Sinnesspiel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sinnesspiel) wrote2023-01-08 08:53 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2023-01-08 08:53 pm
Shiki Novel Translations 3.19.1
1
Yano Tae awoke. For a time, her memory was in chaos and it was all she could do to stare into the darkness. It was a small cabin. A blue darkness cast itself over everything, a cloud of melancholy. The sense that the hut appeared run down added to that. The building had the feel of a long unused storage shed. On the other hand, the sense that until just prior there had been somebody there, maybe what one would call remnants of human presence, lingered. That may have been due to the new but empty bottle casually left on the dirt floor, or because of the carelessly folded newspaper that itself wasn't that old. Either way, Tae had been sleeping directly on that dirt floor, and there wasn't anyone around now. Tae couldn't begin to understand where this was, or what she was doing here.
Tae staggered to her feet, opened the door and went out. The cabin was built at the end of a thin, scarcely paved road. A forest of momi firs were along either side of the road, allowing her to suppose she was likely in the mountains.
Looking at her surroundings, Tae startled and drew into herself. Above the forest of momi, a steel tower glittered silver in the moonlight. From the complex, gigantic shape formed by the steel beams, she felt something mysteriously sinister. It radiated a paralyzing sense of imposition.
To be cowering before a common transmission tower, what on earth was wrong with her? As she thought, even while unable to see any such watcher, Tae began to walk down the slope of the road, wanting to go someplace not looked down upon by that tower.
Since there was a transmission tower, it may have been the western mountains. This road was a woodland path, and that cabin must have been a common toolshed often seen along such logging paths. While she could understand that much, what Tae could not understand was why she was in such a place. At any rate, she wanted to go home. The night roads were scary. Strangely, her surroundings were paled, by no means dark, and yet Tae was seized by the knowledge that the night was terrifying.
(Quickly.. I've got to get back.)
Because the momi fir covered mountain was death's domain.
Tae hurried her feet onward. At first her steps were teetering but gradually her pace steadied, and she had felt her legs much lighter than they had always seemed. Something about it felt quite good. And yet very strange just the same. There was an ueasiness about it, like having forgotten to wear a piece of underwear.
At any rate, while hurrying she made her way down the woodland path into the village. She was just at the intersection at Sue no Yama. She could see a small hokora between the fields. Hurrying paralell to Sue no Yama, she came to the National Highway. After seeming to fly through some span of time, Tae had reached from front of her house. She had safely returned to her home.
Rushing forward in relief, again Tae stopped. The building was asleep, with no lights nor open windows, the storm doors shut tightly. She couldn't help the sinister sensation. It was a feeling like what she had felt from the steel tower. If she came close, something scary would happen, an ominous sense of premonition. This was her own house, and yet were this not the night in which dangers lurked, she would not want to go near it.
(What on earth is this?)
Yes, this was her own house. Surely Kanami was there all alone (why had she been in that cabin?) asleep. There shouldn't bee anything to fear. So then why did her body feel paralyzed?
Tae faltered, and then sobbing, approached the house. It was similar to dread, similar to losing one's nerve. Her inability to suppress that sincere sense of not wanting to get near was because of that ominous premonition. There was a sense of something distinctly not good. And in that house Kanami was alone and asleep. Something, to Kanami---.
Going around the back, she approached the window to Kanami's room. On the inside of the glass with no outer storm guard, the curtains were firmly drawn. She gathered her courage to knock on that window. Some sort of bizarre shrouded over her, which made her seize up at merely thinking of daring to enter the house but that was all the more reason that she wanted to see Kanami's face, so much she couldn't resist.
Hirosawa Takatoshi and Ohtsuka Yasuyuki buried one body in the hole and returned to the shed.
"Who is that?" Takatoshi asked Yasuyuki. Takatoshi didn't remember that young woman's face but he thought that Yasukuki might know as he folded his hands together after burying her.
"The Maruyasu's wife. ---Atsuko, I think it was."
"Heh," Takatsoshi murmured. "That's a shame isn't it."
When someone known to one of your friends didn't rise, you expressed your condolences thusly. It was common courtesy amongst one's own.
"I didn't know her or anything, in particular. Just, she was also a member of the sawmill so it was more in passing."
"Ah, I see."
