—Funny that I’m so parched on such a rainy day.
He hadn’t thought to borrow a dust mask since there wasn’t any work going on. Now, as he emptied the bottle, he realized he should’ve at least brought along a regular anti-flu mask or the like.
—Better finish this up before I turn into a dried husk.
Stowing the empty bottle in his bag, he put his gloves back on and stood up, tablet in hand. He went down to the third basement floor with the two remaining images on his tablet as he looked around.
All workers hospitalized
This tweet had an image of a narrow passageway with bare concrete walls.
Human bones are coming out from that hole
This picture showed a square hole dug into the soil surface, a concrete wall in the background.
These were both distinctive enough that Mitsuhiro figured he’d recognize them immediately, but it was not to be. Nothing he saw seemed to match the photos, so he left the East Wing for the time being, looking around the area that’d serve as an open plaza under the station’s east exit in the future. He saw no success there, either. If the “East Wing basement” reference was to be believed, the poster wasn’t talking about the zone underneath the major crossing in front of the station. But he was running out of areas to search. Puzzled, he walked around the temporary structures—and as he passed by the underground water tank, something strange appeared in the light of his headlamp.
鎭
A character written in dark gray paint or something. It was larger than Mitsuhiro’s height, running from the floor to the ceiling.
—What’s that for?
He looked at it from a distance, since if he got too close, the character would start to disappear in the light from his headlamp. It was a kanji character, but one not seen in day-to-day Japanese life—he had no idea how to read it or what it could mean. But as his light shone on it, he realized from the movement of the shadows that there was a space between the wall and the temporary structure to the left of the character. He looked at this structure; it was lined with some kind of material, as if to soundproof it. He couldn’t see what was behind it.
The space was large enough for two people to fit side by side, and on the floor of it was a large square hole. Mitsuhiro thought it’d match one of the remaining images, but this wasn’t a dirt surface, and it wasn’t just any hole. It was a stairway—not a temporary one made of metal plates and pipes. These were bare concrete stairs.
Mitsuhiro raised an eyebrow. He had no idea why they’d go through the trouble of hiding these stairs with that temporary structure. It was like some kind of facade to hide a service entrance in a commercial building. The staircase’s position was strange as well. If you listened carefully, you could hear the faint sound of water overhead. The air here was dry, but above the ceiling, there was an onrush of rainwater going through. But aside from that:
—What’re they gonna build deeper than the culvert?
He hadn’t heard anything about building a new water reservoir. He checked the blueprints on his tablet. They showed a blank space, no diagram indicating the presence of stairs. Maybe someone overlooked something, or maybe this was here before the project began. If these stairs were built around when the Shibuya River was first diverted, that’d make them at least fifty years old. Maybe they’d fill it with earth and concrete later, just to make sure no workers fell into it.
Mitsuhiro crouched down, peeking in. Exactly ten steps greeted him, with a landing below that made a right turn. If he wanted to look any farther, he’d have to go down, and since he had already looked everywhere else, down it was. He tried to sigh and coughed a little instead. His throat was burning. The coughing stopped after he swallowed a few times, but he couldn’t help but feel thirsty again. He really wanted to finish this up and get something to drink, or else he’d be craving water before long.
Hoping this would be the final step of his investigation, Mitsuhiro descended the stairs, his boots clattering against the steps. He knew the air would grow colder and more humid down below. That was how basements worked. In no time at all, he’d be seeing puddles, and the air would get all musty on him.
But he was wrong. As soon as he walked along the landing, went down the second set of stairs, and reached the next landing, he began to blink. His eyes were irritated—now they were dry, too, not just his throat. The air brushing against his cheeks stung so fiercely that he wondered if a fire had been burning here just a few minutes ago. In a construction site that used concrete, dryness was your worst enemy. Cement hardened after it was mixed with water; unlike with clay, absorbing the water was what made it harden. If it dried out before it was fully hardened, it could lead to cracking and collapse. It was vital to “cure” the concrete, maintaining the right temperature and humidity for it to set correctly. Given that fact, this dryness was awful. Or, really, simply abnormal.
—What kind of equipment could’ve made this place so dry?
It smelled weird, too. Not the usual sewage smell—it was sharper on the nose, drier, like something had been heated up really high in an oven. Mitsuhiro thought he had smelled it somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember where. Instead, his brain gave him the image of his father, who had died when Mitsuhiro was in his twenties. In his mind, his father was wearing a business suit, which was out of the norm for him. The last time Mitsuhiro saw him wearing one was when he was saying his final goodbyes to him, in the coffin.
—Why am I thinking about that?
Mitsuhiro wiped his sweaty brow and went down another flight, to another landing. Your dead father is the last thing you want to think about alone in a dark basement. As he descended, he was struck by a sudden chill—a sign of panic, perhaps.
Maybe this was the cause of his excessive thirst and the weird connections he was making in his mind. Height and confined spaces were the two major phobias a construction site could easily trigger. If you couldn’t control your instinctive fear, you could wind up causing a major accident for yourself.
That reminded him of something his late father had taught him. He’d owned a construction company. Mitsuhiro had known him to be a tough man, mentally and physically, but dependable and a born charmer—until that impression of his father changed. Out of nowhere, he had begun to get sick a lot. He had grown taciturn and difficult to deal with, and his eyes always looked dark somehow. Now that he was dead, Mitsuhiro was no longer sure which one was the “real” version of his father.
—Again. I’m thinking all these unnecessary thoughts.
He took a few slow, deep breaths to calm himself down. His father had told him that it’d help him relax. But no. That didn’t matter.
This truly was a deep staircase. He had passed by several landings now, but they didn’t lead out to any floors at all. And how could the air be this dry?
—What’s at the bottom of this thing? A blast furnace?
As he looked around at the next landing, trying to find the cause of this dryness, he suddenly saw something strange.
Footprints. Coming from downstairs. They were so clearly there on the floor, it made him raise an eyebrow. Why would anyone leave footprints like this?
He bent down and looked at the floor. There was a light dusting of something on it, like soft snow. He ran the index finger of his gloved right hand across it; it left a streak, just like actual snow. But it was a white dust, kind of like fine ash. The ashes of something burned at an incredibly high temperature.
This must have been the cause of the odor. If he blew on this ash, it’d fly up and get inhaled. Praying that it wasn’t asbestos of any kind, Mitsuhiro rose up and rubbed the fingers of his gloves against the wall to remove any residue. Perhaps this was the dust buildup from cutting through concrete. Now he especially regretted not wearing a dust mask as he held the tablet to his chest, took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket with his left hand, and held it to his mouth as he began descending again.
Soon, there were no more stairs leading down. He had finally reached the bottom…and a narrow passageway was ahead.
The thought of having to venture even further through this unpleasant air was incredibly uncomfortable to Mitsuhiro. He wriggled his tongue around, trying to summon more saliva in his mouth as he continued down the passage.
—There it is.
Suddenly, he stopped and brought up one of the tweeted images on his tablet.
All workers hospitalized
The words jumped out at him, giving him goose bumps. Pushing away the thought that staying in such an unnatural atmosphere really would make him sick, he compared the image with what he saw. There was no mistaking it. The sender of that tweet definitely took the photo right here.