Chapter 2.1

Seishin stopped his car at the shoulder of the road and looked at the note Toshio made. Therein were the listed elements that needed to be investigated.

The deceased's sex, age, occupation. Education history, standard of living. Household circumstances, particularly if they used well water. Family structure, maritual status, their parents ages, birth order, family medical history. The individual's medical history, if they drank, if they smoked, eating habits, customs. Their daily sphere of activity, particularly their actions throughout July. The note was made out like a form, with what was filled out filled out from their death certificates and the family registers but there were many blanks.

If going in the order of the outbreak, the first to contract it were the three in Yamairi. If one believed Mieko's talk of catching it from Gigorou, then Ohkawa Gigorou would be thought of as the first. The estimation of when he would have contracted it was right around the middle of July. If at that time, Gigorou or the others had gone out some place, that place could be thought of as being infected. ----That this could be told quickly by asking the bereaved families was something that Seishin was, at first, optimistic about. So he was, but the conversations weren't so simple.

Murasako Hidemasa had lost his wife, his sister, and his nephew, a total of three people. Indeed there weren't any close relatives remaining in the village. But fortunately, as the three had their funeral services performed by the temple, the contact addresses of the Murasako household were left with them. As they were living in Yamairi, he tried to contact any relatives living in the communities below, or any old people who had been close to them, but the results were futile. Nobody knew what the Murasako couple had been doing lately.

The Murasako family children hadn't by any means cut off ties with their parents but in the end their parents were a part of themselves that they had left behind in Sotoba. They hadn't forgotten them, they weren't estranged, and they certainly hadn't lost their love for them, but they had their own lives. Long ago, they would have returned for Obon and rekindled their connections but with small children there were studies and lessons, reasons not to want to go far from home, and when children were at a more independent age, they then became the ones at home waiting to welcome those children to their own homecoming. As a result, their parents deserted in the country were looked back upon less and less.

"If they had even been in bad health, though," said Hidemasa's daughter. "I was worried myself, I did peek in on how they were doing, don't you know. Overall the two were healthy, after all. I thought myself I didn't need to worry and, how to put it---I just forgot. I just didn't worry about it anymore."

She harbored a secret regret of not contacting that but in this case, that it wouldn't have helped at all was true.

At any rate, as far as attempting to make contact in regards to the Murasakos, Seishin was---at least in regards to kith and kin---left with no choice but to accept that it would be near impossible to gather information. Never mind being able to ask the questions that would clarify the circumstances, there was a limit to how much he could ask even with a made-up pretense to dress it up under.

That left Ohkawa Gigorou, but... Seishin thought as he drove towards the village road. At least Ohkawa Gigorou had a nephew left in the village. The Ohkawa Liquor Shop's Ohkawa Tomio was that nephew. Under the guise of buying something on an errand, Seishin visited the Ohkawa Liquor Shop.

In the course of conversation, touching upon Gigorou's death, you must dearly miss him, Seishin said trying to direct the talk with Ohkawa.

"Naw, naw," said Ohkawa, his face a mingling of a smile and a grimace as he waved his hand. "He was already at that age, that old man was."

"None the less, were you not surprised?"

"If you're asking about surprises, that was sure a surprise. My old man's older brother suddenly died, and I was told by the police, after all. On top of that, I I try to go up to have a look and he's so rotted he's falling apart, and he's been strewn all over. Well, to say it's not something you get to experience often's sure enough."

That is true, Seishin nodded. "When was the final time that you had been able to meet with Gigorou-san?"

When was that, Ohkawa said tilting his head as he wrapped the bottle of sake. "It's not like we saw each other that much you know? I'm just gonna put it out there, he wasn't exactly a jolly old man, if there was nothing I needed I didn't feel like seeing him. The old man didn't by no means talk to us much either, when you think, huh he's calling us, it was to say I'm going out so give me your car or pick with up for me, or to say to do this or that for him," Ohkawa said, mouth forming into a pointed frown. "I'm his nephew, I'd think it'd be normal to ask how to make it convenient for me at least. If he stopped into the store unexpectedly once in a while, even if he got something, he didn't pay the bill on it. He didn't think of nothin' but himself. Then on my end, I just couldn't take him talkin' down to me even if he is my uncle. I'm not still some snot nosed brat after all. When I said that, he shouted who do you think I am, I don't have to sit and listen to this, you think I'm a old fart who won't just die already, and went home yelling."

Ohkawa spoke, his huge body rocking with laughter. Seishin frowned at the loud voice as he asked: "Then, you had not met with him just before the incident?"

"Didn't see him. Even before that---'at was early spring wasn't it? Suddenly he comes on in and takes a bottle off the shelf 'n tries to go, I yelled after him to at least bring the damn money to pay for it. I say that and, don't talk about such petty things between relatives, the old fucker says! Relative, relative, he says! I don't ever remember the old man ever helping me out once, don't remember him ever being no use either, is that what you call a relative, I said, took the bottle up out of his hands and pushed him out the front of the shop. I do that, he starts yelling out in front of the shop 'What about you!' I got too pissed off and threw water out at him. Did that, said don't come here again, I'm cutting off our ties, or somethin', I said."

"....Is that so."

"After that, he was incorrigible. Give me your car, go to the JA, he called to say, I slammed the phone down on him and lately the calls stopped coming too. Then suddenly the police call, saying he's kicked the bucket. After all that I'd say I got no obligation to put up for his funeral but I'm the only one of his relatives left. Everyone's either gone and passed or left the village. Like you'd think, not even having a funeral's just too sad, so at the very end I ended up looking after him. I'm a soft hearted guy at the end of the day."

Ohkawa's body quaked with laughter. His wife Kazuko wore a supplicating smile. Seishin, with mixed feelings, paid and let the shop. At the side of the shop, Ohkawa's son Atsushi was breaking down a cardboard box as if it were an enemy. Giving a light bow to him, he suddenly and rudely faced away. In knee length sweats, his bare leg was wrapped in bandages. Were you injured, he had tried to ask, but he only replied, as if refusing him, that he was bit by a dog. It didn't seem Atsushi was in the mood to speak with Seishin. Unable to find a way to guide the conversation from there, Seishin left the Ohkawa Liquor Shop.

A sigh leaked out. With Ohkawa like that, they couldn't know what Gigorou had been up to. Even outside of the village, Gigorou basically didn't have any relatives he spoke with. He tried to at least ask who Gigorou was close with to Ohkawa, but he responded that "There wasn't no one 'sides the old Murasako pops" bluntly.

Yamairi was isolated, Seishin thought looking at the notes. Not only was it geographically isolated from the six communities below, it was isolated from regional bonds and blood bonds. Indeed, if that weren't the case, they weren't likely to be left behind that deep in the mountains. The three old people who had given up and been given up by so much, huddled together to get by. The three of them died in one fell swoop, everything down to footprints of their life floated away into thin air---.

Is this what it means to return to nothingness, Seishin thought. Everything a person amasses and erected, all of it was reduced to its meaningless origins.

---That is why death is so terrifying.

"That's it exactly...."