Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2022-12-26 12:36 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2022-12-26 12:36 pm
Shiki Novel Translations 3.18.4
4
On November 2nd, Toshio called out Hirosawa to Creole. The village would collapse in no time. If he had any intent to stop this state of affairs, Toshio would need any and all cooperation he could get. If there was anyone he could convince, it'd probably be Hirosawa. That's what he thought when the night before he had called him, deciding to start by gathering the people he thought he had a chance of convincing together at Creole.
If looking at the shopfront, Creole had several signs hanging down saying they were still preparing to open. Last time, it had been Toshio who had been called out, and it was here that Toshio had suggested the possibility of an epidemic. That was what he had to revoke here today.
When he opened the door, of course Hasegawa was there, and Hirosawa, Tashiro and Yuuki were gathered around a table.
"Sorry about this, Hirosawa-san. On a work day, even."
No, Hirosawa smiled. "I'm the one who had asked it to be at this time, after all."
That's right, Toshio nodded. He sat down in one of the open chairs. "But, Hirosawa-san, why did you pick now of all times? I mean, wouldn't it be more natural to meet up like this at night? Then nobody would have to miss work."
"That may be true, but...." Hirosawa murmured with grit teeth. "But there's no particularly deep reason."
"That right? I figured Hirosawa-san was another one of 'em who didn't like going out at night." As Toshio spoke, starting with Hirosawa, he looked at each of the four faces gathered around. Each of them averted their eyes. "......Night time pedestrian traffic's died out, and all. We used to have patients coming in up to the last minute during office hours, but even the patients don't wanna come once the sun's set. Wonder why that could be?"
"Isn't it because it gets much colder?" The one who casually offered those words was Hasegawa. "Once the sun sets, it does get colder after all."
That it does, agreed Tashiro. Toshio exampled the four's faces. All of them were afraid of the night, and since it was mutual they were all trying to hide it.
"Have things calmed down for you, Yuuki-san?"
"Yes, well...."
"Any word from the wife?"
None, Yuuki said, voice low.
"Have you tried contact her? Her family?"
"No. ...... There's not really anything to say if I did."
"Why don't you try? It's possible your wife didn't return to her family, isn't it? If that's the case, someone needs to file a missing person's report, don't you think?"
Yuuki looked to Toshio with a grim expression. "Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden? ---Don't tell me, you think I'm being cold about Azusa, and you called us all out here to talk about that?"
Of course not, Toshio shrugged his shoulders as if to say. "I don't have that much free time. And I'm not crazy enough to stick my nose into family business. But still, Yuuki-san. You know about all the moves that have been happening in the village since summer."
"Yes. That's..."
"Residents are vanishing one after another. And it's in the middle of the night, suddenly moving out. There's no explanation, despite them all being extremely abnormal circumstances. ---For example," Toshio began to list off two or three unusual cases. The wife who ran out on him then said she was living with SanYasu again after he too had gone missing, or old man Koike's son's household who all vanished. Toshio had told her to come in for an appointment the next day, and yet Hirosawa Toyoko and her family disappeared, or there was Maebara Setsu who likewise hadn't come in for her appointment.
"Koike-san's Yasuo-kun's household was thought to have caught that illness before the move. Hirosawa's Toyoko was the same, and the old woman from Maebara, too. Seems like anyone who comes down with this disease wants to mysteriously move, huh? And that's not all, it seems to make the people who commute out of the village want to suddenly quit their jobs."
Hirosawa gave an uncomfortable nod. "That is... just like the situation at Yuuki-san's place."
"Yeah, Tohru-kun resigned, too. --Hirosawa-san, how do you think we should make sense of all this? Yuuki-san, what do you think? Before your wife disappeared, how was her complection? Did she seem strangely emotionally muted?"
"That's---" Yuuki held his tongue when charged by those words. His gaze drifted across the table. Yuuki was clearly in a panic.
