Chapter 19
3. The God of Making Ends Meet
After leaving the shrine and descending into the village, the sun had already begun to set, and the western light reflected off the shutters of the shops in the shopping district.
The lanterns that had been hanging just below the power lines were already taken down. If they had still been up, it would have meant the festival was ongoing, and perhaps that portable shrine would have come again.
Shaking off such unpleasant thoughts, I walked through the shopping district and saw a shoe store with dusty display cases lined with men's leather shoes. The elderly shopkeeper was lowering the shutter with a long pole like a fire poker.
When the elderly shopkeeper saw Miyaki and me, he leaned out from the halfway-lowered shutter.
"Have you come up with something?"
"What?"
My voice unintentionally dropped. The old man repeated himself with an apologetic smile, as if to gently turn away a late-arriving customer.
"Have you come up with something yet?"
Miyaki shook her head at me. The rest of the shutter being lowered by the old man drowned out his wry smile.
The red lanterns of a shabby bar, which felt more desolate when lit than unlit, began to glow.
Miyaki and I silently quickened our pace and passed through the shopping district.
The mask stall that had been set up along the roadside was already gone.
As we entered the residential area, with each step forward, the lights in the houses behind us flickered on as if coordinated.
A poorly maintained camellia hedge and protruding plum tree branches came into view.
Beneath the thick branches, which had lost both leaves and flowers, stood a middle-aged woman holding a broom.
"Are you acquaintances of the people who live here?"
The woman spoke with a country-folk familiarity. Normally it would have felt intrusive, but after the eerie riddle earlier, it was oddly comforting.
"Well, sort of..."
"Could you ask them to cut this tree? I'm short, so it's fine for me, but my grandson almost gets snagged by it every morning on his way to work."
"That sounds dangerous. I'll make sure to let them know."
As Miyaki cheerfully replied and reached for the garden gate, the woman shifted her grip on the broom and muttered.
"Whether it's the people of this house or you two..."
"I'll make sure to tell them to cut it properly."
"It's not the plum tree I meant."
The woman waved her hand in front of her face, erasing her expression.
"I meant, have you come up with something yet?"
Miyaki's hand twitched on the gate. I looked back at the woman.
Her lips puckered, then spread sideways as she stuck out her tongue slightly.
U, de.
We rushed into Tomoi's house as if fleeing and slammed the door shut.
"Katagishi, when she said 'have you come up with something,' did she mean..."
"That narrative alignment of the arm, right?"
Miyaki looked down with a gloomy expression.
After catching my breath at the entrance, I looked up to see the only son of the household descending the stairs from the second floor, looking down at us.
Perhaps sensing something from our demeanor, Ryo made light footsteps as he ran back upstairs.
"Ryo, at least say hello!"
The lady of the house poked her face out from the dark living room and scolded him toward the second floor. There was no reply.
She lowered her eyebrows and bowed slightly to us, then finally turned on the living room light.
"I'm sorry my son was rude..."
Thin porcelain cups were placed in front of us at the table, and tea was poured from a pot. There was no steam at all—it must not have been freshly brewed.
As expected, the tea was cold and bitter, like the skin of a dead person.
"He was born late, so we spoiled him too much."
Tomoi, sitting across from us, slurped the tea noisily.
"Embarrassingly, I was the same. My mother had given up hope of having children, having been told she couldn't for so long. I was conceived just when she'd accepted that. I don't recall her ever scolding me."
Tomoi smiled shyly and unbuttoned the collar of his polo shirt.
Miyaki's gaze focused on his neck. A red bruise encircled it, as if he'd been strangled with a rope.
The legend we heard before coming here flashed through my mind.
A mother and her stepchild who killed each other died spitting cotton, and a child who lacked parental love was reborn to a woman who could not have children.
"What was your mother like, Tomoi? Her job or anything?"
Caught off guard by Miyaki's sudden question, he set down his mug and scratched his brow.
"She was quiet and didn't talk much about herself..."
