Chapter 1

When Toshio had suddenly come to pay a visit to Seishin, they were just in the middle of dinner. Like any well known and trusted parish family member, he crossed the garden to poke his face into their living room, pointing to the side with his finger saying "I'll be waiting." As Miwako stood to offer him some tea, he waved her off with a smile saying "Don't mind me."

"I wonder what's the matter, for Toshio-kun to come."

Giving a vague response to Miwako as she tilted her head, Seishin hurriedly finished his meal. He took a small tea kettle, a pot and tea cups from Miwako before returning to his own room. Toshio hadn't gestured to the office but to Seishin's own room, after all.

When he returned to his room, Toshio who had went out on the veranda was gazing out in a daze at the garden. A cooled autumn breeze blew in through the wide open shouji. When he called out to him, he turned with a smile. "As usual, your room's got nothing to it besides the books."

Toshio closed the veranda window, entered the room and closed the shouji. Seishin gave a wry smile. Seishin's room was made up of two six tatami mat spaces but it hadn't been used for anything beyond sleeping for some time now. Even when he came to sleeping, he would often nap in the storage room near the office, so to say that it bad mostly just become an archive for his books was no exaggeration. It went without saying that the shelves were full, but the bed area and even the writing alcove were flooded with books, the futon rolled up, it and the desk and the kotatsu all buried under failed manuscripts copies and printer's proofs.

Toshio leaned against a bookshelf and fingered through one of the nearby catch copies. "It's thought that where a person lives reflects the insides of their psyche. Going with that, your psyche's turned into a storage room. That or you've really abandoned your place and turned it into one."

Seishin knelt before an appropriately sized pile of books and set the teacups on top of it. "It's because I'm usually in the office. ---What is it?"

When Seishin asked, Toshio opened his mouth only to show uncharacteristic hesitation. "Hey... this village is surrounded by death, you said once, huh? No, wrote, should I say?"

"What's this, all of a sudden?"

"Right now in the very present, don't you think that's the state of things?"

Seishin's brows furrowed. "What do you---"

"The village is overflowing with death. Right now, we can't even imagine how many people've been infected by that. It's eating the village from the inside out. So, saying it's surrounded might not be the most fitting word but to me it looks like the village is surrounded. It's slowly becoming more and more obvious."

Toshio cut his words short easily. "I investigate and I investigate, but to me it feels like there's always a wall blocking me off. I'm looking for an exit I can't find, like that. The situation's getting more and more severe. Yet the more I look the more obstacles pile up, like the exit's growing further away. So it's like being surrounded."

Knowing full well that feeling, Seishin nodded.

"What do you think's happening to this village?"

"What, you say?"

Toshio drew his gaze from the catch copy and lifted his face. "I have the feeling I might just know the infection route of the disease. I think I've found an answer that pulls together all the bunch of details. The disappearances, the moves, the commuters quitting their jobs included."

Seishin found himself leaning forward. "Really?"

"Possibly. ---It's The Risen."

For a moment, Seishin failed to understand the word. "What?"

"Oni. It's vampires."

Seishin blinked. Was Toshio using the words as some kind of simile? Or was this Toshio's idea of a joke?

He looked to Toshio troubled over how he was supposed to take this, but Toshio remained serious.

"Anemia's the first symptom, then it finally culminates in multiple organ failure. In all the patients, what stands out is pale skin and lethargy, a cold sweat, a pulse that's hard to feel, and respiratory failure. Pallor, prostration, perspiration, pulselessness, pumonary insufficiency--5P," Toshio murmured. "Shock from blood loss."

Seishin reflexively nodded. "Toshio----"

Toshio cut him off before he could speak. "And it always starts with anemia. Normocytic normochromic anemia. It's not a problem with forming blood. They've lost a large quantity of them. In this case, normally we'd suspect hemolysis due to blood loss. But, there's no trace of blood loss happening. Even doing a full body CT scan we never discovered any internal bleeding. No outward injuries. Nor bloodstains. So they can't be hemorrhaging. So it has to be hemolysis but the COMBS tests return negative. There's no swollen spleen or abnormally high bilirubin or LDH. Those are what I think of as the characteristic features of hemolysis. But, if it's possible for a form of hemolysis that's unthinkable with common sense, why can't there be a form of blood loss that's outside the bounds of common sense? No external wounds. There's no internal bleeding either but even so the patient is losing blood. Blood is leaking out the blood vessels, with a decrease in the circulating blood. The result is that anemia occurs but since there isn't any hemolysis, since there isn't anything abnormal with the body itself, there are no conditions seen outside of anemia."

"But."

