Mitsuhiro felt a weight lift off his shoulders. He almost smiled, but he quickly resisted the urge. He needed to be considerate of Araki, who had just been called out on short notice on something that’d take him all night to work out. Mitsuhiro shouldn’t show too much happiness around him.
“All right. Sorry for the trouble. What about Yoshikazu Hara?”
“On the phone, he told me he was going to his wife’s facility…but he didn’t seem to know where he even was at the time. You were lucky to run into him.”
“I’ll find him again and bring him here for you.”
“Right. And I’ll keep asking around to see if I can find him. Would you mind if I kept in touch with you, Mr. Matsunaga?”
“Yes, please do.”
Mitsuhiro bowed his head, and Araki did the same, like they were business partners. In this deep underground space, illuminated only by their flashlights, it was an unusual, even comical situation. Considering the man lying motionless at the bottom of the hole, their calmness seemed downright eerie. But Mitsuhiro didn’t want to think about that. He believed with all his heart that he should just leave everything to Araki.
“I’ll head out, then.”
Mitsuhiro tried to pass by Araki, then stopped suddenly. “Oh, one second. I had a question about the amulet.”
“The amulet?”
“Yes. The president of Tamai Construction gave me one the other day. Would it be possible to get another one of those from you?”
“Well, they don’t come cheap, but… What did you do with the one the president gave you?”
“I used it, actually.”
“Used it? How?”
“Like he instructed me, I burned the contents, dissolved them in water…”
“So for appeasement?”
“Yes… Well, actually, I ran out of ashes, so I ended up burning the outer pouch as well.”
“The pouch, too? Not to pry, but could you tell me why you did that?”
“Well…there was a little fire in my apartment. A family member left this old fan on too long, and it burned out. It made me kind of anxious, so…you know.”
“Are you being cursed?”
“Huh?”
“Do you sense that your home, or your family, or you yourself are being cursed?”
“No, not at all. I just felt uneasy because…you know, I’ve had a couple small fires in a row now, so…”
“Have you smelled anything strange, like burning bones? Or has your family been feeling unwell because of it? Or maybe you didn’t notice some bone ash stuck to you, and it reappeared somewhere in your home?”
“Nothing like that, no,” Mitsuhiro said without hesitation.
That was the truth. He couldn’t take such silly stories about curses or whatever seriously at all. All he wanted was to get that amulet. That would solve everything. He didn’t need to go telling some guy he barely even knew about what had happened to Sae and Miyoko.
“Well, as I think the president mentioned to you, Tamai’s amulets are quite expensive, even for a single body.”
“A single body?”
“That’s how we count them—one body, two bodies, three bodies. They’re divine bodies, having been bestowed with their power by the gods.”
“All right… So how much does one cost?”
“Even the cheapest one is two hundred thousand yen.”
Mitsuhiro’s eyes boggled. Two hundred thousand for a little good-luck thing? Did he hear that right? Even two thousand was too much, in his opinion; a hundred times that amount was completely insane. It even angered him a bit.
“What? Two hundred thousand? Isn’t that a little too much?”
Araki snorted. If you don’t want it, don’t buy it—that was the attitude he presented.
“Our amulets are the real thing, you understand. They’re not like the cheap ones, the ones made by college students doing seasonal work for a shrine when they’re on break. It takes a lot of time and manpower. We also properly reward our mi-keshi so that we can receive the blessings of the gods.”
Mitsuhiro felt an urge to argue the point, but his lips were too tightly sealed to open. He had no idea how to refute the strange, almost occult reasoning of this man.
“But if you’re not being cursed, then you don’t need it. I’d suggest you leave quickly, or something might leave with you that you don’t want.”
“No, um…I mean, yes… Excuse me, then.”
Mitsuhiro turned away from Araki. He immediately changed his mind. He turned back toward him.
“Actually, I’d still like one, please.”
“An amulet?”
“Yes. How long will it take to get?”
