Ice cream. Not the first request he expected, but it made a lot of sense.
When Mitsuhiro found Yoshikazu Hara for the third time, he said he couldn’t drink and asked for some ice cream instead. If you had to pick something to have on the city streets in the middle of summer, ice cream would be high on the list. So Mitsuhiro went into a convenience store with Yoshikazu Hara and bought several kinds of ice cream, according to his preferences.
Yoshikazu Hara smiled as he accepted an ice cream pop, the kind that children tend to ask their parents for, and got into the passenger seat of the car, eagerly licking and taking bites. He finished it on the way to the construction site, washed it down with a couple of frozen push-up tube pops, and followed Mitsuhiro to the hole at the construction site. He must have really been obsessed with his ice cream, because he didn’t mind the unlit stairs and showed no signs of resisting or trying to escape the whole way.
However, despite this, the third time was not the charm.
Once again, Yoshikazu Hara just didn’t see the hole at all. Mitsuhiro didn’t know if it was the dementia taking its toll or if it was because the hole was too traumatic for him to recognize.
“Hole? What hole?”
“Be careful! It’s right in front of you!”
Ignoring Mitsuhiro’s loud warning, Yoshikazu Hara stepped over the edge with the tube still in his mouth. His gait was so natural, Mitsuhiro thought he might just walk across air and reach the other side. But of course, Yoshikazu Hara wasn’t a magician. He fell like a rock and disappeared into the hole with a thud.
Mysteriously, at that moment, Yoshikazu Hara had disappeared again. There was no need to lower the stepladder to check. When he shone his phone’s light into the bottom of the hole, there was no one there. Just a thick layer of white ash. Well, no—he thought he saw something person-shaped lying near the concrete block, but he didn’t think it was Yoshikazu Hara. Someone who fell into the hole just now couldn’t have been covered with ash that quickly.
All it looked like to him was that Yoshikazu Hara had disappeared. Taking advantage of Mitsuhiro’s panic and confusion, he had quickly hidden in the darkness and fled yet again.
With a convenience-store bag in his right hand and his phone flashlight in his left, Mitsuhiro climbed the stairs, scowling at the futility of it all, and returned to his car parked near the construction site.
He started it up, cranked the AC, and ate a cup of ice cream Yoshikazu Hara had left behind. It’d just melt otherwise. He thought about driving around the construction site on another search, but there was no real need. He knew where to go. He’d found him twice in one day, after all. And unlike when he was searching around in vain, he now knew exactly where Yoshikazu Hara lived.
By now, the guy had probably forgotten all about his escape from the hole and was back in line at the soup kitchen. It was very, very likely.
By the time he finished eating that cold, sweet ice cream, the futile irritation was gone. He was determined to take Yoshikazu Hara back to the bottom of that hole. With the right plan and a little ingenuity, he was confident he could do it—again and again, if needed. No matter how many Yoshikazu Haras there were.
“Good job. You’re getting better at finding Yoshikazu Hara. Keep up the good work.”
Encouraged by his father’s words, Mitsuhiro felt another rush of motivation as he tossed the empty ice cream cup into the plastic bag and drove off.
But as determined as he was, the fourth go-around was unexpectedly difficult. He couldn’t find him along the railroad tracks, so he checked his cell phone and found out about another soup kitchen going on over in the Yoyogi neighborhood. These kitchens and food distributions took place over a hundred times a month across Tokyo, with some homeless people doing the circle between Shibuya, Shinjuku, and Yoyogi several times a day.
So he drove to Yoyogi Park, parked his car, and looked around, convenience-store bag in hand. Sure enough, Yoshikazu Hara was sitting there on a bench, rolling something around in his hands. The thrill of discovering him had lost its edge by now, though. The cycle was starting to become almost routine.
There was a metal armrest in the middle of the bench, designed to prevent people from lying down on it—just one of many ways to make the homeless move along instead of camping out there.
When Mitsuhiro approached him, he saw that Yoshikazu Hara was holding a faded Rubik’s Cube in his hands. He kept playing around with it, observing it from various angles and smiling happily the whole time. His face was full of joy, as if he had finally solved the puzzle, but the colors on each side were all mixed up.
Mitsuhiro recalled seeing someone playing with a Rubik’s Cube somewhere else before. Maybe that had been Yoshikazu Hara? No, it probably was him. Yoshikazu Hara popped up everywhere, it seemed. It was quite surprising.
“You like that thing?” Mitsuhiro asked as he sat down.
Yoshikazu Hara, clearly wary of this interloper, clutched the cube in both hands and pressed it against his stomach. Mitsuhiro could tell that he was afraid of having it taken away, so he took his eyes off the cube and placed the convenience-store bag in front of him.
“Would you like any of this?” he said with a smile. But Yoshikazu Hara grew even warier, glancing up at him from the corner of his eye. In the end, however, he still relaxed enough to get in the car with Mitsuhiro and go to the construction site together.
Back to the routine.
As soon as they arrived at the ritual hall, Yoshikazu Hara quickly strode into the darkness. He wasn’t even slightly afraid of the pitch-black place—in fact, he seemed rather accustomed to it. And he probably was, too; he’d been there many times before.
“Give me one second to turn on the lights,” Mitsuhiro said, hurrying over to the shrine. He turned them on. Yoshikazu Hara was gone.
Mitsuhiro was stunned. He felt powerless. Yoshikazu Hara was some kind of denizen of the shadows. He seemed to melt right into the darkness every time he disappeared—and he’d keep doing it, until he remembered his duty and the desire to stay down here. Until then, there was no choice but to bring him here again and again. To remind Yoshikazu Hara of his duty. And that was fine, because Mitsuhiro was sure Yoshikazu Hara was remembering, little by little. This time, he had gotten into the hole on his own—what further proof did he need?
Mitsuhiro looked at the square edge of the hole. He thought it seemed wider than when he first saw it. He compared the length of the stepladder placed next to the shrine with the distance to the edge of the hole. The hole did seem to be getting closer to the shrine, actually. Like it was trying to swallow it up.
Every time the ashes came out of the ground, the hole got wider. The connection occurred to Mitsuhiro all at once. And, hang on, it wasn’t just getting wider—it was also getting deeper. Eventually, it’d become too deep for the stepladder to reach.
The ash emerging from the ground would accumulate at the bottom of the hole, swallowing anyone who entered. Turning them into the same dry ash. Just like a crematorium.
The ash was burning people alive. Countless people had died in this way, and now they were all this ash coming up from below.
Mitsuhiro was startled by what sounded like a low groan. He came back to his senses. He wasn’t sure what was going on in his mind.
He looked around for the source, but no one was there. He looked into the hole. Was there someone at the bottom? Come to think of it, someone other than Yoshikazu Hara had been in there before, hadn’t he? What happened to him?
But wait a second. Did Yoshikazu Hara really disappear right after Mitsuhiro had brought him down here? Or did he remember his duty on the fourth attempt and climb down into the hole himself?
Mitsuhiro stood at the edge, his hopes high, and searched for Yoshikazu Hara with the light from his phone. But here was nothing but the concrete block and a pile of white ash. It looked kind of like there were people piled up under the ash, but Mitsuhiro didn’t really care what the ash looked like from his perspective. All he was hoping to see was Yoshikazu Hara sitting there, chained up.
Mitsuhiro flipped the light switch again. Relying on the light from his phone, he made his way out of the space, being careful not to fall in, and went to look for Yoshikazu Hara again.