Chapter 1.4

Their lunch finished, the two children flew outside. Maeda Motoko saw them off and then washed the bowls and cups they had been using before they'd left. The same children who had vowed when summer vacation had first started to bring their own dishes to the sink and wash them had begun abandoning their jobs one by one, as if becoming accustomed to the vacation from school and remembering how the wild and free time was meant to be used. They would probably, no, certainly, be leaving their dishes on top of the table and running out to play until after the Bon festival.

--That's just how children are.

Motoko bore a smile as she cleaned. Motoko herself had been made to promise their teacher that they would all clean up around the house together over the break but little by little things returned to this natural state as they approached the new semester.

Even if there were vacations from school, the adult world didn't have such vacations. Her husband was away at work at the JA, the Japan Agricultural Cooperative, and her in-laws had gone off into the mountains. In order to allow her step parents to use them if they returned, she straightened up the utensils and snack box. Setting the cloth over it, she set out of the house.

Motoko's home was in the southern tip of the village. The southern part of the village was nothing but farm fields. The village that opened up from the north like a spreading paper fan collided with the southern mountain ridges that closed it off. That southern spur's tip defined the boundaries of the unobstructed water planes. Those paddy fields were a plane of subdued green. It seemed that out beyond the village was a water shortage that was causing severe damages but for the time being that didn't seem to be in effect in the village. The foot paths between the fields were like a gutter, due to the spreading rice plants. The firs that covered the mountains were a deeper green than ever, shone on by the sun's bright rays that emphasized their hue, the color of summer itself.

A transformer was erected directly on the edge of the southern mountain spur. The power cables that stretched off of that from the mountain ridges out towards the other mountains formed a relay between the ridges, winding from the southern spurs to the westerly ones. The tower glistened like silver against the backdrop of the cloudless summer sky.

Motoko squinted her eyes and crossed the path in front of her house. The thin asphalt road was surrounded by an irregular dotting of houses, overall nothing to cast a sufficient shadow over it, making the surface of the road shimmer with a haze of hot air like heating burning metal. To escape that heat she stepped down from the road into the paths between the rice fields, where the tips of the rice plants tickled at her feet, walking between fields until coming out at the highway. The national highway that ran north from the south of the village meandered greatly between two mountain ridges on the south and the east. Walking along that curve, soon up ahead a short bridge appeared. On the guardrail of the bridge was engraved "Sotoba Bridge" but there probably weren't many who would remember that name. The name didn't mean anything to those outside the village, and to the villagers it was known as the "highway bridge." ---There were plenty of accidents near that "highway bridge"

The plain between the two ridges was broad and allowed for a clear view of the curve. That must have invited negligence on the part of drivers, leading them to speed up in excess, which was bound to lead to an accident. Especially in the south--cars coming from Mizobe heading north, due to the clear outlook, seemed to misjudge how many ares the curve was. An are was by far less than what it appeared. With that misunderstanding, the car would speed up and fail to take the turn, plowing on head. That was bound to happen near the national highway bridge. The cars that had plowed through crashed into the guardrail, and every year the aftermath of that would again lead to bridgework repairs.

That wasn't all, traffic accidents involving people were frequent there too.

Just before the bridge the highway intersected with a road that lead into the village. While the stoplights turned off in the night, there were stop lights about in the daytime, and pedestrian crosswalk lights were also established, yet there were no end to the count of children and elderly hit by cars as they tried to cross the road.

The cars driven by villagers were fine. The villagers knew about the stoplights and of course about the twisting farm roads near there, and they knew the nature of that curve. People from other places easily overlooked Sotoba's stoplight, and furthermore the villagers--such as Motoko herself just now was doing--would rise up from the paths between rice fields onto the highway to cross. In shock at seeing a person suddenly appear there, drivers would hastily slam on the breaks but it was a place where speeding accidents were frequent, there were times when they didn't make it in time, and the odds of any accident that did happen being severe were high. Because these assailants were overall and without fail people from other places passing through the village, Motoko's image of them was an irredeemable one defined as "outsiders: those who come to take away our children by vehicular manslaughter."

