’ll be fine. But then, suddenly, he felt uneasy. —Was this really Takatsuki? This figure who had grabbed his hand and started running single-mindedly? “Professor,” Naoya called out to the figure’s back. The person pulling on his hand didn’t answer—didn’t so much as look back. The anxiety swirled in Naoya’s chest. Was this person actually Takatsuki? After all… …they were running so hard; why was the hand holding his so cold? “—Fukamachi, wake up. Let’s have lunch.” Startled awake by that voice, Naoya opened his eyes. At first, unsure of the time or where he was, he instinctively jerked forward only to feel something digging into his chest at a diagonal—a seat belt. He was in a car. In the back seat. Raising his head, he found Takatsuki looking back at him from the passenger seat. He wasn’t wearing one of his usual suits, but rather a deep-blue short-sleeved shirt. “Are you okay? You were sound asleep.” “We’re at a service area. Let’s eat.” Looming over the driver’s seat, Kenji Sasakura turned to look at Naoya, too. His shirt was black; his casual clothes were always black. And his face was always scary. Seeing the two of them, Naoya finally remembered where he was. He was in Sasakura’s car. It was the fourteenth of August. The first day of their trip to Nagano. Sasakura had come to pick him up in the car as usual, this time at nine in the morning. But apparently, right after settling into his seat, Naoya had totally passed out. Probably because a strange nervousness had kept him from sleeping well the night before. His head still a little fuzzy, Naoya unbuckled his seat belt sluggishly and got out of the car. He plodded after Takatsuki and Sasakura, letting out a small yawn. He felt as though he’d had a very odd dream, but it was already slipping out of his mind. He had been…running somewhere? With someone? Maybe. They entered the service station—there were various restaurants and gift shops inside—to see that it was quite crowded, perhaps because of the Obon festival. Somehow locating an empty table in the food court, the three of them went to get their food in turns. Naoya had ramen, Takatsuki got a rice bowl with pork and shredded vegetables, and Sasakura had a rice bowl loaded up with a big serving of sauce-covered cutlets. “All things considered,” Takatsuki said, transferring some barley-miso paste from a small dish onto his pork, “I’m glad you could come with us, KenKen. Since there was a chance you wouldn’t be able to.” “Oh? There was?” Naoya asked, looking at Sasakura. The other man bit into his cutlet and nodded. “I wrapped up a case the day before yesterday, so it ended up working out.” Whenever they went on trips before, Sasakura had come along as the driver, but he was still a detective, after all. He had the right to take time off, but it wasn’t so easy when he had a case. And at least with this trip, they couldn’t adjust the timing to meet his schedule. “…Wait, so if Mr. Sasakura hadn’t been able to come, what would have happened with this trip? Would we have maybe taken the train and the bus?” “I think I would have rented a car if he hadn’t made it,” Takatsuki said. Naoya was taken aback. “Huh? But, Professor, you don’t usually drive, right?” “When KenKen and I go to places together, we sometimes take turns driving. I don’t own a car, but I am a pretty good driver, you know… I just can’t read maps.” “Still, I mean… I’m really glad you’re here, Mr. Sasakura.” As he grabbed a piece of roast pork from his ramen, Naoya couldn’t help but cast a look of gratitude toward Sasakura. Takatsuki’s driving skills aside, if he was to faint before they made it to their destination, Naoya wouldn’t have been able to drive in his place because he didn’t have his license. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration how difficult it would be for him to move Takatsuki’s unconscious body on his own. “…But, Mr. Sasakura, are you going to be okay?” “What do you mean?” “Well, it’s just…we’re investigating a festival for dead people this time.” Sasakura glared at Naoya. Despite his tough-guy appearance, Sasakura didn’t fare well with ghosts or scary stories. Naoya wasn’t sure the other man would want to come once he heard what the subject of their investigation was. Finishing off one of his cutlets, Sasakura muttered, “I’d be way more afraid of letting you guys go on your own, so I planned on coming from the start.” “That’s… Thank you.” Unsure what else to say, all Naoya could do was thank him. Takatsuki, who had been watching their exchange with a smile, spoke up again. “Now, let’s go over some of the details of this village we’re headed to while we eat. People call it a village, but it’s actually been incorporated into the city of Nagano, I believe?” “Oh, yes. But the people who lived there still called it ‘the village’ back in the day. As I recall, it used to be called Koyama.” “So you went to the aforementioned festival in the former village of Koyama when you were ten years old. That was ten years ago, but you’ve been to your grandmother’s house several times since then, yes? When was the last time?” “Um… My grandmother died in the fall when I was fourteen, so it’s been six years now. I went to the funeral, but my parents said I didn’t need to go to the memorial services afterward because I had school.” “Right. And Mr. Tooyama went three years ago. By that point, he said, the village had become quite depopulated. But what about when you were last there, Fukamachi?” “It was never a very big village to begin with. Come to think of it, I feel like there’d been a steady increase in vacant houses.” As he spoke, Naoya sifted through his memory. When he thought of that village, the first things that came to mind were the green mountains. Even though he must have gone there in both summer and winter, the village in his memory was usually in the height of summer for some reason. Summer vacation had been much longer than winter vacation, so he had gotten to spend more time there in the warmer seasons, which could have had something to do with it. Far more so than memories of having fun in the snow or skiing, images of catching bugs and playing in the river were vivid in his mind. Pure-white cumulonimbus clouds floating in the blue sky, a chorus of cicadas singing. Sunflowers growing tall by the roadside. The fields and rice paddies were more plentiful than the houses, and Naoya and his cousins often hung out in the forests and streams. It had probably been in the last couple years of visiting that he and his cousins had talked about how the festival was growing more and more desolate each year. The wooden stage was still put up in the big open space in the festival grounds as always, and the Obon dance was still performed, but the crowds were gradually thinning, the number of stalls decreasing. Naoya could recall his cousin saying that the festival used to be more exciting but it had become boring. “The festival you usually went to with your cousins,” Takatsuki said. “Did it involve anything else besides the dance? Such as a kagura performance or sacred rituals?” “I don’t think so. At least, not that I ever saw… Though, it’s possible they did have things like that, and I just didn’t know about them.” Naoya still remembered it well. The Obon dance ended at eight o’clock in the evening. When the clock struck eight, the music that had been blaring from the speakers set up in the festival grounds abruptly stopped playing. Then, as if shooing them away, the adults would wave their hands at the kids and say, “Go home, children. Go directly, make no stops along the way, and go to bed early this night.” It was like those were the traditional words to say—every single adult repeated the same thing. The stalls also closed at that time, so the children just left without much resistance. Thinking back on it now, Naoya had the feeling the adults must have been doing something on their own after the kids went home. As he recalled, there had been something known as “festival duty.” And on the year his grandmother was selected for it, she didn’t come home after the festival even in the very late hours. Takatsuki’s eyes narrowed when Naoya relayed that fact. “That’s interesting. I’m curious about that line the adults used, too. ‘Go home, children. Go directly, make no stops along the way, and go to bed early this night,’ was it? Perhaps there was something that necessitated keeping the children away. Speaking of, both you and Mr. Tooyama wandered into the festival when you were kids.” Naoya had been ten years old. They hadn’t asked Tooyama how old he was in his case, but he had used the phrase when I was young to refer to it. Happily stuffing his face with miso-steeped pork, Takatsuki continued: “What I’m most interested in is when Mr. Tooyama went to the village three years ago. The villagers chased him away. I wonder if they shunned people who participated in the festival of the dead.” “Shunned… You mean because those people did something the village considered taboo?” “That’s a possibility. The issue could have simply been the matter of participation in that festival, though. Because of the impurity.” “Huh…?” Naoya’s eyes grew a little wide, and Takatsuki prefaced his next statement by saying it was in no way meant to hurt Naoya’s feelings. “But generally, ‘death’ was treated as ‘defilement.’ Maybe those who had returned after being surrounded by the dead were made to be outcasts in the village because they bore the impurity of death. Say, Fukamachi—did you ever have a similar experience in the village? I wonder if the villagers knew about your ears.” “I don’t think they found out. There weren’t that many people who lied a lot, and outside of my relatives, I really only spoke to the neighbors… Oh, but…” Suddenly, Naoya remembered. It was, if memory served, something that happened the day after he had participated in the festival. In the morning, when he told his parents and relatives that he had been to a festival in the dead of night, everyone asked what he was talking about or said such a thing couldn’t have happened. Even when he insisted he had gone, they laughed it off and said he had been dreaming. But afterward, Naoya’s grandmother called him into the corner of the kitchen and said, “You must not tell anyone what you just talked about.” Naoya asked why. Why couldn’t he talk about the festival? He had definitely been there. It wasn’t a lie. His grandmother didn’t give him a reason, however. She merely emphasized, with a scary expression on her face, “Listen to me. You mustn’t tell anyone.” Naoya had never seen his loving, perpetually smiling grandmother make such a face, and he was only able to nod dejectedly in response. There was one other time, too—though he couldn’t recall when it happened exactly. One of his cousins told a lie about something, and when another cousin derided him for it, the first cousin simply repeated the lie over and over, too far gone to recant. By that time, Naoya had already begun reflexively covering his ears at the sound of a distorted voice. On that occasion, too, he pressed his hands to his ears, trying to ignore his cousin’s lying. Suddenly, his hands were jerked away from his ears from behind. Startled, Naoya whipped around to see his grandmother there wearing the same scary expression as before. “You’ll be found out if you do that,” she said. Then, with Naoya watching her go, dumbstruck, his grandmother had walked off somewhere else. After that, he remembered, he’d always refrained from covering his ears at her house. “That means your grandmother knew about the