The two had been revived for a long time. Attacking victims was no more than routine work, and as a result, disposing of the bodies was no different than taking out the trash. For Takatoshi and Yasuyuki both, they were no longer conscious of the casualties as humans. They were akin to livestock, and while actively trying to think of it that way pragmatically, soon enough it had become the natural way of thinking. --But, someone that you knew was different. Those you had some kind of connection to were different from livestock. At the very least they were different in the way a sheep in the field was different from a pet in the yard.
"More importantly, how's it going? With Hina-chan."
When Takatoshi asked, Yasuyuki laughed, embarassed. "Mm, she's a good girl. She's conscientious and good to me."
Yasuyuki was now living in the house of what was commonly known as Sanyasu. The Sanyasu's daughter Hinako revived and he was living together with her. Hirosawa was living far from where he used to live, in Kami-Sotoba. We say 'far' but it was still within the village, but at the very least there was nobody around with whom he'd used to know. The only people he knew were---a woman about Takatoshi's mother's age who had revived, so he ended up living with that woman.
Yamairi was completely packed. Amongst their kind, those who had experience and no particular blunders against them were gradually being brought down to live in the village. Compared to Yamairi it was a different world. The houses were cozy, and for meals one needed only thin out the area. If you could hide them well enough in the house, one could even get by without hunting. If one took the resultant corpse to the funeral parlor, Hayami would handle it from there.
That said there was work to be done. Takatoshi worked at the town hall, and Yasuyuki managed the mountain cabins that dotted the area. After a bit of work, there were now tool sheds peppered through the mountains. Every manager was assigned five or so, and they tended to the shed and looked after the corpses brought in. Watching over them to see whether or not they revived, and if they did revive bringing in neighborhood 'sheep' to feed them, taking care of them until they attacked their first one and then taking them to Yamairi. If they began to rot, dispose of them. --Like the woman they were burying tonight.
In the past all of this, it had been done at a specific house in Yamairi. Tatsumi and the like could spot those likely to rise and have them brought to Yamairi and look after all of them there, but indeed these days there were a lot of corpses. Far more than Tatsumi could handle by himself, and too many to even make headway in confirming whether they had revived or not. So for the time being there was no choices but to look over every corpse, and there weren't accomidations in Yamairi for that. So they were placed in the cabins, split up amongst those assigned to watch over them, and that was how it now was.
"That sounds rough. You have five cabin fulls, right?"
When Takatoshi said that, Yasuyuki smiled. "It's really not. It's just doing the rounds to each and seeing how it's doing. Having a job feels pretty good actually. In it's own way it gives me something to put myself to. Painting the cabin walls, putting up the boards is fun too. I've gotten the hang of it here lately."
"Huh."
"Still, sorry about this. You came to hang out and I'm making you help."
"I don't mind. It's not that much of a hassle, really."
"I hear the main Hiro's area's going to open up soon. There's that small sawmill in your neighborhood, right? The Hirosawa sawmill."
"Right, it's over there."
"Once that opens up, I asked Tatsumi-san if I couldn't have that area left to me. We'd need someone to work it for building materials, the lumber I mean."
"Sure would. Yasuyuki-san, that was your line of work. Hope that works out, it'd be close by too."
Mm, Yasuyumi nodded. The lowest cabin down the western mountain was just ahead. Yasuyuki opened the gate and stepped inside, then stiffened.
"......What's wrong?"
"She's gone."
Takatoshi went 'Eh?' and peered into the cabin. Indeed, there was nobody there. Even though when they had taken out the woman's corpse before, there had been the corpse of an older woman laid next to her.
"She must've risen," Yasuyuki murmured before turning to face Takatoshi. "You, when we left the cabin, did you lock it?"
Takatoshi shook his head. Takatoshi had left carrying the body. Since he was asked to close the door for him, he did that but he hadn't locked it.
"I was just told to close it for you...."
"There's no point in just closing the door!" --Exactly. Takatoshi could feel his own expression stiffening.
"What do we do, Yasuyuki-san?"
"What do we do? I'm in trouble too, with this. And I'd just asked about the Hiro Main thing too. Tatsumi's going to really lay into me. If worst comes to worst, I might get pulled back to Yamairi."
Takatoshi threw the shovel into the cabin. "We'll look for her."
"...And if we don't find her?"
"Don't talk about something that scary. If she's found by the villagers it'll be a crisis. Tatsumi-san'll string me up."
"But, if she woke up right after we'd left the cabin, I can't imagine she'd get far. She may still be wandering lost in the mountains."
"Well, that's true enough."
