The voice lingered indelibly in her mind, dark and ominous, leaving an unpleasant feeling that slowly permeated her body. Slowly, Saeko came to the realization that the voice hadn’t come from an external, physical source. It was an imaginary voice that had been somehow triggered by the act of touching the book. Was it a sign that Saeko was coming to possess powers similar to Torii’s? Saeko didn’t welcome the prospect of acquiring Torii’s ability to derive flashes of insight about an object’s history whenever she touched something.
Saeko huddled in the corner of the room, trying to contain her emotions as she gripped the leather-bound book tightly in both hands. Meanwhile, the cameras rolled on without her …
Torii sat absolutely still in her chair, the palms of both hands pressed firmly against the table. Hashiba looked on for quite some time before he felt the need to interrupt. “Ms. Torii, what are you getting? Can you describe it to us?”
Torii raised both of her hands and waved them slowly in the air over the table, her palms facing downwards. She seemed to be trying to pick up psychic energy from the family’s belongings through her palms, but the dramatic movements struck Saeko as phony for the first time since meeting Torii. Waving her hands in the air with her eyes closed, the old woman reminded Saeko of an enraptured conductor directing the final strains of a symphony.
A low growl began to rumble in Torii’s throat. Her exaggerated movements grew smaller and smaller until only her fingertips described a point in the air. The middle fingers of both hands pointed downwards, as if indicating an invisible tube that might serve as a portal into another world.
“On the last night, there was a presence other than the four Fujimuras in this home,” Torii intoned somberly. It was clear that she was now in a trance-like state. Her body seemed to give off a yellowish aura that filled the entire room.
Only Saeko was impervious to the strange atmosphere affecting the rest of the group. Instead, she remained transfixed by the black day planner. She had truly discovered a portal into another world.
She knew exactly what the mark on its cover signified. It was her father’s company’s logo, and the notebook was a day planner produced by her father’s company. He had used a book just like it to keep track of his schedule. Saeko had no idea how many copies the company had produced. Hundreds? Not more than a thousand, she was sure. Each year, they printed them up and distributed them to clients, family, and friends. Perhaps Saeko had discovered one in the Fujimuras’ home simply by coincidence.
Saeko rifled through the book.
Its pages were full of penciled entries inscribed in cramped lettering. As Saeko skimmed through them, she saw that the calendar had been used not just as a schedule book but as a sort of journal as well.
July 25-27, staying at Yamanaka Lake for translation project. Must complete manuscript before Steven Sellers arrives in Japan. Daughter’s summer vacation has begun. She seems quite busy studying for her college entrance exams year after next, won’t have much time for me when I get back to Tokyo.
Just as Saeko had intuited, the book was indeed a window into her past.
A stabbing pain shot through her temples. Unable to stand, she sank to the floor right there, resting the book on her knees. She turned to the last page.
There was a dramatic decrease in the amount of text entered after August 22nd. After that, the planner was used solely as an agenda, with no more journal entries.
It was the day after Saeko’s father had called his daughter in Tokyo from the N Hotel in Narita, just before he had disappeared.
Quickly, Saeko slipped the book into her pocket. Anything that had belonged to her father was rightfully hers, and she had no qualms about taking the book. She was supposed to have it.
The discovery of her father’s agenda book from the year of his disappearance was a tremendous and unbelievable stroke of luck. If she could trace her father’s movements prior to his disappearance, she could reopen the investigation of his whereabouts.
Taking care to remain out of the camera’s view, Hashiba moved towards the side of the table opposite Torii. He had been posing his questions from the doorway behind her, but he was growing frustrated. He wanted to be closer to Torii and see if he could move things along.
“Ms. Torii, would you please tell us more about what you’re seeing?”
“The servant of the gods comes in a snake’s form. It preys on life …” Torii paused, her voice choking up. She trembled violently, and her face seemed to be searching the room, trying to detect something. The skin of her cheek quivered, and her pupils rolled upwards.