"But what? But then the organs systematically break down because of an absolute shortage of blood. Primary MODS. The amount of blood decreases even more. All kinds of mediators activate, as if the body's being invaded. SIRS occurs. The lungs are damaged, the alimentary canal hemorhagges, ileus or renal failure starts to occur. Myocardial ischemia occurs, heart function declines, and symptoms of heart failure appear. Secondary MODS. ---Multiple Organ Failure."

"Toshio."

"It's actually textbook. It's just like shock from blood loss. The problem is that without external injuries or bloodstains, and without internal bleeding, that's the end of that line of reasoning. I suspected blood loss. That's why I did a complete internal scan looking for the internal bleed. But, the internal bleeding is never found. I never took external blood loss into account. There were no wounds after all. But at the same time, the patients weren't completely without wounds. Those bumps. Festering like some insect bite. Those were always located near a blood vessel. That's where the patients are losing their blood. To a vampire."

"Toshio, this is bad," Seishin shook his head. "Something's wrong with you."

"Why? This is a medical case. It starts with anemia, ending in MOF so sudden and acute it's unheard of in medical science, with the patient suddenly dying. This is definitely spreading like an epidemic but there's no corresponding Epidemic Disease. It's not just that it's not appropriate to classify as an epidemic disease; clearly there's something wrong. The blood loss can't happen without hemolysis and yet there's no bleeding so there's no hemolysis. The condition deviates from medical common knowledge."

"Even so---"

"If we add a nonsensical existence like vampires to the mix, we can solve the formula. The symptoms conform to it nice and nearly. If we negate the existence of vampires, we preserve a certain breed of consistency in the world itself, but we're still left with a medical case that defies common sense. There's not a huge difference between the two unnatural phenomena, but, now then, which would you choose?"

Seishin had no reply for him.

"That's not all. Ishida-san's gone missing. And with data and a written report on the series of deaths. There's the one-way mass trend of movers. Those movers suddenly going in the middle of the night as if fleeing something, abnormal. At least going by what Koike-san's said, they had an outbreak before they moved. In truth, even if we think of all of the movers as ones with an outbreak, it conforms. Ishida-san didn't exactly move but the part where he suddenly disappeared into the night is the same. It's probably an example of a move---and an irregularity too, don't you think?"

"That's... Certainly," Seishin said unable to disagree.

"But what connection am I saying there is between illness and moving? And those who quit. Those who come down with the disease would want to quit it seems. But at the same time, there can't possibly be a disease that makes people move or quit, can there? Is the pathogen giving orders to the infected? Move! Quit!" Toshio said with a low laugh, before his face became serious again. "---That can't be the case. Pathogens don't have consciousness. But, if there were a pathogen with a will? If the thing infecting them itself, if the main cause itself has a will, and if it was controlling the infected?"

Seishin couldn't give an answer. That kind of thing couldn't possibly happen. Though he wanted to say the obvious, it wouldn't pass his throat.

"It started in Yamairi. It came into the village, the contamination magnified, and all the while the damage has been spreading. It makes anemia occur. The disease gets worse at night. It has a will, and as you can tell by looking at Ishida's case, it chooses its victims arbitrarily. It can control and restrict its victims actions. ---It's vampires. What else could it be?"

Seishin merely wordlessly shook his head. He could neither reply nor find the words. If he could have spoke, the words would have been "They can't exist" but if he expressed that believe it would expose the words "can't" rather than "don't" highlighting it as only a belief.

Toshio breathed a light sigh. Maybe he never expected to be believed from the start; he didn't look like he blamed Seishin.

"I'll be taking the Yasumori missus into the hospital. I'm planning to do a night watch for a while but if you could I want you to swap shifts with me."

Seishin hesitated, then nodded. It wasn't that he believed Toshio by any means. More than being a matter of believing him or not, it was something he honestly wanted to say was too ridiculous and that he wasn't tagging along. But, if Setsuko had an outbreak, he didn't think it was a bad idea to have her hospitalized. If she were being hospitalized, it was important to keep watch to see when it took a sharp turn for the worse. He knew that that was too much for Toshio who was already being worked to the point of exhaustion.

"....All right."

Toshio let out a breath at that again as if something were unburned from his shoulders, then spoke as if suddenly remembering. "Tomorrow, could you go to Mizobe for me?"

"Mizobe? To do what?"

"I need some materials. With the enemy being what it is, medical texts aren't going to be any kind of reference. That said, it's not like I can just go to the Tashiro Book shop like usual and order them."

Seishin faintly sensed a hint of malice.

"Materials... about vampires?"

"That's right," Toshio said dubiously, making Seishin swallow down something bitter.

"If so, I have them.... Right here."

"Eh?"

What a sign. Was there some kind of meaning to this?

"I've been writing. So," Seishin said aware of the feel of goose-flesh chilling down his back. "About The Risen. ...It's called 'Shiki.'"