Shiki: Volume 2

by Fuyumi Ono

"Takasago Moving?"

  Yes, Ritsuko nodded. "It's a strange symbol isn't it, that. Is it possible that they're movers who only work at night, I wonder." Saying that, Ritsuko seemed to laugh at her own words. "....That can't be, there's no such thing."

  Hasegawa and Tashiro, even while laughing exchange bewilgered glances. Here you are, said Hasegawa, serving up a salad.

  "This place is somewhat strange, this village. Whether it be strange moves or strange outsiders." Saying that, Hasegawa wore a wry smile as if remembering that he himself was an outsider.

  "Come to think of it, Kanemasa moved in in the middle of the night, too. Is it becoming a fad, I wonder?"

  "It couldn't be. ...And on top of that, the deaths keep coming. Shimizu-san's place's Megumi-chan and Takami-san, in succession, aren't they? Hirosawa-san was saying that the mourning crew's work kept coming."

  Without thinking, Ritsuko found herself staring back at Hasegawa. For a moment, she had thought Hasegawa had said it like it was a joke. But Hasegawa's face that she stared into was quite serious. It really did feel unease. ----But.

  As if remembering something in looking at Ritsuko's face, Hasegawa waved his hand. "Aa, right, right. Yamairi, you know. In Yamairi, the elderly died, didn't they."

  Ritsuko swallowed a breath. Those weren't the only ones who died. Hasegawa didn't know. It was understandable, if you didn't know them, you wouldn't receive notice of their death. So not knowing about Gotouda Shuuji or his mother Fuki's death was natural, and not knowing abuot Yasumori Giichi or Yasumori Nao's deaths might have been as much of a given as given could be. It might have been overheard somewhere but it wouldn't stick in one's memory, likely.

  (That's not all.)

  Without thinking, a taste developed in Ritsuko's mouth. Gotouda Shuuji, Fuki, Yasumori Giichi, Nao, the three in Yamairi and Megumi, plus Takami made for a sum of nine people. That number was abnormal.

  --But, even Ritsuko who thought as much didn't by any means know the true count.

  4

  Toshio was awakened by the phone. Eyes open, he didn't have the resolve to get up out of the bed. An early morning phone call was a death notice. That was what Toshio learned this summer.

  "---Yes?"

  When he answered, what was in the back of Toshio's mind was not 'Something happened, didn't it?' but instead 'Someone died, didn't they?'

  On the 29th he heard that Ohta Kenji died from Seishin. The next day, on the 30th, Takami's death notice came in. After that, the day before yesterday, the 5th, he had just been contacted by Ishida saying that on the 4th Saeki Akira in Sotoba died.

  "This is Yasumori, the contractors."

  The one on the other end of the phone was the contractor's Setsuko. Then, somebody caught it from Nao, Toshio thought. What's happened, he asked, but this was nothing more than an empty sound put out into the conversation to convey that he understood.

  "Susumu---something is wrong with my grandson. He's limp, even if we shake him his eyes won't open. He's blue..."

  "I'll be right there. In the mean time, call an ambulance."

  Hanging up the phone on Setsuko's tear-mingled voice saying 'yes' Toshio got dressed. When he rushed out of the house and sped by car to the contractor's firm, Susumu was still breathing.

  His breath was shallow and fast. Rather than being short of breath, it was clear he was hyperventilating. In the middle of treating him his breath stopped. Acidosis from hyperventilation, probably. When Toshio confirmed that his heart had stopped, the ambulance finally arrived.

  "His heart's stopped. Just now, hurry!" he instructed to the ambulance crew. She must have heard that, as Setsuko's voice cried out in a loud wail.

  "Susumu---is he dead?" Yasumori Tokujiro clung to him with a shaking hand.

  "It isn't impossible for him to be resuscitated yet." While answering, Toshio's brows furrowed. Setsuko and Tokujirou were in a frenzy over their grandson. His all important father himself, Mikiyasu, watched over that with oddly glazed eyes. He didn't seem to be dismayed in the slightest.

  "Mikiyasu, you all right?"

  Leaving Susumu to the ambulance crew, Toshio went to Mikiyasu's side. Losing his wife and his child in the course of one summer---he was a man who was losing everything. But, Mikiyasu's expression showed no change. A vacant, absent-minded stare leveled over his son.

  "Mikiyasu, ---oi."

  As if trying to convey something, Mikiyasu nodded.

  "You, how're you feeling?"

  Mikiyasu nodded mechanically, then, as if suddenly remembering to do so, murmured.

  "Is Susumu, dead, Toshio-san?"

  While hesitant to answer with yes or to answer with no, Toshio peered at Mikiyasu's face. The strange look in his eyes must have been because of the blued nature of the whites of his eyes. Looking at him up close, his breath was shallow. Taking his pulse, it was clear he had tachycardia.

  "Mikiyasu."

  "Toshio-san, last night, like..." Mikiyasu's mouth faintly frowned, his eyes still vacant. "Susumu talked in his sleep. Mama, he said." He murmured in a disinterested voice. "Then he woke up. Those.... were the last words I'll hear from Susumu, I guess..."

