Other examples included the Marie Celeste ghost ship mystery, and the sudden disappearances of airplanes and ships in the area between Miami, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda — otherwise known as the Bermuda Triangle.
Thus, various group disappearances had taken place all over the world, affecting anywhere from several dozen to several thousand people at once. In each of these cases, not a single body was ever found, nor were there any signs of conflict or violence.
The manuscript seemed to be an exploration of these historical incidents, and an attempt to offer a personal interpretation of the mysteries. In other words, Shinichiro had been working on a book about unsolved group disappearances when he himself mysteriously vanished. Could it be a simple coincidence?
Hashiba headed for the dining room. He had to tell Saeko.
He found her in front of the television.
“I found out what your father was writing about,” Hashiba announced, waving the sheaf of papers at Saeko, who stood listlessly in front of the screen.
Saeko didn’t respond. She stared absently at the television, looking completely stunned. Hashiba turned towards the screen as well, following Saeko’s gaze.
A female reporter spoke shrilly, her microphone clenched in one hand. “Yesterday afternoon at two o’clock, at an herb garden three kilometers south of Atami, nearly all of the visitors were reported missing. Presently, the exact number of visitors is not known but is estimated to be roughly one hundred.”
The pitch of the whirring helicopters elevated a notch, perhaps due to an increase in altitude. The reporter hunched her shoulders against the cold while a group of boys standing behind her excitedly flashed peace signs at the camera.
The reporter’s expression was tense, but she wasn’t fully cognizant of the weight of the situation. It was clear from her face that she was intentionally trying to dramatize the bizarre situation to stir up interest. She didn’t really believe that a hundred people had just vanished off the face of the earth. There had to be some mistake. Perhaps some religious cult had staged the incident to create a stir. Before long, someone would get to the bottom of the mystery …
But Hashiba and Saeko knew better. They both experienced the same flash of intuition: the group disappearance in Atami was the latest and greatest in a string of mysterious cases.
After all, they had seen the relief map in Kitazawa’s office the night before. They had taken in the geographical details of the American West Coast and Japan on the full-color maps. And they both knew: Atami was located right on top of the giant subterranean rift at the intersection of the Eurasian and Philippine Sea Plates.
Chapter 4: Awe
December 22, 2012
An atmosphere of bustling tension percolated through the Atami JR station; even those who didn’t work in the media could tell from the multiple helicopters circling overhead that something was wrong. People lining the crowded platforms craned upwards and asked each other what was going on. Most of them didn’t know, and those few who had caught morning news shows casually informed the others that a large group of people had suddenly disappeared. Since the ones giving these answers hardly understood the details, they only added to the doubts.
Hashiba and Saeko wove their way through the noisy crowd, heading towards the ticket gates. Atami was like a second home to Saeko. Hashiba, too, had spent his early school days in the neighboring city of Mishima and knew the old hot-spring town and its geography well. They both knew that the herbal garden was about a ten-minute cab ride from the station, about an hour on foot.
Now, however, the roads would be jammed with traffic. Hashiba had heard from a colleague already at the garden that the going would be slow and that they should definitely avoid the direct route down Route 135. On top of the ever-growing crowds of onlookers, the police and the fire brigade had set up search parties to carry out a wide sweep of the area. According to the colleague, relatives of the near to a hundred missing people had also started to turn up, further exacerbating the traffic situation. The garden’s parking lot, whose capacity was just a few dozen, was already overflowing with cars, and traffic had begun to spill out into the streets outside and near to the park.
Hashiba had called the TV station almost immediately after seeing the news of the mass disappearance back at Saeko’s apartment earlier that morning. It had only taken a couple of minutes to make the decision to head out to Atami. Needless to say, he asked Saeko to accompany him. He spent the journey calling around and making the necessary preparations for filming. But the one thing he couldn’t secure was a means of transportation at the locale itself.
When they passed the ticket gates, the two of them made straight for the nearest taxi bank, still trying to work out what their best course of action would be.
When Hashiba finished another call, Saeko suggested to him, “There’s a back route we could use.”
“A back route?”
“It’s longer, distance-wise. If we make a circle around the hillside villas, we’ll come out on a street that connects to the Atami New Road,” Saeko explained. “If we turn south before Nishikigaura that’ll take us to right behind the garden.”
“You think the traffic will be better?”
“It should be; only the locals know that route. If we get stuck we’ll just have to get out and walk, but it’s our best option.”
“I hope it’ll be close enough to walk.”
“Either way, it’ll be easier than walking all the way from here.”
It was a gamble for Hashiba. If the back roads were crowded too, then there was a chance they could end up stuck further away. Still, just waiting in the face of a developing situation was unbearable; to keep moving seemed healthier on the mind.
“Okay, the back route it is,” Hashiba decided, ushering Saeko into the backseat of the nearest free cab.
As soon as Hashiba finished explaining the route to the driver, drowsiness washed over him. It had been after one in the morning when he finally fell asleep in Saeko’s bed. He’d woken up after seven and gone straight to her father’s study to print out the document they’d found before the morning news reported a mysterious mass disappearance in Atami. They had left on the fly, their breakfast almost untouched.
The events of the night already felt an age away: his visiting Saeko’s luxurious apartment, their fumbling together, his sudden pulling back, the awkward moment following. Still, despite that, Hashiba felt that he and Saeko had crossed a certain threshold. They may not have consummated their relationship, but at least their mutual attraction was out in the open.
Perhaps exhausted too, Saeko sat with her head resting against the glass window and her eyes closed. Hashiba placed his hand on hers and let his eyes droop.
Until this particular case, the disappearances had been limited to a few people. Now, suddenly, the number had soared nearly to three digits. It was true that Hashiba felt not just trepidation but excitement. Though his body craved rest, it was unlikely that sleep would come to him. Even a blink and he would thank himself for it later; there was no way of knowing what the rest of the day had in store for him. The psychic, Shigeko Torii, was due to arrive in the afternoon. The filming wouldn’t begin until she arrived, but he needed to work the location before she got there.