I understand only a fraction of Souta’s matter-of-fact explanation. But his words bring back a memory of the Keystone when I first saw it. The empty ruins in summer, the frigid pool of water, the lonely stone statue… When I touched it, I felt like it was talking to me. Maybe I was hearing the joy of a cat, bored with its centuries-long task, who had just found a playmate. For some reason, that idea seems to mesh perfectly with what Souta is telling me.
“The Keystone that was in Kyushu is currently running around in the form of a cat, right?” he says, as if he can read my mind.
“Um, yeah.”
“As for the other one…”
He gestures with his leg for me to turn the page. There’s a familiar map of modern Japan labeled “Meiji 34.” That would be 1901. Souta points to a spot on the map. A stone monument shaped like a sword stands in the Kanto region.
“Tokyo…?!”
“Yes, it’s still holding down the head of the worm there. What I want to know is the exact location. Where in Tokyo is the Keystone? As far as I can remember, it’s not written down anywhere, and no one would tell me. But the answer might be in one of these books.”
I turn the pages as he directs. When we finish one book, I open the next. He fluidly scans over cursive I can’t begin to decipher. As he reads, his voice darkens. “They say the location of the Keystone in Tokyo is the site of an enormous Gate. Once, a hundred years ago, it opened and unleashed a massive disaster across Kanto that went on until the Closers of that time shut it. I suspect…”
His voice drops even lower.
“…I suspect Daijin may be trying to open the door again. If that cat is amusing itself by giving us the runaround, we need to get to the door before it does and stop that from happening.”
The constant drone of airplanes comes in through the window along with the breeze. I’m surprised by how many there are. Between the roars of jet engines comes the growl of motorcycles, the wail of ambulances, the tap-tap-tap of futons being beaten clean, the shouts of kids playing on their way home from school, and the distant clatter of a train. Birds are chirping, and not far away, two people are chatting. Someone is vacuuming. The low, layered hum of tens of thousands of cars never stops. I think again about the enormous number of lives playing out in this place. I have a hard time imagining an old stone statue or monument standing silently somewhere in this gargantuan city. The books I’m flipping through change from string-bound manuscripts to old university notebooks. Now the characters are written with a fountain pen, but the handwriting continues to change. The one we’re looking at currently seems to be a diary from around the twenties, but I can still barely read the beautiful mix of kanji and katakana script.
“Dammit,” Souta sighs when we’ve finished going through all the books. “I think that diary had the information I’m looking for, but the key words are blacked out…”
Sure enough, I notice several redacted words in the diary I have open. Thinking I might be able to help, I squint at the page. Before and after the patches of black, I can read the phrases “September 1, Saturday, sunny,” “Messenger from the man on duty in early morning,” “8 AM,” and “God benearth the earth appears.”
“…I see!” I say.
“You figured it out?” Souta asks in surprise.
“No, sorry, I just wanted to say that.”
He smiles wryly. “…I suppose we’ll have to ask my grandfather.”
“What?”
“My grandfather’s teacher wrote that diary.”
“Your grandfather?”
“Yes. He raised me. He’s at a hospital near here.” He looks back at the book, then says quietly, “I didn’t want to disappoint him by showing up looking like this…”
His hunched back makes him look exhausted. So his grandfather is a Closer, too. We should have gone to see him in the first place! I’d think a grandfather would be worried about his grandson, not disappointed. Maybe he can help us. Or is there some reason why that’s not possible?
Suddenly, there’s a loud knock on the door, and I yelp reflexively.
“Hey, Souta, you in there? I think you are!” a man’s voice says. He keeps battering the thin wooden door. I look at Souta. The chair is looking at the door with a poker face, apparently unflustered.
“I saw the open window! So you’re back? Hey, Souta!”
Bang, bang!
“Serizawa… I swear, now of all times,” Souta mutters.
“…Who?”
“A friend. Can you make up some excuse?”
“Are you kidding?!”
Souta is clattering off toward the wall. Serizawa continues knocking rudely on the door.
“Hey, Souta! Can I come in?”
