Leafless trees shook and shuddered, battered by the wind coming down from above.
Several helicopters circled in the sky, their rotors loudly beating against the air.
The motors of heavy equipment groaned.
Dozens of men yelled to each other as they dredged the lake.
In the distance, there were ambulance sirens.
It all overlapped into a giant, obnoxious wall of sound.
All the noise was coming from Inokashira Park.
No, the whole town of Kichijoji had been noisy and on edge today. There was a strange sense of excitement and oppression that you could see on the faces of the people on the streets.
Inokashira Park was normally a place for the locals to relax, but now it was blocked off by police tape and torn apart by construction equipment.
A power shovel was parked as close as it could possibly get to the lake, its arm sticking into the water.
There were dozens of men around it, all wearing work clothes.
The lake itself was filled with men on rubber boats dredging the water.
Even people who had lived here for years had never seen anything like this.
Every year at about this time, the city of Musashino would dredge up all the trash from Inokashira Lake, but this year it was different.
The power shovel slowly raised its scoop from the water’s depths.
It pulled up what looked like lumpy bags of garbage and added them to the pile forming around the lake.
Inokashira Lake was ringed with a mountain of garbage.
There was far more garbage than usual this year.
It was garbage thrown out by a small number arrogant, ill-mannered men.
Garbage created by the unethical and selfish.
Sad garbage.
The garbage of society.
Garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage...
But it wasn’t just garbage. It was dead bodies.