"A lot of residents are moving out mysteriously and disappearing from the village. For most of them we don't know where they're going. Yuuki-san, could you try calling them after this? Your wife's family."
Yuuki looked at Toshio, terrified, and shook his head.
"I see. --Then, how about this. Anyone been to the town hall recently? What about you, Masa-san? When Takashi-kun died, you had to go to the town hall, right?"
"I did, but..."
"You had to submit the death notice, get a burial permit. Right?"
"Of course. But there wasn't anyone around during the day, I got it issued in the evening, but I did get one."
"Right? By the way, I went on Monday, and when I asked them, they told me the number of deaths in this village since September were zero."
That's ridiculous, several voices rose up.
"Yeah, it is ridiculous, isn't it? When this many people have died. Masa-san's house lost their son, and Yuuki-san's place lost Natsuno-kun. But looks like nobody's died."
"This can't be happening."
Toshio nodded to Yuuki. "Yeah. This shouldn't be happening. What shouldn't be is happening. And it's been happening in this village since summer. It keeps on happening. How many people do you think died? How many people do you think have vanished? It shouldn't be happening. Common sense tells you this many people, in this short a time frame, shouldn't be dying and moving out. But what shouldn't be happening keeps happening, ever since this summer."
"What on earth," Hasegawa held his head in his hands. "What's going on? There's something weird about the village. Yes---even before the doctor pointed it out, I'd thought it'd definitely been off."
Toshio nodded. "Yes. It is weird. This many people are dying, clearly as if it's spreading, and yet it's not an epidemic. This is not an epidemic disease. We haven't discovered any sort of pathogen at all."
"That can't be."
"It's true. The truth is this can't be any kind of disease. Does a disease make people resign? Make them move? Where is there a sickness with these symptoms?"
"What does this mean, though? What's happening?"
Toshio turned Hasegawa's question back at him. "You know the answer to that, don't you?"
"How could I?"
"Really? ---You all, you remember the fuss the Itou's Ikumi-san kicked up, don't you?"
The four all held their breath in unison, keeping quiet. Toshio knew by that that they remembered. Everyone remembered it, suspected it. And yet they wouldn't voice it.
"After all, why're we gathering in the daytime? Why didn't we do this at night? Because you all suspect it too. Am I wrong?"
That's because, Tashiro started to say, mumbling and then falling silent. All of them looked in different directions, desperate to hide their dismay. Toshio faced them all and gave a level explanation. The features of what was thought to be an illness, an outline of those symptoms. That impossible combination symptoms that could all line up with only one thing: if one explained them as circulatory hypoperic shock, it lined up. So many missing, so many resigning. Now the village was being cut off from the outside, isolated. It was losing the means to let anyone outside the village know about that abnormality, to prove it. Something had the village under siege, its hand on the throat of the village to choke it out.
"This is ridiculous." Yuuki spat those words and stood. "What are you trying to say? You're not really trying to say the same thing Ikumi-san did, about Okiagari, are you?"
"That is what I'm trying to say. And it's not a baseless claim. If you want, I can show you the proof."
"Gonna call out Kirishiki-san? Try burning incense?"
"I know at the very least that Gotouda Shuuji and Yasumori Nao's bodies aren't in their graves."
Yuuki's mouth dropped. Hirosawa and the others had the same response.
"I know it's an outrage. But I needed to be sure. There's nothing in the coffins but some shed skin. If you want, we can go right now and dig them up again. If we do that, you can confirm with your own eyes that the two of them rose up."
Silence descended on them all. The one to break that was, as expected, Yuuki.
"There's no talking to you."
"Yuuki-san."
"There's no corpse? That's not possible. How old are you?"
"Oi---"
"Now I have one for you." Yuuki narrowed his eyes at Toshio. It seemed like something had exacerbated him. "You always have the temple's Junior Monk at your side. Why isn't the Junior Monk in that seat next to you now?"
