Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2019-06-09 03:24 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2019-06-09 03:24 pm
Shiki Novel Translations 3.14.1
14
1
It was the morning of the twenty-second. Yasumori Kazuya awoke hearing a strange noise. As he started to rise from the bed, his wife Junko beside him in the bed was having convulsions. He rushed to call for an ambulance but his wife had died without ever even reaching the cooperative hospital. Acute heart failure, it was diagnosed.
Yasumori Atsuko was stupefied by her daughter in law's death, and yet somewhere in her mind she ruminated on a single phrase. She couldn't forget those words said by Itou Ikumi: "The Risen." Something was out there. And it wished for their demise. She couldn't shake the sense that there was was something that appeared in the night, that it was something that was some class of Oni. It had devoured its way through the branch family and was now sneaking its way into Atsuko's household. She could not escape the premotion that from thereon, the Oni would thrive in the horror it wrought to her surroundings, and Atsuko's household would be obliterated from the very roots.
(That just isn't possible....)
The Risen, honestly. The only ones who believed in such things were religious fanatics like Imuki. And even Atsuko knew what a farce Ikumi's accusations had been shown to be.
Yet, as Atsuko was bringing her daughter-in-law's corpse back to the village, she couldn't help but sense something ominous in the scenery beyond the car window. The various people continuing to die, the various people continuing to abandon the village. Coinciding with that, the outsiders who had come. There were so many like Sasaki whose character was unknown, or like those who dwelt in Kanemasa whom nobody had ever laid eyes on. New inhabitants who weren't there when they should be, vacated houses all about, there was a dark presence lurking within all of it. That which had invaded the village, lurking at every turn: "Death."
(But Oni, really. They don't exist.)
Atsuko insisted to herself. She could declare with absolute certainty that it was true.
(But just the same...)
Death continued at the contractor's firm. In Atsuko's home this made the second one dead after Giichi. While she didn't particularly believe in the superstitious, just the same it was clear that she had felt it a bad sign.
Yes--This time, if she had the chance, she would go to Mizobe, pay a visit to the shrine, and have an exorcism performed. It would achieve nothing more than easing her mind, but there was something to be said for easing the mind for its own sake.
As she was thinking that, her husband Kazunari spoke distantly.
"What'll we do about Jun-chan's funeral?"
What'll we do, Atsuko blinked. Kazunari gripped at the steering wheel glumly, his eyes forward.
"Lately it feels like a lotta things're being neglected. When I think about it, memorial services and rituals just feel like they've gotten mechanical."
"That's true--they really have."
"Of course we gotta stay humble. That's why I wanna be sure to do Jun-chan's service right and proper, but. It's just, Jun-chan said she'd made some kinda contrast with the Sotoba Undertakers, didn't she?"
Atsuko made a face. Yes, Junko got some thought in her head that had her going not to the Ozaki Hospital but taking herself to the Ebuchi Clinic, and it was there that she had put her seal on a contract with the Sotoba Undertaker service. Atsuko set her gaze on her son's car driving ahead of theirs. Her son Kazuya had been surprised to hear it as well, but Atsuko had been both surprised and aghast. It was incredibly ill-omened, she had thought, and the contract was said to be for a secular service. It would mean there would be no call for a monk, but with their connection to the temple there was no way that that could happen.
"So, whadda you think about doing it the way Jun-chan wanted it done?"
"That's, of course not!"
"But you saw the old man's service and how that went. No one but the Junior Monk even came. The temple's got their hands full. So when you think of it like that, it almost feels bad even asking the temple, and don't it make you feel bad for Jun-chan thinking about it being such a sad, lonely thing like that again?"
"...That is true."
"It sounds like the Undertaker's services are a little weird but it sounds like they do take care of anything and everything. If that's the case, doesn't that mean we don't have to think about nothing and can just focus on thinking about Jun-chan? That's how I figure."
That may be so, thought Atsuko, her eyes falling down to the envelope containing the death certificate in her hands. In order to bury in the village, one had to turn over the document to the branch office or they wouldn't receive the permit for the burial. How many times had it been now that she'd turned in this document, that she'd gotten the permit? How many times had they gone to a worn down, painful, nerve-wracking funeral service? If she were to speak honestly, Atsuko too was reluctant to have another funeral like the ones they'd had lately. It wasn't that she was making light of Junko's death, but now she wanted to leave everything that could be left to others for them to do, and to only focus on mourning and missing her poor daughter-in-law.
"You're right. ... Let's talk it over with Kazuya."
"Yeah. ---Hey, when Jun-chan's service is over, how's about we pay a visit to Hachiman-sama's shrine?"
Atsuko gave a powerful nod. "Yes, I think that we should."
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(Anonymous) 2019-06-21 04:33 pm (UTC)(link)