"But she used to work at a big mansion, right?"
His wife interjected, and he laughed, saying, "Who knows how much of that is true."
"That mansion doesn't exist anymore either. I heard something tragic happened to the family, and even the master ran away."
I played dumb and asked,
"What kind of tragedy?"
"The wife and child passed away. It wasn't a normal death. Some say it was a robbery, but... I don't think so."
As if to say, if it were a robbery, the god wouldn't have let the culprit go.
I wondered how much Tomoi knew and how much he was hiding.
"If it was a crime, your mother was lucky to survive. Was she perhaps on maternity leave at the time?"
When Miyaki asked, Tomoi pondered for a moment.
"No, that doesn't add up. I think it happened about half a year before I was born."
Miyaki and I both looked down at the same time. According to the legend, the maid had been given leave during her final month of pregnancy.
"It's an unpleasant story, so people don't like to talk about it. They say the mother and child were found dead with cotton stuffed in their mouths while they slept. The stepmother had a bad reputation, so some called it karma."
Tomoi, as if resetting the mood, noisily drank the rest of his tea.
The woman who was his mother hadn't been on maternity leave. If she were a maid, there'd be many ways to put sleeping drugs in their food. If she knew the mansion well, it would've been easy to cover her tracks. If the woman committed the crime out of vengeance for the child she loved like her own being killed—
I looked at the cold tea. A thin layer of dust floated on its red surface.
It might be rash to decide Tomoi's mother was a murderer, but if she was, then what's happening now could be karma arriving late.
The son of a child born to a woman who killed and pretended nothing happened is now being tested by the god of making ends meet.
My bad thoughts picked up speed.
"Tomoi, the thing you showed us earlier... that..."
I pointed to the newspaper bundle leaning against the wall like a golf club. Better not to call it an arm.
Tomoi understood and handed me the bundle.
When I unwrapped the newspaper, resealed with cellophane tape, there was indeed an arm inside. The dull blue bruise in the crook of the elbow hadn't changed color. It didn't seem to be a contusion.
"So this is the narrative alignment of the arm, huh..."
As I murmured, faint footsteps echoed in the hallway. I looked to see Ryo crouching by the entrance, pulling over his sandals.
"What's going on?"
Tomoi craned his neck.
"A college friend called. Said they were nearby and needed something."
The boy's slender back was outlined in black against the sunset filtering through the frosted glass. As the door opened halfway, Ryo was yanked away by someone and disappeared.
"Miyaki, let's go!"
"Tomoi, stay put!"
We shoved the door open and burst outside. Bells exploded in our ears.
Inside the camellia hedge that surrounded the house, a narrower inner circle had formed. It was completely surrounded by people.
From housewives in aprons to elderly folks who barely stood, the villagers had entered Tomoi's garden and formed a human wall blocking the entrance.
"Ryo!"
Miyaki screamed. The ones grabbing Ryo's shoulder, one sandal off, were men in white garments who had carried the portable shrine. The young man's pale face trembled, his red lips quivering.
"What the hell is this..."
Just as the bizarre scene overwhelmed our minds, the deafening festival music erupted. The rising and falling flutes, the relentless beat of drums. The villagers swayed like waves to the rhythm.
Ryo, shoved by one of the white-clad men, stumbled to a stop. As he was pushed to the center, all the villagers turned their eyes on him.
The festival music stopped. The villagers giggled, then chanted in unison.
"Have you come up with something yet?"
The chorus of all ages echoed. Ryo could only tremble, unable to answer.
A young man of Ryo's generation stepped forward and spoke in a voice like addressing a classmate.
"You couldn't come up with anything?"
In his hand was a hatchet with a red-painted handle.
The thick iron blade, absorbing the light, slowly rose.
I shoved aside the villagers and dashed forward, slamming my elbow into the young man's side. He lost his balance and fell, dragging Ryo down with him. A housewife swiftly picked up the hatchet that bounced on the stone pavement.