One day, somebody she'd never known or seen from somewhere else would hurt and kill her children, snatching them away. ---Motoko was unable to let go of that uneasiness, especially when she looked at the bridge, that thought would instantly rise to the surface, putting her in an unbearable mood. Her childhood friend Kanami said, with concern, that Motoko seemed to have a touch of neurosis.

(But I simply just can't let go of it...)

Motoko eyed the bridge with unease, seeing a car off on the highway that was speeding. She let out a breath and walked along the highway towards the Drive-in before the stop light. In the wide parking lot of Chigusa there was wasn't so much as a shadow of a car.

As she called out and opened the door, Yano Kanami waved a hand at her. At the cool air of the AC, Motoko took a breath of a rest. Three people, neighbor housewives and one's child, were seated at the counter. Motoko turned and gave them a smile.

"Two minutes late," said Kanami with a smile. Motoko said that she was sorry while taking her apron out from the counter. Kanami lightly poked Motoko in the head. "You were spaced out looking at the highway. For the two late minutes."

Motoko admitted to it as she looked out the window. The shop was on a plot of land shaped like an L and from the counter the view out the window overlooked the highway that lead towards Mizobe.

"Don't worry about it so much. Your kids, Shiori-chan and Shigeki-kun, are obedient ones. They won't go by the highway. It's going to be fine!"

Motoko nodded with a sound of agreement. If she said it to herself, she only made herself worry more but mysteriously when it was Kanami who would say it to her then her unease would vanish for the time being.

Motoko's childhood friend married into the city but five years ago she divorced and returned to the village. Rice fields were plowed over in order to open a drive-in for the truckers that came in and out of the village but two years ago the expressway had opened. When the shop opened, they counted on long haul truckers and opened early in the morning when they would be heading out but that all stopped two years ago. Since then, those who lived in the village continued to provide some degree of business. Thanks to the men who came to drink at night, they were just barely able to stay in business.

Motoko looked to the white board at the corner of the counter. Today's special menu was out. This morning before opening, Kanami prepared lunch portions. Making preparations for the evening meals was Motoko's job. For that she received wages akin to pocket money. Motoko herself was more focused on being with her childhood friend than earning an income so she would have been fine not receiving any pay but Kanami stubbornly insisted on treating her like a worker.

"By the way---have you heard?"

Suddenly asked that, Motoko blinked. "Have I heard what?"

"On the day of the mushiokuri, they say a moving truck came in. Last night, someone was saying that."

Last night must have meant either those who came for dinner, or otherwise those who came to drink after them.

"At the Kanemasa residence? Have they moved in?"

"Who knows? I just happened to overhear it."

As Kanami said that, Shimizu Hiroko who had been reading a magazine at the counter looked up. "I heard it too, that rumor. The one about the truck that came in when the Betto was being lit. But, they say it turned back around. They took the wrong road, I guess?"

"What?" murmured Motoko "If they turned back, then it wasn't Kanemasa. ---They still haven't move in yet have they? Into that house."

"That's right," said Hiroko as she closed her magazine. "I suppose they built it as a holiday home, I mean, they wouldn't choose to live out here of all places, more than likely."

"A holiday home that splendid? And one they went through the trouble of dismantling and reassembling?"

"There could be people like that."

"Impossible," said Tanaka Sachiko. "Who would go that far for a holiday home? In the first place, if they were building a holiday home, it would be in a more fitting place for a holiday. Somewhere where it's cool in the summer or where it's warm in the winter, a resort spot."

"Do you think it's one of those things?" mused Hiroko as she turned to face her. "A western style boarding house?"

"Oh, I doubt it."

"But there are stories like that. I mean, last year around this time--or was it further back still? Somebody had come to do an examination or an inspection for a resort facility, or something."

"Ah," Motoko nodded as she listened to the conversation. There was something like that. That was just a little before the summer, wasn't it? Taking the bypass you could get off at the Mizobe exit, that must have been why. By taking the expressway, even the outskirts of any large city were three hours away.

