He kneeled on that dark, damp floor, put his bag down, and dropped on all fours, too desperate for air to thank his coworker yet. His eyes, nose, and throat ached; his head throbbed; and it felt like someone had stomped on his chest. He wished he could be strapped to a stretcher or wheelchair or something and taken to the hospital right now.
“I’ll bring some water. Stay here.”
The worker, apparently sensing Mitsuhiro’s difficulty breathing, turned his headlamp off, removing his goggles and mask as he jogged over to the office. He was back in around two minutes, an unopened plastic bottle of water in his hand. Mitsuhiro took it in a great hurry, opened it, and gulped it down with audible greed. He wanted to breathe, but he didn’t want to take the bottle away from his mouth either, so he huffed as much as he could through his burning nostrils, downing the entire bottle nearly all at once.
Remembering the pain in his hand, he looked at the damage. The base of the thumb on his work glove was partially chewed off, blood seeping out from inside. The bright glare from his headlamp on it remind him to turn it off, and he did so shakily. He blinked his aching eyes, rejoicing at how doing it didn’t leave him in total darkness anymore. The area was dimly lit, full of ugly-looking concrete and prefab structures, and the smell of sewage seeped out from the culvert…but it was still far safer and more comfortable than the bottom of that underground pit. This was where people actually belonged.
“I came here as fast as I could when the alarm went off,” the coworker said, waiting for Mitsuhiro’s breathing to settle down. “Do you know where the fire started?”
“Not sure,” Mitsuhiro managed to squeeze out of his sore throat, still on his knees.
Before the older man could ask any more questions, his younger companion emerged from the unadorned steel stairway. He was in his own helmet, goggles, and dust mask, a fire extinguisher in his hand. Mitsuhiro hadn’t noticed him before, but he had come down with the older worker.
“Is there any fire to put out?” the older worker asked.
The younger one nodded. “On Floor B2. Some of the materials and plastic sheeting we had piled up in there were on fire.”
The older man stared at him. “Floor B2? Really?”
“Yes, sir,” the younger man replied, removing his mask. “I don’t know what the cause was, but I didn’t see any potential arsonists or anything.”
Mitsuhiro could feel himself growing pale. “Arson…?” he said. The workers hadn’t said that it was, but their attitude suggested that it was highly possible. That, and they seemed to be watching Mitsuhiro pretty carefully. Another beat, and he realized that he was their prime suspect so far.
“I… I have no idea what happened. I tried to leave the basement, and the smoke was already all over the stairs.”
The two men remained silent, so Mitsuhiro pushed through the pain in his nose and throat to keep talking.
“All I was doing was taking photos. I didn’t do anything that’d start a fire. I didn’t touch any switchboards or generators. I don’t have anything to start a fire with. The guy in the basement was with me, too.”
That last sentence startled the two workers. Mitsuhiro was so relieved to survive this ordeal that he’d forgotten to mention the man at the bottom of that hole. The young worker had come up from below with no apparent health issues, so Mitsuhiro assumed that man was safe as well.
“There was someone in the basement?” the older one asked in shock.
“Yes… I don’t know why, but he was stuck in this sort of ritual altar down below. I think I got separated from him because of the smoke. Did you see him around where I was?”
The young worker turned toward his older associate, looking worried.
“Does he mean the room at the very bottom we can’t go into?”
The older one didn’t answer the question, instead turning toward the stairs.
“Let’s go look for him. It might be an arson, so…”
He beckoned the younger staffer to join him. They both went down the stairs.
Mitsuhiro found a place to sit down. The little water droplets in the air felt pleasant to him. It felt like whatever had been eating him up from inside was now leaving his body.
—I hope I get my handkerchief back.
That was his first thought. It made him reconsider what order he should be tackling all the questions in his mind. He was still fairly certain that someone had locked him in that room, at least for a while. He also wanted to see how all of this might be connected with the tweets.
After the fire
The fire had started when Mitsuhiro released that man. Almost as though it was trying to drive him back down into the depths.
Another fire here
His temples began to pulsate. He felt a tingling sensation in his neck. Was there some kind of toxic gas rising up from the bottom of that pit? Had it started the fire?
No… There was no scientific basis for that. It was too out of this world to mention in his report. He was inclined to believe it, having experienced that bizarrely dry air for himself, but it was just too farfetched. If any sort of gas caused the fire, after all, the basement with that pit would’ve been the first to be engulfed in flames.
They needed to presume arson here. Maybe the arsonist was angry that the man he had chained up down there was released. Mitsuhiro stood up, fearing the criminal might jump out and attack him, but the workers returned just then.
“Did you find the man?” he asked.
They both stared back in silence. From their expressions, Mitsuhiro realized that he now had some new problems. He thought about going back down there in an attempt to solve them. He had a terrible feeling now that he was about to be blamed for something he didn’t do.
Without knowing how or why, the man at the bottom of that pit had disappeared without a trace, taking one of Mitsuhiro’s belongings with him.