festival and about your ears. She knew and tried to keep it concealed so no one else would find out.” Takatsuki’s brow was slightly furrowed as he spoke. “You know,” Sasakura chimed in. “Your mother grew up in that village, too, right? She never said anything?” “I don’t remember her ever talking about it. She definitely lived there until she went to Tokyo for college, but…when I told her I was hearing distortion in people’s voices, she just took me to a doctor.” “In other words, your mother either didn’t know, or she had heard the story but didn’t believe it… Hmm. I wish I could interview her.” Takatsuki smiled wryly. He had heard before about Naoya’s relationship with his family. He was probably aware that conducting such an interview would be difficult. Since Naoya had started living alone to attend school, he hadn’t been home other than at New Year’s. Even when he had no other choice but to contact his mother to confirm his grandmother’s address, he had ended up sending her a text instead of calling. Sasakura looked sourly up at the ceiling. “The more I hear about it, y’know, the fishier this village sounds…but it seems like it’s basically a ghost town by now, doesn’t it? What are you going to do? You might not be able to investigate anything even if you do go.” “Let’s leave heading to the village for tomorrow. Today, I thought we could try to find some information at the prefectural library. Lots of local materials aren’t in general circulation and, for the sake of their preservation, aren’t loaned out, so you have to visit a local library to see them. Also—we’re able to meet with your cousin tonight, yes?” “Oh, yes. I’ve already contacted him.” When Naoya had asked his mother for his grandmother’s address, her text response had included a cell phone number in addition to the address. She mentioned that one of his cousins worked in a Nagano municipal office, so he should give him a call. Naoya had said he was going to Nagano with his university professor, so perhaps his mother was fussing over him a little bit, since she’d taken the time to ask his aunt for his cousin’s number. When he called his cousin, Naoya asked if they could talk in a roundabout sort of way—“I’m going to be there for my university professor’s fieldwork, so I’d like to chat about Nagano”—and his cousin readily agreed. They’d decided to talk over dinner. “Of course, it is indeed true that even when we go to the library or to the village itself, we may not find out anything. But supposing that’s the case, isn’t it okay? It’s frustrating not to know, but even if we’re just going for a drive together, eating good food, seeing the mountains, and heading home, isn’t that a fun summer trip?” Takatsuki smiled. Naoya couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that’d be completely fine with that. The fear that had taken root in his heart was still there, not budging. They arrived in Nagano in the afternoon and temporarily parted ways with Sasakura in front of the prefectural library. “I don’t want you to have to go so far as doing research at the library, KenKen. Go do whatever you’d like for a while.” “Got it. I’ll come pick you up later,” Sasakura replied, nodding easily before driving off somewhere by himself. Takatsuki looked at Naoya, saying, “You could have gone with him, too, Fukamachi. I could handle the research myself.” “I mean, that would be a bit much…but I wonder where Mr. Sasakura is going?” “Who knows? But I’m sure he can find something enjoyable to do by himself, whether it’s sightseeing or visiting a hot spring. KenKen’s regular job is hard, so I hope he takes some time for a nice soak somewhere or something like that… Plus, if he came to the library with us, he’d probably fall asleep.” Takatsuki knew Sasakura quite well, which was to be expected since they were childhood friends. The library was a large, three-story brick building. The local-materials section was in the general reading room on the second floor. Takatsuki had done some searching in advance on the library’s website, so when he approached the counter, he began asking the employees to retrieve the desired materials from the stacks and about the library’s microfilm-viewing process. At times like these, Takatsuki really came off as a respectable university professor, despite usually being a big, hopeless golden retriever of a man. Naoya realized then what Takatsuki meant when he said he could handle the research alone. Whether it was microfilm or books, Takatsuki was a fast reader. He could probably get a decent idea of what things were about from their tables of contents, but even so, the speed at which he read a single page was extraordinary. A photographic memory was one thing, but Naoya wondered what was going on with this man’s brain. His information-processing rate was simply inhuman. Nevertheless, hoping to be of some help, Naoya reached for some of the documents as well. He rifled through whatever he got his hands on, looking for anything written about the village. But in the end, they couldn’t find a thing about it in any of the documents. Strange festivals weren’t uncommon in Nagano. Though they found various interesting accounts, they were stories about places other than the one Naoya knew, and he had no memory of similar things happening in the village in question. None of the documents they found provided any useful information. “…Well, I did think it was unlikely that we’d discover anything by looking at the materials,” Takatsuki said as they left the reading room, with closing time approaching. Sasakura had contacted them a short while before. As Takatsuki had said, he’d gone to a day spa. He was on his way to pick them up, so they decided to wait for him in the free space on the mezzanine floor. Purchasing drinks from a vending machine, Naoya and Takatsuki found an empty table to sit at. Unsurprisingly, Takatsuki looked worn-out. Even if he did have the processing speed of a machine, his body was still flesh and blood. Leaning heavily against the back of his chair, the professor rubbed at the inner corners of his eyes, gulped down his can of iced cocoa in one go, and heaved a big sigh. “Hmmm, I got a bit too wrapped up in the task. Aah, I can feel the sugars seeping into my brain… When you’re tired, sweets really are the best.” “…Shall I go get you another one?” “If you wouldn’t mind?” Takatsuki held out his coin purse. Declining it, Naoya bought a cocoa with money from his own wallet and handed it to the other man. Takatsuki was always treating him to things, so he wanted to return the favor on occasion. Accepting the chilled can, Takatsuki smiled happily. “Thank you very much. You must be tired, too, Fukamachi. You should get some sugar in you.” “I don’t use my brain as much as you do, Professor,” Naoya replied, cracking open the pull tab on his can of coffee. Its bitterness cleared his head better than sugar anyway. It was, however, a little frustrating to have done so much research only to have come up empty-handed. “I wonder if the reason there was nothing in the documents is that the village was too obscure after all, so no one paid any attention to it. It is a pretty small town.” “Actually, documents like that are made by people who know a place has certain customs and either want others to know about them or leave records of them for history.” Polishing off his second can of cocoa as quickly as the first, Takatsuki continued: “Even if regional historians or folklorists wander all over the countryside to collect information, if the people living in the places they visit turn them away, saying there’s nothing of note in their village, then those areas become blank spaces records-wise. Within the village, they may have something like a manual or notes on festival procedures that has been passed down for generations. But unless the villagers are okay with others knowing about it, it’ll never end up in a library… Collecting folklore-related materials can be quite difficult. It’s common for researchers to visit the same villages for years, building trust, so they can finally have a rapport with the residents.” “Um…so you mean the villagers keep what they do in their own village a secret from others?” “Yep. You know, like when we went to Yamanashi, and that village had a cave where they worshipped a demon? It’s just like that. The demon legend there was kept from leaving that village for a long time. Speaking of it outside the village was forbidden, and it remained a secret—along with the truth being concealed within the legend itself.” The truth that the demon legend was hiding was a history of murdering people. As time passed and those days were completely forgotten, it became nothing more than an old folktale, and it was only then that the story was spread to outsiders. It was highly likely that the same thing was happening in the village where Naoya’s grandmother had lived. It wouldn’t be surprising if something had been existing there for some time and was known only to the people who lived there—something that wasn’t to be spoken of outside the village. And that something, Naoya suspected, existed not just as an old story but also lived on among the villagers. Given the story Tooyama had told them of his visit three years prior, it seemed safe to assume as much. “Well, it’s only natural that they wouldn’t want outsiders knowing…if that village really does usher in the dead and hold a festival for them.” Takatsuki clutched his empty can of cocoa, his words coming out in a murmur. “That leaves us with no choice but to go see it for ourselves.” What exactly was the secret that the villagers didn’t want to talk about? If they wanted to know the truth about that midnight festival, returning to the village was the only way forward. After reuniting with Sasakura and checking into a hotel in front of the station, they headed to the izakaya where they planned to meet Naoya’s cousin. Perhaps because Naoya had mentioned the name of their hotel, the place his cousin chose was within walking distance of where they were staying, causing Sasakura to mutter with a serious expression about what a “considerate, excellent cousin” Naoya had. Apparently, he appreciated the forethought, since he wouldn’t have been able to drink alcohol if he had to drive. They walked from the hotel to the izakaya to find Naoya’s cousin waiting outside for them. He was wearing a dress shirt and slacks, as he had probably come straight over after finishing work. When he saw them, he started waving excitedly. “Nao! Over here!” “Kazu, it’s been a while.” Naoya’s cousin, Kazu—Kazuya Nishikawa—was three years older than Naoya. His maternal aunt had two sons, and Kazuya was the younger one. The elder was Masahiko, whom Naoya called “Masa.” It had been since their grandmother’s funeral six years prior that Naoya had seen either of them. He was secretly worried that his cousin would have changed so much in that time that he wouldn’t recognize him, but he was relieved to see that Kazuya’s tanned face and mischievous grin didn’t look all that different than before. Naoya had missed seeing the way his canines poked out when he smiled. The only major difference was the height of their eyelines, because Naoya had grown taller. Kazu had been taller before, but now they were the same height, which felt quite strange. “Nao, you’ve gotten so big. You’re in your second year of college already. I’m so happy to see how well you’re growing up.” “Don’t talk like you’re my dad. Kazu—this is Professor Takatsuki, an associate professor at my school. And next to him is his