Chapter 5.4

Seeing her parents off, Shimizu Hiroko felt both dejected and relieved. Her parents from her birth family had both come to stay at the home for the memorial service. She knew that they went through the trouble of staying for three days because they were worried about Hiroko's own depression. But, on top of having lost her daughter, Hiroko was self-conscious of her own depleting will power. She shunned paying attention to her parents and at the same time shunned being paid attention to. 

She opened the entryway as if unloading a burden from her shoulders, heading into the house only to see how empty it was. The electric lights were bright white. The village at night was dead quiet and the frail voices of insects sang of vestiges of fall. 

With Megumi gone, there was a Megumi shaped emptiness in the house. While her parents were about, their presence glossed over that but with both of them gone, it was all the more exposed. Her father-in-law Tokurou and her husband too had lost their vitality since Megumi's death. The presence of people had faded from the house and there were many times when the sound of the TV echoed futilely. She had thought that emptiness suited her own mood, a reason why all the more she couldn't help thinking her parents presence was ill suited and yet when the two had gone the inside of the house was indeed lonely. 

Hiroko sighed and went towards the living room. Her father and law and husband were both watching the surface of the TV without a word. Even if she joined in and made it three people, it probably wouldn't lead to it feeling like there were people gathered together there.

Hiroko went to sit without a word at the dining room table. Nobody said anything to Hiroko, and Hiroko said nothing to anybody. On the table was an open notebook with the costs of the service in them. She didn't want to do anything but if she didn't do something time would fail to pass. It was like being a prisoner of time but even if she thought of ways to kill the time, that imprisonment wouldn't end. 

Without a word Tokurou stood and left the living room. Hiroko and Shimizu both watched that, without asking where he was going or what he was doing. Without Tokurou, unable to bear the building silence, Hiroko opened her mouth.

"....What did you talk with the Junior Monk about?"

"Hm?"

"After the service, I was wondering what you were talking so deeply about."

Ah, Shimizu murmured. Before Megumi had gone missing did she seem to be acting weird in any way, did she go out anywhere from the latter half of July or in August or not. Had she ever gone to Yamairi, was she familiar with a man called Gotouda Something, if he'd ever heard anything like that. 

Hiroko was silent to Shimizu's low answer, the conversation coming to an abrupt halt. While Shimizu too was silently trying to place his thoughts, he thought that he hadn't thought much himself about the answer. 

He didn't think Megumi went to Yamairi. He didn't think she had known a man called Gotouda Shuuji. But he wasn't certain. What kind of man Gotouda was, Shimizu neither knew or asked but just maybe, he thought. ---In the dead Megumi's room was the lingering faint scent of perfume. 

That scent that even now lingered faintly tormented Shimizu. It wasn't air fresher, it was perfume. Hiroko wasn't in the habit of wearing that on a daily basis. Shimizu had wondered about it at the time but the scent that lingered in the room was one that somebody her age might put on trying to put on airs for somebody, he murmured then. When Megumi had collapsed in the mountains, a few heartless neighbors intimated that what happened to her was obvious. Shimizu himself worried about it. Even if Toshio said not to worry about that, could he really believe the assurances of a doctor who said that it was just anemia?

Something probably happened to Megumi. Megumi had probably put on that perfume for somebody. When had his daughter transformed into a "woman"? Shimizu had not only lost his daughter to death but had lost sight of her as well. 

".....He asked some strange things." 

At first for a moment Shimizu didn't know what the isolated words Hiroko had spoken were about, what they were in regards to--who they were even at. When he turned about absentmindedly, Hiroko was looking at him.

"....Aa....Yeah, he did."

"Who was this Gotouda person?"

"Who knows."

"Did that person perhaps do something with Megumi?"

"Something?"

"....I don't like it." Hiroko said without answering his question. 

"Something...."

"Somehow, it's nothing but bad things happening lately."

"I guess so, huh...."

"Didn't the Ohtsuka Sawmill's son die? Just a while ago, Nakano-san's place seemed to behaving a funeral too."

"That right."

"The people in Yamairi died, to. ....This year it's been nothing but such things. What's going on?"

"Isn't it your imagination?" Shimizu said but it came out more bluntly than necessary. The truth was Shimizu thought so too. This year was odd. He was seeing too many funerals around. He couldn't help feeling like something not good was happening in the village right now. But, when Shimizu said as much, his colleagues at work said he was over-thinking it. Maeda who also lived in Shimo-Sotoba lost a daughter, and she became neurotic, they chastised, seeming worried. That might be the case, Shimizu himself thought. 

"It seems the Yasumori Obaa-chan's moved. Moved out to live with her son, I heard. ...Bit by bit it's like the popular's decreasing."

Is that right, Shimizu answered. It felt like they were being left behind in a lurch.

"Come to think of it, Nara-san from the JA retired, too."

"Nara-san? But, he was still...."

"Seems he was sick. It seemed like he planned to hurry into retirement."

"I see.... that might not be too bad."

"Even if you say that. For those of us left behind, it's unbarable. What with employees not coming to work and all."

"Employees? Who?"

Shimizu provided the name of a female clerk who transferred to Sotoba. She had been employed there a long time, so Hiroko knew of her. 

"Her? She isn't coming in?"

"Mm," Shimizu frowned. "This is just between us but it seems she vanished without a trace."

My, Hiroko said aloud. "What about her husband and child?"

Shimizu shook his head with a sigh. Hiroko was shocked, and aware of just how much envy she felt. It wasn't a strong enough emotion to call envy but it was something similar. 

--How good it would be to throw away the present, to flee away towards the future. 

From the house oppressed by silence, from the family with a hole in it. From she herself who had lost her daughter. And.

(....From this cursed village.)