by Mariko Koike
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. The windows still refused to open, and whenever anyone went downstairs to check the lobby door, they found it tightly closed. The people at the moving company were probably waiting impatiently for the truck to return, perhaps assuming that the crew had decided to freelance by taking on another job after they finished with the Kanos’ move. Or maybe they’d already begun calling around, following up on hunches about where the crew might have gone. At some point, perhaps they might send someone to the Kanos’ new address. When they discovered that not a single stick of furniture had been delivered there, they might think it was odd and swing by the Central Plaza Mansion to investigate.
That’s a nice fantasy, but even if it came true nothing would change, Misao thought. If more people from the outside world show up here—colleagues of the missing workers, or someone from this building’s management company, or postal carriers, or people from Teppei’s office, or whoever—the same thing will just keep happening, over and over again. The new arrivals will go up in smoke, and their cars and trucks will vanish into thin air, as well …
If enough missing-person reports came in, the police might eventually dispatch some officers to check out the building, but perhaps they would find the door locked and conclude that everyone had simply moved away. No, on second thought, they would never get that far. If any members of the police force did turn up they would simply be zapped like all the other visitors, reduced to a cloud of steam before they even reached the door.
Teppei went back into the living room and stood in front of Tatsuji and Naomi. “I need you to listen to me,” he said gravely. “The power’s gone off for some reason, and—”
“Oh, no wonder it seems so much hotter than before,” Naomi interrupted, glancing listlessly up at the wall-mounted air conditioner.
“Anyway,” Teppei went on, “even if we can manage to cope with the heat by leaving the front door open or going up to the roof to get some fresh air, the food supply is actually a more pressing concern. I think it would be a good idea to make a comprehensive inventory and list all the food we have right now.”
Tatsuji met his brother’s eyes. “Make a list? What is this, fun and games on a camping trip?”
“Look, we need to agree to get serious and adopt a siege mentality from now on, because we’re going to be fighting for our lives. The food is the fuel to keep us going, so we have to be careful to make the most of what’s on hand.”
“I have, like, zero appetite,” Naomi muttered. “You can all go ahead and eat everything without me. I really don’t care.”
“Okay, listen,” Teppei said, taking a deep breath. “We need to find a solution by tomorrow at the latest. We don’t have enough supplies to keep going very long beyond that, so there’s no time to spare. Rather than sitting around hoping to be rescued, we need to try every possible way of getting out of here, and saving ourselves. To do that, we’ll need energy, and to generate energy we need to eat. The fact is, our food supplies are already dangerously low.”
“So now you’re saying that we’re going to starve to death? Whoa, the good news just keeps on coming,” Tatsuji guffawed. “Speaking of news, I can see the headline now: ‘Family Dies of Starvation After Becoming Trapped in High-Class Apartment Building Right in the Center of Tokyo.’ Yes, indeed, this is quite the delightful little adventure you’ve gotten us into.”
Tatsuji stood up and strode into the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he took out a can of beer, popped the top, and took a long swig. Just then Misao walked up, holding a memo pad. She gently shoved Tatsuji out of the way, reopened the refrigerator, and began quickly writing down a list of the contents: three pieces of bread; strawberry jam; miso paste; pickled plums; half a package of “natural cheese”; a stick of butter; three slices of ham; a few leaves of lettuce; a single cucumber. At the back of one shelf she found an unopened packet of hot dogs that had somehow been overlooked, but they were so far past the sell-by date that they couldn’t really be considered edible.
Next, Misao turned her attention to the canned goods that were packed away in a box labeled “Kitchen.” She had apparently imagined seeing a can of tuna, because the box contained only two oblong tins of corned beef and a single can of vegetable soup. That was the full extent of the canned goods, but the rest of the box was filled with an assortment of edible odds and ends: baking powder, cooking oil, white flour, Tamao’s favorite hotcake mix, syrup, a packet of bonito flakes, and so on.
