Mitsuhiro almost did just that. He fought to keep himself from glaring at Sae and shouting Get out of here! This is all your fault! Even if it meant disappointing Kosuke, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Sae had come back here out of concern for her father, braving her fear, and he couldn’t punish her for that.
“I’m fine, Sae. Are you okay? Did you get burned at all?” he asked as gently as he could, but Sae bit her lip and lowered her head. He had managed to stop himself from shouting, but she’d still seen the hard look in his eyes.
“Daddy, I’m thirsty.”
He was aware that the hot wind, the hunger, and the thirst were making him angry. Mitsuhiro took off his jacket, draped it over his shoulders, and—just like last night—went to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and knocked it back to calm himself.
“Would you like some, Sae?”
Sae, who was still staring at the floor, slowly trudged over and shook her head.
Tell her to get over here right now!
He felt as if Kosuke was shouting orders in his ear.
She needs to come over immediately when her father calls for her.
I can’t, Dad, Mitsuhiro weakly replied in his mind. Please don’t make me. He drank another glass of water, straining to ensure he didn’t follow Kosuke’s orders, and put it in the sink.
“Sae, you didn’t get burned, did you?”
Mitsuhiro examined his silent daughter’s face and arms. Nothing was red or blistered. That was a relief.
“I’ll take care of the fan, so stay in your room, okay? It’s gonna be hot in here with the window open.”
With that, he gently coaxed Sae toward her room. Sae shuffled her feet, and he became anxious that Kosuke might say something, but he didn’t—which brought its own form of anxiety. He knew Kosuke would scold him eventually.
After sending Sae off, he returned to the living room, threw his jacket on the sofa, and looked down at the fan, which had been warped by the heat. Then he looked at the throw rug, with all the burn marks and fire-extinguisher foam bits on it, and sighed. He thought about sealing up the fan (which still had that strange smell to it) in a garbage bag, but before doing so, he took his phone out of his jacket and shot some pictures. He captured the manufacturer’s name, model number, and the area where the fire seemed to have started with his phone’s camera. Then he went to the kitchen, grabbed a large garbage bag, put the fan inside, and took it out to the balcony. He thought he should have the manufacturer retrieve it instead of spending the money to throw it out as oversize garbage. After all, there was no guarantee that a similar accident wouldn’t happen in some other household. He should really have them investigate the cause of the fire.
He wiped off the extinguisher foam with a rag, left the rug as it was, and put the fire extinguisher back on the shoe shelf. He thought about how he’d have to inform the management company and get a new extinguisher as he picked up the keys, bag, and fast food he had left in the hallway.
“Sae, did you eat?” he asked from the doorway.
“Mm-hmm,” replied Sae, who was sitting blankly on the bed.
Mitsuhiro nodded silently and took the things he was holding to the dining room.
When he opened the bag on the table, he found that the drink had spilled out and the burger and fries were all wet, but he didn’t care. He laid them out on the table and devoured them, as odd as it all tasted. By the time he finished, the air in the room had ventilated out, and the smell of the fire faded considerably.
Mitsuhiro put all the wrappers in the fast-food bag, crushed it, threw it in the trash, and closed the windows in the room. Then he sat down in a chair, grabbed his bag on the table, and stared into space. He waited for Kosuke to say something, but there was no sign of him.
He felt calmer now, but perhaps that was why he could clearly smell the odor now. Even though he had taken the burnt fan outside and left the exhaust fan on, the smell of dry ash wafted in from some unknown place. It came from everywhere in the room, really.
No, it was definitely the throw rug, Mitsuhiro told himself, hugging his briefcase to his chest. He’d roll up the rug, take it outside, and that’d be that. But somewhere in his heart, he knew that wouldn’t solve the problem.
So what should he do? As he sat there, Sae suddenly came over.
“Are you doing work?”
Mitsuhiro raised an eyebrow. He wondered why Sae would ask that, but then he realized it was because he was hugging his bag. He knew what he had to do—and why he was holding it so close.
“No, not work.”
Mitsuhiro opened his bag and took out the amulet from the pocket. He put the bag on the floor and placed the charm on the table.
Sae sat down in her chair, curiously looking at the amulet.
Her father untied the string and took out the aluminum foil and wood shavings from inside. When he opened up the foil, he saw some dried ashes stuck to the inside. He thought about dissolving them in water, but something told him that this wouldn’t be enough. He didn’t know if that was because of the amount or quality of the ashes, or how they had been burned, but something was missing, and now that smell was back.
Was it because he hadn’t written those characters in enough places around the condo the first time? As he thought it over, Mitsuhiro looked at the pouch that had contained the wooden tablet. Maybe he could use that, too. That’d give him more ashes, and then he’d write as many characters as possible.
Mitsuhiro took the wood pieces and the amulet pouch and placed them on the open aluminum foil. He went to the kitchen, while Sae followed him with a puzzled look on her face.
“Dad, what are you doing?”
“Um, it’s a kind of magic spell.”
That just intrigued her more. When Mitsuhiro placed the foil and the amulet on the cooktop, Sae moved her stool closer and stood next to him.
“Don’t touch it,” Mitsuhiro said gently as he took the lighter out of the drawer.
He applied it to the foil. The wood bits and pouch smoldered, the smoke rising up and getting sucked into the exhaust fan. Mitsuhiro lit it several times, burning the wood chips, the string, and the pouch, until everything was ashes.
Then he took a small teapot from the shelf, filled it with water, and poured it little by little over the ashes. Taking up a pair of disposable chopsticks, he stirred it carefully, then took it all over to the front door.
Sae followed him as he stared at the character he had written on the top of the front door last night.
鎭
“What did you write?”
“That’s kind of a difficult character. It means ‘to appease,’ which means, uh…you know, to quiet something down.”
“Okay.”
Mitsuhiro wrote the same character on the walls of the hallway and above the doors of each room. He also wrote it on the edge of the kitchen exhaust fan, the microwave, and the walls of the living room and dining room.
“Can I try?” Sae asked.
He handed her the other chopstick. “Can you put some little dots around here?”
Yoshio Tamai had told him that simple lines or dots worked just fine too. Sae did as she was told, tapping the tip of her chopstick on the wall. Most of the ash had dissolved into the water, so it only left a few water marks, but Sae looked up at Mitsuhiro with a satisfied smile. In a rather unexpected fashion, they had buried the hatchet, and now he smiled back at her. Sae wanted to keep going, so he let her do the same thing on the walls by the bath and toilet.
The ashes in the foil were almost gone, the water all dried up. Mitsuhiro folded it up and placed it on the top shelf of the shoe rack, along with the chopsticks he had used for the ritual. He stood in the hallway and took a deep breath. Sae did the same, and her face lit up.
“The smell’s all gone!”
She smiled. Mitsuhiro stroked Sae’s head and felt like he could hear his father saying, I wonder how long it will last. He didn’t know. But he didn’t think the effect would fizzle out.
As he returned to the living room with Sae, the thing on Mitsuhiro’s mind was who he should tell about burning the amulet. He had several business cards from Tamai Construction. Which one should he call?