“Is something wrong?” Startled by her ghastly expression, Hashiba retreated backwards a step.
“Quiet!” Torii hissed, raising a finger to her lips in an unmistakable gesture.
Instantly, the atmosphere in the room turned to ice. Everyone stood rooted in their spots, absolutely still. Only Torii slowly turned. Her gaze passed over the hallway door and a shelf supporting a fish tank, coming to rest at a windowpane. Then she, too, fell motionless.
“The earth will now shake,” Torii intoned.
Did she mean that there was an earthquake coming?
Crack!
It wasn’t the window shattering. It was as if a chasm had opened in the air itself, sharply but painlessly striking the skin of the room’s occupants.
For almost twenty seconds, everyone waited with bated breath, straining intently to detect the presence in the room.
The sky that had been so clear earlier was now covered in clouds. They moved rapidly across the sky, sending flashes of bluish-white light arcing downwards. Outside, the southern Japanese Alps seemed to press in on them. The mountains communicated with the canopy of clouds overhead through glints of lightning, undulating wildly like scan lines on a CRT screen.
With the window sashes tightly closed, the room should have been sealed off from the wind. Yet, the air in the room circulated wildly—it wasn’t wind. It could only be described as extremely localized air movement, and there was nothing natural about it. A burst of air pressure that blew up out of the earth and through the floor.
The windows began to rattle, just as a dog began baying in the distance. Nearby, another dog answered the call, and soon the noise was deafening. Every dog in the neighborhood seemed to be howling at the sky.
Then suddenly the sound of the beating of countless wings filled the air, like a flock of crows rising up into the sky all at once from a telephone line. They seemed to be fleeing, aware that something was afoot.
Saeko and Hashiba’s eyes met, as if to send a mutual signal that something was about to happen.
Saeko felt a sensation similar to the contents of her stomach lurching upwards. She stumbled, unable to keep her footing.
A cabinet next to her wobbled and fell, spilling its contents. The objects seemed to tumble off of the slanting shelf in slow motion, as if gravity wasn’t working properly.
Then she felt a sharp impact to her skull, and the colors faded from her vision. As her consciousness dwindled, out of the corner of her eye she saw Hashiba running toward her.
13When Saeko opened her eyes, she didn’t know where she was. And when was it? Whether someone told her a week had passed while she was unconscious or that it had been only an hour, she wouldn’t be able to refute the claim.
Her gaze traveled from the ceiling down the wall, then took in the person sitting by her bedside. Before she could fully register who it was, a voice said, “Oh! You’re awake!”
The voice was Hashiba’s. Saeko recognized the clothes he was wearing; just as before, he had on a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was close enough that Saeko could see the hairs of his muscular forearms wavering in the fluorescent light.
An image of the last thing she had seen before losing consciousness flashed through Saeko’s mind.
She had felt the ground lurch upwards, and the entire room had rocked in a wave-like motion, causing the objects on the table to slide off th
e edge and tumble through space. The cameramen had crouched down, shielding their expensive equipment, and Torii had slid to safety under the table, facing upwards the whole time, like a gymnast executing a back hip circle. Only the unlucky Saeko was left standing next to a cabinet, and as she’d reached for it for support, the cabinet itself began to pitch forwards just before her fingers reached it, sending a ceramic vessel on the top crashing down on Saeko’s head.
Hashiba looked overjoyed that Saeko had regained consciousness, and his haggard face flushed with color.
“I’m so glad you’re awake!” He looked almost tearful with relief. Immediately, he hit the call button to summon the nurse. He had been instructed to let the doctors know as soon as Saeko woke up.
It took less than a minute for the nurse to arrive, but as they waited, Hashiba gave Saeko a quick rundown of how an ambulance had picked her up at the Fujimura residence.
