As sunset neared the evil spirits again grew boisterous. They who came to the side of he who continued to walk and wander the wastelands hurled abuses and stones alike. Even as one who wandered these lands, a sinner indeed was he, one who had broken the commandments.
---Outcast.
The spirits of the dead scorned him and threw stones.
Indeed, he had been cast out from his hometown on the hill. But, the evil spirits who drifted the wasteland thusly too should have been cursed existences like himself, should have been those created by God, driven out of his order.
Aren't you all outcasts, too!
At his angry voice the evil spirits cackled.
We are not outcasts.
We are not murderers.
Those in this land are without sin, without judgment.
It is that within your heart, the lingering sentiments, the firmly rooted delusions, the hatred, that uncouthly fastens you to your relations.
He was silenced.
He lost his hometown, he had lost the divine protection of God, and he had lost his little brother. The triple penance was without a doubt the reward for the sin he himself had committed.
---Thou art cursed.
Even without receiving the hex of the evil spirits, he was already cursed. Come the night, this curse took the form of his little brother to pay him a visit. Just being there at his side, without laying blame on him, or rather the grotesque figure making no move to injure him at all, serving as neither reprimand nor punishment, could not be called anything other than a curse.
That the little brother called upon him in this wasteland may have been the will of his little brother himself, or it may have been the will of God. If by chance it were the little brother's own will, what, then, was his motive? Revenge, denunciation, blame; any action that would support any conjecture he could make went undone by this Shiki. Vacant eyes only stared intently at him, following him without a word. Perhaps there was meaning in asking the Shiki his intent but as he could not be sure of that, if there was any intent at all, what it was he could not begin to imagine.
Seishin threw down his pencil.
He was making steady progress down the squares of the paper but he didn't feel that he wanted to write any of what he should have writ. It felt like piling up building blocks without meaning. What was written over every square was the character for "emptiness" it felt.
No, Seishin thought. What was burying everything might have been the character for "falsehood."
This was not a curse driven by affection.
--But, however much "his" little brother was an avatar of love, could he really go without hating the sinner who slaughtered him?
He killed his little brother on impulse. To his little brother, the older brother's violence should have been impossible to predict. They betrayal was sudden, an irrational occurrence. And yet all the more if the little brother felt sympathy for him there could be no doubt that his little brother bore a religious fanaticism to that called love.
(No, that's not it.)
Of course his little brother had a specific meaning in that he was nothing more than a symbol. To start with, for Seishin there was never any reason to write people according to reality in a hypothetical, made-up story. If there were a comparison to reality, in reality people didn't have meanings.
Even while he consented to acknowledging as much, the uncomfortable feeling towards that figure, separated from reality, was caused by none other than the unrest that troubled Seishin over Shimizu Megumi's untimely death.
---Of course, people die. There was no escaping that. If a newborn infant could die, then young girls could die as well. To begin with the idea that a human lifespan should continue past that was nothing more than an illusion concluded on by wishful thinking. Life and death were two sides of the same object. It was unmistakably the same thing to say that something was alive as it was to say that something might die.
Regardless, Megumi's death was thought of as tragic. She had enough years to her age to have qualified as having lived life and yet, he couldn't escape the impression that that it was an injustice, that she was being deprived by something. The possibilities her life could have had, the future she had drawn out in her mind, the bitterness and sweetness she was to have met in reality. That those were her right taken away by death most unjust was a feeling he couldn't cast aside.
Death was an unfair phenomenon. ---If so, the death thrust upon "his" little brother should too have been unfair. All the more for it being an act of murder; it was an irrational, merciless violence beyond the solemnity of death itself. The moment Megumi slipped away into death, was she conscious of it? Was the little brother conscious of it? If conscious of it, what was thought of it?
He was struck by the abrupt feeling he should have known.
He timidly tried to turn his head but all that he could see was a red swirl. Until the residential advisor had come into the closed up bathroom, Seishin watched the water. The transparent water flowed over the white tile surface, a floating red haze within it. An uncertain amount of the viscous red liquid was there, riding through the transparent and non-viscous water in slender cord like shapes, flowing. As it looked as if it would become undone, he watched in a daze as threads nearer and nearer to him dissolved into it. Maybe the reason Seishin hadn't been thinking of anything at that time was because it was something he had chosen himself, or possibility because he realized that doing this would not cause him to die. --Yes, at the very least, it wasn't unfair. At lease, not towards himself.
Of course, according to the people around Seishin, even while evaded, it would have been an unjust phenomenon. He was put in a taxi, spent a night at the hospital and tried to return to the dorms just as his parents had arrived. Like that, he was brought home, Mitsuo and Tsurumi---and even those like Tokujirou whose connections to the temple were deep interviewed him. All of them asked why. All of them seemed as if, more than anything, they had suffered the shock of such an unjust and unreasonable something thrust upon them.