Sitting beside Sachiko and obediently sipping her soda, Tanaka Kaori looked at her mother. She was in her third year of middle school, which would be ninth grade, wasn't she? She was a relatively unrefined, dim young girl.

"Can they make a resort?"

"There's no way they can!" said Sachiko with a grimace. "Out here in the country. It was obviously all talk. What, did you want them to be able to?"

"Uh-uh. ...I was just wondering if it was true or not."

"Kaori-chan is a girl at that age, I bet she is thinking it'd be nice if the village opened up some." Hiroko insisted, causing Kaori to shake her head slightly.

"...Not really. I wouldn't know unless they tried but, I mean, if a bunch of strangers came in, it'd get noisy and..."

"Really? But if it came to that, you wouldn't have to get on a bus just to go out if you felt like shopping? They'd also increase the number of buses, so you wouldn't have to be kept waiting so long," said Hiroko with a sigh. "But however you think about it, it's pointless talk. In the first place, the old folks would never agree to it."

Motoko gave a single nod to this, too. There had been talks about an interchange exit for Sotoba too. There had been pointless proposals drawn up and the predecessor of Kanemasa had said that it was for Sotoba's own good, making very forceful motions to enact it. The ones who said no to it were none other than Sotoba itself. Motoko's father-in-law had been burning hot with outrage. We don't need something like that, that would only invite harm into the village and nothing more, the elderly had gathered and stated in conferences with Kanemasa countless times. Whether that did the trick or whether it was related to some other factor, at any rate the interchange was relocated to the more appropriate outskirts of Mizobe and since then the town of Mizobe had been developing rapidly.

"As convenient as you may say it is, weird people would be coming in too you know. I for one will pass on bowing to those outsiders, feeding off of whatever money they may drop."

Hearing Sachiko's words, Hiroko rested her chin in her hands. "So say we don't think of it as a boarding house. But if we call it a holiday home, it's a wastefully huge building, I wonder if they just didn't want to live here? It's a Western style house. It's the first I've ever seen one up close."

As if seeking agreement, Hiroko looked to Motoko. Motoko gave a bewildered nod.

"Really. I wonder if it's been a family home for generations? I wonder if the ones moving in aren't an old couple. I think they didn't want to part with the house they'd become accustomed to living in."

Hiroko laughed as if to poke fun at her. "Then don't you think they could just not move?"

"I'm saying, as they get older, maybe they wanted to live out in the fresh air of the country? Going through the trouble of dismantling the home and rebuilding it can only be out of a deep love of their home, I think."

"Or they just wanted to show off their house, you know?" Hiroko laughed a very playful laugh. "They might have wanted to emphasize that they're a little different from country folk."

Sachiko laughed lightly beside her. "It's hardly a house worth flaunting. It's just an old western house, and if we're talking about ages, then we could give them a good match. For the same amount of money, they could have built a whole new one, after all!"

"Well, compared to us commoners, it is clear they're living in another dimension," said Hiroko with a sigh. "In the first place, we can't even afford to reconstruct one kitchen. It's so inconvenient I'm getting bitter."

"Hiroko's home is still better than ours. It was built when you were married, wasn't it? Our kitchen's been the same since my grandmother's generation."

While listening to Sachiko and Hiroko's conversation, Motoko washed the vegetables for the day's special. There was a heavy feeling settling into her chest, brought on by the image of outsiders coming into the village that rose back up.

(Outsiders... they're coming.)

In Motoko the image of "outsiders" and the image of "those who take away my children" were too entangled to separate.

"Oh my," said Sachiko. Motoko looked up towards the highway and saw one of those outsiders. She could feel something caught in her throat. Without knowing what weighed on Motoko's heart, Sachiko's voice was rudely loud. "Isn't that the workshop's boy, there?"

"Hey, Natsuno!"

It was Mutou Tohru, lightly honking his horn. He rolled down the car window and called out to the figure in a school uniform walking down the highway. Natsuno turned and upon realizing it was Tohru stopped walking, his face contorted into an overstated grimace.

"Where're you going in that school uniform?"

"Students have this thing called school they do. --And I told you not to call me by my first name."

