“I was always against you joining the department. Even if you figure out what happened, it probably won’t bring Misaki back. I wanted you to move on and live your own life instead of letting the past drag you down…”
“It’s not up to you to decide. Misaki may have been your sister, but she was also my wife.” I took a bite of my cutlet, which I had squirted with too much lemon. The lemon was the only thing I could taste. “Besides, for all your talk about going on with my own life, you certainly don’t hesitate to drop the worst cases onto my desk.”
“One must make effective use of one’s resources.”
The corner of Rokuhara’s mouth twisted up into a smile. Meanwhile, a phone rang toward the back of the restaurant. “Is there a Rokuhara here?” the proprietor asked, cradling the receiver in one hand. My brother-in-law stood up and took the phone from the man. I tried to eavesdrop but was unable to make out the details of the conversation. Less than ten seconds later, Rokuhara returned to the table, sat down, and began picking at his fish once again.
“Care to fill me in?” I asked.
“It was nothing noteworthy. One of the dam workers was in touch. Apparently, there’s been some sort of incident.”
“That sounds pretty noteworthy to me. How can you just sit there stuffing your face?”
Still making no effort to stand, Rokuhara poked at the tiny pickles on his plate, which may as well not have even been there.
“The most likely scenario is simply that the worker who went funny in the head has taken a turn for the worse. Hurrying isn’t going to make him better. You can’t unboil an egg.”
“But what if someone has died?”
“All the more reason not to panic. The dead can’t come back to life.”
Feeling like a fool, I went back to sipping my now-cold miso soup.
After paying, just as we were about to leave the restaurant, I heard the two old-timers speaking to each other again in low voices across their empty plates.
“You know, those weirdos showed up again.”
“Weirdos?”
“The ones who were always coming and going before that village became a dam. Some kind of cult or something, I don’t know. The ones who hand out those strange red ornaments.”
“You’ll never catch me joining something like that.”
I was hoping to hear more, but I accidentally made eye contact with one of the old-timers and awkwardly exited the restaurant instead.
A needle-fine mist was falling outside, the kind that’d have someone struggling to decide whether or not to open their umbrella.
“It’s about time! How far away did you two go to eat?!”
The guard, who now considered himself buddy-buddy with us, rushed to our side with his red baton in hand.
Rokuhara told him the name of the diner. “That’s just down the way!” the guard shouted, his eyes almost bugging out of his head. I felt like Rokuhara probably hadn’t needed to tell him where we had gone.
The guard was almost comically panicked, but when I saw that all the other workers were there as well, I realized this was probably no laughing matter. Several police cars glided into the parking lot, rain bouncing off their black and white hoods.
“What happened?”
“That worker we mentioned earlier, the one who went strange in the head. He escaped the hospital and came back here.”
Spittle flew from the corner of the guard’s mouth as he spoke. The policemen exited their vehicles and surged toward the control station in noisy droves.
“Did he cause a scene?”
“Yes, but that’s not the problem. First, he went wild, but then he headed to the elevator!”
Rokuhara furrowed his eyebrows. I could hear men shouting in surprise from the direction of the control station.
“What did he do after boarding the elevator? Did he go down to the bottom of the dam?”
“No, he was eaten first!”
Rokuhara and I exchanged glances. The image of the forlorn black shadow, standing at the bottom of the dam, quickly floated into my head. But I’d been under the impression that the god in the dam left people alone. Rokuhara and I hurried toward where all the commotion was.
It was hard to tell if the wild spray hitting us was from the rain or the discharge from the dam. We passed the control station and went through a rough concrete passageway leading to the dam’s interior, getting increasingly soaked as we progressed.
There were no immediate signs of people, but the dam was noisy and turbulent inside. A policeman pushed past us and hurried deeper in. The tumult grew louder the farther we went. Each time we passed through another section, voices echoed off the metal surfaces of the walls, which were like a spaceship covered in silver plates. I began to process what I was hearing, realizing how strange it was.
“I need to bring an empty milk carton for arts and crafts tomorrow.”
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?! We’ll have to get your father to pick something up on his way home from work.”
“You know, those shoelaces you gave me on my birthday fell apart almost immediately.”
“We should put on the winter tires your next day off. I think it’s going to snow.”
Small talk—the kind you might exchange at home, school, or maybe work—resounded within the space, mingling with the clamor and shouts of the policemen. But why would anyone be talking about stuff like that at a time like this? I came to a stop, colliding with a throng of people. The policemen were bellowing and shouting as they set up a line of yellow and black blockade tape.
“What in the…?” Rokuhara muttered.
That was when I caught sight of what was beyond the policemen’s shoulders. The cold, impersonal doors of the elevator had been flung wide, the overweight buzzer ringing nonstop. Several massive, overlapping bulges, like malignant tumors, had pushed the thick silver doors open from within. Like a carnivorous plant, plump and fruited, groaning incessantly, an angry red slit in the center of the doors. Mouths, mouths, mouths, mouths, mouths. The box was full of mouths, countless sprouting mouths, all of them warbling and chattering, mouths.
“Dad said to get blue, not pink, right?”
“Are you done with that manga you borrowed? I wanna lend it to a friend.”
“I’m starting to get old, you know. I thought I might leave your brother to care for the grave.”
“Hey, man, we’re going fishing tomorrow. Why don’t you join us? Or you could just come and get drinks with us later if you want.”
The tumors were so freakish, but the voices were so mundane—their words so utterly normal. As the tape was stretched across the elevator, the sea of mouths reacted, snapping their teeth in the air. Yellow teeth, wet with fresh blood.