Taktoshi shivered. If this went poorly, Takatoshi would be responsible too. Tatsumi's ire was definitely something to avoid. He could do without the punishment, and as Yasuyuki had said, he might lose his qualifications to live in the village and be brought back to Yamairi.
"And by morning, she'll burn up and die, for sure. Once her face is burnt off, nobody will know who she is from where. We can say that granny also didn't rise so we buried her."
"But still."
"I'll be a witness. If we tell the same story, they won't know. Even Tatsumi-san can't keep track of how many corpses there are anymore."
---That could be true, Yasuyuki thought. Whatever it took, he wanted to avoid losing any good will with Tatsumi that'd come from being scolded for his failures here.
"......Anyway, let's look as much as we can look. She might still be in the area even."
Yano Kanami opened her eyes to a tapping sound on the window. The lamp on her bedside stand was still lit. She got up and looked at the clock. It was past four in the morning. Somebody was knocking on the window. With a force that could break the glass.
(At this hour...who?)
Nobody came to mind as someone who would come visiting before dawn. ---If one didn't count Motoko. She had heard Shigeki's condition was poor. Kanami had tried to call countless times but each time Motoko said she couldn't leave his side and hung up. Each time she felt like she herself was being cut off. She couldn't help thinking that Motoko was isolating herself from the outside world including Kanami.
(Did something happen to Shigeki?)
Maybe something had changed with him. Maybe because of that, she didn't even think to call and came dashing over. If it were Motoko that wasn't by any means impossible.
Kanami rose up and opened the curtain. She peered out the window for Motoko, and what she saw there shocked her. Tae stopped banging on the window. Without hearing it, her lips shaped out 'Kanami.'
"....Why?"
After all, her mother was dead. Kanami, with a pain that felt like rendering her own body to pieces, had placed her in a coffin in the fields.
Despite her shock, none the less her feet moved of their own accord, a half-dash to the back yard. It was all just some misunderstanding, was she feeling happy or sad, this had to be a dream that would leave her brokenly despondent, Kanami staggered between such alternating thoughts and feelings so much she felt as if in the midst of a terrible hangover. This couldn't be real, so this had to be a dream or a haullicination without a doubt. So even were she to open the back door, Tae certainly wouldn't be there without a doubt. Kanami lost her mother. She had lost a part of herself. That could never be taken back she knew, and yet if that was all some big mistake, if by some miraculous fortune Tae had come back, just how, how happy could she be?
(......God.)
She opened the lock with a prayer. With the door open she went barefoot into the backyard, where Tae stood with a shocked expression. She really had come back to her, she thought, while also thinking that without a doubt that meant this was a dream. What a happy--and what a tragic dream. When she awoke, there was no doubt she would cry herself hoarse. She would writhe in loathing against the natural way of the world.
Even while thinking that Kanami cried "Mom!" and rushed to her side. The hand she gripped as as cold as the night wind. But all the same, there was a hand to grab.
"......Mom."
Tae's hand gripped Kanami's hand back. Kanami's tears flowed, and she lead Tae into the house never to separate from her side ever again. The sensation of Tae's hand was too certain to think a dream. Or maybe it was just that she was swept up in the feeling that there was sensation to that hand.
Pulling at the white burial garb Tae was wearing, she embraced her shoulders pulling her into the house. Her body frame and her exposed shoulder, indeed they had a physical sensation. This could be real, she thought. At the same time she thought, that, she felt something cold along her spine. If indeed this was no dream, if Tae had truly come back, then.
Kanami pulled away from Tae and hurried to lock the back door. While thinking she never wanted Tae to leave her side again, at the same time she realized she had to keep her away from the eyes of the world at large. Wondering as she turned from locking the back door if Tae may have vanished, Kanami saw that Tae was still standing there. Kanami felt her first chill.
---Just what was this? Why was Tae here. She should not have come back to her and yet.
"......How?" she asked, but there was no answer. Tae shook her head. Tae looked more shocked than even Kanami.
At any rate, she urged. It'd be bad to stay in the white burial garbs. If the neighbors saw, they'd likely think Tae had risen. --Would think, Kanami realized her own words.
Tae had risen up. A chill rose through her but it was certainly not for fear of Tae. It was of the fact that she had risen at all, and that truth, that scared her.
Reaching out a fearful, fearful hand, she touched Tae's face. Tae's tears overflowed, but those tears had no warmth, and Tae's mouth and nose showed no sign of breathing. Her skin was cold, so cold, and gave off no feeling beyond the tactile sensation.