Slim pickings, Misao thought gloomily. Maybe I could stretch out some of these ingredients by dredging chunks of cheese in a big bowl of seasoned flour, and then frying them up in oil, kind of like croquettes?
After she finished making the list, Misao handed the memo pad to Teppei. He looked it over with an increasingly discouraged expression on his face.
“Oh, we also have some rice,” Misao said brightly. “I was planning to call in an order tomorrow and have it delivered directly to the new house, so there are only about three and a half cups left, but in a pinch we can make rice balls and sprinkle salt on them, and we could probably hang on for a couple more days that way.”
“Yes, and we still have plenty of green tea, right?” Teppei said, matching Misao’s upbeat tone. Misao smiled and nodded, by way of confirmation.
A moment later Tamao wandered into the kitchen. “I’m hungry,” she said plaintively. Misao quickly whipped up some pancake batter, minus the eggs and milk the recipe on the box called for. Thanking heaven for the gas stove, she fried the pancakes until they were lightly browned, then drenched them in melted butter and syrup. Tamao gobbled down every bite, but Tatsuji gave the no-frills flapjacks a doubtful look, then proceeded to chug three cans of beer in rapid succession.
The apartment seemed to be getting hotter by the minute, and the muggy heat was nearly unbearable. It occurred to Misao that she had forgotten to refill Cookie’s water dish. Hastily, she splashed water into the dish up to the brim, and set it down in front of Cookie’s nose. The dog slurped up all but a few drops in a single gulp, then flopped down on the floor again.
Beyond the balcony’s glass door, a sun as deeply red as a ripe tomato was sinking toward the western horizon. The air in the apartment had grown ever more stagnant, and the rooms were beginning to take on a sour smell. Time and again Misao picked up the telephone receiver and held it to her ear but, as expected, she never got a dial tone. The one mechanical bright spot was the elevator, which was still functioning flawlessly.
Throughout the late afternoon, Teppei made frequent trips down to the first floor, where he continued his efforts to shatter the glass entrance door by using the hammer, assorted chairs, and anything else he could lay hands on. Try as he might, the outcome was always the same. He attempted to break into the caretakers’ quarters, thinking it might be possible to escape through one of the windows, but he wasn’t able to make so much as a crack in the glass facade of the small reception office that opened both onto the lobby and into the apartment. That unit’s front door remained unbreachable, as well.
Teppei also paid a visit to the empty apartments on every floor, pushing and pulling every door in the hope of finding one that had been left open. They were all tightly locked, which didn’t surprise him at all. The building’s windowless, unventilated corridors were incredibly hot after absorbing the intense rays of the summer sun all day, and it almost felt as though the structure itself were running a fever. Every surface Teppei touched was disagreeably warm.
Around six o’clock in the evening, Tamao began complaining that she was finding it difficult to breathe. Misao took off the yellow terrycloth shirt her daughter was wearing and let her run around without a top. Gently planting a kiss on Tamao’s bare, sweaty shoulder, Misao whispered, “Don’t worry about a thing, okay? Mama isn’t going to give up.”
“They’re planning to starve us out,” Tatsuji whimpered. “That’s the bottom line, plain and simple. They want us to starve to death.” He had tossed all three of his recen
tly emptied beer cans onto the floor, and they were rolling messily around underfoot. “Hey, Misao,” Tatsuji went on, his tone suddenly sarcastic. “What’s for dinner tonight? Roast duck and chilled consommé? That sounds delicious, but we really shouldn’t keep such a splendid menu to ourselves. Why don’t you invite the monsters to join us?”
“Please, Tatsuji.” Misao sighed. “Can you just dial it down a notch?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I can’t,” Tatsuji said defiantly. He raised both hands above his head and began to dance around the room like a demented dervish. His chino pants, which were already riding low, gradually slipped past his narrow hips until the cuffs were dragging on the ground.
