Right from the start, though, Sayuri couldn’t get in.
In a rather cheeky move, it was locked. The door didn’t move an inch when she pulled on it; neither pushing nor pulling worked. There were no other entrances, either, so Sayuri had no choice but to give up on the idea. There was a window, but that was locked tight, too; and there wasn’t any pressing reason to break the window or put a hole in a wall or anything.
Thinking about it, it was natural that the shed was locked, but Sayuri was still a little disappointed. But, she did find something interesting. Peeking into the shack from the window, she found something that should not exist in this town.
Why is that thing here? she wondered. In this small shack? There were several possibilities she could think of, but Sayuri wanted to deny all of them if she could.
Inside the shack were countless Idol goods: posters; fans; collectable photos. There were also telephone cards that actually seemed nostalgic now, as well as DVDs, Blu-rays, and even VHS and cassette tapes that were rare for this age. It was dark, so she couldn’t make out what was on the DVDs’ packaging and labels, though.
Sayuri shivered. She felt the need to throw up.
There were enough large posters to completely cover the walls and ceiling. The half-open closet had reproductions of Idol costumes inside. All of them were familiar to Sayuri— there was no way she would mistake them.
The shack also had a high quality TV and some other device, possibly for playing music, inside. They were all recent models— at the very least, there had been someone living here for the past few years, surrounded by idol goods.
“Hanemori Joururi,” Sayuri read. All the idols featured on the posters were the same person.
Hanemori Joururi. That room was packed full with a large amount of her related goods. “She should be dead,” Sayuri said to herself.
The next thing she knew, Sayuri had already returned to the cabin that was her home. It seems she didn’t forget her machine, and even managed to finish her job of doing the fixed-point observations, but she had no memory of doing so. It was like her body had been doing the job it was already so used to on its own, while she was half asleep.
But her thoughts were still on what was inside the shack in that cave— although Sayuri was already starting to think it was just a hallucination. Sayuri kept thinking, even though she felt like her head was gently coming to a boil. What the hell was that? Was I daydreaming? Sayuri really wanted that to be so. She didn’t want to remember the name “Hanemori Joururi,” after all this time.
“Mother.” Standing in a small field in front of their cabin, her daughter turned around. “Welcome back. ...Did something happen?” The girl tilted her head slightly.
Saying, “I’m back” reflexively, Sayuri surprised even herself with how relieved she felt when she did that. She had returned to her daily life, and there was relief there. The cabin, her life here, and her daughter had become where Sayuri belonged, even more than she thought it had.
“Mother, you’re sweating a lot.” The daughter was suspicious of her mother, who was acting strangely. Smiling to reassure her that there was nothing wrong, Sayuri was overcome with love for her daughter, and stepped towards her.
The small field next to their cabin was a kitchen garden meant to raise simple vegetables; recently, her daughter was the one managing it. It was better than her just spacing out in the house and doing nothing, so Sayuri let her do what she wanted. Her daughter didn’t read, and there was nothing else for entertainment, like a working TV, in their house...Sayuri was a little worried for her daughter, who lacked any hobbies. If she was interested in growing vegetables, Sayuri would teach her, and eventually have her help with the farm work.
Sayuri fantasized a little about such a happy future. “I’ll go make dinner right away,” she said. “Is there anything you want to eat?” Speaking with her daughter lightheartedly as she approached, Sayuri was startled: she heard music. It was music she wasn’t used to. The song had an uptempo melody, and a warped, dissonant sound leapt up at her.
Sayuri couldn’t make out the lyrics, but apparently this was a song, and it sounded like it was echoing from somewhere far away. Like some sort of siren, it was the kind of repeating sound that makes you strangely uneasy. For a second, Sayuri thought it was her daughter singing, but that wasn’t the case. The girl was looking up at Sayuri, puzzled, without opening her mouth. She was on her knees in the tilled field, and looked like a scarecrow that had been thrown away. Her hand moved strangely, and that movement produced a sound.
“What...what’s this sound...? What are you doing?” Sayuri thought that her daughter had somehow gotten her hands on something that could play music, and that she was currently using it. Sayuri had no recollection of getting her something like that, though— did she borrow it from a friend, or something?
Unlike these deep mountains, the nearby town was overflowing with music. Her daughter had probably taken some of that music back to the cabin to listen to. At least, that’s what Sayuri thought— apparently, she was wrong. Once again, Sayuri shivered.
In front of her daughter was a familiar CRT TV. It had been placed on a pile of unused and rusted farming tools that were arranged to look like an altar of sorts. In the dimming light of dusk, the pile of farming tools looked like a person’s shadow for just a moment: it was a grotesque figure, with a TV for a head.
Looking at it calmly, it was just a pile of oversized garbage though. You can take the screen off of this TV. And in the hollow inside, there was a bird’s nest. Sayuri had forgotten that she already knew that. Her daughter had taken this useless TV and adorned it here, like a precious treasure.