Chapter 6.5

Specks of light dotted the western mountain. Voices mingled calling out 'Ooi!'

"Man, she's not along any of the roadways," said Tashiro as Yuuki wiped his sweat. The mountain nights were cool but as expected when climbing up and down the slope, it got hot. 

There were limits to searching with a hand light within the village. Following the forest paths, pushing through the surroundings and coming back lead to many repeats but there was an uneasiness that they hadn't searched enough. 

'Ooi,' came a voice from very nearby on the mountain, and for a moment, Yuuki anticipated good news but the voice that replied back was tinged with disappointment.

"This's, it's not gonna work out unless we give a full blown mountain hunt. Let's regroup around the Maruyasu lumberyard."

Hirosawa sighed and climbed back onto the forest path, Yuuki following suit. It was only one block of mountains surrounding a small village, and yet trying to find a single person amongst that made one realize, the mountains really were broad. 

Fatigued as they were, while hobbling down the forest path, Tashiro and the young man walking with him came to a stop. It was a monk from the temple. He was called Ikebe, if he recalled. He was just approaching the Kanemasa house. 

"What's the matter, Ikebe-kun?" Hirosawa asked, Ikebe turning to face him with a complicated expression.

"I wonder if anyone in this house has seen Megumi-chan. Wouldn't it be better to ask them?"

Hirosawa blinked. "At this hour?"

"Yeah," Ikebe smiled, embarrassed. "The Madame at the temple was talking about it to Takami-san. Maybe there's a chance she met the people from this house, and couldn't she have forgot the time, like."

"But,"

"And we can't just say ''at this hour' can we, since Megumi-chan was seen climbing the hill? In that case, they may have seen her."

That is true, said Hirosawa making a complicated expression himself as he looked up at the dark house. Yuuki understood Hirosawa's bewilderment. Since they'd moved in, the inhabitants hadn't shown themselves. It looked like those who lived there had no intend to proactively mingle with the villagers. With high fencing that couldn't be peered through, together with such a closed off house, it was thought that the new inhabitants wanted to draw a line between themselves and the villagers. Calling on such people at this hour to ask about a little girl's whereabouts, however proper, was cause for indecision. 

"Shall we try?" The one to say this was Hasegawa. "You're absolutely right. They may have seen her, at least. If that's the case, they may know which direction she had gone, or something along those lines. If Megumi-chan is injured and stranded, what's important is finding her every bit sooner as possible."

That's true, Hirosawa nodded. Yuuki and the others approached the tightly closed gates. On the side of one gatepost pillar was a side door, and on the side of that an intercom was visible. ---Yes, even if they were intruding and waking somebody, all that they needed do was speak over the intercom, so doing this much, in case of an emergency, was bound to be forgivable. 

As their representative, Hirosawa placed his finger on the button. While looking over the faces about him, he timidly pressed the call chime. Twice, three times, and the fourth time there was an answer.

"Yes."

"Uhm---I'm sorry for disturbing you late at night. There's something we'd like to ask, but," Hirosawa conveyed briefly that a high school girl had gone missing and that they were wondering whether they had seen her. 

"One moment please." 

The voice on the other end of the intercom sonded young. A number of people in the village had said they'd caught sight of a young man in about his mid twenties, so it was said so, it must have been him, Hirosawa thought. 

After a bit, the side door opened, Hirosawa faltered. The one who appeared with a flashlight in hand was the man of the rumors.

"Thank you for waiting."

"I am sorry again. At this hour."

"No, no. ---It's just, I'd asked every member of the house but, it seems nobody has seen the young lady."

Is that right, Hirosawa sighed. 

"That she had climbed up this way is certain?"

"Yes. The last time she was seen, it was when she was climbing this hill, it seems."

Is that right, he said stepping outside and closing the door, smiling at the blinking Hirosawa. "I was told by the master to help. They must be worried, he said."

"No--that's," Hirosawa said, dismayed. "To have you do that much for us would be,"

"No. This is the sort of thing we must ban together for. Ah, I am called Tatsumi!"

"I am Hirosawa. I'm sorry for the trouble. Thank you very much."

Tatsumi smiled. "But I may only get in the way. I'm not very familiar with the lay of the land around here, so please instruct me in what to do."