(This is a Risen.)
This is what had been happening in the village, she at last ascertained. Tae rose up from her grave, and had come down from the mountain to bring death. She had come back to bring Kanami along with her.
But even with that said, her mother was here before her eyes, why would she lock her out of the house? Something like telling her to go back to the mountains and driving her out was impossible for Kanami.
"Anyway.... Let's change your clothes? You're covered in mud."
When Kanami pulled her hand, Tae nodded a child like nod. Kanami brought Tae to the washing area, cleaned her face and changed her clothes. Taking off her burial clothes and changing her into her usual bed clothes, she was sure enough her mother. Sitting with her in the tea room with the lights on, the memory that her mother had died seemed more like the lie.
Kanami talked to her countless times, tried to ask her what happened, but Tae only shook her head. She seemed bewildered but gradually she seemed to show colors of frustration. That was when Kanami at last determined that Tae couldn't talk. Her inability to get her voice out was a consternation to Tae herself.
"It's all right...It's fine. Anyway, let's get some sleep? Once we've calmed down, we can take our time thinking it over?"
Tae nodded to Kanami's words. At some point, a bit of light began to leak in. Dawn as breaking.
"Give me a minute. I'll get your futon ready." Kanami called back as she went towards Tae's room. Carrying the futon into the room that she had just cleaned out with all of the deep emotions supposing that the owner would never return to live in it again, she lined it up.
When she returned to the tea room, Tae was prostrated over the kotatsu. Hurrying to her side, she found her limp. It seemed a much deeper loss of consciousness than sleep. --No, more than sleep, it was like she was dead.
No body heat, no breath. Putting a hand to her chest she couldn't feel a pulse. She had been up until a moment ago, and now it seemed like a lie.
This was a corpse. Without a doubt, Tae was dead. She rose up, came down the mountain, was all that a lie? Or was her memory that Tae had ever died in the first place a lie? Maybe Tae was dead here now for the first time. Or maybe she had gone mad and carried Tae down from the grave herself.
While swirling within such incoherent thoughts, Kanami for a time couldn't move. What was certain for now was that her mother's corpse was right before her.
(For now... Carry her.)
Right, bring her to the bedroom, then consult with somebody. --But, who?
As Kanami thought, cradling Tae's body, she drug her along to the bedroom. She laid her in the futon. Doing all of that, she really couldn't see it as anything but Tae's corpse.
Looking like just here and now she had drawn her last breath.
Vertigo. To clear her nausea, Kanami opened the window. Opening the rain guard a bit, she threw up into the garden. How much was a dream, how much was a lie, and what was true? Where did Kanami belong? Just where and what was reality?
Half crying, half wheezing, for a while she breathed at the windowside. Facing the yard, the sight of the pale light beginning to color the village was the same as ever. It was the usual morning, the usual colors of autumn. Not a single thing was abnormal, the view as Kanami knew it did not have such much as a single scratch of difference to it. Then, behind Kanami's back lying in a futon, there should not have been anyone. Yet when she turned around, there was Tae, and thus Tae must have been breathing in her sleep and yet there was neither breath nor pulse.
(......What do I do?)
What was the right thing to do? How could she understand this, accept it, and explain it to herself? Too puzzled and at a loss, she couldn't but cry. The light shone over Kanami's crying back. The night was being wiped away and painted over with the coming morning.
That was when she heard a strange sound. Kanami lifed her face. Tae who had never made a sound opened her eyes and let out intermittend groans.
"......Mom?"
Tae's voice cried out in agony as she covered her face. Before Kanami's very eyes as she rushed over to her, Tae's hand, her face, had red buldges forming, blisters blistering. That was the switch that lead to Tae letting out a scream. Burns, Kanami thought. --But, why?
She didn't know the reason, but she was afraid of the sounds getting out. She hurried to close the rain guards, then closed the window. Tae abrumpty calmed. With a flop the hand covering her face dropped. That hand and face were burnt but, no longer crying out, her eyelids were closed and calm.
"......The morning sun? Because of the light?"
Kanami looked between Tae and the window, then fastened it shut again. Once the rain guard was firmly shut, still somewhat unease about it she placed duct tape around it. On top of closing the glass window itself, she plastered newspaper over it and sealed it with duct tape as well, layerig it over itself in the middle sections. In doing so, while not Kanami's intention, she was hiding Tae's existence from the outside world.
