Chapter 1
1. The God Descending One by One
It was a typical countryside scene.
A spacious yard unthinkable in the city. Camellias would probably bloom in the lush hedges surrounding the house come winter.
Even when tree branches stuck out a bit into the road, it seemed the neighbors didn't mind.
In a corner of the yard, a brand-new shed painted sky blue gleamed in the sunlight.
"My grandson came back and painted it for me. I told him it might be a bit flashy for this house, though."
The elderly woman who owned the house smiled at me while rubbing her hand, speckled with purple blotches. I gave a polite smile in return, though I wasn't sure if it came off well.
"Is this the shed from the incident?"
The old woman gave a vague nod.
I pulled a photo taken with an instant camera from my suit pocket. The date written in leaky ballpoint pen on the back corresponded to this same day a year ago.
I flipped the photo and held it up so it overlapped with the sky-blue shed.
It was anything but a typical countryside scene.
There stood a shed, brutally crushed.
It looked like a typhoon had passed through, but the garden gate in the background didn't have a single scratch.
Only the shed had scattered splintered plywood across the ground, spilling out farming tools, a mangled child's bicycle, and a wooden bat and glove.
The problem was the massive sphere sitting calmly on the debris like a rug.
It was probably about 1.5 meters in diameter. A white orb with the texture of milk jelly glistened as it reflected the morning sun from when the photo was taken. Inside was a slightly smaller light gray circle, and within that, a tiny black dot. If you looked closely, you could see red coral-like blood vessels spreading across the white sphere.
"An eye?"
"Seems like it."
The old woman gave a wry smile at my vague question.
"So this fell on your shed last year?"
"Yes..."
When I lowered the photo, the newly rebuilt shed slid into view.
"Not sure if it was the right or left eye, though..."
"Well, that part doesn't really matter."
Maybe my tone sounded irritated, as the old woman shrank slightly and bowed.
I'm not cut out for this kind of fieldwork. When I looked past the hedge, a woman in a suit like mine, probably also job hunting, gave a sly grin.
"Miyaki, next time you come along for this kind of thing too."
After leaving the old woman's house, I leaned against a guardrail by the unpaved road and lit a cigarette.
"I had a municipal investigation to handle. You should get used to field interviews too, Katagishi."
"Not sure who's the senior here."
As I exhaled into the dry wind, the smoke from my cigarette mingled with the field-burning smoke rising from the rice paddies visible through the trees.
"So?"
Miyaki pulled a clear file from her bag.
"It started in '97. The first was the pool at Third Elementary School, down the hill from here. It's closed now."
"Declining birthrate, huh."
I took the materials from her. The A4 photocopy of a newspaper article had terrible image quality.
Squinting, I could tell the black-and-white photo showed the edge of a 25-meter pool.
A massive hose-like object stretched across the center of the image. It bent slightly in the middle like a kinked pipe.
"Wish it was in color."
"Can't waste taxpayer money. Your ash is falling."
Still holding the cigarette in my mouth, I moved the paper closer and farther until the whole picture came into view.
At the diving board on the pool's edge, the hose split into five branches. Each end had a thin, hard, oval object attached, like a darkened kickboard.
"An arm?"
"Seems like it."
Miyaki said as she put the file back into her bag.
"Since '97, a giant human body part has fallen in this village once a year. So far confirmed are a nose, a right arm, what appears to be a canine tooth, a knee, forty meters' worth of hair weighing about twenty kilograms, and some internal organs. A spleen and a left kidney, apparently."
A cheerful honk sounded twice, and Miyaki and I looked up.
From the driver's seat of a truck loaded with lumber, a sunburned old man smiled and raised a hand. I tried to lift the corner of my mouth in a smile.
"City folks?"
"Yes, we're here from Tokyo on a municipal investigation."
Before I could answer, Miyaki responded brightly.
"Well then, tell your superiors to get more young folks to come visit."