The group split up to split their coverage of the mountains. Yuuki had merely been following Hirosawa and the others. At some point he ended up in a line with Tatsumi and Ikebe, because it was clear they were the only ones unfamiliar with the mountains. 

"Ah, is that the way to the temple?" Tatsumi said to Ikebe, shining his light on the surroundings. "The other day, I had met the fellow named Muroi-san. He was just coming out of the Ozaki clinic."

"The Junior Monk? Heh?"

"You did not hear about it?"

"Yeah. The Junior Monk is the type of person who wouldn't gossip about things like that at all. 

Tatsumi smiled. "He was indeed a mild man."

"That's right. If it was me, I'd spread it all over right away though. At the end of the day, I'm a Hachigoro at heart."

"Is there any News Value to spread with that?"

"Oh, definitely. Everyone in the village is extremely interested, you should know! I mean, your fine house is rather strange, and since moving all the way out here they haven't stepped out even once, have they? So with that, what kind of people are they, and the like, is everywhere."

"It isn't that we don't come out at all, but. I see, that's what it's come to, huh?"

"To put it bluntly, it's thought that you're avoiding the villagers. I mean, I was completely surprised when Tatsumi-san stepped out like this!"

"Avoiding? Why is that?"

"Yeah, well, since moving in, you haven't come out at all. There's that tall fence, and the gate's always shut up real tight."

"Really?" Tatsumi blinked, as he murured. "Maybe in that case, it was not good to move in without giving greetings anywhere. We hadn't been into the habit of socializing with our neighbors much, so it really just never crossed anyone's minds."

"Oh. Well, then." At Ikebe's response, Yuuki laughed.

"That's how it goes when you live in the city. Unless there's a notice going around the neighborhood, you don't usually even know your neighbor's faces, and if you live in an apartment you don't even have that much. You leave the gates closed and even during the day time you lock your doors. Out here though, even in the middle of the night, everything is left open and unlocked. In the beginning even I was a little reluctant to get used to it, myself."

"Yuuki-san also moved in from the city?"

"That's right. That's why, even if knew from the start that that's how it was, I was reluctant. Somehow, I just couldn't stay calm about it, so I would end up locking up the front entryway. Though to start with our house never even had a lock on the back door."

"Heh?"

"It was like---like I'd left the gas oven on somewhere, it felt like. It took about half a year for me to get used to it."

"So that's how it is, huh?" Tatsumi nodded. "I'll have to report that when I go back. I don't think anyone's thought about that at all."

"Though I don't think it's anything you have to force on yourselves. But, isn't it boring? Bored up in the house all the time like that."

Yuuki nodded, too. "You've finally moved all the way out here after all. You can leave the house without locking the doors, know everybody in the neighborhood, easily come and go helping each other out. ---That is the greatest thing of all about small societies like this."

"Isn't it just?" Tatsumi nodded with a smile, and Yuuki devoted himself to the search. It made him uneasy to get too caught up in small talk, and in doing so some distance had been put between themselves and Hirosawa and the others who had started on ahead. While hurrying his feet, he thought to himself that even with such a difficult move in, the family wasn't really all that strange. 

---All it is is what it is, as was so often the case.

Maybe because they had closed their mouths and were hurrying ahead, they were able to overhear another nearby search group's conversation. 

"Man, this is really eating up all kinds of time."

"It'll be great if we find her, but. I don't think I could deal with finding her already en route to Buddhahood."

Without thinking, Yuuki looked towards the forest. Through the spans of dark underbrush and thicket, the flashlights couldn't be seen. It seemed there were two or three but he couldn't tell which people precisely they were. 

"Sure hope we don't. Anyway, ain't she probably just out fooling around somewhere? Come tomorrow, she'll just come back with a bland look on her face."

"She just might. It is the Shimizu girl, ain't it? That girl likes to show herself off. Makes you wonder if she's not getting it on shacked up with some guy."

"If she's just shacking it up that'd be for the best, though. I mean, they're saying just recently the old people up in Yamairi were killed off, weren't they? I just hope that freak's not still hanging around somewhere."

"Those were natural deaths, weren't they?"

"I've got to wonder about that. Just before that there was that thing--the little boy from the Maeda household, wasn't it? There was a hit and run on him, wasn't there? Things ain't as peaceful as they used to be, even in this village."