"That's...."
"This's all your delusion. You're so busy you snapped. That's why the Junior Monk can't stand to be around you anymore. That's why he's not here too. Am I wrong?"
Toshio was at a loss for words. Those charges were closer to a delusion, but Toshio couldn't exactly explain why Seishin wasn't here.
"I recommend you take some time off." Throwing those words down, Yuuki left the shop. Toshio was too taken back to do anything but watch; he turned to face Hirosawa and the others, but as if something were too unsightly to look at, Hirosawa too turned his eyes from Toshio.
"Masa-san, I...."
Tashiro gave a strained, forced smile. "Yuuki-san's been on edge since his son died. He didn't say that out of any real malice or anything, don't worry about it."
Toshio had almost taken some comfort from that, until Tashiro then also turned his gaze away.
"You're probably tired too. What with what happened to Kyouko-san and all. I mean--I don't hold it against you. You've been rushing around tending to a huge number of patients, I know. It's clearly an epidemic, but since you can't do anything about it, it's gotta be really frustrating. I get how you're feeling. For sure."
"Masa-san's voting with Yuuki-san, then."
"I don't think you're delusional. It might be true the bodies are missing. I heard something like that a long time ago. About grave robberies and stuff. They'd cremate them. They used to believe that human bones could cure lung disease, right? ---It's probably something like that, I figure."
Toshio was at a loss for words. Hasegawa nodded with a smile.
"There are cases like that, aren't there? Come to think of it, it happened in America too, didn't it? Something about someone digging up dead bodies. That case that they turned into a horror movie."
"Oh, yeah. Ed Gein," Tashioro said with a deliberately brightening voice. "Tobe Hooper was the director."
"Hitchcock's 'Psycho' was modeled off of that too, wasn't it?" Hirosawa gently wedged in. Toshio watched over the shifting mood in shock. They were intentionally trying to slide the topic in another direction.
"......This's your all's answer, huh?"
At Toshio's words, the fabricated smiled faded.
"......I'm sorry to say this, but to me it all sounds preposterous. I know that you've convinced yourself and you've prepared, but." Hirosawa said, shaking his head. "Maybe it's we who are being obstinate, inflexible in how we see things. But there's something you must understand. We've all been baptized by modern rationalism. Brainwashed, you could even say if you like. There are no such things as monsters or magic in this world. That's the foundation of our understanding. That's not to say that that's the one and only absolute truth. But that is for us the foundation of how we understand everything else in the world. Maybe that itself is a delusion, but to us that's a fundamental fact. Even if you tell us now to dismiss it, we cannot. To do that would be for us to lose everything."
"This isn't that abstract a level of conversation."
"That is the level of the conversation. Oni or anything like them don't exist, that is our--or at the very least for me it's a matter on which there's no argument on, on a psychological level. Everything else has to start from that. Not only do they not exist, this must be a disease, the moves, the resignations, they must all have some reasonable explanation. They simply have to, and so to make it so I may even fabricate an explanation. If it can't be explained, then it must be a mistake of the facts themselves. If that's not the case, then our sense of the world---our sense of our very selves, will also be forfeit."
Hasegawa gave a single nod of agreement, wordlessly rising from his seat and moving behind the counter.
"......I want you to help me. I can't stop this myself."
"If there is something that needs to be stopped, it isn't something which a doctor should have to bear alone, nor is it something that necessarily even can be. There are so many dying. Even if, as you say, Doctor, the family register is being falsified---even if, for the sake of argument, we say that that is true, then it's more than just a lie, it's an opportunity for the outside to have their attention drawn to it. It'd be impossible for this situation to continue on indefinitely."
"You really put your faith in people, huh?"
"I'm not particularly saying that someone from the outside will definitely reach in to help us. I'm saying they won't abandon us. The world is curious, the world is suspicious, and I don't think that those traits can be repressed. Someone would notice the inconsistencies. If they really are being falsified, wouldn't those falsifications clearly conflict with reality? Someone will suspect it, their eyes will be drawn to it. So it'd be impossible for matters like this not to be resolved."