Leaving behind his friendly smile and the engine's rumble, the truck carrying the old man drove off.
"You lie so smoothly."
Miyaki shrugged. The only truth was that we were from Tokyo. That was enough.
We couldn't exactly say we were dispatched to investigate unexplainable paranormal phenomena happening all over.
I stubbed out my cigarette in a portable ashtray and started down the slope.
Between the leafless, dried-out trees, houses surrounded by similar hedges lined the path.
Further ahead, I could see a cracked asphalt road running like a scar through what looked like scorched farmland.
"We've only just started the investigation on the local land god here."
Miyaki walked beside me, watching the mud seeping into her pumps.
"I already looked into that."
"You should've told me first."
"We don't know each other's personal contact info, do we?"
I pulled a folded copy paper from my suit pocket. It had an ink drawing I found in a book of local folklore at the regional museum — the kind only eccentric students would read.
"Apparently drawn by a painter who lived here in the tenth year of Tenpō."
Miyaki peeked at my hand. On the yellowed paper was a mountain ridge drawn with overlapping straight lines, and rice paddies marked with dots. Peeking out from behind the mountain was a bald, emaciated giant with a hollow expression.
"It has a certain charm."
The giant's eyes, almost like empty holes, revealed no emotion. The lines drawn with a flat brush seemed to represent villagers looking up at the giant.
"There's hardly any detailed legend. Not even a name for this god. Just that the entire land — the mountain and village — was its sacred body, always watching over the villagers, or something like that."
"That's all?"
"There was also something like a short poem from the early Meiji era. I didn't really get it, but it said something like the god returned because the village had become prosperous enough after a certain year's festival..."
"Ah, I heard that too. Apparently they danced to that song during the village festival."
Something larger than a pebble hit the tip of my shoe, and I stopped.
Looking down, I saw a stone shaped like melting ice, half-buried and sticking out of the soil.
"That's dangerous. What is this?"
As I crouched down, I instinctively felt I shouldn't touch it. In this line of work, bad hunches tend to be right.
Scraped clean of mud, only the characters for "abundance" and "path" were visible on the surface of the stone.
"Is something wrong?"
I shook my head in response to Miyaki's question.
The slope ended, and golden rice stalks spread out around us.
In the corner of my vision, I saw a deserted gas station almost buried under the shade of trees. No cars sat under the roof marked with red and orange stripes.
Even the LED sign showing gas prices was turned off.
"Really is the countryside."
"Apparently, they did some development recently and built a bunch of roads. Even opened a tunnel through the mountain."
"When was that?"
"Around '97, I think."
Miyaki and I exchanged glances.
A mountain loomed ahead, like it had been painted over with dark brown ink. Staring at the slope, I saw a thin, scraped-looking line where no trees grew.
That must be the mountain road they opened.
I wondered if that old man was now driving his worn-out truck up that mountain.
"Miyaki, by the way, when is the village festival held?"
Miyaki didn't notice the slight tremble in my voice.
"Apparently they don't hold it anymore, but it used to be today."
At that moment, a thunderous sound rang out.
I instinctively stepped in front of Miyaki as a gray gust of wind blasted us.
The swirling smoke was mixed with fine gravel that pelted our bodies.
Coughing and choking, Miyaki and I glared into the hazy distance.
The red and orange roof of the gas station had folded into a V-shape like origami, with a hole punched straight through the center.
The gas pump directly below was tilting, looking like it might snap at any moment.
I thought it would be bad if it caught fire and exploded, but that wasn't even the main concern.
The object that had crashed through the roof was now resting atop the pile of rubble.
A soft, pale orange mass like a sheet was draped halfway over another gas pump. Within the folds that formed complex wrinkles was a circle, and even the shadow of fine downy hair growing inside it was clearly visible.
It was a giant ear.
We call phenomena beyond human understanding—no, beyond human control, whether good or evil—or the things that give rise to them, "Territorial Divine Offenses."