"I don't wanna say this too loud but, I personally think we might just get this over with faster if instead of searching the mountains we arrested Ohkawa's boy and asked him where she is."

"More like Kanemasa. After all there is a young guy with them, isn't there? Couldn't he have dragged her into the bushes out here?"

Yuuki came to an immediate halt, turning towards Tatsumi. Tatsumi pointed to himself with his index finger, a comically dumbfounded look on his face. 

"Yeah, yeah! There's talk that the car that did a hit and run on the Maedas was the Kanemasa's car, you know!"

"Now hey, you, didn't the Junior Monk from the temple have a talk with them?"

"No matter what else is going on, I don't think that one's true."

"I gotta wonder. In the first place all the folks in the village are always treat the temple a little too special. Even with the Shimizu's daughter, we can't be too sure. I mean, that Junior's past thirty already and still single, you know."

"The temple has another one on the younger side, too. Couldn't it have been him?"

Yuuki was somehow too ashamed to keep walking. He waited for the voices to move far on ahead. Tatsumi and Ikebe stopped, as if waiting for Yuuki. The sounds of others pushing their way through the underbrush grew distant, until Yuuki let out a secret sigh of relief. 

"....Please don't think we're all like that."

"It's nothing for Yuuki-san to make such a face about. An outsider is just that," Tatsumi said with a forced smile. "All the more for staying so strangely indoors. It really would have been for the best had we gone around giving greetings."

"Even if you went around introducing yourselves, you would still be seen around as outsiders...." Ikebe breathed a sigh. "To start with, the villagers are basically family, after all."

"That is how it goes." Speaking with an intentionally flippant tone to the two, he bowed his head. The tendency of the village to exclude foreign substances as a matter of course was something Yuuki was all too personally familiar with.

Ikebe laughed. "Once we find Megumi-chan, her parents will be put at ease, and we'll have proof to clear our names. --Let us go!" 

The angry voices shouting out 'Oo!' went on into the night past three in the morning. Hearing 'I found her!' Yuuki and the others pushing their way through the thicket looked up. As they looked around for the source of the voice, Hirosawa and the others came hurrying back from a nearby slope. 

"It was from that way!"

Yuuki and the others headed in the direction indicated. Yuuki himself had completely lost his sense of where he was but according to Hirosawa, Yuuki and the others were apparently fairly far north of the western mountains. 

"Far ahead of here is a narrow mountain stream, and across that is the northern mountain. The one with the temple."

So they were right where the northern and western mountains crossed. Going down the slope, it seemed to come out to a cove like area where the Maruyasu lumberyard isolated the terraced fields. 

The lights from within the village mingled, along with the voices of the people. From here and there and there and here the sounds of the underbrush giving way was heard, people coming to gather round. Hurrying along after Hirosawa and Tashiro at the front, at last the place where the lights gathered together could be seen. There was a difference in level about one person's height tall, and beneath that in a hollowed out place the people gathered. 

"Did you find her?"

As Hirosawa came running, a man wearing a fire brigade happi coat turned to face him. "She's here. ---Right here."

[TL/N: ...a man wearing a fire brigade happi coat turned to face him.

Another Japanese cloth coat, often with large crests on the back to identify a team, unit, group or shop the wearer belongs to. Typically associated with labor workers, but they do have their place in traditional, formal situations as well.

"If it was me, I'd spread it all over right away though. At the end of the day, I'm a Hachigoro at heart."

Hachigoro was a name frequently used in Rakugo, which are story telling acts performed by a single person doing all of the voices, and usually with minimal or no narration. While the name was used often it was never necessarily the same character, so much as it was a stock name, Hachigoros did have some specific reoccurring tendencies, such as pretending to be more high class or intelligent than he was and (trying to) speak and act in a classy manor, perhaps imitating another he'd seen use such social skills to their benefit, while ultimately being a buffoon. Hachigoro was considered a samurai name, and thus back then it was ironic to have someone associated with the noble classes being the butt of so many jokes, but on the other hand the character is often considered very easy to relate to because of his simpleton nature, and usually did not actually (or at least, did not honestly) have high status or position, frequently being a laborer or layabout. This has made the name associated with fairly polite every-man types and Joe Blows.

