by Fuyumi Ono
Ha, Seishin nodded.
"Through this and that they got together but with it being like that before the marriage, there was no way it could have gone well. Anyway, the fighting had never died out. Meiko-san and Seiichirou-san were both cold to Hinata-chan, and at those sorts of times Kou-chan would back his mother, and with losing a child on top of that, and Meiko-san and her husband blamed Hinata-chan for that, well, for Hinata-chan and Hinata-chan's parents, that was just a terrible story. She couldn't bear being blamed after she'd lost a child, even though it was a dangerous situation for the mother herself! When it came to talking about whether she'd return to her home family or not, well, even we advised Meiko-san on what to do. You can't have that happen, we said. And so this time it was Meiko-san and their turn to bow their heads and apologize, somehow bringing peace about, but as expected the fights didn't die out with that, did they?"
"Ah.... Is that right."
"In things like this, it's a husband's job to stand in the middle and somehow make things work out, but after all Kou-chan is a Mother-con or has an Oedipus complex is it called? He always had his own parent's back. So it looks like the fights with Hinata-chan never tapered out. Hinata-chan wasn't a bad girl but she wasn't the type who could stay quiet if there was something to be said. ---Well, I'd thought when I'f heard that Hinata-chan was gone that she'd returned to her home family at last too, but. Go to check with them, I'd said to even Kou-chan but Kou-chan and Meiko-san and her husband all said that if she wants to leave let her do what she wants. But, when these things happen, that isn't what you do, is it? If you're breaking up, break up properly, we tried to advice them. And so when they finally contacted her home family, the home family said she hadn't returned. It was her parents whose color went pale!"
Seishin blinked. "The parents from the other family were not aware of it?"
"That's right, they weren't! Her parents turned it around, asking what they were thinking not making contact until now, what would it come to if something happened to their daughter, with a fighting, threatening attitude. In the end, it was the other family who filed the missing person's report. Mieko-san and her group being them said they were sure it was probably a man, that she ran away with him without a doubt, and such outrageous things. But no, our own wife here talked with Hinata-chan a good amount yes? So that's why I can say this, but Hinata-chan was a more solid kid than you'd think, in spite of her all-out looks. She wasn't that kind of girl but when you first see her, her hair is red, and she dresses flashy so it's an easy mistake to make, that she was just playing around. That's, she did go out to Mizobe often, walking around until late at night it seems but with her husband's family being like that, she was returning to her home family to complain, meeting with girl friends to be comforted and the like. Mieko-san and them thought that she was playing out at night a lot, they were so sure that there was a man, though, yes?"
"...Is that so. "
As Seishin wondered what he did to deserve getting stuck listening to these endless family circumstances, Yukiko said: "And despite everything being like that, they said Hinata-chan called them."
"----Eh?"
"Like I said," Yukiko said as if convincing him to listen. "A call came from Hinata-chan, and they said they were going to live with her, you know. But, isn't that a bizarre story? If Hinata-chan came back, I'd understand that, don't you know. But living together, there's no way that could mean the San'Yasus moving, could it? Kou-chan had a job and all. Do you think there's any chance that Kou-chan would quit that job, that they'd abandon the mountains and their fields, to move into their wife's place?"
Seishin tilted his head.
It was impossible. Even taking the story with a grain of salt, she left due to so much antagonism---Even setting aside that it had been the same thing with Sakai-Matsu's son, he couldn't think that if the wife had called, the family wouldn't throw away their plots of land to go.
"That can't be, I said to them. Something like that, you can't expect me to believe it, I said. But you know? Mieko-san said that either way that's how it is, persistently. She was like... her eyes were glazed over. Like she was possessed, would you call it? She wouldn't say where she was going, what they were going to do. In the end, without saying where she was moving to, they moved away. And that's leaving behind their furniture and family goods. I saw the truck's loading tray after all. They really took the bare minimums. Packing up enough to barely call moving, they left their house in the night. I just find it so creepy I can't stand it!"
That was abnormal, Seishin thought. That move was strange no matter how he thought about it. He could only think that Mieko saying it was in order to live together with Hinako was a lie. Yet all the same, why would she have to tell such a life and leave the village? They had a house and land. They had jobs and lives. To cast all of that off into the wind, never mind that they quietly fled away, to go so far as to use such a transparent lie, why could the family absolutely have to pull out of the village so badly?
Yukiko breathed a sigh.
"And even still, my son's been saying some scary things, it feels so creepy."
"Scary things?"
Yes, Yukiko lowered her voice. "You don't think Hinata-chan's buried in the yard behind the house, do you, like."