friend, Mr. Sasakura.” “Good evening, I’m Takatsuki from Seiwa University. Thank you so much for today.” Sasakura bowed slightly, while Takatsuki greeted Kazuya with a smile. Kazuya looked back and forth between Takatsuki—who had a gentle, soft air about him—and Sasakura—who, at first glance, absolutely came off as a guy who worked for the mob—and smiled vaguely. He probably couldn’t quite decide what to make of such a pair… Naoya understood the feeling. Once inside, they were shown to a table for four. Naoya sat next to Kazuya, while Takatsuki and Sasakura sat opposite them. With Kazuya and Naoya beside each other, Takatsuki started looking between their faces. “You do look a bit like Fukamachi. Because you’re cousins, I suppose.” Next to him, Sasakura nodded. “The vibes are totally different, though. He’s like a cheerful Fukamachi who doesn’t wear glasses.” Kazuya laughed. “Yeah, back in the day, we sometimes got mistaken for brothers. Is Nao still really quiet even as a college student? He was pretty lively when we were real little, but sometime along the way, he just got way more subdued. Maybe it’s ’cause he started wearing glasses.” Putting an arm around him, Kazuya slapped Naoya firmly on the shoulder. Worried that Kazuya might expose his whole childhood if they continued on like this, Naoya decided to change the topic. “Hey, Kazu, you work at city hall now, right? Do you know anything about local materials or festivals in the city? Professor Takatsuki specializes in folklore and is researching that sort of thing. If you do know anything, it would be a huge help if we could ask you about it.” “Festivals? I mean, Nagano definitely has all sorts of festivals…but I’m in the sports department, so I don’t know much about that stuff.” “…I see.” Thinking they were perhaps barking up the wrong tree, Naoya looked at Takatsuki to find him and Sasakura peering at the izakaya menu with great interest. Eyes alight, they talked about wanting to eat basashi and sakura-nabe, almost making Naoya want to hold his head in his hands. He was only just remembering that the two of them, first and foremost, wanted to have a good time with whatever they did. “You can drink, right, Nao? This place has great local sake. Do you and your friend like alcohol, Professor? You didn’t drive here, right? Then let’s drink!” Kazuya, too, was someone who loved to party. Naoya remembered him being the most energetic and noisiest of his relatives when they were little. They continued to chat cheerily for a while after that, drinking and eating as they went. Naoya was a bit of a lightweight, but the other three men drank quite a lot, in his opinion. Despite that, neither Takatsuki nor Sasakura seemed all that different when they had alcohol. Naoya had still never once seen either of them in a state he would have described as drunk. In comparison, Kazuya was as intoxicated as one would expect of the average person. On top of that, it made him pretty crass. “For real, though! Nao was such a crybaby when we were kids! If me or my older brother left him out of something even a little bit, he’d practically burst into tears. In the middle of a game of hide-and-seek, he’d get worried we wouldn’t find him and just start bawlin’ his eyes out. He would cry if he wet the bed.” “Hold on, Kazu! Why are you even talking about that?!” “I can’t believe my little NaoNao, who was sooooo cute, is old enough to drink! The same little guy who laid there weeping in his futon when he got a fever and couldn’t go to the festival!” Kazuya clung to the sake bottle throughout his drunken, red-faced ramblings. Smiling widely, Takatsuki brought his glass to his mouth. “Wow, so Fukamachi had that sort of phase. I wish I could have seen it.” “You don’t have to join in on the conversation, Professor!” “But I mean, Fukamachi still cries a lot now.” “Excuse me, Mr. Sasakura?! Name one time I cried!” “Do you have any photos of Fukamachi when he was little? I’d love to see them.” “Ahh, I’d hafta go get those from home. Should I do that? Go get the photo album?” “Don’t seriously offer to go, Kazu! And, Professor, think about what you’re asking for!” Kazuya made to stand up from his seat, and Naoya pulled him back down. How had things gotten so out of hand? Having already switched to drinking oolong tea, Naoya brought his glass to his mouth and, once again wanting to hold his head between his hands, wondered what in the world they were doing. This was just a normal night out drinking. Not to mention, he was the only one being made to suffer. It was incredibly frustrating. When he looked across the table, he saw both Takatsuki and Sasakura smirking at him. What was so fun about listening to stories about other people’s childhoods? Naoya glared back at them reflexively, and the two of them burst into laughter at almost the exact same time. They seemed to be having a better time watching Naoya’s reactions than listening to Kazuya’s stories. Increasingly annoyed, Naoya crunched down on the ice in his tea. Apparently satisfied after a good laugh, Takatsuki finally started questioning Kazuya. “—That reminds me. There was a festival in the village where your grandmother lived, right? What kind of festival was it?” “What kind? Just a regular Obon festival. There were stalls and red lanterns that everyone danced under. I really looked forward to it when I was a kid.” “The festival was put on by a Shinto shrine, I believe? Before the dancing, were there any sorts of rituals? Like prayer readings?” “Ahh, there may have been, but they were probably done at the shrine on top of the mountain. So I dunno. We weren’t allowed to go up the mountain on festival days. And anyway, there were so many stairs to climb up, I wouldn’t have wanted to go.” “So you never went up the mountain, not even outside of festival days?” “No, I did a few times. There’s an old shrine up there, at the mountaintop. I don’t remember what kind of shrine it was, though. Just that there was some kind of big rock.” “…A rock?” Takatsuki stroked his chin lightly at Kazuya’s words, as if in thought. “There was?” Naoya asked his cousin. “A rock, I mean.” “Yep,” Kazuya answered, nodding emphatically. “Oh, that’s right, it was just my brother and me who went that time. We left you behind. You were still pretty little.” The shrine on top of the mountain was not somewhere Naoya and his cousins typically chose to play. That was partly because it was a bit far from their grandmother’s house, and partly because there were lots of other spots, more interesting ones, that didn’t require overcoming a long staircase to get to. Despite that, even Naoya had gone up the mountain to the shrine at least once. As he recalled, it had been a time when his cousins had left his grandmother’s house early for some reason or other, leaving him bored without anyone to play with. Naoya remembered climbing the mountain stairs, which he usually didn’t bother with, as if he was off on his very own private adventure. Just getting up the steps had exhausted him, however, so he simply rested a while at the shrine grounds before heading back down. He had remembered hearing that if he went around to the other side of the shrine and climbed downward for a while, he could reach another village on the back side of the mountain. At that age, though, he had been too afraid to go that far. Young Naoya had been content solely with having gotten to the summit. Kazuya looked upward as if recalling the good old days. “It had one of those ropes around it that shrines have, so I figured we probably weren’t supposed to touch it. The rope strung across the shrine itself was super raggedy, but the one around the rock seemed kinda new, like it was the more important one. But we were told not to go to the shrine too much, so that was the last time my brother or I went. Plus, when we got back and told Grandma, she got mad at us.” “Was she angry that you went into a sacred place?” Takatsuki asked, but Kazuya shook his head. “Nope. It was because of the snakes.” “Snakes?” “Yep. She said it was dangerous because there were tons of snakes on the mountain.” Kazuya’s head tottered a bit as he spoke; he was pretty drunk. Naoya was starting to worry. “You’ve had too much to drink, Kazu. Here, have some water.” “Ah-ha-ha-ha, you’re mature enough to take care of your elders! You’ve grown up so well, Nao!” He slapped Naoya’s shoulder again. You drunken idiot, Naoya thought, liberating a glass that was about to fall over from his cousin’s grip. “When you went up the mountain,” Takatsuki probed further, “did you actually see any snakes?” “Hmm, I’m not sure, I might not have. But I mean, it’s a village in the middle of the mountains, y’know? Snakes were always popping up. One got into Gran’s house once, too. Nao was so scared that he started wailing. That was a rough one. Even when we told him the snake had been brought outside, he just wouldn’t stop crying. He hid in the closet and wouldn’t come out.” “How about you stop talking for a bit, Kazu?!” This is bad, Naoya thought. At this rate, his embarrassing childhood stories would never stop being told. Wishing he could just leave, Naoya grabbed a piece of basashi with his chopsticks and popped it into his mouth. He was having an awful time, but at least there was good food. When Naoya went to the bathroom afterward, he ended up alone with Kazuya. Naoya had finished his business and was about to head back to their table when he ran into his cousin in the hallway. Kazuya was waving his hands, calling Naoya’s name and bumping into the wall, so Naoya hurried to grab his shoulders and hold him steady. Just as he had taken a few tottering steps, Kazuya came to a halt in front of the bathroom door. He turned to look at Naoya. “Gosh, those teachers sure can drink, huh? And they don’t seem drunk at all. College professors are amazing.” “Only one of them is a professor.” “What does that scary-looking guy do?” “…He’s a detective.” “Detective?! Oh, that’s great!” Kazuya burst out laughing; he might have thought it was a joke. Then, the smile still lingering on his red face, Kazuya started staring, oddly fixated, at Naoya. “Wh-what is it, Kazu?” “…Just, I’m glad you grew up safely, Nao.” “I told you to stop talking like you’re a parent.” “No, I mean…I was a little worried.” “Huh?” “Because, well—” For a moment, Kazuya closed his mouth. He stared vaguely into space, and Naoya got concerned again. “Kazu? Are you okay? Do you feel sick? Are you going to throw up?” “…Oh, sorry. It’s not that. It’s Grandma.” “Grandma?” “Yeah. Listen, Gran was hospitalized over here before she died, right? She wasn’t far from my house, so I visited her a few times.” Their grandmother had died of heart disease. There were no hospitals in the village, so she was admitted for a while at a large hospital in the city center. “One time, I was talking to her about when we were kids. About how we would come play at her place every summer. I said, ‘I hope Nao is doing well,’ and her face got all scary all of a sudden, and she said, ‘Naoya might not have grown up.’” “…What?” Naoya felt like an icy fist had grabbed hold of his heart. Kazuya shook his head unsteadily. “I was like, ‘What are you talking about? He’s fine. Nao’s good.’ But Gran still looked all mad. She said, ‘That boy was taken by the mountain god, so I don’t know.’” Taken? With an eerie chill running up and down his spine, Naoya tried to figure out what “taken” was supposed to mean in this context. Borrowed? Stolen? Captured? But none of them seemed to make sense. Realizing he wouldn’t be able to figure it out until he knew who was supposed to have been taken, Naoya asked, “Kazu, did Grandma say who ‘that boy’ was? The one who was taken?” “Who? You, of course.” “What…?” The answer came in such a matter-of-fact tone that Naoya was temporarily frozen in place by it. Kazuya forced a smile. “But look, you’re twenty years old already, aren’t you? It’s fine, I’m glad, you grew up just fine. I’m sure Gran would be happy, too!” He slapped Naoya on the back and finally disappeared into the bathroom. —Taken by the mountain god. Those words resounded ominously in Naoya’s head, sending a chill through him when he should have felt flushed from drinking. Spreading out both of his hands, Naoya stared down at them a while. His gaze continued past his hands and down to the rest of his body in turn. His grandmother was wrong. Nothing had been taken. Nothing was stolen. Everything was accounted for. He pressed his outstretched palms to his face. It was fine. He was here. Lowering his hands, running them over his cheeks along the way, Naoya remembered with a start. That summer night when he was ten, the one who had brought him a mask when he hadn’t been able to attend the festival himself? That was Kazuya. Back then, if he hadn’t had that mask, what would have happened when he stepped foot inside that festival? The thought was too terrifying to entertain. The next day, with Sasakura in the driver’s seat, their group of three headed for the village once known as Koyama. Naoya got a message from Kazuya over LINE first thing in the morning. He had been drunk enough the night before that Naoya had worried about him getting home by himself, but he had completely returned to his senses come morning. Having forgotten the evening’s events, however, Kazuya seemed afraid that he had done something rude in front of a university professor. Naoya thanked him for the night out and sent him a sticker warning him not to overdo it with the alcohol. In the car on the way to the village, Takatsuki spoke up. “—About the mountain god and such that Kazuya talked about last night.” Once they’d returned to their hotel the previous night, Naoya had told the others about what Kazuya had said regarding being “taken by the mountain god.” At the time, Takatsuki, a thoughtful look in his eyes, had merely said, “What an interesting choice of words.” Then he had smiled and said, “It’s late already. Let’s talk about that after we get some sleep.” Unfortunately for Naoya, it had weighed so heavily on his mind that he hadn’t slept much at all. “It has a very homegrown sort of feel to it, doesn’t it? That phrasing—the mountain god. And apparently, the shrine in question also had an iwakura, which makes me think whatever is being passed down in that village is what we would call ancient Shinto–style kami worship.” “By an iwakura, you mean the big rock Kazu was talking about?” “Yes. Kami worship is essentially the worshipping of nature, where they revere and deify things like big mountains, big trees, and the like. You know the famous Mount Miwa in Nara, yes? The mountain itself is the target of worship, the iwakura, and the rock where the kami resides… But it seems a bit strange to me.” “What does?” “Those sorts of sacred mountains are usually quite big. But from what you and Kazuya said, I get the feeling the mountain in question isn’t particularly large. After all, it had stairs going the whole way up, right? Not a climbing trail? About how many steps were there? What were they made of—stone? Or was it one of those that’s crafted from big piles of logs and rock? Did it have any loops or turns on the way up?” “Huh? Umm, I don’t really remember how many steps it was, but I would guess around two hundred… It was a regular stone staircase, and it didn’t turn at all. It just went in one straight shot up to the summit, and there was a Torii gate at the very top. It was definitely smaller than the mountains surrounding the village. I guess you could say it was more like a hill, but… When I was a kid, I heard that the village used to be called ‘Koyama,’ and I remember thinking, Oh, I get it. Because there’s a small mountain here.” “That’s true, the origin of the village’s name might have come from that mountain. And about that ‘taken by the mountain god’ thing—your grandmother’s ‘might not have grown up’ comment makes me think that this mountain god takes children. There’s also the possibility that they performed Shinto rituals at the festival with the children kept away.” At that point, Takatsuki turned around in the passenger seat to look at Naoya. “So I don’t think you have to worry now, Fukamachi.” “Huh?” “Because you’re already twenty. It’s unclear what the mountain god’s definition of a child is, but by modern standards, you’re an adult.” “Oh…right. That’s true…” Certainly, someone who was old enough to be considered an adult by society wouldn’t be a target for the mountain god. Naoya let out a sigh of relief. He somehow felt really reassured upon hearing Takatsuki say those words. Ever since Kazuya had told him the story about their grandmother, Naoya’s fear of returning to the village had been rearing its head again, but that also felt like it had subsided. “That being said, you can’t be too careful. If anything happens, Fukamachi, I’ll make sure to keep you safe, but don’t do anything careless. Also, from what Mr. Tooyama said, it’s better if we don’t let the villagers find out about your ears, so don’t cover them even if someone tells a lie.” Naoya hurried to steel himself after Takatsuki’s gentle warning. Before long, they were coming up on their destination. The ridges of the surrounding mountains were giving Naoya déjà vu. It was a sight he had seen many times before—the blue sky of summer vacation, the cumulonimbus clouds that seemed to swell up from the other side of the mountains. The curved road winding its way between the peaks that eventually led to a single village. Countless fields and terraced rice paddies carved out of the gentle slopes. The intermittent houses popping up as they continued farther down the road. Despite being incorporated into the city, this place was still a village. The view was so different from that of the city center they had been in not long ago. There were no tall buildings. The greenery was more abundant. The fields and rice paddies outnumbered the homes, and there was almost no traffic. But the sense of déjà vu and nostalgia Naoya was feeling didn’t last long. Gradually, like a game of spot the difference, he began to notice where the scenery in his memories varied from what was in front of his eyes. It felt like the amount of foliage had increased by about 50 percent. Just as Tooyama had said, the village seemed to have become quite depopulated. Some of the places where Naoya expected to see houses had been turned into fields, which wasn’t so bad, but there was also a plethora of homes that had been completely abandoned. He caught glimpses of such places—their collapsed roofs and decaying walls—through lawns and gardens so overgrown that they were practically forests, and he thought they made quite the lonely sight. They decided to start by going to the house where Naoya’s grandmother had resided. No one lived there anymore, but it was the starting point for Naoya’s memories. Relying on no more than somewhat vague recollections, Naoya directed Sasakura into the village. The car slowed its speed, but even when they were basically at the village center, there was hardly anyone to be seen. Naoya marveled at how the people here could take care of so many fields and paddies in such circumstances. The thick patch of sunflowers growing just where he remembered them might have been descended from the seeds he had once scattered with Kazu and Masa. Glancing sideways at the stream that ran along the road, Naoya told Sasakura to keep going straight for a while. In the past, he would come here in a car driven by his father or mother. Naoya would ride in the back seat with their pet golden retriever, and the two of them would watch the scenery go by the window with their face and muzzle pressed to the glass. Once they came to the second bridge over the stream, Naoya’s grandparents’ house would be just around the corner. Turning right, there would be a pear orchard. And beyond that would be the house itself, where his grandfather and grandmother would sit on the long porch in their work clothes, waving in his direction. The car approached the second bridge and made a right turn. The pear orchard was there, just as Naoya remembered it. But— “—Stop here, please.” Sasakura brought the car to a stop. As Naoya got out, a chorus of cicada song enveloped him, twice as loud as in the city, just as he remembered it. The strong smell of grass wafted up from the weeds that grew unchecked along the road. That, too, was just as he remembered. Beyond the pear orchard, however, the old familiar house was gone. There was more orchard in its place. There wasn’t even any indication that a house had ever been there. Then a voice spoke. “Who are you? What are you doing over there?” Naoya saw someone approaching him slowly from inside the orchard. It was an old man in a straw hat and work clothes, with a towel hung around his neck. Naoya recognized his face. He lived nearby. The man’s name, he was pretty sure, was— “…Mr. Nakamura?” “Who are you?” the old man repeated, his tone suspicious this time. Naoya pointed at his own face. “Um, the woman who used to live here, Midori Tahara? I’m her grandson, Naoya! I used to come visit here a lot when I was young—” “—Ahh. Nao, eh?” Seeming to remember him somehow, the old man smiled. Since he lived nearby, Mr. Nakamura had doted on Naoya often. His grandmother had asked him to help the old man out in the orchard more than once. Every time Naoya and his family were preparing to head back home, Mr. Nakamura brought them a plastic bag of large pears, saying it was a souvenir. Naoya remembered the man being older than his grandmother, but it appeared he was still working the fields. He looked thinner and more wrinkled than in Naoya’s memories, but he seemed healthy nonetheless. “Well, you’re all grown-up. Are you a college student now?” “Yes, I’m a second-year student. Um, Grandma’s house…?” “It was put up for sale after Midori passed, and I bought it. That was the deal we made. Her two daughters always said they had no intention of taking over the place, so.” “I see…” Thinking it was probably preferable to see no trace of the house rather than to see it in shambles, Naoya turned his gaze once more to where the home had stood. It was already impossible to tell what had been garden and what had been building. Just as the lonesomeness began creeping in, Mr. Nakamura spoke again. “So why are you here? No one lives here anymore.” “Oh, that’s—” “Excuse me, hello there.” At that moment, Takatsuki suddenly popped out from behind Naoya. Sasakura was still in the car, looking on. “My name is Takatsuki. I’m an associate professor at the university Fukamachi attends. He’s showing me around here for my fieldwork in folklore.” “‘Field work’? A university professor, you say?” “Yes. I heard they hold an Obon dance every year in this village during the Obon season. Are there any Shinto rituals or kagura that happen along with the dance? I would be so grateful to watch them if there are—” “—We don’t do that anymore. The Obon dance,” Mr. Nakamura said, cutting Takatsuki off. There was some distortion mixed subtly in with his voice. Naoya clenched his fists in response to his hands reflexively trying to move to cover