Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2022-12-25 05:26 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2022-12-25 05:26 pm
Shiki Novel Translations 3.18.2
2
On the first day of November, as the hours turned to evening, a death certificate was delivered to Toshio. There was one patient, a daughter of the Kunihiro's in Kami Sotoba, whose death it announced. It's Ritsuko, Toshio ascertained, rushing to the Kunihiro household as soon as he had closed the clinic.
It was nearly six. The villagers on the road upon which dusk was falling quickly walked with their faces down. Nobody stopped to so much as call out a greeting to anyone, much less stand about talking. When he arrived at the Kunihiro household, the lights were already on but there were no mourning lights nor black and white curtains hung. There was nothing to showcase signs of misfortune.
"Excuse me. Good evening."
There was no answer to Toshio who called from the entryway. Toshio went around to the side of the building. From the veranda along one side of the house, he could make out Yasue and Midori in the living room.
"Kunihiro-san, Good evening."
When he knocked on the porch window and called out, at last the two turned to him. Toshio tried his hand on the glass. It didn't seem locked, and it opened easily.
"How is Ricchan?"
"She died." Yasue's voice was curt.
"When... Today?"
"Yes, this morning."
"But, her over-night..."
"We called the undertaker." Yasue said shortly and then turned away. Toshio tilted his head. They asked the undertaker, but did that mean it wouldn't be until tomorrow? ---They couldn't mean that since the asked the funeral home, they weren't doing to do their own over night vigil.
As he thought, what had him even more dubious was that the mother and little sister who should have been blaming Toshio were only sitting, spaced out. Their pallor was poor, weariness in their posture. Their daughter and older sister had just died, and yet they showed no emotion.
"Ricchan. What did she die of?"
There wasn't even an answer to Toshio's question. Midori threw herself down lazily on the zabuton.
"This household is part of the temple parish, isn't it? So why the Funeral Home? Who was it who took care of Ricchan, who signed her death certificate?"
"It was Ebuchi-san," Yasue said listlessly, rising to go further into the house with what seemed to be a great strain.
---The symptoms were showing.
Toshio was sure of it, by the way they were acting. Both Yasue and Midori. Without a doubt. He continued to ask questions from the porch, but Midori remained laid out and didn't so much as answer. Without ever coming to a conclusion, Toshio closed the window and left the property, looking at his surroundings. From one side of the house, he heard the truly lonesome sounding cry of a dog.
The sun had already set, and the faint darkness was beginning to settle. There was no sign of anybody passing by. The light was on at the house next door, and seeing the curtain open at the window facing the road, Toshio went towards the neighboring house. He called out from the entryway. If he remembered, next door should have been the home of Tamura Hirotake. One of the few left in the village, he was an old man who worked at the construction company and was a regular at the hospital with lumbar spinal stenosis.
"Tamura-san, excuse me."
Do you know any details about how things are next door? Toshio tried to ask several times, when a single old man appeared. But he was a bit younger than Hirotake.
"Excuse me. Is Tamura-san in?"
"I am Tamura?"
Toshio's mouth opened.
"No... I mean, Tamura Hirotake."
"That's me," said this man who was like, but different from Hirotake, an old man who still had some youthful vitality in him.
"That's a bad joke. You're not Hirotake-san."
"What are you on about? You're pretty rude. I am Tamura Hirotake. I'm him, so if I say it, I can't be wrong."
"But."
"If I'm lying, where's your proof that I'm not Tamura?"
Toshio was hard pressed to answer. If he went back to the hospital, he had Tamura's medical records but it wasn't as if the medical records had a photograph attached. They did have an insurance number but of course an insurance card didn't have a photograph either. As for X-rays of his afflicted areas, but that didn't serve as any proof by itself that someone wasn't Tamura himself. Of course, if he could then do an X-ray on the person before him, it would likely show that they weren't the same. But, given the circumstances, he didn't think the man would consent to that.
Toshio looked around for something that might help him. The next neighbor on from Tamura had their storm shutters firmly shut. So did the house across from it. Further beyond that, beyond the paddy fields there was a house he could see with the lights on, but the curtains were drawn closed to block out the outside.
"If you still doubt me, ask the neighbors," the man said nodding towards Ritsuko's house. "I've known them a long time. Or if that's no good, try asking at the Shinoda household right over there."
The man banged the entryway door closed.