It can't be, Seishin started to say when he realized he couldn't necessarily deny that. ---No, that wasn't it. It wasn't a matter of the probability not being the possibility. It was that there was a shadow from the undeniably ominous thoughts looming after the San'Yasu's move.
On the road home, Seishin couldn't help but become caught up in his thoughts. The problem was supposed to be a plague. Since summer, a continuing string of inexplicable deaths. That was supposed to be what Seishin was investigating. Certainly since summer the number of dead had not been normal. But all the same, thinking of Sakai-Matsu and San'Yasu, what was truly strange was not a matter of who was dead, he thought.
Something was advancing on the village. Wasn't the sickness but one part of that, was the impression he had. But, what was advancing? Incomplete moves and dead people, what significance was there that he was trying to say was between them----.
5
That day, Toshio received the phone call informing him of Gyouda Etsuko's death in the evening. When Toshio had rushed there, Etsuko was without a doubt dead, and a few hours had passed since she'd died. It seemed she had died while her husband Bungo was in the mountaints. Her dead face was calm and her clothes were undisturbed. Lethargic and her breath just stopped. Toshio mechanically wrote acute renal failure on the death certificate.
When handing over the death certificate, Toshio requested for Gyouda to allow him to take a blood sample from Etsuko but, as expected, Gyouda refused. Aside from not being able to do a blood test, he could only theorize but Etsuko had held out relatively well for her age. She was quick to visit the hospital, and with treatment for a bit its worsening had been abated. But---Toshio thought as he returned to the hospital where patients were working him to death. The problem was that the bunch from the village were hurrying into the hospital when there was no particular condition, while the ones who were really ill were avoiding the hospital. Unable to get past their own physical condition, they didn't want to go out, and while avoiding that they became unable to move about.
What to do, he could probably have the patients hospitalized right away; while worrying thusly, examination hours ended. Seishin came when he was drawing back to his own room glaring at medical charts.
"---How is it?" Seishin opened, speaking first.
Toshio answered carelessly that it was hopeless. "As expected, the premonitory symptom's anemia. There's a fever too, but not too high. From there in about three days it dramatically worsens. Deterioration of multiple organs, furthermore accompanied by light edema and mild jaundice, or possibly blisters and inflammation from a diminished immune mechanism. Since antibiotics don't work, it isn't bacteriogenous."
"Bacteriogenous?"
"Vancomycin do
esn't have any effect. I dare say it's probably not caused by a bacteria. At any rate, at the level where it's manifesting amnesia, with a full blood transfusion, it feels like there's some effect that keeps them alive longer. Characteristics outside of the anemia include blisters. In all cases festering traces of insect bites were found presenting near blood vessels. I think that confirms that there's an intermediary carrier but I can't concretely specify what it is. That's all the commonalities between the patients. Their physical health and characteristics, lifestyles and habits, circumstances, they're all unrelated. I can't think of it as contaminated water, soil, or food. It's not poison, it's an infectious disease. That much I can say for the time being is reality. ---And, on your end?"
Seishin opened the notebook. He passed over a copy folded within it to Toshio.
"A common point was, as usual, not found. As you can see. Also, ----I don't know whether this has any connection or not but...." Seishin hesitate to speak. Toshio, resting his chin in his hands, urged him to go on.
"Gigorou-san from Yamairi left and returned to the village when he was sick."
"You said that before too, last time," Toshio started to say, Seishin talking past him.
"Ohta Kenji, Hirosawa Takatoshi, Saeki Akira, Takashima Yasuo, Shimizu Gardening's Ryuuji-san, and Ohkawa's Shigeru-san, these six commuted to work outside of the village. And---Just before their death, suddenly, they retired from office."
Toshio titled his head. "What's that?"
"I'm saying, before they died they resigned without a word to their families. And furthermore, very, tremendously suddenly, quitting without a reason. In the case of Hirosawa's Takatoshi-san, he made as if he were going out to work and he was passing his time in the Pachinko parlor in Mizobe, where he collapsed."
"Funny story, isn't it..."
"Of the people who have died, there were six people who had commuted. Each of those resigned before they died. ....What do you think this is?"
Like I know? Toshio answered. "Just, if nothing else it's not connected to the disease. Those guys didn't have symptoms."
He tried to give a smile but Toshio himself wasn't satisfied with that dismissal. It might have been a coincidence but even so six people were six people, and all of them.
"Also, I know that this isn't related either but.... There are fewer people.. Have you noticed?"
"I know there're fewer."
"That's not what I mean. Not just from dying. There are a lot of move-outs. There are also many who it's unknown if they moved or died. They're also suddenly leaving the village. They're leaving the village as if running away into the night, without a word to their neighbors." Seishin said, presenting the copy of the memo. In withered characters were written 22 names, not in Seishin's hand writing, and at the end of that, this time in Seishin's writing, "Maruyasu (San'Yasu) * Naka-Sotoba" was added.