"You're saying someone will notice the inconsistency? The village is being cut off from the outside. It's becoming a black box."
"Indeed, the Mutou's Tohru-kun had resigned before he died. But all the same, his workplace was made up of people, with human connections. At some point, someone will wonder what happened to he who had quit, and they'll make contact, I'm sure, and beyond that, I'm also sure there would be some business need they'd have to reach out. The fact that Tohru-kun died would be known outside of the village. I'm sure it's already known. Many people likely know that the person Mutou Tohru has died."
"But that's all other people's problem, to them."
"They're his colleagues."
"You mean former colleagues---Since this summer, there've been an abnormal number of deaths in this village. I started thinking it was weird around the end of August. Yuuki-san and you all thought it was strange around the start of October. Why do you think there was such a time lag between us?
By the time you all asked, the death toll was already over thirty people. But until it reached that point, you all didn't suspect a thing. Of course, there were deaths you all didn't know about. But you all should've seen the incessant funerals going on around you. You should've heard the rumors about who all died. But that didn't draw your attention. If it's not someone directly connected to you, it doesn't stir any emotion in you. Isn't that how it goes?"
"That's...."
"Listen. The death of someone close to you is a big deal. Nobody can ignore that, nobody can forget it. If that kept happening, you'd notice it was abnormal. But if it's someone else's problem instead of yours, you can ignore it, you can even forget about it. If it's not one of your own, death doesn't register as death. Death gets stripped of its gravity. Tohru-kun's coworkers might've heard that Tohru-kun died. But Tohru-kun's not their coworker anymore. He's not one of them. Even if they're aware of the fact that Mutou Tohru died, nobody's aware of it the way they are a grave, painful death. For deaths like that stripped of their meaning, at most they'll be the seed of a bad joke, or maybe the seed of some ghost story.
You all have talked about it all summer too. Something's wrong, is this a really bad disease going around, or something. All of you, about what percent of you believed that? When, at what point, did that become a reality you couldn't ignore anymore?"
Hirosawa kept silent. Toshio turned to look at Hasegawa, but Hasegawa had begun washing the dishes. Tashiro stood and said that he had to tend to the store as he left. Hirosawa sighed and stood up as well. Saying he had to get to work, he left.
That left Toshio alone. For a time, Toshio sat staring at the four empty chairs, then hung his head and left the shop.
Outside, the weather was shamelessly splendid. The sky was bright, as if the chill in the air had frozen anything which might accumulate and shaken the frozen crystals from the skies. There was also the strangely cheerful sound of a flute. The Shimotsuki was close. Each household's deciduous trees were changing colors. Only the momi firs which lined the mountains were still flush.
He returned to the hospital feeling overwhelmingly beaten down. There were no signs of patients in the deserted waiting room, leaving only Mutou in the office typing at a calculator.
"Ah, welcome back."
Yeah, Toshio answered vaguely as he looked around. "Where's Yasuyo-san?"
"Delivering medicines and checking on the older patients, she said."
I see, Toshio said resting his chin in his hands, on the counter.
"......Naa, Mutou-san. From where you sit, what've you seen happen here since this summer?"
"Haa?" Mutou asked looking up to Toshio.
"How about 'Oni invading the village' ?"
Mutou blinked. "Surely you're joking?"
That right? Toshio gave a bitter laugh. Toshio had no way out, and was furthermore utterly alone.
On November 2nd, Toshio called out Hirosawa to Creole. The village would collapse in no time. If he had any intent to stop this state of affairs, Toshio would need any and all cooperation he could get. If there was anyone he could convince, it'd probably be Hirosawa. That's what he thought when the night before he had called him, deciding to start by gathering the people he thought he had a chance of convincing together at Creole.