Tohru laughed and told him to get in, motioning to the passenger seat. Natsuno wiped at his face with his shirt sleeve and got into the car.

"S'hot..."

"Why are you even out walking in this heat?"

"I got tired of waiting for the bus."

Tohru laughed at that dejected answer as the car took off again. While it wouldn't be unexpected for the middle school and grade school to be shut down in this village either, the high school students had to take a bus to the neighboring town. Not many of those buses ran in the middle of the day so if your timing was bad, you'd be waiting over an hour. While waiting, he discarded everything he was carrying and decided to walk to the next bus station. Sometimes he would actually meet the bus at the next station but most of the time the bus would pass him between stations and in the end he would be walking for three hours to get back to the village. ---Until two years ago, Tohru had the same thing happen to him a lot too.

"Knew I should've taken my bike. --Come to think of it, Tohru-chan, why are you cruising around here? Don't you have work?"

"Today's a training day. Once the training's over, we can go on home. You lucked out."

"Must be nice to still get paid the same."

"If you're jealous, than hurry up and graduate. Once you get your license you won't have to walk anymore either."

"No matter how much I hurry the year isn't going to. In the first place, once I graduate, you think I plan to set foot here again?" Natsuno said as he wiped his face with his sleeve again. "There's not even a train. How the hell does anyone live here?"

Tohru forced a smile. Natsuno was one of the few move-ins. His parents were eccentric, moving out into the country the year before on a whim. There were the occasional people who would move in from nearby but there wasn't anybody who came from the city. Even the people who moved in from the surrounding towns were sure to have blood ties to the village. Actually, Tohru himself was a move-in but he moved in when he was still a child. The Mutou household didn't have any blood ties to the village either but his father already worked at the village clinic so it wasn't as if they had no connection at all. Still, it seemed pretty rare. It'd be fair to say the only people eccentric enough to come to the village with no ties would be Natsuno's parents.

"You'll make your parents cry with talk like that. They're the type who wanted to finally move out into the country and be surrounded by nature in a mountain village, doing the old-timey, heart-to-heart neighbor thing and all," Tohru said as Natsuno made a face.

Natsuno's parents moved from the city looking for nature. They bought an empty house, prepared a lot and set up a workshop in the village from where they sent out furniture crafted from the fir trees. The Mutou family did indeed move in from outside of town themselves but as Tohru was raised in this village, he had a stronger sense for it. It could be inconvenient at times but he wasn't particularly unhappy with it. That said, there wasn't anything he was particularly happy with either. It was what it was. Thus he tried to understand why someone would move in suddenly.

If it was for nature, then while there were mountains and rivers, those mountains themselves were covered in man-made forests of those fir trees. He wasn't sure where the lines could be drawn at calling it nature, and if someone called it out as just a backwater town that was behind the times, he wouldn't know how to counter. With that in mind he could see where Natsuno could be so unhappy here. Natsuno was born and raised in the city, and it seemed he couldn't stand how inconvenient life here could be. It seemed only natural when he grumbled "My parents' whim is a royal pain. Wish I'd just graduate already."

As Natsuno grumbled, Tohru made a turn at the stop light towards Sotoba. A small ways down the village road by the riverbed, there was a stationary shop just across from the grade school, where a gathering of old folks came into sight.

"They're always loitering around there."

Tohru smiled at Natsuno's words. The Takemura Stationary shop was primarily a business for children. Aside from for the children who came in on their way home from school, the customers from around the neighborhood were as rare as a cuckoo's cries. The shop had folding chairs out front, so it eventually became a place where one could usually see the elderly gathered around.

"All day every day, they sit around just sharing boring gossip. ---Ah, they were looking at us."

Tohru looked in the car mirror to see one of the old people up out of his chair as if he had been looking into the car. Natsuno sighed. "Standing to 'see us off.' They were definitely checking to see who was riding with you, just now."

"No way."

"That's definitely what it was. Every time I pass by them they staaare at me. It's like they're keeping an eye on the outsider."

Tohru forced a smile. "They're just curious. They don't have anything else to do or enjoy."

"If they're bored can't they play gate ball or something?"