After a few minutes of wild abandon, Tatsuji stopped and glared at Misao. “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” he snarled. “I saw two men dissolve right before my eyes—I mean, they literally went up in smoke. That’s right: I saw human beings dissolving. So why don’t you give me a break, for once?”
“Will someone please make this idiot shut up?” Naomi erupted. Her pretty, small-featured face was distorted by her obvious dislike of her husband’s over-the-top behavior. “Look, I’m just going to say it, since you brought it up. If what you were seeing up on the roof was so traumatic, why didn’t you just leave and come back downstairs, instead of waiting around till the end?”
After this speech Naomi seemed to be trying to calm herself down, but she was seized by a fit of frenzied coughing. “I think I’m going to be sick again,” she said, looking pleadingly at Misao. After a moment the wave of nausea apparently passed, because Naomi took a long, racking breath and toppled over sideways on the couch.
* * *
Misao didn’t have much of an appetite, but she threw a heaping cup of white rice into a pan and set it on the front burner of the gas stove. When the rice was done she shaped it into five triangular balls, each with a morsel of pickled plum at the center and a sprinkling of salt on the outside, then served them alongside the three remaining slices of ham. She had originally been hoping to save the ham until the following day, but in this heat—and with a refrigerator whose internal temperature was now lukewarm at best—there was a very real danger that the meat would go bad before then, so she decided it should be eaten as soon as possible. As for Cookie, her dinner consisted of the usual amount of dry dog food. However, there were only a couple of helpings of kibble left in the dog food box, and it occurred to Misao that before long she would need to start allotting a share of the human rations to Cookie, as well.
As day turned to evening, the heat began to diminish to the point where the ambient temperature became almost bearable, although the extreme humidity still made the apartment feel like a sauna. When darkness fell, Teppei found a flashlight and switched it on, but Misao quickly objected. Something might happen during the night, she reasoned, so they ought to preserve the flashlight’s batteries, just in case. For now, they could get by with candlelight.
Finding the candles among the tangle of packed boxes turned out to be a major undertaking. By the time some tapers finally turned up in a carton of small household items, the entire apartment was plunged into inky darkness.
Instead of making the rooms seem more cheerful, the light from the candles actually seemed to foster feelings of trepidation. Everyone gathered around the table, silently munching on their minimalist rice balls and pausing from time to time to pour some tepid tap water down their parched throats.
When the meal was finished, Tatsuji sat for a long time without saying a word. He seemed to be gradually coming to terms with the situation, and his face wore an expression of deep melancholy. Clearly, he was trying to fight off the feelings of hopelessness and despair, but he didn’t appear to be winning that battle. Finally, he spoke. “Looking ahead,” he said, “how would you rate our chances of getting out of here alive?”
“Maybe twenty percent?” Teppei replied candidly. “No, probably closer to ten. Hey, at least it isn’t zero.” A single rivulet of sweat ran down his forehead, but he didn’t bother to wipe it off.
“And what do you propose that we do now? Do you have a plan?”
“I honestly have no idea,” Teppei admitted. “I feel like we’ve explored every possible option, but there must be something we haven’t thought of yet.”
“What if we all went up to the roof and shouted at the top of our lungs?” Naomi suggested, as she rolled a pickled-plum pit around in her mouth.
“Shout?” Teppei echoed, looking at his sister-in-law with hollow eyes. “Suppose we do shout, and someone hears us? If they show up at the door, the same thing will just keep happening over and over again. More innocent people will die, and we won’t be any closer to getting out of here.”
“Not only that,” Misao said. “There’s nobody living within earshot of this building in any case. You all saw the view from the roof, right? On the north side there’s nothing but empty land and the remains of some housing project that was abandoned a long time ago. The graveyard’s on the south side, and it’s huge, so unless someone chanced to be visiting a grave near this building, no one would hear us. Anyway, the cemetery is usually deserted. As for the temple, it’s much too far away for any sound to carry from here. The east side, as you know, is just vacant land. So we could go up to the roof and shout our heads off, but we’d just end up with sore throats. Besides, as Teppei said, if someone did hear us shouting and tried to rescue us, they wouldn’t get past the entrance.”
