“Can I do it myself?” he asked as a last-ditch form of resistance. “Like, burn the talisman inside the amulet…?”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. In fact, just the other day, I lit such a fire to calm the spirits, but it almost spread to me and others.”
“You got burned?”
“It wasn’t serious.”
Araki stroked his arm through the sleeve of his work clothes. It must have been at least a minor burn. And he was an expert at this—if someone like Mitsuhiro tried it, Araki was implying, he’d wind up in flames.
“But either way, under no circumstance should you try to handle this yourself. It will only bring disaster to you.”
“All right… So how much does it cost to request that?”
“If we treat this as an extension of the ritual-hall appeasement… Well, in order to calm the disaster and pray for the safety of your family, I think around three million yen would cover it.”
It felt like a direct blow on the head. As Mitsuhiro parked the company car in the lot, his hands shook, his head spun, and his stomach turned cold. He feared he might run into something, but he managed to work the car into its space.
“Um…” He searched for way out of this. “Does it have to be you, Mr. Araki…?”
“Your other choices would be the previous president or the current one…but if this involves mobilizing our whole firm, it could cost as much as an entire ritual hall.”
Three million yen. The shock to his head was followed by a nail driven into his heart. He couldn’t breathe. A delayed wave of nausea, like motion sickness, washed over him. Stretching his budget wouldn’t nearly cover such an amount. He’d have to take out another loan, leaving him deep in debt. It’d be ridiculous to lose all his money and place in life—all very real-world things—just to be rescued from some strange, invisible threat. But the fear that he had no choice in the matter lurked in the pit of his stomach.
“I can’t possibly come up with that kind of money…”
His voice trembled.
Araki nodded back reassuringly with what seemed like genuine sympathy.
“Well, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, please don’t hesitate to consult with us.”
With those parting words, Araki got out of the company car, opened the soundproof door with his number code, and entered the construction site.
Five hundred thousand yen for the exorcism. What if that didn’t work? What if the strange stain didn’t disappear? What if it spread out even more when he came back home? Would he have to buy another amulet for the same amount? What if that one did nothing, too?
There was just no choice. He gritted his teeth. He had to protect his home, even if it meant depleting his savings. Look at all the homeless people he saw. They had nowhere to live, which meant they couldn’t obtain proper residence identification, which meant they couldn’t get a home or a job. If he wanted to avoid that, he just needed to tough it out.
A sudden, excruciating pain shot through his left hand, resting on the steering wheel. It made him scream and curl up in pain.
Hang in there.
His father’s voice. What did he mean, “hang in there”? The pain was unbearable.
“What a whiner.”
His father’s voice was clearer now. It was coming from behind him again.
“Go buy some painkillers. Or maybe you could ask Mr. Araki to fix it for you. He’ll do damn near anything for you, won’t he?”
“But I don’t have any money left.”
“You have your daughter’s college fund, don’t you? You can cancel all your insurance policies. You could all share one cell phone. Lots of ways to make it work. You could even take out another loan.”
“I don’t want to…”
Mitsuhiro hugged his knees on the seat with both his good hand and his aching one. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
“It’s tough, isn’t it?” his sympathetic father said. Mitsuhiro sobbed like a child as he looked at his father in the rearview mirror.
“Was it this hard for you, too, Dad?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Is that why you were so strict with me and Mom?”
“Could be, yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t know about that at all.”
“It’s all right.”
His father patted him lightly on the left shoulder. Instantly, the pain in his hand subsided.
Mitsuhiro wiped away his tears, put his feet back on the floor, and looked around the car. One time, when he lured Yoshikazu Hara in here with beer and snacks, the man had taken one look and said, “Whoa, you live in here or somethin’?” He had seen the convenience-store bag full of dirty clothes he was still carting around. Mitsuhiro had replied that he didn’t, but he remembered how he tried to laugh off the question and completely failed to. He saw them every day, but his subconscious regarded the homeless people around him as creatures from another planet. Now that he knew that they most certainly weren’t, he didn’t know what to say to that question any longer.
Why did he think it could never happen to him? He didn’t know anymore, even though he was slowly drifting toward that reality. It felt like a hole of his own, one he couldn’t crawl out of by himself, and it made his head spin.
“You are the mi-keshi of the hole,” his father said. “And that’s fine, isn’t it? In fact, it’s an honor. If the hole wants you to, you should go in there with your whole family.”
Mitsuhiro tried to say he didn’t want to, but his phone was ringing too loudly to reply. He was still wearing his seat belt, so he twisted his body around to pull his phone out of his pants pocket. The name on the screen made his eyes widen.
It was Takenaka. Wasn’t he supposed to be absent from work? Mitsuhiro considered ignoring the call—Takenaka couldn’t have been calling about anything except the company car he was about to confiscate—but he didn’t want Takenaka looking all around Tokyo for him, so he picked it up.