In short, Ikebe may be a monk, but he's saying he's pretty ordinary and likes to talk as much as anyone. Incidentally, a famous Hachigoro rakugo happens to be about the time when he pretend to be a monk simply because a temple lacked a head priest and he happened to be bald.]

"Is she hurt?" Hirosawa asked, the man cocking his head.

"At least it doesn't look like she is."

Yuuki who had come running was also able to see the girl being helped up by so many people. She didn't look to be injured, but she was entirely limp.

"Hey, you're Megumi-chan, ain'tcha? You okay?" A middle aged man who helped her up gave the girl a shake. Someone's voice called out: "It'd be better not to shake her too much!"

"Wouldn't it be best to call the Ozaki Doctor? She might've hit her head."

"Ah... That's true." 

Just as the middle aged man spoke, Megumi's eyes opened. The lights gathered around were brilliantly bright, so she raised her hand to cover her eyes.

"You're conscious? Are you okay?"

To the surrounding questions, Megumi nodded. She seemed out of it somehow but she didn't look to have any injuries.

"How do you feel? Can you stand?"

When spoken to, she gave a somehow  mindless, slow-witted not. Gripping the hands offered from right and left, somehow, she was able to stand. 

"Thank God," came a relieved voice. With the men's support, Megumi staggeringly started down the slope.

"If she can walk by herself, I guess there's nothing to worry about," Hasegawa said, Yuuki letting out a deep sigh. If noting else, it was good she was safe. 

"She must've fallen off the ledge, huh? Just glad we found her, honestly." Tashiro gave a broad smile and Yuuki nodded. Boisterously relieved sighs and smiling voices flowed back into the village, people coming down from the mountains in groups of twos and threes.

When Ikebe returned to the temple, it was after four, and the light from the office next to the temple living quarters was still on. He quietly opened the entryway door, standing ont he dirty floor as he tried to brush off the mud and scraps of grass clinging to his jeans when, perhaps having heard him, Seishin came.

"Welcome home. I am sorry for having put you through the trouble."

Spoken to by the assistant head priest, the younger Ikebe bowed his head. Ikebe couldn't hate that nature of Seishin's. While he was ever mindful of having reserved manners no matter how long he had known someone, which could make him thought of as constrained, it was much better than him treating people overbearingly. 

"How did it go?" Seishin asked, worried. The assistant head priest stayed up late often enough but today he may have been up waiting on Ikebe. 

"We found her."

"Ah, that's good. In the mountains after all?"

"Yes. Just at the ledge in the back yard of Maruyasu. It appears she fell on the slope or something along those lines; she was unconscious when we found her."

"Is she all right?" 

"It seems so," Ikebe said, sitting on the ledge of the entryway. He spoke while taking off his leather boots. "When she was called, her eyes opened. She seemed kind of lifeless, but as far as injuries, it looks like she didn't have any, and with a little support she was able to walk down the mountain."

"Ah... that's good."

Thinking whether 'good' could be said or not made Ikebe remember Megumi's state. Megumi seemed absent minded. With a gaze seemingly unfixed, her gait while walking, even supported, was unnatural. The state of having had a terrifying experience, like heart hadn't sobered to the experience was what it looked like. 

"I wonder if something happened?" While listening to Seishin's question asked with a voice from the bottom of his heart, Ikebe thought of complicated matters, getting the mud off of his shoes.

"That's something we can't be sure of, as Megumi-chan herself didn't say a thing. Even if you spoke to her, she seemed inattentive, or like she was spaced out. Once she's home, slept, and calmed down, they could try to ask again."

Ikebe stopped short in his answer. 

The village was small. At some point, that conversation would become a rumor, one which would probably come back through the temple. Ikebe who came into Sotoba from the city, was unpleasantly familiar with the narrowness of the "society" of the village.

(Even though he's a good person....)

Ikebe thought. Towards the assistant head priest, Ikebe held unconditional good will. Yet, there were people saying strange things. Just like before when the child was hit, he couldn't help but wonder why.

Honestly, thought Ikebe, suddenly remembering a rumor he had overheard. He stole the faintest side glance at Seishin's profile. 

It was a rumor he could certainly never ask Mitsuo or Tsurumi about. Was it really true? Maybe the reason the villagers looked upon him so strangely was----could it be because of that?