"The circumstances of the moves are strange, too." Saying this, Seishin talked about the examples of the Sakai-Matsu and San'Yasus. Toshio scowled. Indeed, these circumstances were bizarre. But, unless they realized the illness and fled, moves were unrelated.
"I received the certificates of residence from Ishida-san, too. By the way, from August until now, there haven't been any moving notices turned in to him."
"Not a one?"
"Not a one. Even Takami-san's family did not turn one in."
"That's a strange story too, another one."
Toshio gazed at the note but it didn't invite much of his interest. It obviously had no connection to the disease. No matter how many people there may have been moving out, that wasn't within Toshio's sphere of action."
"I've been hearing that Yuzuki-san from the library had quit or that the principal of the grade school had wanted to quit too. ....Do you not think that something is odd?"
"That" Toshio threw down the note. "is a weird story if you want me to call it weird but, but, that and this case aren't related."
Toshio looked serious as he nodded.
"I don't think it is. But it doesn't make sense! It feels like something is happening in the village. It feels like, somehow, the illness is a part of that something."
"It's your imagination," Toshio declared. Something like a faint irritation seized him.
"I've thought that may be the case. But, Sadaichi-san had noted this but look at that moving list. The people who came and went from Yamairi are cleanly, clearly gone now. The three living in Yamairi died, and the people who would have come and gone to Yamairi from any place else have done. With the people related to Yamairi gone, it really is settled. Doesn't Yamairi seem like a place of interest?"
Toshio breathed a sigh. "You can't just tie every little thing together."
"But."
"You're right that that was Yamairi and this is Yamairi too. You're right that there are a lot of people moving out too, and I'll even acknowledge that the circumstances are weird. ---But, what connection are you saying this has to the illness?"
"That's..." Seishin casted his eyes down.
"It must've been a royal pain to investigate all this this far. But, this has nothing to do with us. What we have to think about right now is that disease on our hands. It's building momentum, don't you get it?!"
"That's..."
"You've completely lost sight of the point of the investigation. We have to prove that the string of deaths is being caused by an epidemic. We have to confirm what kind of disease it is, to find a way to treat it. And yet here we are with its premonitory symptoms being hard to read, with it getting to the point where nothing can be done but the time the people around them notice it!" Toshio spit out. While saying it, he knew his own words were setting off his irritation. "We need medical cases. And yet the villagers aren't coming in to the doctor until it's gotten worse! They're counting on a lay person's judgement and folk remedies! As circumstances get worse and worse by the time they're brought in, and if there's no way to save them, I can't even track how it progresses! ---There's no doubt it's an epidemic. There's probably a carrier animal. That's all that we know. We can't even overlap the disease's consistencies. It's true I'm not an epidemiologst. Nor am I a researcher. I'm just an ordinary private practive doctor. There're limits to what I know, I won't deny that. But, I've still put my best into this. But, even if I research and research, I just keep thinking more and more that these symptoms shouldn't be happening. There's nothing wrong with blood formation or hematosis. There's nothing wrong with their bone marrow. We're not finding any internal bleeding. All that leaves is hemolysis but the hemolysis reaction's not happening. Anemia that shouldn't happen is happening. And it's getting violently worse. There're way, way too few medical cases. So it's nothing but a bunch where the mechanism that leads to their deaths don't even match up!"
Toshio smacked the mountain of clinical records.
"The essential patients don't come in until the sickness has gotten to the last stage. And yet the number of patients with pointless complaints of illness are increasing. How many patients do you think come in in one day lately?! Even the staff are mentally strained! They're tired!"
With his eyes still cast down, Seishin remained quiet.
"You think I give a damn about the bunch who leave here because they want to? You've wasted our time! On top of that, you even asked Sadaichi-san, you said?! What do you think Sadaichi-san's going to make of you sniffing around here and there?! Not just that, the bunch in this village aren't idiots! They're starting to notice something's up! If on top of that it gets around that the Junior Monk from the temple's asking around for information, isn't that going to fuel their uneasiness even more!"
The one who was depressed was taking on an explosive form. Seishin tried to say something but in the end he held his tongue. The sympathy he'd felt towards Toshio was visible there on his face. Seishin probably thought that Toshio was impatient and tired, making him irritable. And he'd be right, but right then that compassion laden gaze was rubbing on his nerves the wrong way.
"If you've got the t
ime to spare for all that, then take note of the faces of the people who come to the temple. Looking to see if people are sick, straining your ears to hear if people are talking like someone in their family has a cold would be who knows how many times more useful!"