Yano Tae awoke. For a time, her memory was in chaos and it was all she could do to stare into the darkness. It was a small cabin. A blue darkness cast itself over everything, a cloud of melancholy. The sense that the hut appeared run down added to that. The building had the feel of a long unused storage shed. On the other hand, the sense that until just prior there had been somebody there, maybe what one would call remnants of human presence, lingered. That may have been due to the new but empty bottle casually left on the dirt floor, or because of the carelessly folded newspaper that itself wasn't that old. Either way, Tae had been sleeping directly on that dirt floor, and there wasn't anyone around now. Tae couldn't begin to understand where this was, or what she was doing here.
Tae staggered to her feet, opened the door and went out. The cabin was built at the end of a thin, scarcely paved road. A forest of momi firs were along either side of the road, allowing her to suppose she was likely in the mountains.
Looking at her surroundings, Tae startled and drew into herself. Above the forest of momi, a steel tower glittered silver in the moonlight. From the complex, gigantic shape formed by the steel beams, she felt something mysteriously sinister. It radiated a paralyzing sense of imposition.
To be cowering before a common transmission tower, what on earth was wrong with her? As she thought, even while unable to see any such watcher, Tae began to walk down the slope of the road, wanting to go someplace not looked down upon by that tower.
Since there was a transmission tower, it may have been the western mountains. This road was a woodland path, and that cabin must have been a common toolshed often seen along such logging paths. While she could understand that much, what Tae could not understand was why she was in such a place. At any rate, she wanted to go home. The night roads were scary. Strangely, her surroundings were paled, by no means dark, and yet Tae was seized by the knowledge that the night was terrifying.
(Quickly.. I've got to get back.)
Because the momi fir covered mountain was death's domain.
Tae hurried her feet onward. At first her steps were teetering but gradually her pace steadied, and she had felt her legs much lighter than they had always seemed. Something about it felt quite good. And yet very strange just the same. There was an ueasiness about it, like having forgotten to wear a piece of underwear.
At any rate, while hurrying she made her way down the woodland path into the village. She was just at the intersection at Sue no Yama. She could see a small hokora between the fields. Hurrying paralell to Sue no Yama, she came to the National Highway. After seeming to fly through some span of time, Tae had reached from front of her house. She had safely returned to her home.
Rushing forward in relief, again Tae stopped. The building was asleep, with no lights nor open windows, the storm doors shut tightly. She couldn't help the sinister sensation. It was a feeling like what she had felt from the steel tower. If she came close, something scary would happen, an ominous sense of premonition. This was her own house, and yet were this not the night in which dangers lurked, she would not want to go near it.
(What on earth is this?)
Yes, this was her own house. Surely Kanami was there all alone (why had she been in that cabin?) asleep. There shouldn't bee anything to fear. So then why did her body feel paralyzed?
Tae faltered, and then sobbing, approached the house. It was similar to dread, similar to losing one's nerve. Her inability to suppress that sincere sense of not wanting to get near was because of that ominous premonition. There was a sense of something distinctly not good. And in that house Kanami was alone and asleep. Something, to Kanami---.
Going around the back, she approached the window to Kanami's room. On the inside of the glass with no outer storm guard, the curtains were firmly drawn. She gathered her courage to knock on that window. Some sort of bizarre shrouded over her, which made her seize up at merely thinking of daring to enter the house but that was all the more reason that she wanted to see Kanami's face, so much she couldn't resist.
Hirosawa Takatoshi and Ohtsuka Yasuyuki buried one body in the hole and returned to the shed.
"Who is that?" Takatoshi asked Yasuyuki. Takatoshi didn't remember that young woman's face but he thought that Yasukuki might know as he folded his hands together after burying her.
"The Maruyasu's wife. ---Atsuko, I think it was."
"Heh," Takatsoshi murmured. "That's a shame isn't it."
When someone known to one of your friends didn't rise, you expressed your condolences thusly. It was common courtesy amongst one's own.
"I didn't know her or anything, in particular. Just, she was also a member of the sawmill so it was more in passing."
"Ah, I see."
The two had been revived for a long time. Attacking victims was no more than routine work, and as a result, disposing of the bodies was no different than taking out the trash. For Takatoshi and Yasuyuki both, they were no longer conscious of the casualties as humans. They were akin to livestock, and while actively trying to think of it that way pragmatically, soon enough it had become the natural way of thinking. --But, someone that you knew was different. Those you had some kind of connection to were different from livestock. At the very least they were different in the way a sheep in the field was different from a pet in the yard.