Having a feeling that would probably be a better use of their time, Tohru's smile dropped. The truth was simply that new move-ins were unusual, so the people of the village were unusually interested. Those stared weren't out of any ill will but it was sure to be unbearably depressing for the one who was the subject of those stares.

He drove down the riverbed road as he thought as much. After driving some distance, two figures, young boys in school uniforms, leisurely walking along came into view and Tohru honked his horn.

"Ooi, Tamotsu."

It was Tohru's brother. Standing beside him was Tamotsu's classmate, Murasako Masao.

Tamotsu turned with a surprised face. "We lucked out. Hey, Masao, let's hitch a ride."

Tamotsu turned and called to him, but Masao took one look at the passenger seat of the stopped car and shook his head.

"No thanks."

"Why? It's cooler in the car."

"I said no thanks. I'm walking home. If you want to ride, you go ahead and do that, Tamotsu."

At such a blunt refusal, Tamotsu looked back and forth between Masao and Tohru, giving a forced smile and a wave for them to go on. He would be fine walking with Masao. Tohru didn't pressure them, giving a wave and driving on.

"They're a rare breed."

Tohru had no response to Natsuno's annoyed voice. Masao was the third son of the Murasako rice shop. There was something he didn't like about Natsuno, some kind of prejudice he harbored against him. It might have fundamentally been uneasiness about him having come in from the city.

In a small town there was a small community but if you tried to live there, you would know there were all types. He didn't think it was a different world, like Natsuno's dad had said. It was just a village like anywhere else. While thinking as much, they drove along the road that followed the mountain stream, turning west at the bridge. Once out of the area where the houses were crowded in, past the green fields, in the western mountains was a peculiar sight: a strange house that didn't suit the village in the slightest.

"Come to think of it, I wonder how long they're going to wait to move in? In that house."

Natsuno gave a disinterested gaze to the western mountains. "Who knows."

There was no doubt that once the new transfers came in, interest in Natsuno's household would thin out. That was how market competition worked, the market value was decided on the whims of the gossipers themselves.

"I wonder if they're ecologists like Natsuno's parents."

"Like my parents are anything as great as all that. --And stop calling me by my first name."

Tohru forced a smile. It seemed like he really hated that name his dad gave him, based on some Heian noble. He said he hated it because it sounded like a girl's name and could be almost impressively persistent in his opposition to it.

"But, your house's situation's so messed up, what do you want me to do?"

The married couple retained their maiden names. So, Natsuno's parents weren't entered in the family register together. Natsuno was entered with his mother Koide Azusa in the family register but because of the way schools were he went by his father's last name of Yuuki.

"...Talking about it's a pain," Natsuno mumbled as he looked towards than estate. "Moving out to a place like this, they're bound to be a family of helpless weirdos. ---If not that, then criminals on the run."

"It was the boy from the workshop after all." Satou Oitarou turned back towards the shop, a smile overtaking his face as if he had made a momentous discovery; in turn, Takemura Tatsu fanned herself, seeming to force a smile.

"Just like I told you." The one sounding so proud of herself was Ohtsuka Yaeko. "That was the office manager's son's car."

By office manager, they meant the senior office staff at the Ozaki clinic's front office, Mutou. Mutou was not a man of their land so there was no shop name to know him by. That was why the elderly called him 'the office manager.' In the past year, the Yuuki family (or should they be called the Koide family?) were the same, and calling them the 'workshop' shop name became the standard.

"That is what one would look like from behind is it not?" Yaeko motioned at the shape. "A white Coup, yes? With just the two doors. With those three numbers on the plate. I know them well."

"Oh my," said Hirosawa Takeko, as if to protest. "Even I could have told you that much."

"Wasn't it you who asked who it was?"

"I meant who was in the passenger's seat. Well, I don't think it appeared to be a girl, but."

"It was the Workshop's boy." Oitarou took her seat on the folding stool with a complacent smile. "I knew with one look at the shape of his head. Knew it was right."

"He had a school uniform, didn't he?"

"That means nothing on a school day. I saw Shimizu's daughter going to school in her uniform as well."