At 3:54 that afternoon, an earthquake with an intensity of between four and five on the Japanese scale had struck the Suwa Lake area. Nobody had been killed, but a number of homes right at the epicenter at Suwa Lake had been damaged. A handful of people who had been unluckily struck by falling objects had been injured, including Saeko. The ambulance had taken her to the Emergency Room at the Ina General Hospital. All together, five people who had been injured in the earthquake had been brought here.
In the ambulance, the paramedics had made sure Saeko’s airway was open so that she could breathe. As soon as they arrived at the hospital, they had hooked her up to an IV, measured her blood pressure, and assessed her breathing. With all of the emergency staff working together, it had taken mere minutes. They had proceeded to give Saeko a CT scan, and the entire process was finished in just twenty minutes.
The CT scan revealed that there was no lethal damage to her brain. There was some concern over the fact that she had remained unconscious for two hours. The doctors worried that she might show symptoms of subdural hemorrhage or a cerebral contusion and deemed it necessary to monitor her carefully.
Saeko had been moved into one of the standard hospital rooms, with a curtain that screened off her bed from the other bed. Her breath and heart rate were being recorded by a monitor next to the bed, but she couldn’t read the display from where she lay.
The nurse called in Saeko’s doctor, and Hashiba stood up quickly to make room. The doctor checked the numbers on the monitor and asked Saeko various questions. He seemed satisfied by her responses.
“Yes, yes …” he nodded vigorously.
Encouraged, Saeko asked a question of her own. “Doctor, how much longer do I need to stay here?” The words came out in a tumble.
“If you’d only been unconscious for a few minutes, we would have classified it as a minor concussion. But two hours is rather long. You may feel fine right now, but it’s safest to assume that you’ve experienced some brain damage. We don’t want to run the risk of bringing on serious complications later, so we’ll need you to stick around until we can be sure there’s nothing to worry about.”
With a slight groan, Saeko shut her eyes and conjured up an image of her day planner.
Today and tomorrow are fine because I’m supposed to be working on the TV project. But I need to be in Gifu the day after to report on a different project …
“How long will the tests take?” Saeko asked.
“At least three days, a week at the longest.”
Saeko shuddered at the thought of being shut up in the hospital for a week. After the report in Gifu, she needed to write up her article and send it in to the magazine, and then she was scheduled to head up to Hokkaido for a different project. No matter how she looked at it, there was no way to extend the deadlines.
“Please take it easy. We need to keep an eye on you for a little while.”
With that, the doctor gave the nurse a few words of instruction and they both filed out.
Hashiba disappeared after them but returned moments later, dejectedly taking a seat once more at Saeko’s bedside.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, bowing deeply.
Saeko was startled. Why was he apologizing to her? “For what?” she asked.
“This wouldn’t have happened to you if I hadn’t asked you to come here.” Hashiba’s hands were on his thighs, his elbows bowed out to the side. His head was so low, it was almost right in front of Saeko’s face.
“It was just bad luck. And I should’ve been more careful.”
“But if you hadn’t been there, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Saeko didn’t really care that she’d gotten injured. She wasn’t in pain, and she felt completely normal. The main issue was the trouble it would cause if she had to stay at the hospital for too long. But she bit back on her frustration and asked after the staff instead.
“Was everyone else okay?”
“Yes, fortunately,” Hashiba assured her. Saeko alone had drawn the short straw.
“What about the project? Did you get some good footage?”
When Saeko brought up the show, Hashiba almost leapt to his feet. “Did we ever!” he began, before quickly checking himself. He shook his head, realizing how insensitive it was to get excited about the footage they’d gotten when a member of the team was incapacitated.
“As a collaborator, it would make me glad if you did,” Saeko reassured him.
“I don’t know if you’d call it good footage, but we definitely captured some interesting material. Do you remember what happened? Shigeko Torii predicted the earthquake right before it happened. That sort of thing doesn’t happen every day—capturing a prediction, and then having it realized and getting the whole thing on camera.”