If looking at the shopfront, Creole had several signs hanging down saying they were still preparing to open. Last time, it had been Toshio who had been called out, and it was here that Toshio had suggested the possibility of an epidemic. That was what he had to revoke here today.
When he opened the door, of course Hasegawa was there, and Hirosawa, Tashiro and Yuuki were gathered around a table.
"Sorry about this, Hirosawa-san. On a work day, even."
No, Hirosawa smiled. "I'm the one who had asked it to be at this time, after all."
That's right, Toshio nodded. He sat down in one of the open chairs. "But, Hirosawa-san, why did you pick now of all times? I mean, wouldn't it be more natural to meet up like this at night? Then nobody would have to miss work."
"That may be true, but...." Hirosawa murmured with grit teeth. "But there's no particularly deep reason."
"That right? I figured Hirosawa-san was another one of 'em who didn't like going out at night." As Toshio spoke, starting with Hirosawa, he looked at each of the four faces gathered around. Each of them averted their eyes. "......Night time pedestrian traffic's died out, and all. We used to have patients coming in up to the last minute during office hours, but even the patients don't wanna come once the sun's set. Wonder why that could be?"
"Isn't it because it gets much colder?" The one who casually offered those words was Hasegawa. "Once the sun sets, it does get colder after all."
That it does, agreed Tashiro. Toshio exampled the four's faces. All of them were afraid of the night, and since it was mutual they were all trying to hide it.
"Have things calmed down for you, Yuuki-san?"
"Yes, well...."
"Any word from the wife?"
None, Yuuki said, voice low.
"Have you tried contact her? Her family?"
"No. ...... There's not really anything to say if I did."
"Why don't you try? It's possible your wife didn't return to her family, isn't it? If that's the case, someone needs to file a missing person's report, don't you think?"
Yuuki looked to Toshio with a grim expression. "Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden? ---Don't tell me, you think I'm being cold about Azusa, and you called us all out here to talk about that?"
Of course not, Toshio shrugged his shoulders as if to say. "I don't have that much free time. And I'm not crazy enough to stick my nose into family business. But still, Yuuki-san. You know about all the moves that have been happening in the village since summer."
"Yes. That's..."
"Residents are vanishing one after another. And it's in the middle of the night, suddenly moving out. There's no explanation, despite them all being extremely abnormal circumstances. ---For example," Toshio began to list off two or three unusual cases. The wife who ran out on him then said she was living with SanYasu again after he too had gone missing, or old man Koike's son's household who all vanished. Toshio had told her to come in for an appointment the next day, and yet Hirosawa Toyoko and her family disappeared, or there was Maebara Setsu who likewise hadn't come in for her appointment.
"Koike-san's Yasuo-kun's household was thought to have caught that illness before the move. Hirosawa's Toyoko was the same, and the old woman from Maebara, too. Seems like anyone who comes down with this disease wants to mysteriously move, huh? And that's not all, it seems to make the people who commute out of the village want to suddenly quit their jobs."
Hirosawa gave an uncomfortable nod. "That is... just like the situation at Yuuki-san's place."
"Yeah, Tohru-kun resigned, too. --Hirosawa-san, how do you think we should make sense of all this? Yuuki-san, what do you think? Before your wife disappeared, how was her complection? Did she seem strangely emotionally muted?"
"That's---" Yuuki held his tongue when charged by those words. His gaze drifted across the table. Yuuki was clearly in a panic.
"A lot of residents are moving out mysteriously and disappearing from the village. For most of them we don't know where they're going. Yuuki-san, could you try calling them after this? Your wife's family."
Yuuki looked at Toshio, terrified, and shook his head.
"I see. --Then, how about this. Anyone been to the town hall recently? What about you, Masa-san? When Takashi-kun died, you had to go to the town hall, right?"
"I did, but..."
"You had to submit the death notice, get a burial permit. Right?"
