Chapter 3
3. The God Descending One by One
Miyaki and I were made to sit on cushions at the village community center, so thin that we could feel the texture of the tatami directly, facing residents with wry smiles.
"To put it simply,"
Miyaki looked up at me anxiously. I knew I wasn't good at speaking appropriately in discussions like this, but I couldn't worry about that now.
"Those eyeballs and ears didn't just fall and end there. I think they're trying to return to the mountain or underground of this land."
The old man who was said to be the village chief and his middle-aged female secretary exchanged glances.
"What would happen in that case...?"
The secretary was the first to speak.
"It's just speculation, but if something that big starts moving around, it won't stop at just barns and gas stations being damaged."
"Not right away, of course. But if more parts of the divine body keep appearing and it becomes whole enough to start moving..."
Miyaki waved both hands as if to mediate.
Perhaps it was used as a substitute for a children's cram school, but the walls were covered with calligraphy paper bearing phrases like 'Taxes for Us' and 'A Bright Future', written in clumsy brushstrokes.
"What do you think we should do?"
The village chief, now with 'Taxes' emblazoned across both shoulders, rubbed his chin with a troubled expression.
"First, we should return all the existing divine body parts to the earth. Then, take all the broken stone statues from the roadside, remake them properly, and put them back where they were. Probably, the guardian god's body got scattered because those were broken apart. Even if we can't tear up and flatten the road now, it should at least serve as a temporary fix. The only thing humans can do is show sincerity."
After a moment of silence, the secretary answered hesitantly with a concerned smile.
"I think the stone statues are already okay..."
"What?"
Miyaki nudged me as my voice involuntarily dropped.
"Ah, that. We thought it was bad too. The year after an arm fell on the village, the eyeball came next, right? We figured we must have angered the god or something."
The village chief picked up the explanation.
"So we held a memorial for the broken stone statues at the shrine and made new ones to place where the old ones were. Some of the old ones were buried too deep to remove, so we left those as is."
Now it was Miyaki and I who exchanged glances.
With the faint light seeping from the community center at our backs, we stepped outside. The wind, carrying the scent of life from the village below the mountain path and withered leaves, was bitterly cold.
"Ah, look, over there."
Rubbing both arms in her thin suit against the cold, she pointed to a corner.
At the back of the community center, in the far end of a parking lot marked only by a wooden sign, a stone statue stood buried among camellia trees.
I crouched and traced the surface bathed in orange light with my finger. Focusing on the textured area, I saw the inscription: "November 3rd, Year Ninety-Nine."
"Do you think this won't work...?"
I felt Miyaki's reproachful gaze and the uneasy stares of the village chief and secretary on my back. I stood up and brushed the dust from my knees.
"For now, let us take this matter back with us."
I gave that answer as a last resort. I thought it sounded like something a government official would say.
"What are we going to do, Katagishi?"
Declining the village chief's offer to see us off, I walked down the slope with no streetlights, and Miyaki murmured behind me.
"What else can we do? I guess we just have to bury it now..."
The path lit by the penlight was a road of scraped earth with scattered pebbles, so monotonous it felt like my senses were warping—as if I were looking at the surface of the moon.
"Maybe dividing the road was a bad idea after all. Like you said, it's impossible to tear up and flatten the road now."
"Yeah."
"Even after building new stone statues, the god is still dissatisfied?"
"Who knows."
I gave only a hollow reply as I walked down the slope. I felt like I was overlooking something.
A pebble kicked by Miyaki bounced ahead of me and hit a stone statue by the roadside.
"Blasphemous."
Miyaki chuckled.
"How many parts of the divine body have been gathered so far? We've got both eyeballs, and the arms..."
Suddenly, the voice of the old woman whose barn had been destroyed echoed in my mind.
She said she couldn't tell if it was the right or left eye.
I recalled the two eyeballs that had surged into the abandoned school building, nearly breaking through the door.
One of the eyeballs had a pupil that was significantly larger than the other. Could they really be that different in size on the same body?
I stopped walking and turned around.
"Miyaki, only one arm has fallen so far, right?"
"Uh, wait a second."
Miyaki began rummaging through her bag in the darkness. I approached and shone the light into her bag. She found the file and began flipping through it page by page, then let out a small 'ah'.
"They're both accounted for."
"Show me."
I snatched the file from Miyaki and searched for the relevant pages. One arm had fallen into the school pool. The other had been thrown across an intersection.
Holding the flashlight in my mouth, I lifted the photos with both hands. They only showed the curve from upper arm to elbow and down to the wrist. The fingertips were hidden behind a broken traffic light.
"Damn it..."
I took the flashlight from my mouth and spat the words.
"Miyaki, we're going back to the abandoned school."
"You're kidding, right?"
I patted Miyaki's shoulder, her face showing genuine dislike, and dashed down the slope.
I had memorized the combination to the padlock by sneakily watching it earlier in the day.
With a scream-like screech, the iron door opened, and as I slipped inside, Miyaki let out a pitiful voice.