Things were what they were at Ritsuko's house. Perhaps if he did ask, Yasue and Midori might testify that it was indeed Tamura. As for Shinoda---when Toshio thought about it, the Shinoda mother and child had moved out in September, he remembered. In the list Tamo Sadaharu had made were Shinoda and her child's names. Toshio had considered them infected for the sake of argument and had written the two as deaths on the graph.
Toshio returned to his car, feeling as if he were wading through mud. In returning to the hospital, he couldn't stop a faint sense of vertigo. When he did get back, he did go ahead and dig out Tamura's records, but as expected there was nothing to prove or support that that man was not Tamura.
Tamura's X-ray images and that man wouldn't match, that was for sure. But that man shouldn't consent to having one taken, and even if he were to allow it, all it would prove is that the x-rays didn't match. Tamura's imaging on the afflicted areas had his insurance number, but if that man had Tamura's insurance card and said that it was the original x-ray that was labeled incorrectly, that it hadn't been Tamura's image to begin with, how would Toshio prove that that wasn't the case?
The number of deaths in the village since September was zero. Since then people had continued to move out but it looked like some inhabitants like the Shinodas had come back. It may have been the case that those who had come back like that only showed themselves at night, or maybe they were like Tamura in that they looked similar to but did not actually look like the person who had lived there originally.
--No, Toshio thought. Tamura lived alone, but it's not like he didn't have any family. They had left the village, but he had children. If he could call those children back, they should be able to provide testimony that that man wasn't Tamura.
(But will they let me do that?)
For example, if those children he called to the village were attacked and left the village with vacant eyes and died in some other town, would somebody notice the abnormality?
(Is there anyone who doesn't live in this village who could testify that something abnormal is happening here?)
Those who lived outside the village and commuted in for work should understand something had been off since this summer. At the very least they knew there had been a string of funerals. But Towada was already gone. As was Shimoyama. Yuki and Satoko weren't here either.
"I see," Toshio muttered t himself. "Even if the village is zero, it's not zero in the city of Mizobe."
Right, on the contrary, those outside the village, if anything the deaths would be more prominent outside. The deaths by those attacked by the Shiki would clearly be a surplus of deaths. There should be a string of deaths outside, around the village. If he pointed that out---.
Thinking that far, Toshio lightly smacked his desk. He was at his wits' end. For example, what if Towada, or what if Shimoyama had moved just before their death? Doing that, the deaths would be dispersed, if they could smooth the numbers of reported deaths out enough that no matter what Toshio might have pointed out, it'd have been in vain. And they, quite possibly, had been doing that much.
The town hall was abnormal now as seen. Toshio had never even seen the face of the local residential officer who came in after Takami. Those who commuted to work from outside the village had vanished, and those who commuted out of the village for work quit before they died.
"And that's not all......"
Since summer, the staff who came to collect fees for the medication deliveries and been changing incessantly. Once again, the people coming and going from the village was something they had regulated well.
Looking back, before they'd known it the village had been cut off from the outside. In every possible way, the flow of people had been cut off, the village isolated, transformed into a black box.
"But that many humans are dying!"
They couldn't erase the memory of those deaths. Traces of their lives, traces of their deaths were impossible to completely wipe out. Toshio had their medical records, copies of their death certificates, detailed service bills too, and those were presented to the insurance fund who then paid them out. The insurance should have their own records of the treatments charged. For the dead, there should be payouts on their life insurance. And there should be death certificates, records of deletion from the family register, there should be traces left everywhere. --But, when the all important town hall itself reported a death count of zero, how did those who compiled the data reconcile the inconsistencies?
Toshio laughed lightly. It became a low, warped laugh.
Those who were claimed dead and for whom there was a life insurance payout never were marked as dead on the family register, and then those very people moved and there whereabouts were unknown.
"If I go missing, it's perfect..."
That they weren't dead was the official 'truth.' If only one side claimed that they were dead, and if all of the ones who had claimed as much had moved and couldn't be found, what the public would make of that was all too clear, wasn't it?
"This is their aim."
At last, there would be no one dwelling in the village. They'd continue to move out, the village would be peacefully dismantled. And over its ruins would be a settlement deep in the mountains where the inhabitants were mysteriously only seen at night.
And this isn't something in the far off future. This abnormal state of affairs will draw on and on, building up more and more inconsistencies, intending to draw suspicion. They must be in a hurry to move forward.
"The village might not have much time left."