"Of course. But there wasn't anyone around during the day, I got it issued in the evening, but I did get one."
"Right? By the way, I went on Monday, and when I asked them, they told me the number of deaths in this village since September were zero."
That's ridiculous, several voices rose up.
"Yeah, it is ridiculous, isn't it? When this many people have died. Masa-san's house lost their son, and Yuuki-san's place lost Natsuno-kun. But looks like nobody's died."
"This can't be happening."
Toshio nodded to Yuuki. "Yeah. This shouldn't be happening. What shouldn't be is happening. And it's been happening in this village since summer. It keeps on happening. How many people do you think died? How many people do you think have vanished? It shouldn't be happening. Common sense tells you this many people, in this short a time frame, shouldn't be dying and moving out. But what shouldn't be happening keeps happening, ever since this summer."
"What on earth," Hasegawa held his head in his hands. "What's going on? There's something weird about the village. Yes---even before the doctor pointed it out, I'd thought it'd definitely been off."
Toshio nodded. "Yes. It is weird. This many people are dying, clearly as if it's spreading, and yet it's not an epidemic. This is not an epidemic disease. We haven't discovered any sort of pathogen at all."
"That can't be."
"It's true. The truth is this can't be any kind of disease. Does a disease make people resign? Make them move? Where is there a sickness with these symptoms?"
"What does this mean, though? What's happening?"
Toshio turned Hasegawa's question back at him. "You know the answer to that, don't you?"
"How could I?"
"Really? ---You all, you remember the fuss the Itou's Ikumi-san kicked up, don't you?"
The four all held their breath in unison, keeping quiet. Toshio knew by that that they remembered. Everyone remembered it, suspected it. And yet they wouldn't voice it.
"After all, why're we gathering in the daytime? Why didn't we do this at night? Because you all suspect it too. Am I wrong?"
That's because, Tashiro started to say, mumbling and then falling silent. All of them looked in different directions, desperate to hide their dismay. Toshio faced them all and gave a level explanation. The features of what was thought to be an illness, an outline of those symptoms. That impossible combination symptoms that could all line up with only one thing: if one explained them as circulatory hypoperic shock, it lined up. So many missing, so many resigning. Now the village was being cut off from the outside, isolated. It was losing the means to let anyone outside the village know about that abnormality, to prove it. Something had the village under siege, its hand on the throat of the village to choke it out.
"This is ridiculous." Yuuki spat those words and stood. "What are you trying to say? You're not really trying to say the same thing Ikumi-san did, about Okiagari, are you?"
"That is what I'm trying to say. And it's not a baseless claim. If you want, I can show you the proof."
"Gonna call out Kirishiki-san? Try burning incense?"
"I know at the very least that Gotouda Shuuji and Yasumori Nao's bodies aren't in their graves."
Yuuki's mouth dropped. Hirosawa and the others had the same response.
"I know it's an outrage. But I needed to be sure. There's nothing in the coffins but some shed skin. If you want, we can go right now and dig them up again. If we do that, you can confirm with your own eyes that the two of them rose up."
Silence descended on them all. The one to break that was, as expected, Yuuki.
"There's no talking to you."
"Yuuki-san."
"There's no corpse? That's not possible. How old are you?"
"Oi---"
"Now I have one for you." Yuuki narrowed his eyes at Toshio. It seemed like something had exacerbated him. "You always have the temple's Junior Monk at your side. Why isn't the Junior Monk in that seat next to you now?"
"That's...."
"This's all your delusion. You're so busy you snapped. That's why the Junior Monk can't stand to be around you anymore. That's why he's not here too. Am I wrong?"
Toshio was at a loss for words. Those charges were closer to a delusion, but Toshio couldn't exactly explain why Seishin wasn't here.
"I recommend you take some time off." Throwing those words down, Yuuki left the shop. Toshio was too taken back to do anything but watch; he turned to face Hirosawa and the others, but as if something were too unsightly to look at, Hirosawa too turned his eyes from Toshio.