his ears and looked at the old man. “As you can see, the village is in such a state now. The young ones keep leaving for the town, abandoning the fields and paddies. All that’s left are us old folk who are just sitting around waiting for our time to come. Even if we did hold a dance, the setup is such hard work, and there aren’t many people, so it would hardly be a festival. That’s why we all got together some years back and decided to call it quits.” “Is that so? That’s a shame… Then what about the rituals concerning the ‘mountain god’?” Takatsuki asked with a smile. The old man’s expression shifted slightly. “Mountain god? Where’d you hear that from?” “Fukamachi’s cousin. He said he heard about it from their grandmother when he visited her in the hospital.” Mr. Nakamura looked grim. Smile still in place, Takatsuki went on. “He said that apparently, there’s a mountain god in this village. A mountain god that takes children, it would seem. I wonder, does take mean kidnap in this context?” “…Who knows? I don’t.” The old man’s voice warped violently. Trying desperately to keep his composure, Naoya repressed the chill that ran down his spine. It wouldn’t be enough to simply resist covering his ears. Even a look of discomfort was likely to be noticed. In as normal a voice as he could muster, Naoya asked, “Mr. Nakamura, what about the mountain shrine? What was it that they worshipped to there?” “The goddess of fields and paddies and such. Oogetsuhime, I think?” “And that’s not the mountain god?” “No, it’s not. The mountain god—that’s just an old legend, Nao.” “But I’ve never heard it,” Naoya said, feeling like he was managing a smile that could pass for natural, “and I used to come to this village every year as a kid.” Mr. Nakamura looked at Naoya as though he was at a loss. Taking off his straw hat, he scratched at the short white hair on his head. “It’s a scary story, so I decided not to tell it to children. I’m sure Midori did the same, but…maybe she forgot herself when she got sick, so she ended up talking about it.” He grumbled about being put on the spot, though he knew it was no use complaining about a dead person. Naoya and Takatsuki glanced at each other, and the professor nodded slightly. Mr. Nakamura’s attitude toward the two of them was like night and day. He seemed more likely to talk to Naoya, whom he had known since Naoya was little. “I’m not a kid anymore, Mr. Nakamura. It’s fine. So…is the mountain god in the mountain?” “…Yeah.” The old man nodded and stared off into the distance. As if pulled along in his wake, Naoya and Takatsuki looked in that direction, too. Beyond the rows of fields, they could see a small mountain covered densely by trees. That was the one. Though clearly no match in height for the tall mountains surrounding the village, its rounded form was imposing, and it bore a strange presence, as though the other mountains behind it were merely its attendants. In a village where the slopes were all filled with rice paddies and farmland, the mountain, standing unaltered with not a single terrace carved into its sides, seemed somehow extraordinary. Digging around in the pocket of his work clothes, Mr. Nakamura pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. He lit one and took a puff. “In this village, they say that when people die, they go to that mountain. They say there’s an entrance to the underworld beneath the mountain, and that the mountain god ferries the dead to the underworld.” “An entrance to the underworld…?” “Like I said, it’s an old legend. See, I told you. Isn’t it scary?” Mr. Nakamura smiled, and Naoya smiled back. “Um, so then do the dead come back from that mountain during Obon?” The moment Naoya asked that question, the old man’s mouth snapped shut as if to swallow back up the smoke he had just exhaled. He looked at Naoya with a probing gaze. “I mean, because,” Naoya continued, flustered, “Obon is the time when the dead return from the spirit world, right? So—” “—Ha-ha-ha, what a strange thing to say, Nao.” Mr. Nakamura cut across Naoya’s words with a laugh. “What exactly are they teaching you at university? Don’t talk such nonsense… The dead don’t come back. ” The old man’s voice warped with a metallic creak, clawing at Naoya’s eardrums. In the same moment, Naoya’s shoulders instinctively flinched. Damn, he thought. Mr. Nakamura’s expression changed. His wrinkle-laden eyes opened wide. A hand, calloused from working the fields, gripped Naoya’s arm with great force. “Nao, you—” “Wh-what is it, Mr. Nakamura?” He moved closer, as if to stare into Naoya’s eyes, started to say something, then bit his lip. With a gulp like he was swallowing something extremely bitter, the old man opened his mouth again. “I ate bread this morning. Tomorrow, I’m going to town to go shopping. My grandson is coming to stay the day after tomorrow, so I have to prepare.” “…” Every one of his words, spoken in the same breath, was utterly banal, and yet they were all complete lies. Unable to help himself, Naoya had gone stiff, and Mr. Nakamura looked at him with despair blooming across his face. “You— Nao, why…?” “—Excuse us. We’ll be going now.” Takatsuki stepped between Naoya and the old man from the side. Casually removing the man’s grasping hand from Naoya’s arm, Takatsuki bowed slightly, then started walking, one hand planted on Naoya’s back to push him along. As he went, Takatsuki’s hand keeping him moving, Naoya looked back over his shoulder at Mr. Nakamura. The old man was still staring, dumbfounded, at him. Then, abruptly, he shouted, “…Go home quickly!” He flapped his hands at them as if to shoo them away. “Go home! Go directly, make no stops along the way! And go to bed early this night!” Those words were the exact same ones the adults always said to the children at the end of the Obon festival. Sasakura started driving as soon as Naoya and Takatsuki got back in the car. “It looked like you got into some kind of disagreement at the end. What happened?” “The old man figured out Fukamachi’s ears.” “…You’re kidding me.” “It was unavoidable. Are you okay? Fukamachi?” Takatsuki asked, turning around in the passenger seat. Naoya shook his head. “I’m fine. Um, so what do we do now?” “Good question. I think I’d like to climb the mountain first of all,” Takatsuki answered. Sasakura glanced at him. “Everything’s good?” he asked quietly. Takatsuki stroked lightly at his chin. “I don’t think that old man will be a problem. At the very least, I expect he won’t spread word around the village about Fukamachi so that they gang up to come find him.” “What’s your reasoning?” “He seemed worried for Fukamachi.” “…Did he? He shouted at him at the end there.” “That was just the thing adults in this village say to protect children. Like a sort of incantation. He probably still thinks of Fukamachi as a child who needs to be looked after. He must have been partial to you when you were young, right, Fukamachi?” Naoya looked back through the rear windshield. The car had already been traveling down the road for some time, and all he could see was the pear orchard in the distance. His first memory of Mr. Nakamura was probably from around the time he was in kindergarten. It was of the old man holding out in one hand a huge pear that seemed as big as Naoya’s face at the time. Naoya had hastened to take the pear with both hands, and Mr. Nakamura had stroked his head with his large palm. His bright smile had beamed down from a much higher height then. Mr. Nakamura had fawned over and taken great care of Naoya. Feeling as though he’d committed some terrible betrayal, Naoya dropped his gaze to his own lap. He wondered what his grandmother would say if she was still alive. Would she tell him to go apologize right away? Or…would she say the same thing to Naoya that Mr. Nakamura had said? —Go home. Go directly, make no stops along the way. And go to bed early this night. They drove through the village, this time toward the mountain. Occasionally, they spotted what appeared to be the figures of villagers in the fields and rice paddies. They all seemed to stare intently as they drove by, probably because they immediately recognized that the car belonged to a stranger. An elderly couple standing side by side in the very center of a cabbage field watched them pass with fixed gazes. Just once, an old man approached the car along the footpath between fields, but the moment he spotted Sasakura through the window, he turned on his heel and ran. …This guy is like a guard dog, Naoya thought, looking at the driver’s seat. Eventually, the car emerged into a wide-open clearing. It was the site where the festival had been held every year. In the past, the wooden stage would have been erected in the center of the clearing several days in advance of the festivities, but now it was empty. On the other side of the clearing was the mountain, into which a long stone staircase had been built between the dense tree growth. Either side of the mountain was engulfed in the forest that likely served as the boundary between this village and the one on the mountain’s other side. A dwelling for a mountain god sounded like a frightening place, but under the blue summer sky, the slope was a perfect snapshot of Naoya’s summer holidays. He even recalled using this mountain as the subject of a drawing assignment during elementary school. “Ah, so it’s not a very tall mountain after all,” Takatsuki said, his tone joyful. “It feels more like a small hill. But the shape is lovely! Like a beautifully coiled snake. It makes you understand how nicely formed mountains like this one become objects of worship. You really do have to see things like this with your own eyes, you know?” The car stopped in the corner of the clearing, and all three of them got out, Naoya with his usual bag in hand. Sasakura wasn’t carrying anything extra, but Takatsuki had a small backpack slung over his shoulder for a change. Taking some bug spray out of his bag, Takatsuki handed it to Naoya. “Here, Fukamachi, you should put some on.” “Oh, thank you.” Takatsuki’s backpack was filled with drinks and onigiri he’d bought for their lunch near the hotel, but it seemed he had crammed some other items in as well. It appeared incredibly bulky. Sasakura looked up the length of the stone steps. “We’re climbing these?” he asked, sounding bored. “Of course. Let’s have lunch at the top,” Takatsuki replied, hoisting up his bag. “I’m sure it’ll be nice to gaze down on the village from up there.” Naoya handed the insect repellent to Sasakura, who used it with a resigned expression on his face. The cicadas were cacophonous. They sang in a chorus so loud, it seemed to make the very mountain shake as the group of three began their ascent up the stairs. Far from being well maintained, the stone steps wobbled in some places. Some were cracked, and quite a few had turned green in parts where moss was growing over them. There were no landings and no handrails. Climbing such steps without rest was weary work. On top of that, there was a clear difference in stamina between Naoya and the two men ahead of him. Every time Naoya felt like he was too worn-out, Sasakura turned around to glare at him, leaving him with no choice but to pick up his feet and keep going. “Are you okay, Fukamachi? Don’t push yourself. If you were to slip and fall, you could get seriously injured.” said Takatsuki, his voice heavy with concern. “…Yes, I know…” “How are you the youngest one here and also the weakest? Didn’t you say you were going to start working out?” asked Sasakura. “…Please don’t compare me to