“Not long at all. I’d just have to go get one from where we keep them.”
“How about tomorrow?”
“Certainly. It’d be in exchange for your harvest offering, though.”
“My what?”
“Money offered to the gods, that is. In olden times, it would have been the first ears of rice harvested at the start of the season.”
Araki scratched his neck as he spoke. He seemed to be getting annoyed with talking to someone so ignorant on this subject.
“And that’s the two hundred thousand yen?”
“Yes. There are more expensive ones, too.”
“All right. I’ll have the money. Is it okay if I contact you tomorrow?”
“That’s fine, Mr. Matsunaga, but…”
“…But what?” Mitsuhiro urged, a little irritated. He was getting tired of talking so much in this dry cavern. He wanted to get back to the surface and drink all the water he could.
“Are you being cursed?”
Araki asked the same question again, leaving Mitsuhiro even more frustrated than before.
“What? No. Of course not.”
Araki was not satisfied. “If you see anyone in your life who shouldn’t be there, please let me know.”
“Shouldn’t be there how?”
“In most cases, it’d be someone deceased. If someone who died long ago starts appearing around you, that’s a sure sign you’re under a curse. The bone ash in places like this can often transform into the deceased, so it can break through the barrier. By ‘barrier,’ I mean the one protecting a certain plot of land, or house, or even a person’s body or mind. When bone ash makes its way through a barrier, the evil spirits that cause mischief on earth will gather around it and join forces to curse you together, often creating accidents involving water or fire. If you don’t realize you’re talking to the dead and start seeing or hearing things that aren’t real, then in the worst case, it could endanger your life and the lives of those around you.”
Mitsuhiro couldn’t help but chuckle. He wanted to ask Araki if he really believed all that nonsense, but Araki’s tone was serious. The guy was just living in a totally different world from the modern one Mitsuhiro called home. He and his kind had turned the propagation of stupid old superstitions into a kind of business.
“I’ll be careful about that,” Mitsuhiro said. He wanted to end this conversation on a polite note, as irritating as it was, mainly because he didn’t want Araki to get angry and refuse to sell the amulet to him.
“If you do happen to see the deceased, please wear or take possession of one of their belongings. That alone will do much to prevent the bone ash from transforming.”
“Okay. Thanks for telling me. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mitsuhiro bowed, making it clear he wanted to end this chat. Araki remained silent, nodding slightly. He, too, found it frustrating to advise someone who seemed to barely even speak his language.
“I’ll contact you again tomorrow. Thank you.”
Mitsuhiro said goodbye as if he had just wrapped up a client meeting, and this time he turned away from Araki. He walked toward the open door, picking up the helmet and flashlight Yoshikazu Hara had left behind. They both belonged to Hara, not to whoever was in that hole. Mitsuhiro was firm with himself about that.
“Hopefully the bone ash will come back… I’ll have to consult with the old president again.”
Mitsuhiro could hear Araki griping to himself behind him, but he ignored it and continued on his way. He turned around at the door, but Araki was already climbing down the stepladder into the hole, so with no further goodbyes, he entered the passageway and climbed the stairs.
—Am I being cursed?
As he headed toward the ground floor, a laugh suddenly welled up from his throat again. The stories from Tamai Construction’s employees certainly seemed convincing when told in such a creepy place—that was the annoying part about all this. A lot of people actually believed all that crap, Mitsuhiro was sure. Maybe not even that many, but just a few staunch believers were all Tamai Construction really needed. Charging hundreds of thousands of yen for a single amulet? No wonder they demanded millions for some barren room underground.
But despite his opinions on Tamai Construction, his desire to get that amulet of theirs ASAP was a wholly different matter. That was that, and this was this. Needing something to get rid of that weird smell was completely separate from being cursed or whatever.
—Isn’t that right, Dad?
Mitsuhiro smiled as he looked up at the reassuring sight of his father climbing the stairs ahead of him.