He felt like at least one of the blood vessels in his brain was about to pop. He might’ve been able to calm down if he at least had something to drink. Then again, he likely would have just drunk down everything he had. That was the kind of thirst this was. These ashes, the remnants of the fire, were completely robbing him of all moisture.
I can hardly breathe
He found himself biting his hand with the handkerchief. He was dissolving into full-blown terror. But just as he was about to scream in overwhelming fear, something slammed into his thigh. It was a table, attached to the wall. The thing that had appeared in the flash from those photos. Now there were white fluttering objects on it. They were shimenawa and shide—the heavy ropes and zigzag-shaped paper streamers seen decorating Shinto shrines. They were also used at construction sites, usually for groundbreaking “earth-appeasement” ceremonies and the like.
Looking closer at the table, he could see trays of these shide, and the washi paper used to make them. There was something shiny on one of them. A small piece of metal—a key of some kind. Likely the key to the door he had just gone through.
As he tried to go around the table, he noticed a large stepladder lying on the ground in front of it. Moving away from it, he looked at the table from the front.
Now, he finally realized, it was a shrine—a small wooden shrine against the wall, a little higher than Mitsuhiro’s head. It wasn’t some ancient Shinto altar; it appeared to be brand new. The shimenawa, that sacred rope of straw, was tacked right up to the wall between the altar and the table. Behind it, on the wall in dark gray paint, was that character:
鎭
No, he intuitively realized, it wasn’t paint. It was ash. It had been written with the ashes after something had been burned up.
Mitsuhiro consciously relaxed his jaw, taking the handkerchief and hand out of his mouth. He took a natural deep breath. The stench in the air moved away, and cool, misty air flowed into his body.
For the first time since he had started down the stairs, he could breathe properly. Immediately his pulse slowed down. Sweat began to ooze from his skin, like he was ejecting steam from every pore.
Mitsuhiro, grateful for the clean air, began to wonder if this was a small underground enshrinement. He had heard that places like these were often built inside large buildings in Japan. They were also called “ritual halls” or “sanctuaries,” and only a few people were allowed to enter them.
Part of him wanted to thank this shrine for the fact he could now swallow the saliva in his mouth without difficulty, but that seemed a little unscientific. There had to be a structural reason why the air was only humid right here. He felt considerably calmer as he thought this over. It wasn’t like this altar was the sole reason why he could breathe properly again. Of course not.
Then he looked at the table. With his left hand, still in a glove, he rubbed the surface. Nothing was accumulated on it. The white lime-like dust on the stairs and the dirt was absent on the table. Someone must have been frequently wiping it off—or something else was keeping it from piling up. The idea that the altar could keep itself divinely free of dust was too preposterous to consider. Surely it served as a kind of landmark. It must have been placed at this special point where the air was cleaner for some reason. That was the rational way of thinking.
He now found himself completely at ease—and on top of that, something curious now appeared in the light. It was a thick black wire hanging down from far overhead toward the right side of the table—a cable. At the bottom end of it was a simple switch, capable of being turned on or off.
—Is there power going to this?
Mitsuhiro walked up to it in disbelief and turned it on.
With a flash, orange light poured in from all directions. It was as if the sun had set, and all the streetlights had come on at once.
Thanks to this light, he could see that this space was almost a perfect square, about twenty yards wide on each side. That large square hole was in the center of the space, and the altar was on his side of it. The door he had lost sight of was on the other side of the hole, right in front of the altar, and it was still open. It was such a simple setup, he wondered how he got so lost in it.
The lights weren’t on the ceiling but hung from the four corners of the room. The reason was obvious: The ceiling was just too high. It was so deep and vaulted, he couldn’t even see it with the headlamp alone.
—What’s this stepladder for?
It was a little too big to be needed for replacing those lights. It was almost as large as a regular ladder, in fact.
—Is it for getting in and out of that square hole?
Mitsuhiro walked up to the hole, but he was suddenly distracted. For the first time, he noticed something on the left side of the wall facing him—some kind of heavy machinery. The center of each wall remained dark, the light from the four corners not quite reaching, and this pure-white machine shimmered in the middle of it, stunning him.
—A pile driver?
It resembled an excavator, but instead of an arm at the end, there was a pump and a large hammer. This equipment was meant for forming cement-milk piles in the ground, using the so-called pure-pile method. The three-point prop and pump were folded up for now, but when fully assembled, the machine was over thirty feet tall. There were some concrete piles lying beside it as well, ready to be driven down.
How in the world did they get this down here? You couldn’t carry it down the stairs, so Mitsuhiro assumed they used a crane to lower it. Then they put a ceiling over this space and just sealed it all up, driver and all. Or did this space lead all the way to the surface? No way. There was no giant hole this size in the middle of Tokyo.
None of this made any sense. All the pile-driving work had already been completed. Piles were one of the most sensitive current topics in the construction industry, and if there was any change to their implementation schedule, Mitsuhiro would have known about it, especially if there was additional work to be done.
And why would equipment painted this blinding white color be used underground? There weren’t any regulations on the color of heavy machinery like this, but it was common practice to employ bright, conspicuous colors like yellow to prevent accidents. White machinery would stand out in cases like daylight mountain excavation, but using this underground seemed completely unreasonable. If anything, it’d make the equipment blend in with the walls in lit areas. Mitsuhiro hadn’t even noticed it in the dark until now, in fact.
But as he looked at this enigmatic piece of equipment, he heard a metallic jingling from the hole. Then a voice, almost like a groan.
“Is… Is somebody there?”
Mitsuhiro wanted to shout out loudly, but the thirst and surprise stifled his voice.
—The door had been open.
He should have considered the possibility that someone else might be in here. Maybe someone had fallen in the hole trying to flip the light switch by the altar. So he looked into the hole to call out again to whoever was in there—but then his voice left him.
The bottom of the hole was a flat, bare dirt surface, and it was littered with trash. There were plastic bottles, along with what appeared to be food wrappers. Surrounded by this trash was someone leaning against the wall, legs sprawled out.
He was either asleep or unconscious, not moving an inch. He appeared to be a man, considering the bushy beard. His gray hair was long and shaggy, and his thick coat and pants looked worn and dirty.
—Is a homeless guy living here?
That was Mitsuhiro’s first impression, but that was impossible. The people who slept in parks and under railway overpasses around here had been cleared out for this redevelopment, yes, but it would be impossible to sneak past all these security guards and workers to set up shop in a construction site this size.
Having no idea how he got in or why he was here, Mitsuhiro then noticed something strange on the man’s left leg. Around the ankle of his sneaker, which was so dirty that Mitsuhiro couldn’t tell what color it originally was, he could see a metal ring that reflected the light from his headlamp. A thick chain, silver in color, extended from it, leading to some unseen place below.
Fearfully, Mitsuhiro got down on his knees, put his gloved left hand over the edge of the hole, and peered down. There was a cone-shaped concrete block there, like a giant bollard of some sort. It was too big and heavy for one person to carry around. The chain was tied crosswise to this block. It was likely secured with a lock or something.
—He’s not living here by choice.
Now Mitsuhiro understood what he was seeing. He didn’t think he could explain it well at all, but he could at least see what kind of situation this man was in.
A person was chained up at the bottom of a large hole dug into a deep underground space.