the two of you…” Thinking he would get serious about his fitness once he was home again, Naoya wiped the sweat from his face. It wasn’t as warm as it was in Tokyo, but hot was still hot. The only reprieve was the shade cast by the branches and leaves spreading from the trees on both sides of the steps. Nonetheless, when they made it to the top of the stairs and stared back at the village, it did feel a little refreshing. It was a sight Naoya had seen once as a child. A view of the village from the mountain peak that overlooked it. It was nice to see things from above, even if they weren’t all that high up. A pleasant breeze was blowing, cooling down their sweat-drenched bodies. Fields and rice paddies stretched far and wide under the blue sky. In the distance was a mountain ridge. Far enough away to look like little scale models were the woods and fields where Naoya used to gambol about with his cousins. The Torii gate sat not at the exact top of the stairs but several steps away. Rather than eating on shrine grounds, they decided to plop down on the stone steps to have lunch. “We have to be careful while we eat, since there could be snakes around.” Takatsuki handed onigiri to Naoya and Sasakura as he spoke. The warning made Naoya feel like a snake would pop up from nearby at any moment, and he glanced around nervously. According to Kazuya, their grandmother had scolded him for going up the mountain because there were snakes everywhere. In the end, however, they saw not a single snake while eating. Naoya didn’t remember seeing any during the ascent, either. Perhaps, he thought, the line about being wary of snakes was another incantation meant to keep children away from the mountain. After lunch, they entered the shrine. The grounds had been roughly leveled, but there was no chouzu-ya for purification nor a signpost explaining the shrine’s history, so the place somewhat had an air of desertion. Farther in sat a single timeworn shrine that seemed like it was on the verge of being subsumed by the surrounding trees. A rusty bell hung from its gabled roof, and the red and white cloth dangling from the bell was so tattered it looked like it would snap if pulled. Beneath the bell sat a little offering box. There was a small board nailed to the side of the bell; its inked characters were just barely legible despite how much they had faded. “‘Oogetsuhime-no-kami’? Just like the old man said. She’s an agricultural deity.” Takatsuki put an offering in the box, tugged cautiously on the barely intact cloth, and put his hands together in prayer. He didn’t seem particularly interested in the shrine, however. After a brief look, he walked over to a corner of the grounds. There was a small path there—though it was overgrown and a little difficult to make out—that led farther into the mountaintop. They walked a short ways down that path, which really did seem like the kind of place where snakes would appear, and found the iwakura that Kazuya had mentioned surrounded by trees. The rock was flat, moss-covered, and about ten feet wide. It came up to around Naoya’s chest in height. All around the stone, stakes had been driven into the ground with a rope strung between them. As Kazuya had said, though the rope hanging around the shrine’s main building seemed about to rot away, this one looked newer. It must have been regularly maintained. The god that lived in the iwakura was probably more important to the people of the village than the one that lived in the shrine. “That’s odd. There are no other big rocks—just this one. I wonder why? From the looks of it, I would say it might be basalt?” Takatsuki studied the rock from outside the rope barrier. “That old man said there’s an entrance to the underworld beneath this mountain. That the mountain god takes the dead there… Exactly what sort of deity is this mountain god?” There was nothing in the immediate area to shed light on that question. There was only the iwakura and the rope surrounding it. That was likely enough for the people who believed in it. Mr. Nakamura hadn’t wanted to speak of the mountain god in detail. The people of the village had probably never talked about the matter to outsiders. That was why no documents about it existed. The village was steadily decreasing in population. Belief in the mountain god was bound to disappear along with it someday. Suddenly, something occurred to Naoya. If that happened, what would become of the mountain god? If there was no one left to worship a god, would it fall to ruin and become a demon, as a famous folklorist once said? But the iwakura had probably been here since long before people inhabited the area. If the god took up residence in the rock because there were people who worshipped it, then that deity might die off if all its believers disappeared. If the god had always been there, though—wouldn’t it just carry on existing there forever? Even if the rope strung around the rock rotted away one day and the mountain path was completely swallowed up by the grass, if the iwakura was the seat of the god, wouldn’t the god continue to reside in it? Wouldn’t it stay here in this place, covered overhead by a thicket of green trees, where the sunlight filtering in through the leaves fell in scattered pinpoints of white, forever? “—Ah!” At that moment, something on the rock moved. It was a snake. A brownish snake slithered slowly up from the other side of the iwakura. Its long body, striped with black, crept easily over the rock’s rugged surface. As it neared the center, just once, it lifted its head. The snake’s crimson eyes stared at them imposingly. Naoya, Takatsuki, and Sasakura all watched the creature intently, not speaking a word. The snake stayed like that for a little while as if assessing them, its thin tongue poking out of its mouth now and then. But eventually, it began its calm, slithering descent over the front surface of the rock. It made its way to the ground, wriggling its long body across the mountain path, and disappeared into the thicket on the other side. It was only when the snake was no longer visible that Naoya realized he had been holding his breath the whole time. He exhaled, and at the same moment, cicada song met his ears. It was as though all the surrounding sounds had just suddenly returned. Looking up at Sasakura standing beside him, he saw the other man wearing an expression similar to his own. Takatsuki was still staring closely at the rock. “Professor, that was…” “Yep, a striped snake.” Takatsuki turned to Naoya with a smile. Perhaps he hadn’t felt anything at all when he saw the snake, because he continued in his usual tone, “Maybe the warning about snakes on the mountain was genuine after all. Striped snakes aren’t venomous, so they’re no danger, but there could be other species—” Then, suddenly, they heard— Boom, boom, buh-boom. Startled, Naoya looked in the direction of the sound. It wasn’t coming from the village. It sounded like it was resonating from deep in the mountains. But why would that be? And in the daytime? “Ah,” Takatsuki said, “I wonder if there’s a festival on the back side of the mountain today, too?” “Huh…?” “If you go over the mountain, you can climb down to the village on the other side, right? They’re probably doing an Obon dance. It’s a little too early in the day for it, so they might still be practicing, maybe? Well then—since we’re here, why don’t we go see? I’d like to hear what people on that side have to say as well, and a festival sounds like a good time!” “But wait a minute, Professor—” Before anyone could stop him, Takatsuki set off toward the rear of the mountain in high spirits. Wondering what to do, Naoya looked up at Sasakura, but the other man simply plopped a hand on his head and said, “Just go with it.” Then he followed after the professor. Takatsuki, it seemed, had always been like this, and as his childhood friend, Sasakura was always there at his side. Emerging from the mountain path, they found themselves inside shrine grounds that looked like a mirror image of the ones from before. It was clear, however, from the state of this shrine, that it was regularly maintained. Apparently, the deity worshipped on this side was “Ootoshi-no-kami.” Another agricultural god, according to Takatsuki. On this side, too, was a long stone staircase leading down the mountain. And when they looked down, just like on the other side, they saw a clearing spread out below. In the center was a wooden stage covered in red and white cloth. The drumming from before had indeed been practice, evidently, as there was no one on the stage at the moment. They could see lots of people in the clearing, though. Rows of lanterns were being hung, and stalls were being set up. Everyone was preparing for the festival. The village on this side of the mountain seemed to have more people left in it than the other one. That much was clear just from looking down on it from above. They couldn’t tell exactly how the villages differed from their vantage point, but this village had an obviously greater number of houses, and the roads seemed wider, too. The three of them descended the steps, and those closest to the staircase cast them quizzical looks. “Who are you guys? Where’d you come from? Don’t tell me you’re from the other side of the mountain?” “Yes. My name is Takatsuki, and I teach folklore studies at Seiwa University in Tokyo. I came here to do fieldwork.” Takatsuki introduced himself with a smile. His friendly expression worked, and soon, even those who regarded them with suspicion at first had relaxed into good cheer. The way the professor had with people felt like magic at times. His appearance seemed to have a particularly tremendous effect on the women who were setting up for the festival. In no time, a crowd had begun to form around him. “My, my. I didn’t know the college professors in Tokyo looked so much like actors. I’d love to take a class from someone with a face like that.” “And to think you’re doing research in a little middle-of-nowhere town like this. Although, there is the festival today, so your timing is perfect. Make sure you check it out, Professor—the stalls will be opening up soon.” “What? You’re going to help us set up? A college professor? Oh my, how lovely! Really? Are you sure? That would be much appreciated, Professor; you’re so tall!” Standing a little ways off from the throng, Naoya and Sasakura exchanged glances. “…Um, it looks like we’re going to be helping with setup.” “Guess so. But that’s fine, isn’t it?” “Yeah, it’s fine…” “After all, he’s probably going to gather information from these people while he helps out,” Sasakura said, slowly looking around. “Since he couldn’t get much out of anyone in the other village.” He walked off toward the group that was working on hanging up lanterns. Despite being a little wary of his appearance for a moment, the people warmed up easily enough when Sasakura gestured to Takatsuki and said, “I’m with him.” Naoya decided to assist with setting up the festival’s headquarters tent along with Takatsuki. Perhaps because of his plain looks, the ladies didn’t talk to Naoya nearly as much, but they were still sociable with him, saying things like “You’re a student in Tokyo? And accompanying your professor? How impressive.” The atmosphere in this village was the polar opposite of the one on the other side of the mountain. Takatsuki seemed to be making good progress with gathering information while erecting the tent. “I see. So you don’t interact much with the village on the other side?” “Well, you see, the population on that