Chapter 53
Chapter 53
2. The God of Vestiges
City of the dead. That was the first phrase that came to mind.
Ever since we got off the bus, the village had been shrouded in thick fog. The air was the temperature of a corpse's skin.
I rubbed my goosebump-covered arms. Beside me, Kirima looked unfazed.
"How are you not cold?"
"Because you're the one wearing that aloha shirt."
"What I wear has nothing to do with it."
"You're making it harder to question people showing up dressed like a fool."
"You're bad at questioning people even without me."
He kicked me in the shin. Kirima was a different person from when he was doting on his daughter yesterday.
I had let my guard down after working with Ryoko for a while.
As if reading my mind, Kirima snorted through his nose.
"Tough luck working with me again, huh?"
"Ryoko wasn't much better. Isn't she kinda scary?"
Kirima widened his eyes and let out a deep sigh.
"You finally noticed?"
"So you thought so too, didn't you?"
Kirima quickly started walking, as if to dodge the question.
"Ryoko already investigated this village, but she didn't find anything abnormal. That's why we were sent again."
"Why bother? Feels like a waste of time."
"Beats me. Who knows what goes on in her head."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Still better to be paired with you. Process of elimination, though. I hate both options."
Kirima kept walking without kicking my shin this time.
"Yeah. No matter who you're with, the best thing is to avoid dealing with gods in the first place."
We descended the foggy slope.
The swamp we arrived at reflected the color of the mist, like milk spilled into mud.
Withered reeds grew along the water's edge, surrounded by gloomy trees, and a wooden boat lay abandoned, belly up.
A tattered suspension bridge stretched from one end of the swamp to the other, looking like it would collapse into the murky depths the moment you stepped on it.
"Even if it's not Territorial Divine Offenses, something's bound to show up here."
Unable to bear the creepiness, I said that, and Kirima stared gloomily across the swamp.
His mouth was stiff, and his wide-open eyes were so dry he forgot to blink. I followed his gaze, but all I saw was a moss-covered stone monument.
"Kirima?"
Kirima finally snapped out of it.
"What's with that stone monument?"
"Stone monument...?"
It's common for others to not see what I see, but it's the first time I couldn't see what someone else did.
Frustrated, I stepped toward the stone monument.
"Look, this thing."
As I got closer, I saw that characters were carved into the stone surface. The grooves were filled with moss and hard to read, but they looked like some kind of kanji.
"'I' and 'younger brother' in katakana... Iotouto?"
After staring at the stone monument, Kirima closed his eyes and sighed.
"Idiot, that's read as Vestige."
"No way. Vestige is two characters."
"There are characters that convey a word with just one symbol."
"...Vestige, that's the name of the god we heard yesterday, right?"
"Yeah. No idea why they're using a non-standard kanji, though."
"It comes from the local legend."
Startled by the sudden voice cutting in, I realized a young man had appeared in front of us without us noticing.
His curly hair hung down, and his shirt clung to his skinny frame, making him look like he had just climbed out of the swamp.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Who the hell are you? You're not from the village."
Kirima responded with a scowl.
"We're here to investigate the local legend..."
"Ah, someone like that came from Tokyo before. A woman who looked like a teacher with glasses. You know her?"
He must be talking about Ryoko.
The man pushed past us, touched the stone monument, and scraped off the moss with his fingers.
"Investigation, huh? With this many incidents, I guess someone had to come."
"Incidents? What incidents?"
"Mysterious deaths. You came here not knowing?"
Kirima and I exchanged glances.
The man suddenly pointed across the swamp.
"See anything?"
I squinted, but all I could see were reeds drooping like freshly bleached women's hair. Kirima silently lowered his gaze.
Seeing that, the man shrugged.
"Looks like the big guy gets it."
The man ran his fingers through his disheveled hair with a weary look.
"Honestly, I'm at my limit too. If you can do something, please do. Not that I expect much from you guys."
"Is that how you ask someone for help?"
As I crept toward him, Kirima smacked me on the back.
"There's no café here, so this place will have to do."
The man led us to a wooden shack that looked like a bus stop waiting room.
The enamel bench was covered in dust, and the letters on the backrest were faded.
The man introduced himself as Kai and pulled out a cigarette.
"How much do you guys know?"
Kirima stood in front of the bench and answered.