"Masa-san, I...."
Tashiro gave a strained, forced smile. "Yuuki-san's been on edge since his son died. He didn't say that out of any real malice or anything, don't worry about it."
Toshio had almost taken some comfort from that, until Tashiro then also turned his gaze away.
"You're probably tired too. What with what happened to Kyouko-san and all. I mean--I don't hold it against you. You've been rushing around tending to a huge number of patients, I know. It's clearly an epidemic, but since you can't do anything about it, it's gotta be really frustrating. I get how you're feeling. For sure."
"Masa-san's voting with Yuuki-san, then."
"I don't think you're delusional. It might be true the bodies are missing. I heard something like that a long time ago. About grave robberies and stuff. They'd cremate them. They used to believe that human bones could cure lung disease, right? ---It's probably something like that, I figure."
Toshio was at a loss for words. Hasegawa nodded with a smile.
"There are cases like that, aren't there? Come to think of it, it happened in America too, didn't it? Something about someone digging up dead bodies. That case that they turned into a horror movie."
"Oh, yeah. Ed Gein," Tashioro said with a deliberately brightening voice. "Tobe Hooper was the director."
"Hitchcock's 'Psycho' was modeled off of that too, wasn't it?" Hirosawa gently wedged in. Toshio watched over the shifting mood in shock. They were intentionally trying to slide the topic in another direction.
"......This's your all's answer, huh?"
At Toshio's words, the fabricated smiled faded.
"......I'm sorry to say this, but to me it all sounds preposterous. I know that you've convinced yourself and you've prepared, but." Hirosawa said, shaking his head. "Maybe it's we who are being obstinate, inflexible in how we see things. But there's something you must understand. We've all been baptized by modern rationalism. Brainwashed, you could even say if you like. There are no such things as monsters or magic in this world. That's the foundation of our understanding. That's not to say that that's the one and only absolute truth. But that is for us the foundation of how we understand everything else in the world. Maybe that itself is a delusion, but to us that's a fundamental fact. Even if you tell us now to dismiss it, we cannot. To do that would be for us to lose everything."
"This isn't that abstract a level of conversation."
"That is the level of the conversation. Oni or anything like them don't exist, that is our--or at the very least for me it's a matter on which there's no argument on, on a psychological level. Everything else has to start from that. Not only do they not exist, this must be a disease, the moves, the resignations, they must all have some reasonable explanation. They simply have to, and so to make it so I may even fabricate an explanation. If it can't be explained, then it must be a mistake of the facts themselves. If that's not the case, then our sense of the world---our sense of our very selves, will also be forfeit."
Hasegawa gave a single nod of agreement, wordlessly rising from his seat and moving behind the counter.
"......I want you to help me. I can't stop this myself."
"If there is something that needs to be stopped, it isn't something which a doctor should have to bear alone, nor is it something that necessarily even can be. There are so many dying. Even if, as you say, Doctor, the family register is being falsified---even if, for the sake of argument, we say that that is true, then it's more than just a lie, it's an opportunity for the outside to have their attention drawn to it. It'd be impossible for this situation to continue on indefinitely."
"You really put your faith in people, huh?"
"I'm not particularly saying that someone from the outside will definitely reach in to help us. I'm saying they won't abandon us. The world is curious, the world is suspicious, and I don't think that those traits can be repressed. Someone would notice the inconsistencies. If they really are being falsified, wouldn't those falsifications clearly conflict with reality? Someone will suspect it, their eyes will be drawn to it. So it'd be impossible for matters like this not to be resolved."
"You're saying someone will notice the inconsistency? The village is being cut off from the outside. It's becoming a black box."
"Indeed, the Mutou's Tohru-kun had resigned before he died. But all the same, his workplace was made up of people, with human connections. At some point, someone will wonder what happened to he who had quit, and they'll make contact, I'm sure, and beyond that, I'm also sure there would be some business need they'd have to reach out. The fact that Tohru-kun died would be known outside of the village. I'm sure it's already known. Many people likely know that the person Mutou Tohru has died."