side has decreased so much… This side is closer to major roads, so we haven’t lost as many residents. Besides, the only way to get there from here is over the mountain. The stairs are dangerous, and going up and down is tiring.” “That’s true. Plus, there are snakes!” Takatsuki added. The women looked a little puzzled at those words. “Yes, I suppose. We’re in the mountains, so we do get a lot of snakes.” “They might be startling to people from the city, but we’re well used to them here.” The women laughed. Apparently, in this village, they didn’t warn people against going up the mountain because of the snakes. The conversation continued, and the oldest woman in the bunch said, “You know, when I was a child, my parents would tell me, ‘There are monsters on the other side of the mountain, so don’t go there.’” “…Monsters?” Takatsuki was squatting on the ground, assembling the framework for the tent; his hands came to a sudden stop. The same woman nodded, chuckling. “Snakes aren’t particularly scary, but monsters are, you see. So all of us kids tried to stay away from that side.” “I see. Monsters are scary, indeed,” Takatsuki said, gently setting down the frame. Naoya, assembling the pieces across from him, suddenly got a bad feeling. Looking over quickly at the professor, he thought, Don’t tell me he’s going to… Takatsuki got to his feet. “So what type of monsters are we talking about, exactly?” “Huh? What type—?” The woman, who had been on the verge of trying to answer, blinked in surprise. Takatsuki had walked briskly up to her, not stopping until he was at least two or three steps over the normal distance one would leave between people, and was standing quite close. He took both of her hands in one smooth motion. Grabbing them tightly, he pulled them toward himself as if preparing to kiss the backs of her hands at any moment. “Are they humanoid, or perhaps something hairy? One-eyed creatures, or many-legged ones, or something very large, maybe?! And do they only appear on that side of the mountain, or do they cross over it to come here?! Excuse me, please tell me everything about them! Oh, I’m so glad I made the effort to come to this side of the mountain. I’m so lucky to have met someone like you!” “Um, wha…? Huh…? Um…?” Takatsuki spoke animatedly, his eyes round and sparkling, and the woman could do nothing in response but stand there, mouth agape. Naoya rushed frantically to the professor’s side. He had not expected the man’s golden-retriever mode to activate at a time like this. “Professor, please calm down. Let go of her hands right now!” “What? But I want to hear about the monsters, Fukamachi! Aren’t you interested? I am! I really want to know!” “That’s not the point, so please stop abandoning your common sense out of nowhere! It’s not okay to just grab a woman’s hands like that in Japan!” Right as it seemed Takatsuki was going to pull the woman into a hug, someone smacked him mercilessly on the back of the head. It was Sasakura. “Geez, you idiot. Learn your lesson for once.” “Ow, ow, ow, ow… I-I’m sorry, KenKen, Fukamachi…” Looking crestfallen, Takatsuki clutched at his head. Traveling with Sasakura meant there were two people in charge of being the professor’s common sense, so Naoya could rest easy. The older woman pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks. “Oh dear, this is the first time someone’s held my hands like that since my husband proposed to me… Umm, do you like monsters, Professor?” “Please do excuse me. I research ghost stories at the university, so I get a bit excited when I hear about monsters.” Takatsuki bowed to the woman, who laughed and waved his apology away. “Well then, let me tell you about them. On the other side of that mountain, there are monsters. Or maybe I should say—there are ghosts.” “Ghosts?” Takatsuki’s eyes narrowed slightly. Sasakura grimaced. The woman pointed toward the mountain with one hand. “You see how there are woods on both sides of the mountain? It’s not like we have to go over the top of it to get to the other side. We could go through the forest, but no path was ever made through it—because of the ghosts. They say there were folks who saw them long ago. They spotted people who should have been dead walking around in those woods. That’s why, when we were young, our parents often told us not to go into the forest or over the mountain.” “Oh, I’ve heard that, too. Things like ‘Dead people walk through that forest on summer nights, so be careful.’” “So have I. When I was a child.” The other women nodded with looks of recollection. Naoya met Takatsuki’s gaze. —Dead people walking through the woods. That had to mean the festival that happened in the middle of the night. Thinking back to their conversation with Mr. Nakamura, Naoya remembered his horribly distorted words: “The dead don’t come back.” In that village, though, it turned out that they actually did. “Hey! Get back to work already, or we’ll never be done!” A group of people setting up a different tent called out to them just then. The women all responded in the affirmative and returned to setting up. Naoya and the others followed suit. Ultimately, the three of them assisted with the festival arrangements, and when they were done, they were given three seats in the headquarters tent as guests of honor somehow. Apparently, word got around that they were a “distinguished group of scholars from Tokyo.” A steady stream of tea and sweets were brought to them, and people were constantly approaching Takatsuki and Sasakura to chat with them for a while. Occasionally, someone would even come over to Naoya, who was trying his utmost to sit unnoticed in the shadows of the other two men, posing very earnest questions to him like “My son wants to attend university in Tokyo. What is student life like there?” As expected, most of the people who talked to Takatsuki were women, but Sasakura was more popular with the men. His height and strength had come in very handy during festival setup. There was even an old man among his visitors who was quite eager to persuade Sasakura to take over his farm. A sturdy build was the most crucial thing for a farmer, evidently. Every time a new person approached Takatsuki, he asked them casually about the other village, but the answer he got was always the same. —There were ghosts on the other side of the mountain. —Therefore, we don’t go to that side, and we don’t go into the forest that separates the villages. No one had heard of the “mountain god.” To the people of this village, the god in the mountain was Ootoshi-no-kami, the one whose shrine they had seen earlier. Before long, it started getting dark, and all the red lanterns hung about the festival site were lit up. Music for the Obon dance began playing from speakers set up throughout the clearing. Two people in traditional clothing climbed onto the wooden stage and began energetically beating the large drums atop it. Boom, boom, buh-boom—the sound rang out, reverberating down through the pit of one’s stomach. Within moments, the clearing was filled with people in yukata. The sellers manning the stalls, which surrounded the venue like a siege wall, also started calling out in earnest as though peak time was upon them. The festival had begun. “Why don’t we check out the food stalls since we’re here?” When there was a break in their crowd of visitors, Takatsuki stood up from his seat. Then he started rummaging through his backpack as if suddenly remembering something. “Here,” he said, pulling something from the bag. “Take these.” They were masks. One white fox, one black fox, and one red demon. Sasakura glared at him. “…Hey, what the hell? Did you bring these all the way from Tokyo?” “I thought they would help get us in the festival mood,” Takatsuki replied, chuckling. “I didn’t know whether there would be mask stalls here.” Sasakura stared hard at Takatsuki for a while, then silently took the black fox mask. Instead of putting it right over his face, he shifted it to a slightly slanted position on his head. After some hesitation, Naoya picked up the red demon mask. The mask was comical, like the ones found at supermarkets around Setsubun. Following Sasakura’s lead, he put it on at an angle. Smiling, Takatsuki did the same with the white fox mask. “Now, let’s enjoy ourselves. This is just a normal festival.” Indeed, this festival was entirely run-of-the-mill. Enticing smells wafted from stalls selling yakisoba and grilled corn. Yukata-clad children swarmed around the festival fishing games, trying to catch goldfish or floating balloons with little nets and hooks. Somehow, it felt like time had rewound. The festival Naoya had eagerly waited for every year as a child looked just like this one. He even spotted boys in Sentai masks running by just as he was glancing around. “Ah, cotton candy! Now that makes me feel like it’s a festival.” Takatsuki laid eyes on a cotton candy machine and pointed at it. A man wearing a headband skillfully wrapped the cloudlike spun sugar around some disposable chopsticks. Takatsuki watched him, eyes aglow, and when the cotton candy was done, the man held it out in his direction. Looking just like a kid, Takatsuki went over to buy it. He returned with the cotton candy in his hands and a radiant smile on his face. Sasakura plucked a tuft of sugar from the candy floss and popped it into his mouth. “Yeesh, that’s sweet.” “Well, it is sugar.” “I’d rather have grilled squid. Fukamachi, let’s go get some.” “Oh, okay.” Sasakura set off toward a stall at a brisk pace with Naoya racing to follow him. The two of them turned around after buying their grilled squid to find Takatsuki was gone. Surprised, they looked around the area, catching sight of him in the circle of Obon dancers. The women from earlier in the day, who had changed into yukata at some point, had apparently kidnapped him. They seemed to be telling Takatsuki, who was shaking his head to indicate he didn’t know the dance, that he just had to watch the people around him to learn. Giving up the fight, Takatsuki started imitating the dance moves he saw others doing. The professor participating in an Obon dance was quite a novel sight, enough to make Naoya want to record it on his phone so he could show it to Ruiko and Yui. Standing at Sasakura’s side and munching on his food, Naoya slowly raised his gaze. The warm glow of the red lanterns. The almost inconveniently loud music. The lively festival drums. The smell of charred soy sauce wafting out from the stalls. The spirited laughter of children and adults alike. Ahh, Naoya thought. This is a festival. A festival for the living. Nothing like the festival Naoya had seen once, years ago. The world on this side of the mountain was for the living. And if that was so, what did it mean about the village where Mr. Nakamura still lived? What about the other side? “Ugh, I’m beat. I didn’t think they’d make me dance.” After some time, Takatsuki came staggering back in their direction, having finally been freed from the circle of dancers. Naoya and Sasakura had been outside the circle, just watching the entire time. “Geez, I can’t believe you two aren’t dancing,” he said grumpily. “You should have joined in, too, instead of standing here watching me dance!” “As if. I’ve hated Obon dancing since I was a kid. Anyway—how long do you plan on hanging around here?” “Ah, you’re right. We should go soon.” Takatsuki glanced at his watch. Naoya checked his own watch as well. It was half past eight. In the village on the other side, the Obon dance would already be over, despite things still