"More importantly, how's it going? With Hina-chan."
When Takatoshi asked, Yasuyuki laughed, embarassed. "Mm, she's a good girl. She's conscientious and good to me."
Yasuyuki was now living in the house of what was commonly known as Sanyasu. The Sanyasu's daughter Hinako revived and he was living together with her. Hirosawa was living far from where he used to live, in Kami-Sotoba. We say 'far' but it was still within the village, but at the very least there was nobody around with whom he'd used to know. The only people he knew were---a woman about Takatoshi's mother's age who had revived, so he ended up living with that woman.
Yamairi was completely packed. Amongst their kind, those who had experience and no particular blunders against them were gradually being brought down to live in the village. Compared to Yamairi it was a different world. The houses were cozy, and for meals one needed only thin out the area. If you could hide them well enough in the house, one could even get by without hunting. If one took the resultant corpse to the funeral parlor, Hayami would handle it from there.
That said there was work to be done. Takatoshi worked at the town hall, and Yasuyuki managed the mountain cabins that dotted the area. After a bit of work, there were now tool sheds peppered through the mountains. Every manager was assigned five or so, and they tended to the shed and looked after the corpses brought in. Watching over them to see whether or not they revived, and if they did revive bringing in neighborhood 'sheep' to feed them, taking care of them until they attacked their first one and then taking them to Yamairi. If they began to rot, dispose of them. --Like the woman they were burying tonight.
In the past all of this, it had been done at a specific house in Yamairi. Tatsumi and the like could spot those likely to rise and have them brought to Yamairi and look after all of them there, but indeed these days there were a lot of corpses. Far more than Tatsumi could handle by himself, and too many to even make headway in confirming whether they had revived or not. So for the time being there was no choices but to look over every corpse, and there weren't accomidations in Yamairi for that. So they were placed in the cabins, split up amongst those assigned to watch over them, and that was how it now was.
"That sounds rough. You have five cabin fulls, right?"
When Takatoshi said that, Yasuyuki smiled. "It's really not. It's just doing the rounds to each and seeing how it's doing. Having a job feels pretty good actually. In it's own way it gives me something to put myself to. Painting the cabin walls, putting up the boards is fun too. I've gotten the hang of it here lately."
"Huh."
"Still, sorry about this. You came to hang out and I'm making you help."
"I don't mind. It's not that much of a hassle, really."
"I hear the main Hiro's area's going to open up soon. There's that small sawmill in your neighborhood, right? The Hirosawa sawmill."
"Right, it's over there."
"Once that opens up, I asked Tatsumi-san if I couldn't have that area left to me. We'd need someone to work it for building materials, the lumber I mean."
"Sure would. Yasuyuki-san, that was your line of work. Hope that works out, it'd be close by too."
Mm, Yasuyumi nodded. The lowest cabin down the western mountain was just ahead. Yasuyuki opened the gate and stepped inside, then stiffened.
"......What's wrong?"
"She's gone."
Takatoshi went 'Eh?' and peered into the cabin. Indeed, there was nobody there. Even though when they had taken out the woman's corpse before, there had been the corpse of an older woman laid next to her.
"She must've risen," Yasuyuki murmured before turning to face Takatoshi. "You, when we left the cabin, did you lock it?"
Takatoshi shook his head. Takatoshi had left carrying the body. Since he was asked to close the door for him, he did that but he hadn't locked it.
"I was just told to close it for you...."
"There's no point in just closing the door!" --Exactly. Takatoshi could feel his own expression stiffening.
"What do we do, Yasuyuki-san?"
"What do we do? I'm in trouble too, with this. And I'd just asked about the Hiro Main thing too. Tatsumi's going to really lay into me. If worst comes to worst, I might get pulled back to Yamairi."
Takatoshi threw the shovel into the cabin. "We'll look for her."
"...And if we don't find her?"
"Don't talk about something that scary. If she's found by the villagers it'll be a crisis. Tatsumi-san'll string me up."
"But, if she woke up right after we'd left the cabin, I can't imagine she'd get far. She may still be wandering lost in the mountains."
"Well, that's true enough."
