The diner was located a short distance from the dam. The wooden roof and walls had turned a deep brown, as if they had absorbed all the surrounding humidity. With each step across the softened floorboards, I expected to see puddles of water seep out around my feet.
We were led to a four-top, where I sat diagonal from Rokuhara instead of straight across from him. Picking up a sticky menu, Rokuhara ordered the golden eye snapper. I was still not in the mood to see fish, so I ordered the pork cutlet, before chugging my glass of water.
“What about that dam worker who went funny in the head? Do you think he’s all right?” I asked.
Rokuhara refilled my glass with ice water from the pitcher on the table.
“Yes, he’s apparently in stable condition. He was sent to the hospital, and his daughter has checked up on him. She said he has all the Chinese medicinal remedies and supplements he takes to thank for being fine.”
“Fat chance.”
The chime over the door rang, and two older customers stepped inside, shaking out plastic umbrellas as they entered.
“Didn’t I say it? That’s why I was against building that dam. Forget about the environment. It had nothing to do with it. That village was always strange.”
“Maybe, but it wouldn’t have done much good to leave it there, would it? All the young folks were getting out of there anyway; the place was just too creepy.”
The pair plopped themselves down two tables away from us, still grumbling as they sat. The waitstaff came out from the back and set steaming trays in front of us. The two old-timers must have been regulars, because the worker just asked if they wanted the usual, before disappearing into the back again.
“The sunken village beneath the dam”—Rokuhara split his disposable chopsticks and began peeling off the bones from the over-simmered snapper he’d ordered—“was apparently in the business of making caskets before it was submerged. It was full of camphor trees, which was where they sourced the wood.”
“They didn’t have much interaction with the surrounding villages, though. People said the place was too dreary.”
“Those from the other villages probably didn’t want to confront death in such a direct way while they were still alive. Which is hardly fair when they were going to have to rely on the coffin makers in the end.”
Rokuhara certainly knew how to put a man off his meal. I recalled the first time I visited Rokuhara’s house. We were all sitting around the dinner table, which was loaded up with takeout sushi or whatever, while he rambled on and on about the relationship between the fishing industry and poaching syndicates. I don’t even think he was purposely trying to be unpleasant. The sight of the sushi had just brought the subject to mind. Which somehow made it even worse.
“Mitsuji, let’s not talk about that right now.” I could still remember her voice as she scolded him, the tear-shaped mole beneath her eye twisting up into a smile of commiseration with me—
“What year was the dam built again?” I asked, shaking away my thoughts as I searched for a different topic.
“Ninety-nine.” Rokuhara’s chopsticks, which had been relentlessly picking at the bones of his fish, paused in midair. “Many of the current divine incursions seem to stem from the latter half of the nineties. I highly doubt there is a single cause behind them all, but I can’t help but wonder if there is some common factor at play.”
I refocused on the breading on my cutlet a few times as I considered what Rokuhara had just said.
“Miyaki compared it to a bug in a game.”
“A bug?”
“Yeah, back when we were in that fishing village. Like when one thing goes awry and is patched over, it causes bigger and bigger distortions to appear. She was just spitballing, though.”
“A distortion…”
Rokuhara drank half his water and then tilted the glass.
“This is different from what’s happening now, but another strange incident apparently happened in the sunken village a few years before the dam was built. Incredibly, people began to hear the voices of the dead coming from regular boxes made of wood from the village trees.”
“Voices, you say?” I asked, trying to appear calm.
“Yes, the voices of old friends or relatives. Supposedly, many of the villagers who heard these voices wound up hanging themselves from the camphor trees, claiming they needed to go meet their loved ones. Around that time, it seems many people also reported seeing an approximately four-meter-tall person dressed in mourning clothes in locations around the village.”
I thought back to the shadow, standing with its legs thrust into the water of the dam. Maybe it was the source of all these problems. Rokuhara continued:
“The sacred trees were meant for coffins. This may be some sort of punishment for using the wood for more trivial ends instead… We should follow up on that as well.”
“I wasn’t going to mention this at first…” I washed down my now thoroughly cold rice with a swig of water, set down my chopsticks, and leveled my gaze at Rokuhara. “But when I made eye contact with that thing at the dam, I heard Misaki’s voice.”
Rokuhara’s eyes widened slightly.
“She didn’t say anything particularly special. Just that we should take a break before we continued investigating and get something to eat. It sounded so normal and mundane that I answered her before I even realized.”
The streaks of rain on the windowpane made the world outside a blurred white vortex.
“It’s probably not a good idea to answer the dead,” Rokuhara said.
“We don’t know that Misaki is dead.”
Rokuhara shrugged and grimaced. Even in the face of massive disaster, he tended to remain calm to the point of indecency. I could tell, though, that his current reaction was forced.
It had been a rainy winter’s day when Misaki disappeared. She told me she had something to do at her parents’ house and was going to be gone for a little while. I never even questioned it; I just drove to the station while the rain continued to fall. I wasn’t able to get into contact with her after that, and when I asked Rokuhara about it, he said he didn’t know anything about any errands at home. That was when I first started to panic. She hadn’t left behind a note—only tons of premade meals in plastic containers in the fridge. I remembered her standing in the kitchen, saying “Once you finish all these…” as she placed the lid on a container, a faint smile crossing her face. What was she going to say next? “…Forget about me”? In the end, Misaki disappeared, leaving behind a half-finished bottle of face lotion and a skirt she had bought for next summer.
Rokuhara glanced out the window and spoke as if talking to himself.