being in full swing on this side. But going back meant… “…Professor. We’re going to have to go over the mountain again, aren’t we?” “Yep. After all, the car is parked on the other side.” Takatsuki smiled brightly. That was when Naoya realized at last: Oh. This is what he planned on from the start. What happened in the village on the other side once the Obon dance ended? In order to find out, Takatsuki had intentionally been wasting time on this side. The masks, too, were probably a precaution he took just in case. If that midnight festival really was going on even now, they’d be in trouble without masks. “…But it’s dark on the mountain. There are no lights.” “I brought flashlights.” Of course, Takatsuki was well prepared. He took three small flashlights from out of his backpack. Bidding farewell to the people around them, they headed back toward the mountain. There were those who told them not to go in the dark, who invited them to stay at their home, but Takatsuki merely smiled and waved good-bye to them. With the festival atmosphere at their backs, the group of three began the climb up the dark stone steps. For a while, none of them spoke a word. Shining the flashlights where they were walking, they made the ascent in silence. The daytime chorus of cicadas was replaced at nighttime by the chirping of bush and bell crickets. Their clear, ringing calls resounded as the noise of the festival gradually began to fade away. The continued boom of the drums and the Obon music, however, remained audible. They reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the shrine grounds. Naoya glanced up at the sky. Even after staring for so long into the beam of his flashlight, he could see the stars clearly. At first, only the brightest stars were visible, but his eyes soon adjusted so that the other, smaller twinkling lights stood out, too. The air was clearer here than in Tokyo, and the light pollution wasn’t as bad. This night sky was truly star-studded. The moon wasn’t out yet. The flickering stars, innumerable, were scattered across the dark, cavernous indigo sky. Naoya had learned as a child, lying next to his cousins in his grandmother’s garden and gazing skyward, that the light of the stars alone was quite bright in its own right. It had been Masa, he thought, who taught him that the faint white band traversing the darkness was the Milky Way. In those days, the sky above the village was so different from the one Naoya was used to that it scared him a little. The bottomless night had forced him to confront the fact that the cosmos was endless. He remembered feeling strangely uneasy, as though if he looked up at the sky for too long, some invisible force would suddenly blow him into the void. “Fukamachi, let’s go.” Takatsuki called Naoya’s name, and he looked back down. The three of them ventured deeper into the dark mountain. As they left the shrine grounds and stepped onto the path, the surrounding darkness somehow grew, perhaps because the branches overhead blocked out the starlight. The beams of their flashlights cut through the dense blackness. They kept walking, carefully making their way through a world that seemed to be divided into black and white. The thought that they might encounter another snake certainly slowed their pace. Passing by the iwakura and emerging into the shrine grounds on the other side of the path felt like it took a lot longer than it had earlier that day. At the top of the stone steps, looking down at the clearing below, Naoya gasped. He could see blue lanterns. “…How?” he muttered without meaning to. The tremor in his own voice startled him. Countless blue lanterns, like will-o’-the-wisps floating in lines, were strung through the clearing. There were no people there. The faint sounds of drums and music they heard were coming from the direction of the village they had just left. In the clearing below, all was silent. “—Yep, just as I thought,” Takatsuki said, standing at Naoya’s side and looking down at the clearing. Slowly, Naoya turned his gaze to Takatsuki. Illuminated by the flashlights, the professor’s eyes seemed to shine with a bluish tinge—the same color as the night sky spread out above their heads. “What do you mean, ‘just as I thought’?” “Should I tell you my theory? It’s about the festival in the old Koyama village. I think there were probably two Obon dances held there every year.” “Two?” “The first was a normal one, the one you participated in every year with your cousins. Just a regular festival where everyone danced happily under the red lanterns, like the one we were at. But that one ended at eight in the evening, which I thought was a bit on the early side. However, the adults always chased the children away from the festival grounds at that time. Why was that? Most likely—to set up the other Obon dance.” After sending the children home, the villagers changed the red lanterns out for blue. If the Obon dance for the living was the festival’s face, the one for the dead was its underbelly. The adults of the village welcomed the dead who were returning from the mountain by creating a place for them to have their own Obon dance. “In this village, they believe there’s an entrance to the underworld beneath the mountain. During Obon, the dead return from the mountain, and a venue for the Obon dance is needed to pacify them. That was this village’s way of associating with the dead.” “…Why an Obon dance? Does the dance serve as a memorial service?” Sasakura asked, and Takatsuki chuckled. “These days, Obon dances are done to the songs of popular Enka singers or anime themes, so I don’t think most people see any religious meaning in them. But the origin of the Obon dance is actually odori-nenbutsu. It is said to have been started by the monk Kuya in the Heian period, who would dance and beat a drum or ring a handbell as he recited the nenbutsu. This evolved in the early-modern period into nenbutsu-odori.” “Hold up. What’s the difference between odori-nenbutsu and nenbutsu-odori?” “With odori-nenbutsu, the person chanting is also the one dancing. But with nenbutsu-odori, those roles are separate. The nenbutsu-odori linked the Buddhist Feast of Lanterns to the preexisting Japanese belief in ancestral spirits and such, and it became the Obon dance as we know it today. There’s another place here in Nagano Prefecture called Niino, and in the Obon dance they put on, the songs still retain many elements of nenbutsu.” Takatsuki turned his gaze back down the steps. “In some regions, people sometimes hide their faces with hats or hoods during the Obon dance. This is said to be for matchmaking purposes between the men and women in a few areas, but there’s also a theory that the masks allow the dead who have returned from the spirit world to dance together with the living… From what Fukamachi has told us, it’s definitely the latter in this village.” Lightly flicking at the angled fox mask on his head, Takatsuki looked at Naoya. “And I believe that in this village, the returning dead are considered a danger to the living. In particular…to children.” After the first Obon dance was over, the adults always, without fail, chased the children away. Whether it was the dead or their overseeing mountain god who took the children, the villagers believed that the children should not be allowed to participate in the second Obon dance. “Although, I think the second, secret Obon dance in this village was just a formality. They simply switch out the lanterns. They might have pretended to beat the drums, or maybe the adults danced a little by themselves. But I doubt they actually played the drums. If they had, everyone would have heard the sound in the middle of the night, and it would be strange that we don’t hear them at this very moment… The sound of festival drums that Fukamachi heard—well, that’s probably something else entirely.” And that second Obon dance, the one for the dead, continued even now, when the first one had already been discontinued. That was the reason Mr. Nakamura’s voice had distorted. “I really wish I could have interviewed the villagers here better, but it seems it’s not to be. Ah well, there’s no helping it.” With that, Takatsuki started down the stone steps. Sasakura called after him. “Hey. You’re going down there?” “Of course. If we don’t, we can’t go home.” “…Isn’t the festival happening down there the one for the dead that Fukamachi saw?” “I don’t think so,” Takatsuki answered plainly, coming to a stop and looking back. “…Your reasoning?” Sasakura asked. “The reason is that I can’t hear the festival drums.” Holding a hand up to one ear as if searching for the missing sound, Takatsuki slowly shook his head. “Fukamachi went to the midnight festival because he was lured by the sound of drums. I believe it was the same for Mr. Tooyama. It was probably a turn of fate for both of them… If you aren’t invited in by the sound of drums, you can’t cross the boundary to the other world.” Takatsuki sounded almost disappointed as he spoke. Sasakura sighed and turned to Naoya. “Hey, can you hear the sound of drums?” “No—I can’t hear them.” Naoya shook his head. There was no sound coming from the village on the other side anymore, either. Their festival seemed to be over as well. All Naoya could hear was the sound of the wind blowing through the mountain trees. Sasakura sighed again. “Okay. Fine, then.” That settled, he also started to descend the stairs. Naoya followed. They met up with Takatsuki, who was waiting partway down, and the three of them went down the staircase side by side. In such darkness, it was brighter when everyone moved in a line together and lit up the ground at their feet. If there were any villagers in the clearing below, they would plainly be able to see their group’s approach, but they couldn’t worry about that now. In the past, the blue lanterns would have continued all the way up to the mountain summit, but that practice was apparently no more. They descended the stone stairs slowly, one step at a time. “…The car. You don’t think anyone slashed the tires or anything, do you?” Sasakura muttered. When the villagers came to the clearing to set up for the festival, they would have seen the parked car. Given the near-hostile looks people had sent their way from the fields and rice paddies, it was no wonder Sasakura was worried. Takatsuki shrugged. “I don’t think that’s likely. But if that did happen, we’d have to go back to the other village for help. There doesn’t seem to be cell service here.” “What? Don’t tell me we’re going to climb up and down these stairs again?!” Naoya said, and Takatsuki laughed. “It would be good exercise, wouldn’t it?” “No, that’s a bit much… I’d worry about how sore my muscles will be tomorrow.” It was then— Halfway down the steps, Naoya froze in his tracks. “…Huh?” He could hear something, he thought. Takatsuki and Sasakura turned to look at him. “What’s wrong, Fukamachi?” “Hey, what is it?” Naoya put the hand that wasn’t holding the flashlight to his ear. The wind was blowing. On either side of the staircase, the rustling of the mountain trees was loud. But within that rustling, Naoya couldn’t help but feel as though there was something else mixed in—the sound of human voices whispering. The voices were faint, but they were many. It seemed like they were coming from every direction, as though droves of people were hiding behind the trunks of the trees. The whispers continued in low, hoarse voices. They were so quiet, it was hard to tell what they were saying. “Fukamachi…?” Takatsuki was looking up at Naoya worriedly.