Why, the sage inquired.
Seishin could not answer. That was because he did not have an answer, yet by them, in their own way, Seishin's
Sentiments of the heart were given consideration and allowance, were processed and quietly digested in their hearts. The neighbors no longer asked why. Instead they treated the slaughterer who had snatched away their lovable brethren unjustly with gazes steeped in compassion and sorrow,
Sehsin came to his senses and breathed a self-derisive sigh. Through the window came the night air and the sounds of the insects. Seishin folded up the writing paper and put it into the trashcan before leaving the temple office.
The village he overlooked from the grounds was dark. As expected there were no longer any remnants of the lights from the Bon dance. The dead that had returned for a handful of moments, and the living who welcomed them were asleep. ---No, there should have been at least one house that was not asleep. Among the sparse lights he could see, one was the light of a window of that unfortunate household, and within that window, surrounding the young girl's remains, they had one final night to spend with their daughter. The lights lit for the gods and the incense set for her not yet put out was the family's final protection of her.
Thinking of Shimizu and Hiroko's, and surely her grandfather Tokurou's, grief depressed him. It was unreasonable to be laying out the one who was supposed to have laid them out. Thinking such pessimistic, melancholy thoughts he entered the cemetery.
The cemetery, for Seishin, wasn't a strange place. It was where the dead slept but strange as it was he felt it was the same as his patron's own tatami sleeping rooms. Now there was nobody. ---Always, there was nobody. That was the sort of place it was.
Flashlight turned on, he cut across the cemetery walkway to the temple's northwest forest. The steep, chiseled slope faced downwards towards the Yasumori lumberyard but, with the night falling as it had, the slope appeared to run down towards nothing but a dark hole. Along the edge of the slope continued the foot-formed wood cutter's path. Overlooking the lumberyard was a road that detoured towards the western mountains.
He walked while shining a light at his feet. While endeavoring to think about "his" little brother's death, never the less his thoughts always slipped towards Megumi's death in spite of himself. He couldn't not think about all that Megumi had lost. That he couldn't separate himself from it may have been because her cause of death wasn't stated clearly. The day after Megumi's disappearance, she had received an examination by Toshio. Toshio diagnosed her with ordinary amnesia but three days later Megumi was dead. Shimizu Hiroko who told him as much seemed to blame Toshio, an intentional cold indifference hanging in the air when he had come as a condolence caller to the all night vigil.
Of course people made mistakes. He understood that Toshio wasn't almighty, that he made errors. Even if it wasn't a grave medical malpractice error, there were probably no end to the trivial mistakes he had piled up. Even knowing that much, he felt something lingering in his chest. It wasn't as if it was anything he felt towards Toshio. If nothing else, Seishin knew full well that Toshio was as earnest as one could possibly be regarding his own obligations, and on that point he had full faith. ---It was just, if somebody hadn't made some kind of mistake, couldn't Megumi's death have been avoided? Wasn't what lead to her death correctable? Megumi's death was such an irrational turn of events, wasn't it something that shouldn't have happened? He couldn't escape such misgivings.
He walked on for a while, when suddenly the light fell upon emptiness in front of him. Through the cut of the firs, there was a peek at the starry skies. He had lost his sense of time, but he had walked for about fifteen minutes from the temple. Within the forest of firs, there was a random building. It was a desolate and dilapidated old building.
The mountains in this area were a part of the temple. As all of the firs in this area were former gave markers, they were not cut down. As there was no trimming or maintenance, the surroundings had the distinction of being a pure and natural forest. The small path Seishin had walked went forward on into the western mountains and crossed with the woodland path but as far as people who followed this path now a days, it was probably limited to just Seishin. This area which was a part of the temple was a mountain not to be entered by the villagers. Long ago, there were those who saw it thusly. A member of the Kirishiki family, renting this place from the temple, built up that separated building as his own. And there it remained.
Walking across the grass damp with evening dew, he walked up to the porch. The concrete porch was cracked, with summer grass growing out of those crevices. On the porch were two cylindrical pillars supporting the eaves of the roof but with one of the pillars in decline the roof drew an uneasy, warped curve.
As Seishin neared the porch, shining the flash light forward (at last before him) onto something white (a white, pail doll) and stopped.
"----You."
As she turned to face the flashlight, raising one radiant hand, the girl turned around.
"Muroi-san?"
Seishin thought to call out to Sunako but without knowing what suffix to append to her name, his words were swallowed down.
"Good evening," the young girl smiled. "Is Muroi-san also taking a stroll?"
"Aa---that's right but, you...."
Perhaps not noticing Seishin's bewilderment, Sunako looked up at the building.
