Saeko felt a puff of air against her neck. She looked up and saw that Isogai had moved right up to her, his face close to hers. She had been busy reading the file and hadn’t noticed him close his laptop and lean over. He made a show of sniffing close to her neck a couple of times, his eyes closed. He didn’t seem to mind that she was reading his file.
“You smell nice,” he said.
“Huh?” Saeko blurted a response, pulling away in surprise, hardly able to absorb the meaning of the words.
Isogai opened his eyes, put a hand on Saeko’s lap, and purposely closed the file with a smile. “If you really want to know about me that much, all you have to do is ask.”
His sudden shift into a familiar, almost flirtatious manner caught Saeko off guard, conflicting with the image she had put together in her head. She reeled away as though he had just stuck electrodes in her head. She turned to stare out of the window, desperately trying to control her breathing.
It wasn’t that cold yet; the sun was still high in the sky. Kagayama’s shivering was a reaction to the sight before him, something he could think of no possible explanation for. A chill snaked its way up his spine, and his bladder felt as if it might burst. The gaping crater that lay before them looked almost like a porthole into another world.
As Hashiba and Kagayama approached the void, the unstable earth around the rim of the crater crumbled inwards, making a dry, pattering sound. The shrine’s red torii continued to hang over the threshold, looking as if it might collapse any minute. Kagayama leaned forward and tentatively approached the crater’s edge. He craned his neck forward to get a better view of the base, but seeing the earth giving way he quickly jumped back several steps.
Looking back he saw the path they had come up leading back through a dense thicket of trees; there was a small sculpture of a bird by one of them. His bladder reaching bursting point, Kagayama ran back across the path, off into the undergrowth, coming to rest next to the statuette, overlooking another small valley to the side. The bird was made from some form of cane and stood with wings outstretched. It was a gull. Kagayama squirmed on his feet as he remembered the weird scene of three days ago, that immense flock of gulls that had taken to the sky all at once. He felt that his bladder was about to give and struggled to get his zipper open just in time to catch the gush, wetting his left hand in the process.
Fuck …
He wiped his hand against his coat and enjoyed the sensation of relief flooding through him. As he stood there, pissing next to the cane model of a gull, Kagayama began to put a theory of his own together. The sudden disappearance of ninety-one people, the sudden appearance of a giant crater — in his mind there was only one thing that could explain both phenomena. It had to be a UFO. To Kagayama, it was the most natural conclusion: four days ago, aliens had touched down and abducted the people from the gardens, leaving that giant pockmark of a crater in their wake.
But the timing doesn’t fit …
For his theory to work, the crater needed to appear before the people vanished. But as far as they knew, there had been no crater here three days ago. Of course Kagayama had no idea how a UFO might function, and at the moment he didn’t really care. The only thing he was sure of was that the whole damned thing was over his head.
Kagayama found his way back and began to lay out his theory to Hashiba: “It’s the only possibility, right? It has to be a UFO. There’s nothing else …”
Hashiba looked at the man. His hair was long except at the top of his head, where it had almost completely receded. The look reminded Hashiba of a vanquished samurai from an old print, somehow unhealthy, and also of a missionary from an old textbook.
Hashiba tutted. He was getting tired of Kagayama’s obsession with aliens. During his time in the industry, Hashiba had known one too many a camera hand get excited about the possibility of capturing a UFO on film. He knew of shooting trips to Australia and Canada but never heard about anything of substance being uncovered. There had been a show that had tried the alien line to explain the overnight appearance of crop circles in England. After the program had aired the crop circles had been exposed as the work of a couple of old people playing a practical joke. Needless to say, the station’s reputation had suffered tremendously.
Those programs had been aired by other stations, but the warning was clear. Stay away from UFOs. Psychic phenomena were acceptable, if just barely. But you had to be so careful with UFOs. You might get away with a subtle allusion to the possibility of something being UFO-related, but anything more was just broadcasting suicide. Why the hell was Kagayama so enamored with the idea?
“Lay off, will you?” Hashiba vented, but his words could have equally been directed towards the crater, the bizarre disappearances, rather than Kagayama.
“Come on, though, have you ever seen anything like this? What other possible explanation is there?” Kagayama persisted, taking a step towards Hashiba.
By now, of course, Hashiba had already given up on the idea that the disappearances may be something as mundane as a kidnapping. There were the strange changes in animal patterns, in plant growth. Everyone here had felt the strange feeling on their skin, a kind of bubbling cold. They’d experienced physiological effects; Kagayama wasn’t the only one feeling the need to relieve his bladder more frequently. Even Saeko, who hardly ever seemed to need to go, had suffered the same unbearable urge to urinate. They even had proof that the local magnetic field had been disturbed somehow — the magnetic display on a watch effectively spinning in a counterclockwise direction. He’d heard theories that, if UFOs did actually exist, it was possible that they used a form of anti-gravity engine for propulsion. He had no idea what that meant in real terms, but it seemed plausible that such a technology would interfere with local magnetic fields.
Still, to suddenly conclude that this was all down to a UFO landing was ridiculous. How big a ship would it have to be to hold ninety-one people? There had been no sightings of anything of the sort. Moreover, there had been no crater here just after the mass disappearance. And now, three days later, here it was. Hashiba wondered if perhaps the gods were toying with them.
“Anyway, more to the point …”
They had urgent business to attend to; finding the crater had been such a distraction they had forgotten themselves. They had to get this on film, and it was no time for the show’s director to be standing around idly. Time was of the essence, so he had to communicate the situation to the camera crew back in the hotel and get them up here to film it. Hashiba knew that if they missed this opportunity due to his tardiness then it would be his neck on the line.
He pulled his phone from his shirt pocket to call Hosokawa. Just as he was about to make the call the phone started to ring.
It was Saeko; her cab had just arrived at the garden’s main gate. There was no time to waste. Hashiba covered the phone and called out towards Kagayama, “Call the hotel and get Hosokawa and the crew up here.” Then he put the phone back to his ear.
“Is everything okay?”
Hashiba was caught off guard by the question, realizing he had no idea where to start explaining something he himself didn’t know how to process. The best thing was for the other two to come up and see for themselves. “Something big’s happened. It’s hard to explain … You just need to get up here and look at this yourselves. I’m looking forward to see what the professor makes of this.”