I headed to work from Gotanda Station, got into the elevator from the front hall, and got off at the editors’ floor.
Until now, no matter how tired or exhausted I’d been when I arrived, I’d done most of my work automatically. But now if I didn’t carefully think about everything I was doing, the fear threatened to overwhelm me. Even the office I’d seen a million times before was starting to feel like another world.
I got out of the elevator, took a deep breath to slow my heart rate, and entered the editorial department.
“Good evening!” I said, in a louder voice than I really needed to.
But nobody answered. I looked around and saw that none of my co-workers were sitting at their desks. Had everybody gone home at the end of the work day? There were still several days before the final deadline for the magazine, but it was rare to have absolutely nobody here.
Just—
“I see... Nobody’s here, huh?” I felt a little relieved to realize it. “Ascension... Maybe I’m a little weaker than I thought.” Not that it really mattered at this point.
Yesterday, I’d gone to Daiseiji and seen my own corpse. I’d seen my own dead body with my own two eyes. It was hard, just like I thought it would be. My job was working with the occult, and I’d always been able to sense ‘ghosts’ nearby me, so I thought that would give me some strength against it.
“I guess I’m in no position to laugh at Gamon, huh?” When I was with him and the other kids, I’d been trying my best to stay calm because I was older. But I’d actually been as scared as them.
I headed to my desk and sat down in the beat-up chair, then sighed and stretched out my legs. And then I saw a paper bag under the desk. “Isn’t this...”
Inside the bag were about twenty books. They were the ones that I’d borrowed after Dr. Hashigami had recommended them to me.
“Doctor... I’m sorry I never got to give them back to you.” I thought of the man whose face I would never see and whose voice I would never hear, and put my hands together.
What would I do with these? I was... dead now. But I needed to give them back to Dr. Hashigami’s family. Maybe I’d give them to Sarai.
“But I doubt he’d really appreciate it...” What should I do with them?
Wait, didn’t I have more important problems to deal with? Why was I wasting my mental energy on this stuff? I sighed again just as I heard a voice out in the hall.
“Yes... Yes, everything’s going according to plan. It’s fine. Yes... I’m very grateful to the Hachifukushin Circle... The money’s coming in fine... Yes... Yes...” The editor-in-chief came into the room, his phone pressed to his ear.
I stood up without thinking. I’d been caught off guard, and I’d tensed up. Would he be able to see me? Or...
I steeled myself and waved once I was sure I was in his field of vision. When I’d done this before, he’d always glance at me quickly and then wave back. But...
He didn’t even look at me as he went straight to his seat.
“S-Sir!” I yelled. My voice echoed throughout the small room. Or at least, it should have. But the editor-in-chief didn’t respond at all. Normally, even if you wanted to ignore someone, a loud yell like that would startle you. “He can’t... hear me.”
Thinking back, that morning when the bodies had been pulled out of Inokashira Lake, something had seemed wrong when I’d talked to the editor-in-chief and the rest of my co-workers as we watched the news.
So that was it. They couldn’t see or hear me.
“Ascension, right?” Suddenly I felt dizzy. I grabbed my desk to keep from falling to the floor. It was no good. If I stayed here any longer, the reality of the situation was going to crush me. I went to stagger out of the room.
“Yes... Dr. Hashigami’s essay... at some point... as planned...”
Did he just say Dr. Hashigami? The editor-in-chief was still talking to someone on the phone. He sounded very serious, and his voice was a whisper even though nobody else was here.
What was this feeling? My sense of smell as a Mumuu reporter was picking up something. I turned around and went back to his desk.
“Yes... Alright... Thank you. Goodbye.” He bowed his head several times and finally hung up the phone. He put away his phone and stretched out his limbs. He seemed annoyed. “Sigh... Those people are just obnoxious. They do pay pretty well, though.”
He didn’t even notice that I was right in front of him. His eyes were turned towards the laptop on his desk.
I walked around behind him without the slightest fear of being discovered and looked at the computer screen. “Ascension!”
The screen was showing an essay by Dr. Hashigami. It was a scanned PDF with his personal signature on the front page.
It was dated... February 11th?
“What is this?”
I’d never seen it before. I’d been in charge of checking all of the essays that Dr. Hashigami wrote for Mumuu. So how was there one I’d never seen before? And from the 11th of February...
“That’s the day he went missing!”
That would mean this was his last essay! Why did the editor-in-chief have this? The title of the essay on the monitor was...
“Time and the Spiritualizing World”