“But does that bear any relationship to the missing persons case?”
“Ms. Torii has given us some descriptions that are good hints as to the family’s current whereabouts. We plan to look for places corresponding to her descriptions tomorrow and the next day to get some footage at those locations.”
“I hope you find something.”
“Yes, that would be great. But even if we don’t, we have a perfectly viable show. Thanks to you, Saeko.”
“Not at all. I’m so sorry I wasn’t more helpful …” Saeko had been scheduled to attend the filming tomorrow as well, but that wouldn’t be possible now.
“Don’t worry about that. Just rest and take it easy. And please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. What about your family? Do you want me to call them and explain what happened?”
Saeko looked the other way with a forlorn smile. “I don’t have a family,” she informed him.
“What?”
“There’s no one to contact.”
Hashiba looked disconcerted as he took in this information. If nothing more, at least he knew now that Saeko was single.
“In that case, let me get you whatever you need. The hospital shop has pretty much everything.” Memo pad in hand, Hashiba waited for instructions, but Saeko hesitated.
Even without checking, she could already tell. The nurses had changed her out of the clothes she had been wearing earlier, leaving only her underwear, and dressed her in a hospital gown. The travel bag Saeko had left in the van was by the side of the bed. It had a change of clothes in it, but since Saeko had expected to spend only one night away from home, she hadn’t brought any feminine hygiene products. Psychological duress always made Saeko’s period come early. But she found herself unable to tell Hashiba what she needed most at the moment.
Besides, I can ask the nurse later …
Saeko decided against asking for sanitary products and instead told Hashiba, “I’m thirsty.”
“Fine. I’ll get you some juice or something.”
“Thank you. Just a minute,” she said as Hashiba rose to leave. “What happened to the clothes I was wearing when I got here?” For some reason, talking to Hashiba reminded Saeko of her father, and she’d remembered the old day planner she had been looking at when the earthquake struck.
“Here. It sho
uld all be here in this wardrobe.”
“Would you hand me my jacket?” She remembered dropping the day planner into the pocket of her buckskin jacket. Unless it had slipped out when she’d fallen, it should still be there.
Hashiba circled around the foot of the bed and retrieved the jacket from the wardrobe. “Is this it?” he asked, proffering it to Saeko across his forearm.
Please, let it be there, Saeko prayed as she reached into the pocket. Her fingers encountered the texture of smooth leather. It is! Without thinking, Saeko hugged the little book to her chest.
“Your day planner?” Hashiba asked. He didn’t seem to realize that Saeko had taken the book from the Fujimuras’ home. As he stood up with Saeko’s jacket over his arm, his expression was one of innocent curiosity.
Saeko didn’t respond. A thought flashed through her mind: I wonder if he’s married?
It was the second time the question had occurred to her.
14Night came early in the hospital wing. The overhead lights were switched off at nine o’clock, and the patients were only allowed to keep their bedside lamps on until ten.
Almost two hours had passed since Hashiba had left at the end of visiting hours.
Normally, Saeko never went to bed at this hour. She usually stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m., and to fall asleep any earlier than that she needed a drink. If she stayed in the hospital a while, Saeko was sure she’d get used to the schedule, but it was going to be a challenge falling asleep this first night.
Determined to make herself go to sleep, Saeko turned off her bedside lamp and set down the manuscript she’d been reading on her bedside table. After skimming through her father’s day planner, she had recalled that the article Toshiya had given her was still in her bag and had pulled it out to pass the time.
Just as Toshiya had said, Jack Thorne’s paper specifically addressed the relationship between black holes and information theory. The thesis was that information was the fundamental component of both matter and life and that black holes were a sort of massive information disposal mechanism.
A black hole came into being when a massive star went extinct and its own powerful gravity caused it to get smaller and smaller until it occupied zero space, becoming a sort of rift in space-time. No particle sucked into the hole could escape, including light, meaning that any information in the vicinity was completely swallowed up.