"But that's all other people's problem, to them."
"They're his colleagues."
"You mean former colleagues---Since this summer, there've been an abnormal number of deaths in this village. I started thinking it was weird around the end of August. Yuuki-san and you all thought it was strange around the start of October. Why do you think there was such a time lag between us?
By the time you all asked, the death toll was already over thirty people. But until it reached that point, you all didn't suspect a thing. Of course, there were deaths you all didn't know about. But you all should've seen the incessant funerals going on around you. You should've heard the rumors about who all died. But that didn't draw your attention. If it's not someone directly connected to you, it doesn't stir any emotion in you. Isn't that how it goes?"
"That's...."
"Listen. The death of someone close to you is a big deal. Nobody can ignore that, nobody can forget it. If that kept happening, you'd notice it was abnormal. But if it's someone else's problem instead of yours, you can ignore it, you can even forget about it. If it's not one of your own, death doesn't register as death. Death gets stripped of its gravity. Tohru-kun's coworkers might've heard that Tohru-kun died. But Tohru-kun's not their coworker anymore. He's not one of them. Even if they're aware of the fact that Mutou Tohru died, nobody's aware of it the way they are a grave, painful death. For deaths like that stripped of their meaning, at most they'll be the seed of a bad joke, or maybe the seed of some ghost story.
You all have talked about it all summer too. Something's wrong, is this a really bad disease going around, or something. All of you, about what percent of you believed that? When, at what point, did that become a reality you couldn't ignore anymore?"
Hirosawa kept silent. Toshio turned to look at Hasegawa, but Hasegawa had begun washing the dishes. Tashiro stood and said that he had to tend to the store as he left. Hirosawa sighed and stood up as well. Saying he had to get to work, he left.
That left Toshio alone. For a time, Toshio sat staring at the four empty chairs, then hung his head and left the shop.
Outside, the weather was shamelessly splendid. The sky was bright, as if the chill in the air had frozen anything which might accumulate and shaken the frozen crystals from the skies. There was also the strangely cheerful sound of a flute. The Shimotsuki was close. Each household's deciduous trees were changing colors. Only the momi firs which lined the mountains were still flush.
He returned to the hospital feeling overwhelmingly beaten down. There were no signs of patients in the deserted waiting room, leaving only Mutou in the office typing at a calculator.
"Ah, welcome back."
Yeah, Toshio answered vaguely as he looked around. "Where's Yasuyo-san?"
"Delivering medicines and checking on the older patients, she said."
I see, Toshio said resting his chin in his hands, on the counter.
"......Naa, Mutou-san. From where you sit, what've you seen happen here since this summer?"
"Haa?" Mutou asked looking up to Toshio.
"How about 'Oni invading the village' ?"
Mutou blinked. "Surely you're joking?"
That right? Toshio gave a bitter laugh. Toshio had no way out, and was furthermore utterly alone.
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Exactly! I see the point went clean over your empty head, dude.
If I thought this scene was frustrating in the anime, reading it is so much worse. I even had to dig my old account password from the depths of my memory so I could rant about this. They're like, "Okay sensei...I see you're too excited, let's get you back to bed now."
I suppose this is one moment though that shows the thought-provoking beauty of this novel. Being shackled by rationalism, would any of us, without seeing what Toshio has, cross that threshold and believe him? Toshio has some balls just laying it out for them, too - and this shows how desperate he's getting. At this point, I wonder if he has a plan for what he'd do next if he managed to recruit some of these guys. For anyone reading, what would you do?
Anyway, awesome to see that you're picking up the translation again! I can't wait to see the Shiki get what's coming. (Oh, sorry for the spoiler...but I don't think anyone came here without seeing the anime or manga first?)