Taktoshi shivered. If this went poorly, Takatoshi would be responsible too. Tatsumi's ire was definitely something to avoid. He could do without the punishment, and as Yasuyuki had said, he might lose his qualifications to live in the village and be brought back to Yamairi.
"And by morning, she'll burn up and die, for sure. Once her face is burnt off, nobody will know who she is from where. We can say that granny also didn't rise so we buried her."
"But still."
"I'll be a witness. If we tell the same story, they won't know. Even Tatsumi-san can't keep track of how many corpses there are anymore."
---That could be true, Yasuyuki thought. Whatever it took, he wanted to avoid losing any good will with Tatsumi that'd come from being scolded for his failures here.
"......Anyway, let's look as much as we can look. She might still be in the area even."
Yano Kanami opened her eyes to a tapping sound on the window. The lamp on her bedside stand was still lit. She got up and looked at the clock. It was past four in the morning. Somebody was knocking on the window. With a force that could break the glass.
(At this hour...who?)
Nobody came to mind as someone who would come visiting before dawn. ---If one didn't count Motoko. She had heard Shigeki's condition was poor. Kanami had tried to call countless times but each time Motoko said she couldn't leave his side and hung up. Each time she felt like she herself was being cut off. She couldn't help thinking that Motoko was isolating herself from the outside world including Kanami.
(Did something happen to Shigeki?)
Maybe something had changed with him. Maybe because of that, she didn't even think to call and came dashing over. If it were Motoko that wasn't by any means impossible.
Kanami rose up and opened the curtain. She peered out the window for Motoko, and what she saw there shocked her. Tae stopped banging on the window. Without hearing it, her lips shaped out 'Kanami.'
"....Why?"
After all, her mother was dead. Kanami, with a pain that felt like rendering her own body to pieces, had placed her in a coffin in the fields.
Despite her shock, none the less her feet moved of their own accord, a half-dash to the back yard. It was all just some misunderstanding, was she feeling happy or sad, this had to be a dream that would leave her brokenly despondent, Kanami staggered between such alternating thoughts and feelings so much she felt as if in the midst of a terrible hangover. This couldn't be real, so this had to be a dream or a haullicination without a doubt. So even were she to open the back door, Tae certainly wouldn't be there without a doubt. Kanami lost her mother. She had lost a part of herself. That could never be taken back she knew, and yet if that was all some big mistake, if by some miraculous fortune Tae had come back, just how, how happy could she be?
(......God.)
She opened the lock with a prayer. With the door open she went barefoot into the backyard, where Tae stood with a shocked expression. She really had come back to her, she thought, while also thinking that without a doubt that meant this was a dream. What a happy--and what a tragic dream. When she awoke, there was no doubt she would cry herself hoarse. She would writhe in loathing against the natural way of the world.
Even while thinking that Kanami cried "Mom!" and rushed to her side. The hand she gripped as as cold as the night wind. But all the same, there was a hand to grab.
"......Mom."
Tae's hand gripped Kanami's hand back. Kanami's tears flowed, and she lead Tae into the house never to separate from her side ever again. The sensation of Tae's hand was too certain to think a dream. Or maybe it was just that she was swept up in the feeling that there was sensation to that hand.
Pulling at the white burial garb Tae was wearing, she embraced her shoulders pulling her into the house. Her body frame and her exposed shoulder, indeed they had a physical sensation. This could be real, she thought. At the same time she thought, that, she felt something cold along her spine. If indeed this was no dream, if Tae had truly come back, then.
Kanami pulled away from Tae and hurried to lock the back door. While thinking she never wanted Tae to leave her side again, at the same time she realized she had to keep her away from the eyes of the world at large. Wondering as she turned from locking the back door if Tae may have vanished, Kanami saw that Tae was still standing there. Kanami felt her first chill.
---Just what was this? Why was Tae here. She should not have come back to her and yet.
"......How?" she asked, but there was no answer. Tae shook her head. Tae looked more shocked than even Kanami.
At any rate, she urged. It'd be bad to stay in the white burial garbs. If the neighbors saw, they'd likely think Tae had risen. --Would think, Kanami realized her own words.
Tae had risen up. A chill rose through her but it was certainly not for fear of Tae. It was of the fact that she had risen at all, and that truth, that scared her.
Reaching out a fearful, fearful hand, she touched Tae's face. Tae's tears overflowed, but those tears had no warmth, and Tae's mouth and nose showed no sign of breathing. Her skin was cold, so cold, and gave off no feeling beyond the tactile sensation.