“How about if we sent up one of those advertising balloons?” Naomi asked. “Or is that a worthless idea, too?” Those questions weren’t addressed to anyone in particular, but Naomi’s rancorous tone, and the way she curled her lips, seemed to make it clear that she was mocking Misao.
“Come on, can’t we think of some way to escape?” Tatsuji pleaded, folding his arms in front of his chest. “It seems like we’ve tried every potential exit, from here down to the first floor. But maybe we’re overlooking something. What if we jumped off the roof onto a mattress? Oh, never mind.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes, obviously realizing what would become of anyone who landed on the ground anywhere near the building—assuming they even survived the fall.
“Wait!” Naomi cried. “The basement! There’s a basement, right?”
Tatsuji laughed derisively. “Yeah, there’s a basement, but it’s useless. It doesn’t have an outside door or even any windows. I don’t even want to think about that place, because from what I hear it’s where all the ghosts and monsters hang out.”
“You’re joking, right?” Naomi looked incredulous.
Teppei exchanged a quick glance with Misao, then said, “We don’t know that. As I keep telling you, we don’t know anything for sure.”
Tamao swiped at the coating of perspiration that still covered her bare chest, then stared at each of the adults’ candlelit faces, one after another. “The basement’s where I got hurt,” she announced. “We were playing, and all of a sudden there was a big cut on my knee. There was tons of blood, and I had to go to the hospital in an ambulance. Isn’t that right, Mama?”
Every eye swiveled to look at Misao, and she nodded in confirmation. “We never did find out what caused it,” she said. “The doctor was saying there could have been some kind of weasel wind down there, but—”
“This is a nightmare,” Naomi broke in. “There’s no other explanation. I’m asleep right now, and I’m having the worst dream ever.” She rubbed her ashen cheeks, which had long since shed any traces of the blush she’d applied that morning. “And everyone knows how this nightmare is going to end. We’re all going to die a hideous, horrible death in a pool of our own sweat.”
In the wavering light of the candles the figures around the table cast enormous, grotesquely distorted shadows on the bare walls, making the room appear to be populated with a party of extra-large demons.
“Hey, I just had a thought,” Teppei said, catching Misao’s eye. “I wonder whether those bars are still down there.”
&nb
sp; “Bars?” Misao cocked her head.
“You know, the cartons of protein bars that were left down in the basement when the health food company moved out a few months ago.”
“What are you talking about?” Tatsuji edged forward in his chair.
“Oh, I remember now. There were some cartons of high-calorie bars,” Misao said, turning to Naomi. “You’ve heard of diet bars, right? Well, these are the opposite. They have a lot of calories and protein and vitamins, so supposedly you can get all the nutrients you need even if you don’t eat anything else for a few days. I think they were originally designed for use in space programs, but now I gather some skinny people use them to put on weight.”
“Wow, really?” Naomi said with a contemptuous laugh. “Considering that most people these days are interested in losing weight, whoever invented those bars wasn’t exactly a marketing genius.”
“Seriously, though,” Teppei said. “If the cartons are still down there, they might keep us going for a while.”
“So are you suggesting that we should just casually waltz down to the basement and grab the boxes?” Misao asked, playing devil’s advocate. “Even after the things we’ve seen today, and everything we know about what’s happened down there in the past?”
Tatsuji, however, was immediately on board. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day!” he declared. “If we just have enough to eat for the next few days, it’ll help us keep our strength up while we try to get out of here.”
“That’s right,” Teppei agreed. “As I recall, there was a big stack of those boxes. We’re already scraping the bottom of the supplies we have on hand, but if the protein bars are still there, they should carry us along for a couple of days, at least. At least we won’t have to worry about starving to death tomorrow.”
“What if the elevator stops working again while you’re busy exploring?” Misao asked.