On the first day of November, as the hours turned to evening, a death certificate was delivered to Toshio. There was one patient, a daughter of the Kunihiro's in Kami Sotoba, whose death it announced. It's Ritsuko, Toshio ascertained, rushing to the Kunihiro household as soon as he had closed the clinic.
It was nearly six. The villagers on the road upon which dusk was falling quickly walked with their faces down. Nobody stopped to so much as call out a greeting to anyone, much less stand about talking. When he arrived at the Kunihiro household, the lights were already on but there were no mourning lights nor black and white curtains hung. There was nothing to showcase signs of misfortune.
"Excuse me. Good evening."
There was no answer to Toshio who called from the entryway. Toshio went around to the side of the building. From the veranda along one side of the house, he could make out Yasue and Midori in the living room.
"Kunihiro-san, Good evening."
When he knocked on the porch window and called out, at last the two turned to him. Toshio tried his hand on the glass. It didn't seem locked, and it opened easily.
"How is Ricchan?"
"She died." Yasue's voice was curt.
"When... Today?"
"Yes, this morning."
"But, her over-night..."
"We called the undertaker." Yasue said shortly and then turned away. Toshio tilted his head. They asked the undertaker, but did that mean it wouldn't be until tomorrow? ---They couldn't mean that since the asked the funeral home, they weren't doing to do their own over night vigil.
As he thought, what had him even more dubious was that the mother and little sister who should have been blaming Toshio were only sitting, spaced out. Their pallor was poor, weariness in their posture. Their daughter and older sister had just died, and yet they showed no emotion.
"Ricchan. What did she die of?"
There wasn't even an answer to Toshio's question. Midori threw herself down lazily on the zabuton.
"This household is part of the temple parish, isn't it? So why the Funeral Home? Who was it who took care of Ricchan, who signed her death certificate?"
"It was Ebuchi-san," Yasue said listlessly, rising to go further into the house with what seemed to be a great strain.
---The symptoms were showing.
Toshio was sure of it, by the way they were acting. Both Yasue and Midori. Without a doubt. He continued to ask questions from the porch, but Midori remained laid out and didn't so much as answer. Without ever coming to a conclusion, Toshio closed the window and left the property, looking at his surroundings. From one side of the house, he heard the truly lonesome sounding cry of a dog.
The sun had already set, and the faint darkness was beginning to settle. There was no sign of anybody passing by. The light was on at the house next door, and seeing the curtain open at the window facing the road, Toshio went towards the neighboring house. He called out from the entryway. If he remembered, next door should have been the home of Tamura Hirotake. One of the few left in the village, he was an old man who worked at the construction company and was a regular at the hospital with lumbar spinal stenosis.
"Tamura-san, excuse me."
Do you know any details about how things are next door? Toshio tried to ask several times, when a single old man appeared. But he was a bit younger than Hirotake.
"Excuse me. Is Tamura-san in?"
"I am Tamura?"
Toshio's mouth opened.
"No... I mean, Tamura Hirotake."
"That's me," said this man who was like, but different from Hirotake, an old man who still had some youthful vitality in him.
"That's a bad joke. You're not Hirotake-san."
"What are you on about? You're pretty rude. I am Tamura Hirotake. I'm him, so if I say it, I can't be wrong."
"But."
"If I'm lying, where's your proof that I'm not Tamura?"
Toshio was hard pressed to answer. If he went back to the hospital, he had Tamura's medical records but it wasn't as if the medical records had a photograph attached. They did have an insurance number but of course an insurance card didn't have a photograph either. As for X-rays of his afflicted areas, but that didn't serve as any proof by itself that someone wasn't Tamura himself. Of course, if he could then do an X-ray on the person before him, it would likely show that they weren't the same. But, given the circumstances, he didn't think the man would consent to that.
Toshio looked around for something that might help him. The next neighbor on from Tamura had their storm shutters firmly shut. So did the house across from it. Further beyond that, beyond the paddy fields there was a house he could see with the lights on, but the curtains were drawn closed to block out the outside.
"If you still doubt me, ask the neighbors," the man said nodding towards Ritsuko's house. "I've known them a long time. Or if that's no good, try asking at the Shinoda household right over there."
The man banged the entryway door closed.
Things were what they were at Ritsuko's house. Perhaps if he did ask, Yasue and Midori might testify that it was indeed Tamura. As for Shinoda---when Toshio thought about it, the Shinoda mother and child had moved out in September, he remembered. In the list Tamo Sadaharu had made were Shinoda and her child's names. Toshio had considered them infected for the sake of argument and had written the two as deaths on the graph.