"What are you doing? Run!"
Ryo desperately crawled out from beneath the young man's stomach. Shouting, he scanned the villagers' encirclement. Where the hell could they escape to?
The festival music, which had stopped, now blared even more loudly. The blade of the axe swung by the housewife grazed Ryo's side.
A thin arm that had raised to shield his face was stained with blood, and his elbow was turning bluish-black.
"Miyaki..."
I hesitated to say the next words. Even as I wavered, the axe's follow-up strike was closing in on Ryo.
Miyaki's pupils narrowed slightly, and she turned her back to me.
"Ryo-kun"
Ryo, whose right shoulder had been grabbed, looked up anxiously. I couldn't see Miyaki's expression as they faced each other. Her words came too quickly for me to stop her.
"I'm sorry"
Miyaki pushed Ryo's shoulder with both hands. Beyond his rising torso, I saw the silver arc of the descending axe.
A spray of fresh blood drew an arc through the air, and an arm, severed like an overgrown branch being pruned, flew off.
As a red semicircle traced the dusk sky, I saw the villagers who had been standing still slowly raise their hands to their chests.
The young man who had been on the ground stood up, and the housewife dropped the axe. Then the sound of applause echoed.
The villagers clapped with smiles. Ignoring Ryo, who had his arm cut off, and Miyaki and me standing frozen, they applauded grandly.
The group in white robes, without joining in, watched for a while, then turned in perfect unison and exited through the garden hedge.
The villagers also stopped clapping and, like a marching army, turned their backs and shuffled home.
Replacing the vanished festival music, the sirens of an ambulance and a police car—far too early—began to sound, and the red lights, redder than the sunset, bathed the garden.
"That must have been awful, your son..."
"How scary to think it was just a slip of the hand."
"Anyway, please stay strong, both of you."
"It's strange to say, but in a way, it was a blessing he didn't lose his life."
"Yes, if it had been his chest or head instead of his arm..."
The narrow hospital lobby was filled with the stagnant warmth of the heater and the villagers' idle chatter.
Miyaki and I were in the parking lot outside, separated by a single pane of glass.
"They say Ryo's life isn't in danger. Apparently, the severed arm can be reattached through surgery..."
"That's good to hear..."
From here, the nurses rushing busily through the hospital and the villagers gathered around the foam-padded bench encouraging the Tomoi couple looked like dolls crammed into a miniature hospital.
"God reigns in the heavens. All is well in the world, huh."
Miyaki's profile, trying to force a smile, reflected in the glass.
"Miyaki"
"Yes"
"Maybe I shouldn't say this, but... you did good."
Her forced smile turned to surprise, then to a bewildered grin.
The answer to the patchwork trial of the god had been vaguely forming in my mind even before Ryo got that bruise on his elbow.
If we needed to explain the fact that an arm had been in the garden without creating a culprit, the most reasonable story would be that a family member had lost it in some accident.
Besides, the god here is one who returns lost things to their original place. Ryo lost his arm in the garden, and retrieved it there. The process and result are reversed, but we could align the details later.
That seemed like the answer that would cause the least harm.
The story is, I lacked the guts to do it—but Miyaki didn't.
"It's just a patchwork justification, nothing more..."
"The god here is probably the same. Originally, it's not the kind of god that could do something like that."
Miyaki shrugged her shoulders.
"Anything you can call a patchwork justification isn't all that impressive. If you could really pull it off, no one would notice they were being justified. They'd just believe it was always that way."
I looked at her pale profile, but she didn't say anything more.
"Maybe so... there are gods like that."
In fact, the one I'm chasing is that kind of god.
I didn't look at the Miyaki standing beside me, but at the one reflected in the glass.
I probably need to tell her soon why I started this job. About the woman who was, for a short time, my wife.
"Well, anyway... for now, I just want to go home and sleep without thinking about anything..."
The illusory Miyaki, blending into the light-filled lobby, nodded and mouthed, "Yes, indeed."