  Toshio gripped Mikiyasu's hand. His fingertips were cold. His arm in his lap had nodes here and there on them that looked the same as Nao's.

  "Wait a sec," Toshio turned back, calling to stop the ambulance personnel carrying Susumu out. "Him too. Take this guy to the National Hospital."

  Tokujirou and Setsuko who were following Susume out stopped and turned.

  "Junior Doctor---"

  "I don't know the details but tell them out there that he has aplastic anemia or acute leukemia."

  The EMS crew looked at each other in surprise and brought in the stretcher. In the mean time, Toshio took out a syringe.

  "Mikiyasu, put out your arm."

  As if he weren't the first to be doing this, the left arm with the tourniquet already had nodes over the veins. Avoiding those he stabbed the needle in and withdrew a peripheral blood sample.

  "Junior Doctor, is Mikiyasu---"

  Toshio looked into Tokujirou's panicked face.

  "It's not confirmed or anything. It's just in a worst case scenario, that might be the case."

  "But..."

  "It's just a precaution. ---Now, go with Susumu-kun and Mikiyasu."

  Toshio took the peripheral blood sample back and sent out half of it to the Yajima Health Institute for testing, affixing a label to it and storing it safely. The other half he took towards the examination room. His hematocrit values were down, hemoglobin concentration decreased, clearly anemia, but by looking at the smear sample, the erythrocyte count was high.

  "...It's that."

  "---Susumu-kun? The contractor's boy?"

  While changing into her nurse's uniform, Yasuyo's eyes were wide. Ritsuko nodded.

  "It seems like it was this morning. Mikiyasu-san appeared to be sick too, so he was transported to the National Hospital in Mizobe."

  I see, said Yasuyo, in a low voice mixed with a sigh she couldn't help. Nagata Kiyomi let out a deep sigh as she affixed her nurse's cap in her hair.

  "...The poor things. But, this is shaping up to be the real thing."

  "It sure is," Yasuyu nodded. "The wife, the son, and the husband in a row. It's an epidemic."

  Kiyomi nodded. "It's been on my mind for a while, so I'd been turning books inside out, but I can't figure out what it is. No matter how you look at it, it seems suspicious, but each one I've looked at seems different from this one."

  "We aren't doctors, after all. ... ...But, it doesn't show many symptoms, does it?"

  Yasuyo who answered looked as if she too had researched and researched with no results.

  "I wonder if we'll be all right?"

  To Ritsuko's question, Yasuyo gave an utterly uninvolved seeming smile.

  "It's no use the bunch of us getting worried. The Junior Doctor is well aware. We'll be fine if we just work as the Junior Doctor says. That's our job, after all! .... But
, well, I hope nothing terrible happens, still."

  "I hope we can keep it under control," Kiyomi said once again with a sigh. "If we don't handle this well, it's going to get even busier, ... from here on."

  "I'm not grateful for it, but that's the job so it can't be helped. If there are patients, we follow the doctor's orders, that's our duty. If the doctor feels like he's managing somehow, then we can't very well say that it's too mysterious and we don't know so we're running away, now can we?"

  That's true, Kiyomi smiled. Ritsuko, too, somehow managed a smile. They were the nurses with seniority, so that they were so firm was reassuring. They were firm in what they must do, enough so to brag about it.

  "I'm sorry. I just became a little panicked."

  Yasuyo gave a carefree smile. "That's bound to happen. Well, just be sure to eat well and keep up your strength. If you don't take care of yourself, you'll lose this test of strength!"

  "I wonder if we might lose weight?"

  At Kiyomi's interruption, Yasuyo gave a hearty laugh.

  "Well, that would be a plus. ---But, while we might become shapely, Ricchan would probably just become a stick."

  Ritsuko smiled. "Surely if that happens, the doctor will become nothing but a shadow."

  "Without a doubt!"

  Laughing, Ritsuko came out of the locker room towards the break room. That was when the part timer Miki called out to stop her. Behind Miki, Fujou lingered looking unease.

  "Uhm, say, Ricchan, we had heard that the contractor's boy had died, but."

  "It seems like he did, didn't he."

  "I wonder if things are all right. ... I mean, doesn't it seem like we keep hearing about all these deaths?"

  Fujou seconded her, flustered. "I wonder if some terrible disease isn't spreading. We have a small grand child at my house, too..."

  Ritsuko smiled. "I think that the doctor is aware of what is happening. If you can't help worrying, then perhaps we should try consulting the doctor about it?"

  "Ah, ... that's right."

  Miki murmured, turning back towards Fujou. Fujou nodded but did not seem satisfied.

  "If you would like, I could convey to him that Miki-san and the others are worried for you."

  "If you would be such a dear."

  Miki and Fujou bowed their heads to her.

  "The doctor has not said anything yet, but just in case, please be careful when taking out the medical waste."

  The two nodded as if clinging to her words.

  5

  Seishin lit the fire in the lamp. The dark light shone over the inside of the abandoned church building.