Toshio returned to his car, feeling as if he were wading through mud. In returning to the hospital, he couldn't stop a faint sense of vertigo. When he did get back, he did go ahead and dig out Tamura's records, but as expected there was nothing to prove or support that that man was not Tamura.
Tamura's X-ray images and that man wouldn't match, that was for sure. But that man shouldn't consent to having one taken, and even if he were to allow it, all it would prove is that the x-rays didn't match. Tamura's imaging on the afflicted areas had his insurance number, but if that man had Tamura's insurance card and said that it was the original x-ray that was labeled incorrectly, that it hadn't been Tamura's image to begin with, how would Toshio prove that that wasn't the case?
The number of deaths in the village since September was zero. Since then people had continued to move out but it looked like some inhabitants like the Shinodas had come back. It may have been the case that those who had come back like that only showed themselves at night, or maybe they were like Tamura in that they looked similar to but did not actually look like the person who had lived there originally.
--No, Toshio thought. Tamura lived alone, but it's not like he didn't have any family. They had left the village, but he had children. If he could call those children back, they should be able to provide testimony that that man wasn't Tamura.
(But will they let me do that?)
For example, if those children he called to the village were attacked and left the village with vacant eyes and died in some other town, would somebody notice the abnormality?
(Is there anyone who doesn't live in this village who could testify that something abnormal is happening here?)
Those who lived outside the village and commuted in for work should understand something had been off since this summer. At the very least they knew there had been a string of funerals. But Towada was already gone. As was Shimoyama. Yuki and Satoko weren't here either.
"I see," Toshio muttered t himself. "Even if the village is zero, it's not zero in the city of Mizobe."
Right, on the contrary, those outside the village, if anything the deaths would be more prominent outside. The deaths by those attacked by the Shiki would clearly be a surplus of deaths. There should be a string of deaths outside, around the village. If he pointed that out---.
Thinking that far, Toshio lightly smacked his desk. He was at his wits' end. For example, what if Towada, or what if Shimoyama had moved just before their death? Doing that, the deaths would be dispersed, if they could smooth the numbers of reported deaths out enough that no matter what Toshio might have pointed out, it'd have been in vain. And they, quite possibly, had been doing that much.
The town hall was abnormal now as seen. Toshio had never even seen the face of the local residential officer who came in after Takami. Those who commuted to work from outside the village had vanished, and those who commuted out of the village for work quit before they died.
"And that's not all......"
Since summer, the staff who came to collect fees for the medication deliveries and been changing incessantly. Once again, the people coming and going from the village was something they had regulated well.
Looking back, before they'd known it the village had been cut off from the outside. In every possible way, the flow of people had been cut off, the village isolated, transformed into a black box.
"But that many humans are dying!"
They couldn't erase the memory of those deaths. Traces of their lives, traces of their deaths were impossible to completely wipe out. Toshio had their medical records, copies of their death certificates, detailed service bills too, and those were presented to the insurance fund who then paid them out. The insurance should have their own records of the treatments charged. For the dead, there should be payouts on their life insurance. And there should be death certificates, records of deletion from the family register, there should be traces left everywhere. --But, when the all important town hall itself reported a death count of zero, how did those who compiled the data reconcile the inconsistencies?
Toshio laughed lightly. It became a low, warped laugh.
Those who were claimed dead and for whom there was a life insurance payout never were marked as dead on the family register, and then those very people moved and there whereabouts were unknown.
"If I go missing, it's perfect..."
That they weren't dead was the official 'truth.' If only one side claimed that they were dead, and if all of the ones who had claimed as much had moved and couldn't be found, what the public would make of that was all too clear, wasn't it?
"This is their aim."
At last, there would be no one dwelling in the village. They'd continue to move out, the village would be peacefully dismantled. And over its ruins would be a settlement deep in the mountains where the inhabitants were mysteriously only seen at night.
And this isn't something in the far off future. This abnormal state of affairs will draw on and on, building up more and more inconsistencies, intending to draw suspicion. They must be in a hurry to move forward.
"The village might not have much time left."
no subject
(Anonymous) 2023-01-08 03:52 pm (UTC)(link)No shit hahahahh
The shikis are seriously so sly. The novel does a better job at showing us how the villages downfall happened without anyone being able to do anything.
Also It's awesome to see a new part released, thank you for your work!!