Sitting silently in the corner of the stool area was Itou Ikumi, who did not seem to find the gossip interesting. It was as if 'how childish' were written in large print on her thin face.

Tatsu forced a smile as she gave up on fanning herself, turning on the switch to the electric fan. A light breeze was stirred but given that it was only blowing around more hot air it didn't feel the least bit cooler.

Of course the breeze from the fan wouldn't reach the seats. The heat flowed in from off of the village pavement, and without the air conditioner the shop would have been boilingly hot. It may have been something only the elderly could do, leisurely gossiping in those steaming conditions without a care.

Takemura was right off of the highway, on the village road, across the street from the grade school. Beyond Takemura was nothing more than the grade school grounds and the drive-in but as there weren't any particular side routes, most cars that came to the village would be sure to pass by Takemura. It was an ideal place to monitor who came and went from the village (it may have missed a few cars that came from the highway to the farm roads but there weren't many of those). ---However, Oitarou and company just had too much free time on their hands, it wasn't as if they gathered to survey the cars that came through.

It was sheer practicality that had Tatsu looking towards the road. She had used to come from a family of farmers but she renovated the front area of her living room where the sliding glass doors were and crafted a shelf to stand her wares on. She cleared away her entryway and opened the area, put out some chairs and opened shop. It was right after the war.

She had family outside the village but she lost her husband in the war. And so after the war she returned empty handed and started a business. They sold notebooks, paints, protractors and compasses. Children come in to buy gym shirt logos or gymnastic caps or whatever they were lacking for school. After school they would buy some of the cheap snacks, ice cream, or juices. The grade school only had six classes in total. There was one class of each grade, and there were maybe about ten a child per class so business wasn't booming but it was enough for a single old woman to make a living.

She had spent the entire post-war period seated at that watch post like place, watching the children and the village road. Other than someone from the neighborhood stopping by, there was nothing in particular to do besides watch the road, so even without intending to memorize them, she learned which cars belonged to which families. And it wasn't just cars. Those who used the highway bus stop also passed by Takemura. Many of those who came through had previously attended the grade school, so she knew their names and faces. That was how Tatsu came to know all the comings and goings of the village.

--No, not all of them.

Come nightfall, Tatsu closed the storm shutters and stayed inside. Spending the nights like that until morning, she couldn't know about the cars that came and went before then. The moving truck that had come by in the dead of night, for example.

"....A truck, mm." Tatsu let out a sigh. She hadn't intended to say it so loudly but it caught Oitarou's attentions.

"What was that, something about a truck was it?"

"Not really," Tatsu replied. "Nothing to say a thing about. I was just thinking what that could have been about."

"What are you talking about?" asked Yaeko.

"What this, guess nobody's told Yaeko-san yet. A truck came. During the mushiokuri."

"The Kanemasa family?"

"Nope. But I saw it when I was burning the Betto," Oitarou said, proud of himself over something. "You know, my house is right after the Sannohashi bridge after all. The Betto's burnt right there on the other edge of the river bank. That's where I saw it from, that's when the cars came through. A hauling struck and two passenger cars."

"Heh?"

"It came close to the bridge then turned on back around. The truck had a pine tree mark on it. A Takasago Pine, I think it was. Takasago Moving was written there. I confirmed it with a camera, so there's no mistaking it."

Tatsu gave a secret snicker. Oitarou had a good camera, unsuited for a man his age. It was a hand-me-down from his son in the city and had a long distance magnification lens. Oitarou came around carrying his camera but in spite of that he'd never bought film or had pictures printed. Of course, he'd never shown off any pictures he'd taken either.

Ikumi who had been standing off alone spoke. "Either way, they were sure to be no good."

Oitarou leaned forward. "No good, really?"

"They were turned out by a ceremony to ward off troubles, so they must have been trouble themselves. Something like that coming here would be horrific!"

The elderly said nothing, giving a silent shake of their heads. Ikumi was younger than the elderly gathered around. She wasn't of an age to be called 'elderly' herself but she didn't fit in with the women her own age, due to being a bit eccentric.

"...But, what a strange story."