  The old style oil lamp was something that had been left behind here. Not just the lamp, the personal items belonging to the recluse who had formerly lived inside the church were all left behind. Clothing smeared in dust and mouse droppings, books rotting with mold, everything that had come to comfort him for use in his daily life.

  The reason Seishin had originally started coming here was because of these things, because Seishin enjoyed reading over the things offered up by the person who dedicated himself here to living out his own individualistic faith in this sanctuary. He would chip at them uniformly, though he couldn't follow any chain of reasoning that would really give a gap into a single certain personality, but he sought out the meaning behind each and every article, taking great interest in the task of seeking out whether one item would reveal the meaning to another and tie something together.

  Books on black magic and curses, another was a book on history, a dubious religious pamphlet. Mixed in with those were physics and biology books, and mixed in with those were guileless moral stories aimed and children.

  He didn't know what he was thinking amassing this collection of books. Just---thought Seishin. There was no doubt that he admired martyrs. He wanted to be a martyr to something and yet what to actually become a martyr for, he himself may not have even known. He had been here always, searching for a divinity to which to devote himself. If that wasn't the case, then he may have been seeking the words to express the personal god he had found through his own intuition.

  He was drug out of here and brought back, and, he thought, he probably couldn't find what he was looking for there. When he had first discovered this place, he had sought out information on the person who had lived in Kanemasa but in the chaos after the war he had gone missing and today still what had become of him after that remained unknown. If he had found the divinity which he was meant to serve, he wanted to know about it, he thought.

  While thinking on that, he opened a spotted book, when he'd heard a soft clattering sound. In the light of the lamp, he turned his gaze towards the entrance where the sound had been made, seeing Sunako's face peeking in.

  "---Muroi-san?"

  Seishin closed the book, surprised. Sunako came towards the bench with a light stepped gait.

  "I had seen the light and thought that it might have been you. I could see from the window of my house."

  "Ah, .... I see."

  "Do you remember your promise? I have brought the book. I wonder if I could have you sign it for me?"

  Seishin nodded and took in hand the book Sunako had brought out. It was the second book Seishin had published. It was still a well bound book, but this book shouldn't have been in circulation any longer. Had it been treated with so much care? Opening the book, he signed the flyleaf page. It was something of a rarity but the people of the parish had often asked for his signature, though lately they did not. He found himself a little self-conscious.

  "Thank you. I'll treasure it."

  The lamp light shone over the happily smiling little girl's face.

  After meeting last time, he'd tried researching about SLE. Systemic lupus erythematosus. In Japan it was classified as a collagen disease but more precisely it was a type of connective tissue disease. That said, Seishin couldn't imagine very concretely what kind of connective tissue it was. There were many young women with it, as most of the patients inflicted were female. It seemed it was something that could be passed down through the family but it seemed it wasn't clear if it was genetic or not. The primary symptoms were characteristic red spots on the skin and joint pain for this illness but it afflicted the entire body. A particular problem was decreased kidney function and decreased cardio-pulmionary function. There was full body weakness and a tendency towards infection, and lesions in the brain and nervous system could also happen. They were sensitive to ultraviolet rays, which could lead to an outbreak, which could lead to serious illness, kidney decline and cardio-pulmionary decline leading to uremia, valvular diseases, and inflammation of the pericardium, which could become life threatening. Abnormalities in the immunte system was the designated cause but what caused the outbreaks was unclear, and there was no set medical treatment. Forced to battle the illness all throughout one's life, because returning to society or work was difficult, it was designated as an incurable disease.

  Maybe it was because he knew that, maybe it was because of the unsteady light of the lamp, a melancholy shadow seemed to settle over the little girl's face.

  "Your complexion looks poor."

  "Does it? ---I suppose it may. For a while I was bedridden."

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm already quite used to it."

  The little girl faintly shrugged her shoulders. Her pale white skin looked sickly but there were no signs of the characteristic red spots. It seemed the primary medical treatment for SLE was steroids, and taking doses of it for a long time could have severe side effects but for the time being Sunako didn't have the well known side effect characteristics of a full moon face or a the outward appearance of a buffalo. Aside from a poor complexion, she looked quite healthy. He wrote that off as being how it looked to a layman's eyes.

  But, Seishin thought. Sunako's life was hanging upon a delicate balance. Yes, life was fragile, more so than people believed. Yasumori Susumu had died. It was possible that Mikiyasu, too, would not come back alive.

 
(Mikiyasu... ...)

  Four years younger, he lived nearby. The temple and the Yasumoris had a deep connection. When they were smaller, they often played together. You could even call him a childhood friend.

  That summer, many villagers died. There were those he knew and those he did not. But as for somebody like Mikiyasu, it was the first time someone he felt a co-ownership with had fallen. If it was that, then Mikiyasu wouldn't be saved. The last time they met would be at Nao's funeral, then? It was possible that he would never see Mikiyasu alive again. The next time they met, Mikiyasu would be an empty shell, and he would be the ones performing the last rites over that Mikiyasu's empty shell.