"Is this an abandoned house? I wonder just where I've found myself."
Seishin walked closer towards the porch the girl was standing on.
"This is the temple grounds."
"Oh my, then, perhaps I have entered where I must not?"
"No. That's not really what I meant," Seishin murmured, his eyes somehow or another going towards his left hand. The bland wrist watch dial glowed. "You're taking a stroll at this hour?"
"It's as you see. ---Say, this strange building, what is it?" Sunako half asked while gesturing inside of the door all but rotting off. "It appears to be like a church, but it seems it is not."
Seishin couldn't answer that. He was too profoundly baffled.
"Your flashlight?"
"I came without one. The nights in the country certainly are dark, aren't they."
"Step aside." Seishin set foot on the porch Sunako was on and entered into the building. "I have another prepared, I'll lend it to you."
Oh my, said Sunako from the entrance peeking within. "Is this by chance Muroi-san's hideout? Perhaps this is most intrusive of me?"
"No," Seishin said succinctly, taking up a flash light he had set out on the bench near the entrance. He pushed the switch to assure it worked and presented it to Sunako. "---Here."
"Thank you," Seishin said, entering the building seeming nervous. Taking the flashlight, she shined it over the inside of the building there. The dust covered, lined up benches, and the long, narrow windows in the walls surrounding them as well as something that appeared to be an altar at the front were illuminated.
"This not---a church?"
"It's a church. A private one."
Seishin sat on a bench. Because Seishin had brushed away the dust countless times, for now the grains of wood could be seen. Above the upper right of the altar the night sky could be seen. One part of the roof had fallen in. Beneath it grew summer grass around a pile of debris, and the inside of the building had the smell of evening dew an was filled with the sounds of insects.
"That's a lie, isn't it? It's not a church, this place."
While shining the light here and there, she sat beside Seishin.
"You'll get dirty."
"I'm fine. --But, there is stained glass."
The long, narrow windows were indeed stained glass, All the same, not a one had anything from the scriptures depicted on them.
"Unsettling images."
To begin with the craftsmanship was crude, and on top of that they were broken here and there but it was clear what was depicted on the stained glass Sunako's light illuminated. Three men. The man in the middle had a katana raised in a samurai fashion, and before him knelt two peasant looking men looking upwards with their hands folded in prayer. Beside them were the depictions of cross sections husks of fallen, removed heads. The heads themselves couldn't be seen.
Seishin clutched at his wristwatch and sighed.
"It is a church. Though it's not a formal one. In the past, there was someone strange in this village. He sectioned off this land for himself and build a church."
"Hmm?" Sunako murmured, shining her light on another stained glass window. "A man covered in flames---Ah, no, this is what they call the dance of the straw coat, isn't it?"
[TL/N: Dance of the Straw Coat - A form of torture that involved wrapping a person in a straw coat, as was at times used as a rain coat in the feudal era, and lighting them on fire. It was a form of torture often used on Christians during their persecution in Japan]
Seishin nodded. "Right. He had for a time left the village, and where he was at he had frequently visited a church but he wasn't a formally baptized believer. He didn't have an interest in God. Likely---"
Sunako finished his words. She turned her head while illuminating a picture of a victim being attacked by a lion.
"He had an interested in martyrs. Yes?"
Seishin smiled. "Mm, I think he did. So, it might be better to call this a shrine to martyrs than a church. For him it was a sanctuary, but that isn't what is called a church."
"What a strange fellow you had here."
Mm, Seishin nodded, shining a light towards the altar. Even if it was called an altar, it was just a platform with a few brass candlesticks set out. What Seishin was turning his light towards was the half crumbled interior of the sanctuary, to the left-hand side of the altar---illuminating what was within the sanctuary. That was a bed framed with the same brass as the candlesticks.
"He lived here?"
"Yes, he really was far removed."
"This wasn't someplace that believers gathered? Not where he carried on a, let's see, new aged religion?"
"I don't think it was like that. ---Though thinking that of him was what drove him out here. But, probably, he had never intended as much, I don't think. The benches are here as if he'd intended to have believers but it looks like he only thought of them as ordinary shelves. When I first found this place, clothing and every day tools and books were lined up on them, after all."
"Was he not well in the head?"
"That might have been the case. He was Kanemasa's---the one who lived where your house is. But they were called Kanemasa. Takemura was his real name. Kanemasa was a trade name."
"He was an ancestor of little old man Takemura?"
"It's not an old enough story to call him an ancestor. As I said before, this is a temple lot. He came saying that Takemura wanted to rent the land. It seems like it happened after the war. Takemura's son was a strange eccentric character, who he said wanted to separate himself off and live out here, so the story goes. As he was a man with many eccentricities, it seems my grandfather thought that it was surely his family who forced him to live separated."