Yaeko mumbled to herself, but Tatsu found herself nodding in her heart. A truck came into the village in the middle of the night. And yet it turned back. --To Tatsu's recollection, this sort of thing had never happened before.

Change didn't happen in the village. Even if the people seemed different, it could all be summed up tidily by saying that they were simply country folk. Anything strange or sudden was still within the parameters of being sensibly believed, things that could be shrugged off by saying 'these things happen.' Never the less, a truck coming in the middle of the night surpassed that. ---No, it wasn't just the truck.

Tatsu watched the steam rise from the road's surface.

There was that Kanemasa house. It was sensible to believe that outsiders could move in but that building surpassed sense. It was one thing to move, but it was another thing entirely to have that building brought in from elsewhere. Why would anyone do such a thing? Were they that attached to their home or were they wanting to look down their noses that the villagers? Or possibly...

Was there a need for it? For that old fashioned, stone building?

Hirosawa pulled into his parking space in front of the house and got out of the car. He unloaded the sack of used books he had bought in town as his small daughter peeked out from behind the curtain and waved. The scent of grilled fish wafted from the house, lights on at twilight.

Before entering into the house and giving his daughter a nod, Hirosawa looked to the western mountains. The color of the sky indicated the night was far off, and from that mountain range could be seen a building. Ever since seeing the truck turned back by the mushiokuri, for some reason or other, it had been on his mind. Perhaps it was because he now realized that the building was there, so that the inhabitants were not was unnatural.

It was an old fashioned house. He'd seen many houses be built but he'd never seen one dismantled before, and he was very interested in the construction, so very different from traditional Japanese methods with wood. In August of last year, they tore down the old mansion and began construction about a month ago, finishing off with the fence. The worker's temporary quarters on the property were dismantled. The materials were hauled out and the gates closed. It had been sitting since then in deserted silence, much to the interest of the villagers, that house.

Hirosawa hadn't heard a word about the inhabitants. He'd caught pieces of a rumor that they seemed to be from the outskirts of Tokyo. If you were having something built in the village, one would definitely use Yasumori Construction Company. No other information had leaked but he did know that this time the Yasumori Construction Company didn't receive the job. The trucks that had come to build the fence had the name of a major construction company on them, and a different prefecture's plates. Perhaps it wasn't a project that could be done by back water construction workers.

At a glance, it was a two storied building. A complex, jagged pattern adorned around it. There was a window in the steep roof, so there may have been an attic as well. Looking at the foundation, it probably had a spacious basement, too. The imposing stonework outer wall was detailed with a timber trim. It was ornate yet simple, and he wondered when it was built. It looked fantastically old fashioned and yet it didn't look to be that old in itself. If it were really that old of a building, it wouldn't have been so easy to dismantle and reconstruct elsewhere.

There weren't many windows and there didn't seem to be a porch or a veranda anywhere. He remembered watching its construction, so he thought that there was something like a bay window or two on the first floor. The windows were simple, with four corners, undecorated by any arch or such. There were slated shutters that closed tightly. No, they were more like a single slate than shutters, so maybe they were better called storm guards. It seemed like it would have poor lighting and ventilation but maybe the high ceilings would still keep it cool in the summer.

It was dignified and handsome, yet Hirosawa felt that it had the stiff feel of a fortress. The house was built on the side of the hill that faced the village as if to look down on them--or in other words, to keep watch on them. If that house was a fortress, it was not a fortress for Sotoba; it was a bridgehead for an outsider to watch over them. But, outsiders from where?

---From the fir tree laden mountains, it projected onto Sotoba:

(The village is surrounded by death.)

"Daaaaad." His daughter opened the door. "Dinner!"

"Where's my 'welcome home'?" Hirosawa patted her head as she drug along in his wife's shoes.

"I said it before from the window. Dad's the one who didn't even say 'I'm home.'"

"I'm home."

Hirosawa gave his daughter's back a light push, stepping onto the porch. Before stepping into the entryway he gave one more look to the house thrusting up into the mountainside.

(.... Fir trees are death.)

Was that a metaphor that the author from the temple would have used?