"They say you can meet the dead on that bridge over the swamp."
"Have a seat... Right, the suspension bridge between this world and the next. Classic ghost story."
"Are the mysterious deaths related to that?"
"Probably. Long ago, two brothers lived in the swamp. While building the bridge, the younger brother drowned. The older brother finished the bridge. The younger became the guardian god of the swamp and, out of pity, made the bridge connect to the world of the dead. That's the legend. I heard it from a classmate."
"So that's why the character for younger brother was there."
Kai nodded at my murmur.
"That classmate went nuts and disappeared. So did my old man. He got dementia from a brain disease, started wandering, and six months ago they found him drowned in the swamp."
"Who did your father see at the swamp?"
"...His son. He said he saw my dead younger brother."
Kai snapped the half-smoked cigarette in two.
"What a waste."
His exasperated smile looked like one you'd give a younger kid.
Kai exhaled a long stream of smoke and said,
"Lately, I've been seeing my brother too."
"He drowned. He was in second grade and had just started losing his baby teeth. I remember putting the box with his fallen teeth in the coffin. At the funeral, my mom cried, 'Maybe he died before his new teeth could grow in because we didn't bury them under the floor.'"
Kirima closed his eyes. Maybe he was thinking of his daughter.
I asked in his place.
"But meeting the dead... Are you sure it's really your brother?"
Kai ran his fingers through his curly hair.
"I didn't believe it either. But I saw him. I try to avoid the swamp, but I keep ending up there. He calls me 'nii-hyan' because of his missing teeth. He remembers how I used to tease him for that, everything..."
Kai hung his head and shook it. He really did seem at his limit.
He crushed the broken cigarette into the ashtray and turned on his heel.
"Hurry up and do something. I'm at the Kai Bicycle Shop if you need to talk."
After walking a few steps, Kai turned back to look at us.
"If you didn't have anyone close to you who died, what do you think you'd see in that swamp?"
The abrupt question caught me off guard.
"Maybe nothing at all."
"That's what most people would say."
Kai said nothing more and walked away.
Kirima pulled the tin ashtray closer and took out a cigarette. I also pulled one from my pocket and struck my lighter. The smoke melted into the mist.
"This village's a lot more trouble than I thought."
"Yeah, it is."
With a cigarette in his mouth, Kirima picked up a discarded newspaper from the corner of the waiting room. His turned back felt like rejection.
I gave up asking what he saw in the swamp and peeked at the paper.
"Find anything interesting?"
"Says the Soviets are developing a nuclear aircraft carrier."
"Is that bad?"
"Could mean full-scale war."
"If that's the case, maybe we shouldn't be worrying about some backwoods god."
"Not necessarily."
Kirima folded the damp newspaper.
"The countermeasure headquarters is planning to utilize Territorial Divine Offenses. Eventually, they'll probably use it for more than just eliminating the evil god. This kind of thing might be happening in other countries too."
"There are Territorial Divine Offenses overseas?"
"Who knows. But as long as faith exists, it wouldn't be strange for them to take other forms."
The scale of it all was too big for me to grasp. I exhaled smoke. Ryoko's words floated through my mind.
"So gods are slaves to humans..."
Kirima glanced at me sideways. The purple smoke built a bridge into the mist.
As we both stood up, the waiting room shook like it was about to flip over. What a piece of junk.
I still felt like the shaking hadn't stopped.
It wasn't just my imagination.
A red glow, like the eyes of a monster, seeped through the mist and came rushing toward us—a single ambulance sped past.
It was heading toward the swamp.
We exchanged glances and chased the siren that saturated the thick fog.
The police had already put up yellow tape around the swamp.
A paramedic pushing a stretcher shoved past a cop, opening up a small space.
"Again? Half a year ago it was her husband..."
Voices rose from the crowd. Over the shoulders of the onlookers, I saw a body being pulled from the swamp.
The body, hoisted by two people, was stiff like a mannequin. His curly hair was soaked this time, and swamp mud had stained his shirt.
It was Kai.
I heard Kirima let out a groan.
The ambulance pulled away, revealing the whole murky swamp. I gasped.
The moss-covered stone monument at the swamp's edge used to say "Vestige."
Now it had been carved with "Kai." Like a gravestone that had stood there for decades.