"Ah," Sunako frowned as if with disdain. "A diplomatic form of house arrest."
"That's right. ---Or would be, but it wasn't like that. It was something he wished for himself. And then he built this. When those of the village saw it, they were surprised. No matter how you look at it from any angle, it's a church. Of course, there was no law against there being a church per-say, but---"
"This village was one overseen by the temple," Sunako smiled. "Was that it?"
Seishin smiled again.
"Right. The villagers were largely temple parishioners and such. This is surely a new branch of Christianity, and he had a mind to start it here, it seems they thought. That's why my grandfather and the villagers at the time were alarmed. At the end of a long push of whether he should return or not, Kanemasa forced him to come back to them. Still, it seems he had been living here for about three years. After that this place had fallen into ruins like this. That all happened during the war."
"Heeh...."
Seishi looked over Sunako who shined the light about with great interest. This was no hour for a girl of about thirteen to be out walking.
"Do you always go out walking at this time of night?"
Sunako turned back to look at him. She lightly shrugged her thin shoulders, her long hair spilling from her shoulders to her chest.
"It isn't as if I always do. At least, when we were at the prior house, I wasn't able to go out."
"A little girl shouldn't be walking around at night, they said?"
"But, ---I wonder if this is a rude way ot putting it? Since we're so far in the country, I don't think there is much reason to worry. Especially if taking a stroll through the mountains."
"It's dangerous in the dark. There are wild dogs as well."
"I'd suffocate always staying in the house."
Seishin remembered what Tatsumi had said.
"You... aren't able to go out in the day time at all?"
"That's right, especially in fine weather. The sunlight is bad for me. If I soak in ultraviolet rays, it will quickly become bad for me. That's why even if I will remain peaceable about not going out to school, if I were also closed in at night, why, I could just fall into hysterics. I'd be more dangerous than a wild dog if I were to fall into hysteria, you know."
Seishin blinked. "You look rather healthy."
"When I am healthy. ---That's, I do have a doctor who oversees my health at my side, after all. There is a doctor in the home. But, I do sleep a lot. You could say half of my time is spent sleeping."
"I see..."
To a little girl who couldn't walk around in the day time, night might not be a time for sleeping so much as a time for taking in the fresh air. He knew that Sunako could also be seen as precocious. Surely inside of the home she really did pass the time often indulging in books.
Sunako sat there on the bench, her feet poking out from the skirt cuff swinging alternately. That was indeed childish, and when he thought that in spite of that aspect of her, she was braving an incurable disease, he realized his sense of compassion. It was the same compassion he had felt regarding Megumi.
"However, even if it's only half of the time, it's good you're well. Even if it's troublesome."
"It isn't something for Muroi-san to be depressed about."
"That isn't really what I meant. --Today, a young girl in the village died."
"...Dear."
"Though she was a little older than you. It was really sudden, too soon. Yes, this might be an irresponsible thing to say but if she were given another half a year, even bedridden, I think that she'd have wanted to live."
"Muroi-san, were you close to this person?"
"I wasn't particularly close with her, but the family is a part of the parish."
"How strange."
Seishin looked back at Sunako. Sunako tilted her head to the side, looking up at Seishin.
"If you were very close, I would understand why Muroi-san would become depressed. Or is it that how Muroi-san feels towards all of those in his parish?"
"No... I wonder. It's just that she was so young. She was still only in tenth grade."
"You're a romantic, aren't you. Or should I say sentimental?" Sunako said, standing up, brushing the dust from her skirt. "It's as if you think that a young person dying is especially terrible."
Seishin's eyes widened slightly.
"You don't think that it's a terrible thing?"
Sunako turned her head, With a certain determination, she looked at Seishin.
"Death is terrible for anyone. --Didn't you know that?"
Seishin was at a loss for words.
"It isn't related to whether you die young or take on many years and then die. The same for good and bad people. Death is equal. There's no such thing as an especially terrible or a not so terrible death. That is why death is so terrifying."
Death is equal, Seishin murmured.
"Whether young, whether old, regardless of their day to day life style, those things only have meaning while a person is alive. Age or individual personality are too irrelevant, your time will come, and when that happens, everything that defined that person and all that they stood for becomes meaningless, so any death is terrible. Am I wrong?"
Seishin nodded in agreement.
"I must return now. --Would you mind if I were to come here again?"
"I think that's your own choice. The mountain paths are dangerous at night, so I wouldn't recommend it, though."
"People are only free half of the time as it is, so I'm not of a mind to be stopped by a bit of danger. Do you come here often, Muroi-san?"
"Not enough to call it often, but."
"Oh? Then, next time, I'll bring a book with me. I wonder if you could sign it for me, if we meet again?"
Seishin smiled. "I don't mind."