Hashiba cursed his weakness. When she’d asked him about it, Saeko had had this look, almost pleading. It would have been obvious even to a less narcissistic man which answer she wanted to hear. Hashiba had bent the truth because he couldn’t bring himself to crush the hope he had seen in her eyes. Fully aware that a convenient lie would bring consequences, he had given in to the temptation. Walls were hemming in on both sides of him now as payment.
“Some urgent work came in and I didn’t want to disturb you by calling so late. Sorry.”
“It’s not like it ever wakes up Yusuke.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
While pregnant, Hashiba’s wife had contracted a bout of German measles, and Yusuke, Hashiba’s son, had been born hard of hearing in one ear. It hardly affected Yusuke; his determination to pick up on even the smallest sounds made him in fact more sensitive. All the same, Hashiba’s sense of guilt deepened at the thought that he’d hunted for ass while leaving his wife at home with their hearing-impaired child.
His wife was silent for a few beats. Hashiba had a bad feeling about what would come next.
“The results of the test came back,” she said at last, her tone sagging now, heavy, dragging Hashiba down with it.
“So soon?” Four days ago, his wife had undergone a test for breast cancer. She had been told that the results would be back in two weeks. So the results were early; Hashiba didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
“They asked me to come back for more detailed cell testing.” His wife’s voice quivered slightly.
I see … Hashiba was shaken by an awful conviction that his affair last night had somehow affected the result.
Just two weeks ago, his wife had told him that she had found a lump under her breast. She had guided his hand towards the underside of her left breast, and there he had felt the small, unnatural lump — a small change in his wife’s body, the body that he had not touched in a long time. He remembered thinking that, if it was cancer, the lump was already quite large. “It’s probably nothing, just some inflammation,” he had said, not wanting her to worry unnecessarily. “But perhaps we should get it tested, just in case,” he had gently recommended as well. Four days ago, his wife had finally dragged herself to the hospital.
The lump was in exactly the same place as Saeko’s and almost the same size.
Last night his sexual desire had dried up the moment he had felt the lump under Saeko’s breast, but it was not because of worry that she could have cancer. The image of his wife had flashed in his mind, as clear as day, and he had been unable to wipe it away. His wife had employed an unexpected tactic to stop him from continuing the affair.
Would Saeko try to explain this using physics terminology, as the contraction of wave functions? Not that Hashiba really understood the laws of physics — his own impression was simply that he was being punished by heaven. The test results had overlapped, at fifty-fifty, but had been shifted towards the worse by his staying at Saeko’s. Two once equally likely possibilities, through the contraction of wave functions, had converged into a single state, cancer.
Glimpsing a moment of the workings of the world, Hashiba prayed: Even if they do have to remove her breast, please let my wife live.
“If something happens to me, it’s okay if you found someone else, you know.”
Hashiba’s eyes darted over to where Saeko was seated in the distance, deep in conversation with Kagayama. Has she caught on about Saeko? he wondered. Bad test results, cheating husband — if his wife was beleaguered by two fears, it was Hashiba’s duty to assuage her anxiety. “I’ll be home tonight, I promise,” he assured her, adding a few more comforting utterances before he hung up the phone.
He glanced over towards the table where Saeko and Kagayama were still engrossed in conversation. It didn’t look like they had picked up on anything in his behavior. Hashiba shut his eyes and took a deep breath, wiping away the sweat that had gathered on his forehead. He found himself walking into the bathroom. After washing his hands meticulously, he looked up and saw his face in the mirror.
What the hell are you going to do?
Until this point, his life had been smooth, but it was as if a small cut had appeared and was gradually widening. He had to tend to it before it festered.
Yet, Hashiba was at a loss as to where to start. His flesh-and-blood self was genuinely worried for his wife. But the face in the mirror shone with desire for Saeko. The discomfort of reality dissociating from its mirror image wasn’t something that vanished no matter how assiduously he washed his wands.
Late in the afternoon, as if with foresight of the improvement in traffic, Shigeko Torii arrived in a cab. The low winter sun had already begun to cast the shadow of the mountains against the east-facing hills of the park. When her foot emerged from the cab, Hashiba felt that the air grew even chillier. Though it had been almost a month since he had last seen her in person, she had aged far more than one would expect. As her legs found the ground he saw that they were feeble and unreliable. He ran up to the taxi to help, taking the luggage from her lap. The bag, like its owner, seemed somehow weightless.
“Sorry to be a burden,” Shigeko said, bowing her head lightly, revealing her thinning hair and mottled scalp. It was a painful sight, and Hashiba found himself looking away. He busied across to the staff caravan and put Shigeko’s luggage on the back seat.
The timing of her arrival was perfect; they had just wrapped up the last of their interviews of family members of the missing tourists. Most of the people that had come to the park had sent their parents off to enjoy a package trip and were around Hashiba’s age. While all of them were worried, the strangeness of the disappearances gave them an air of puzzlement. Hashiba had tried to imagine how he would feel if his mother had been involved, but instead his thoughts had kept on returning to his conversation with his wife.
Calling Kagayama over, he gestured towards the closed entrance and asked, “They’ll let us in now, right?” Before the day was over they needed to capture incontrovertible images and sounds of the site, mixing in Shigeko Torii’s reactions.
“Yes, we have an agreement.” The place was still closed to the public, but media had a way in. Kagayama had obtained permission to film inside by talking to the hotel that owned the place.
“Right, let’s go.”
There were six of them in alclass="underline" Hashiba, Saeko, Kagayama, cameraman Mitsuru Hosokawa, sound technician Ryoichi Kato, and Shigeko Torii. They made their way in through the restaurant and met with Herb Gardens’ PR rep, Mitsuo Sodeyama, who would be their guide.
“Thanks for agreeing to take us around.” Hashiba made a low bow in greeting.
“Please all of you get in this bus,” Sodeyama said. While he worked as the PR rep, when he had spare time Sodeyama also drove the garden bus. Today, he had agreed to accompany Hashiba and the others to the parking lot at the top and escort them for the rest of the day. Sodeyama had luckily been in the office at the base last afternoon; if not, he might have been one of those included among the missing.
When they reached the top, he decided to turn the bus around, drive back down, and walk up to rejoin them. Just in case, he didn’t want to leave the bus at the top while he escorted them since they would be taking their time with all the filming.
It was already close to 4 p.m. At this time of day there would usually still be a few groups of tourists making their way down the paths. Today, with the gate still closed to the public, the garden was eerily still. As Sodeyama worked his way up the hillside, he stopped many times to catch his breath. Having just turned thirty, he was confident about his stamina and was used to walking up and down the garden. Yet today, he found himself awfully short of breath. His whole body felt oddly heavy — or rather, it was as though the atmosphere were thinner. Sodeyama had never experienced mountain sickness, but his whole body registered a new, odd sense that the altitude had suddenly shot up.