(This is a Risen.)
This is what had been happening in the village, she at last ascertained. Tae rose up from her grave, and had come down from the mountain to bring death. She had come back to bring Kanami along with her.
But even with that said, her mother was here before her eyes, why would she lock her out of the house? Something like telling her to go back to the mountains and driving her out was impossible for Kanami.
"Anyway.... Let's change your clothes? You're covered in mud."
When Kanami pulled her hand, Tae nodded a child like nod. Kanami brought Tae to the washing area, cleaned her face and changed her clothes. Taking off her burial clothes and changing her into her usual bed clothes, she was sure enough her mother. Sitting with her in the tea room with the lights on, the memory that her mother had died seemed more like the lie.
Kanami talked to her countless times, tried to ask her what happened, but Tae only shook her head. She seemed bewildered but gradually she seemed to show colors of frustration. That was when Kanami at last determined that Tae couldn't talk. Her inability to get her voice out was a consternation to Tae herself.
"It's all right...It's fine. Anyway, let's get some sleep? Once we've calmed down, we can take our time thinking it over?"
Tae nodded to Kanami's words. At some point, a bit of light began to leak in. Dawn as breaking.
"Give me a minute. I'll get your futon ready." Kanami called back as she went towards Tae's room. Carrying the futon into the room that she had just cleaned out with all of the deep emotions supposing that the owner would never return to live in it again, she lined it up.
When she returned to the tea room, Tae was prostrated over the kotatsu. Hurrying to her side, she found her limp. It seemed a much deeper loss of consciousness than sleep. --No, more than sleep, it was like she was dead.
No body heat, no breath. Putting a hand to her chest she couldn't feel a pulse. She had been up until a moment ago, and now it seemed like a lie.
This was a corpse. Without a doubt, Tae was dead. She rose up, came down the mountain, was all that a lie? Or was her memory that Tae had ever died in the first place a lie? Maybe Tae was dead here now for the first time. Or maybe she had gone mad and carried Tae down from the grave herself.
While swirling within such incoherent thoughts, Kanami for a time couldn't move. What was certain for now was that her mother's corpse was right before her.
(For now... Carry her.)
Right, bring her to the bedroom, then consult with somebody. --But, who?
As Kanami thought, cradling Tae's body, she drug her along to the bedroom. She laid her in the futon. Doing all of that, she really couldn't see it as anything but Tae's corpse.
Looking like just here and now she had drawn her last breath.
Vertigo. To clear her nausea, Kanami opened the window. Opening the rain guard a bit, she threw up into the garden. How much was a dream, how much was a lie, and what was true? Where did Kanami belong? Just where and what was reality?
Half crying, half wheezing, for a while she breathed at the windowside. Facing the yard, the sight of the pale light beginning to color the village was the same as ever. It was the usual morning, the usual colors of autumn. Not a single thing was abnormal, the view as Kanami knew it did not have such much as a single scratch of difference to it. Then, behind Kanami's back lying in a futon, there should not have been anyone. Yet when she turned around, there was Tae, and thus Tae must have been breathing in her sleep and yet there was neither breath nor pulse.
(......What do I do?)
What was the right thing to do? How could she understand this, accept it, and explain it to herself? Too puzzled and at a loss, she couldn't but cry. The light shone over Kanami's crying back. The night was being wiped away and painted over with the coming morning.
That was when she heard a strange sound. Kanami lifed her face. Tae who had never made a sound opened her eyes and let out intermittend groans.
"......Mom?"
Tae's voice cried out in agony as she covered her face. Before Kanami's very eyes as she rushed over to her, Tae's hand, her face, had red buldges forming, blisters blistering. That was the switch that lead to Tae letting out a scream. Burns, Kanami thought. --But, why?
She didn't know the reason, but she was afraid of the sounds getting out. She hurried to close the rain guards, then closed the window. Tae abrumpty calmed. With a flop the hand covering her face dropped. That hand and face were burnt but, no longer crying out, her eyelids were closed and calm.
"......The morning sun? Because of the light?"
Kanami looked between Tae and the window, then fastened it shut again. Once the rain guard was firmly shut, still somewhat unease about it she placed duct tape around it. On top of closing the glass window itself, she plastered newspaper over it and sealed it with duct tape as well, layerig it over itself in the middle sections. In doing so, while not Kanami's intention, she was hiding Tae's existence from the outside world.