“Argh!”
“I can hear you in there!”
Bang, bang! I glance at Souta for salvation, but he just says, “He’s not a bad guy,” and leans against the wall. Bang, bang!
What do I do?!
The door clicks open. The man standing at the entrance has a mullet bleached almost blond and a red satin shirt unbuttoned at the chest, like a gangster.
“Um, hi,” I say, bowing pertly.
“Whoa!” Serizawa looks at me in shock. I’ll have to think on my feet. “Who are you?!”
“Um, Souta’s little sister!”
“He has a little sister?”
“Um, I’m his…cousin who’s just like a sister!”
“Seriously?”
He narrows his cold eyes behind a fashionable pair of round glasses. Eek!
“Um, you’re Serizawa, right?”
“You know my name?”
“Souta has mentioned you.”
The dagger-like glare behind his glasses softens considerably.
“A teaching certification test?” I say, echoing Serizawa’s words. I’m having a hard time believing them.
He’s standing in front of the bookcase, his back to me.
“Yeah,” he continues grumpily. “Yesterday was the second round, but he didn’t show up. That’s not like him.”
“The test was yesterday? Really?!”
I glance at Souta standing against the wall. He won’t look me in the eye. He sits there, soaking up the afternoon sun and maintaining his act.
“What an idiot. Four years of work, up in flames.”
Serizawa sounds exasperated. He’s looking at the rows of reference books on the shelf. Acing Your Teacher Employment Exam, So You Want to Be a Teacher, Real Questions from Tokyo Teacher Exams, Mastering the Elementary Subjects with Ease. Sandwiched between the faded spines of used books, these titles stand out, bright and new.
“I was so worried when he didn’t show up, I couldn’t focus on my own test.”
He sweeps his long locks irritably off his forehead and glares over his shoulder at me.
“What did you say your name was? Suzume?”
I shrink back. He’s got a really nasty stare.
“Tell Souta never to show his ugly mug around me again. He’s really pissed me off.”
“Uh…”
“Oh, wait…,” he says, glancing away like he’s just remembered something. “I lent him twenty thousand yen,” he mumbles, then glares at me again. “Tell him to return it, pronto.”
“Huh…?”
“He said his family business was in trouble,” Serizawa mutters, sticking his thumbs in the pockets of his black skinny jeans and walking toward the door. “That guy needs to learn to take care of himself… Dammit… Can’t even text when he’s in trouble? What is he, a kid? I swear, no common sense…”
Serizawa is putting his shoes back on like he’s done here, and done with me. I trot over to the entryway. He pulls on his pointy-toed shoes and opens the door.
“Later,” he says with a cursory glance at my flustered face.
He walks out the door. Just then, the phone in my pocket buzzes.
“Shit!” he says and stops walking. His phone is buzzing, too, with that dissonant sound. He takes his phone out of his pants pocket and looks at the screen.
“An earthquake warning. Wonder if we’ll feel it.”
I put my shoes on silently and slip past him out of the room. He says something I can’t hear, but I don’t have time to answer. I lean over the railing in the common hallway and look out at the city.
“It stopped,” he says. Our phones are silent. “Hey, you okay?” he asks, peering into my face.
“…It’s close,” I blurt out, ignoring his question. Much closer than I expected. Beyond the rows of houses and multiuse buildings, maybe two or three hundred meters away, a reddish-black column rises. Writhing slowly in the gaps of sky between buildings, that muddy river is like an enormous, meaningless sculpture hurled into the middle of the urban space. Flocks of crows circle the worm, cawing.
“Shit, that’s a lot of birds!” Serizawa says next to me. “They’re near the Kanda River. I wonder if something’s in the water.”
He can’t see—not the part that matters. I notice a clattering sound.
“Let’s go,” Souta whispers sharply, suddenly at my feet. I lift him up and take off running.
“Hey, wait, where are you going?!” Serizawa shouts after me. I don’t look back. As I race down the apartment stairs, I think, A teacher certification exam? But—
But Souta didn’t say a word to me about anything like that.