"Let's not do this. Government employees breaking and entering is bad."
"Relax. Even if you're not a government employee, breaking and entering is still bad."
"That makes it worse!"
Holding the flashlight in one hand, I walked across the schoolyard where faint white lines still remained. When I looked up, the unlit school building loomed, blending into the darkness. As I illuminated the abandoned school, which now felt like a shattered god's coffin or a communal graveyard, I quickened my pace.
"Where are the arms stored...?"
Following behind me, Miyaki replied to my muttered question.
"I don't know. I mean, they're twenty-five meters long, right? You'd have to break through a wall to fit them in a classroom."
A gust of night wind blew, and the distorted wall across the schoolyard swayed. I pointed my flashlight in that direction.
The long horizontal cover that looked like a wall flapped in the wind, forming bulges as if something inside was pushing out. It was a blue tarp.
On the edge of the tarp, I could make out the words "Boys' Changing Room" on a small shed stained by rainwater.
"The pool. Let's go."
The air had grown even colder, with a metallic, impenetrable chill.
I pushed on a part of the leaning fence, and without resistance, it opened a path toward the disinfection tank.
"Katagishi, explain this to me."
"If I do, you'll run away."
I shoved the penlight into Miyaki's hands, saying, "Just hold it and don't move."
The shower, turned white with limescale, was dimly illuminated. Abandoned kickboards had turned black with mold.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the edge of the blue tarp thrashing like a living creature.
I rushed to the poolside.
The tarp stretched across the entire twenty-five-meter pool had collected rainwater in its uneven surface. Between floating spider carcasses and dead leaves, the moon swayed like a cage of light.
The center of the pool had two mounds rising up, suggesting neatly aligned elbows.
I had Miyaki shine the light at my feet and ran toward the diving platforms.
At the base of each platform, I began untying the yellow and black cords binding the tarp. My hands were numb, and the cords, hardened by years of rain and wind, wouldn't come undone easily. When I yanked one forcibly, my hand bounced back and struck something hard beneath the tarp.
It felt like a thin, oval iron plate. I thought it was a nail.
I tore off the remaining cords and grabbed the edge of the tarp. A strong wind, as if darkness had gained mass, lifted the tarp faster than I could.
In the dim light, the dried-up bottom of the pool came into view. I instinctively tried to avert my eyes from what was in the center, but I couldn't help but see the ten pillar-like fingers lined up directly beneath the diving platform.
"Miyaki, can you see it?"
There was no reply. Instead, the penlight beam wavered up and down, reflecting her panic.
"Both are right arms."
The two massive arms lying in the pool both had their palms facing the disinfection tank, thumbs pointing up.
"Don't tell me the guardian god had three arms..."
Miyaki's voice trembled.
"The eyeballs we saw in the school building were different sizes. And the drawing of the guardian god in the documents didn't have any hair..."
The giant drawn on the yellowed calligraphy paper had a bald head, as if drawn in one continuous stroke from head to toe.
"Then whose hair was that? And the things that fall on this village every year..."
"I don't know..."
Thinking they had incurred divine wrath by disrespecting the old guardian god and developing the mountain and land, the villagers erected stone statues throughout the area to enshrine a new god. But in this village where the monuments of faith had been replaced by something else, was it truly the original god still watching over them?
"A guardian god that turned into something else... or perhaps something entirely new pretending to be the original land god..."
One of the arms in the pool, the one closer to them, twitched faintly on its own.
Just as I thought it might have been stirred by the wind, the arm slowly began to rotate, turning its wrist—veins bulging in blue and purple—toward us.
I could hear the sound of Miyaki's shoes scraping the ground as she stepped back.
With a dragging, slithering sound, the rotating arm turned its palm toward us and slowly folded in all its fingers except the index finger. The remaining index finger stood upright, pointing toward the sky.
As if to say, "Be silent."
The village, now fully bathed in morning sunlight, shimmered with brilliance across its rice paddies and groves, as if nothing ominous had ever existed.
Without saying a word about covering the arm again with the pool's blue sheet and fleeing the school building, we returned to the lodging prepared by the village, and now we sat in the car, gazing out at the morning scene.
Bulldozers and cranes crossed the road that had been carved through the land. The sunlight reflecting off their painted surfaces stung my sleepless eyes.
"So in the end, did you tell them to bury it?"
Miyaki, in the passenger seat, rubbed her eyes and asked. Leaning against the steering wheel, I nodded with a heavy head.
"Yeah. I didn't say there was some unknown other god. I just said, 'Let's return it to the earth.'"
"I wonder what will happen after it's buried..."
"Who knows. Maybe the real guardian god of this place is still alive and will defeat whatever incomprehensible evil thing came crawling into the ground for the village's sake..."
An old man leaned out from the tractor's driver seat and waved at our car. I responded with the horn.
The exhaust fumes scattered the dazzling sunlight, tracing even the ridgeline of the mountain towering across the road.
"All we can do is pray for that."
In the end, that's all humans can do when it comes to gods.