On the morning of August 21st, Toshio was awoken by a single telephone. At the sound of the bell that roused him, unpleasant as it was, he woke up to take the receiver with the feeling that it was his day off, damn it. As he picked up the receiver, he realized his sense of deja vu.
---Once, this same thing had happened. Surely, the call was to convey bad news.
"Yes, this is Ozaki." On the other end of the phone was a woman's voice. The urgency of that voice, too, was something he remembered, as expected. "Who is this?"
"This is Tamo. Kami-Sotoba's Tamo," the woman's voice was clear.
"Ah---what is it?"
Toshio sat up in bed and reached out his hand for the cigarettes by his pillow. There were many Tamos in the village, and there wasn't just one Tamo household in Kami-Sotoba either, but there was only one house that would be called "Kami-Sotoba's Tamo." That was the Kami-Sotoba's Supermarket's Tamo. Going by the voice, he wasn't talking to Tamo Satomi but to her daughter Yuuko most likely.
"The Gotouda's Fuki has died. I think that she is gone."
Toshio stopped short in his motion to light his cigarette. "----Fuki-san?"
"Early this morning Tae-san from Chigusa came, saying Fuki-san was looking bad. When I tried to go there, she was cold. It doesn't look like she's breathing, and when I tried to put my ear to her chest, I could not hear any heartbeat. Could you please come?"
"I'll be right there." Toshio abandoned his unlit cigarette in the ashtray. "Please wait at Fuki-san's house. Try not to tamper with anything in the vicinity. ---Can you do that?"
"Yes," he heard from Yuuko as Toshio hanged up the receiver. Again, he thought. He had the feeling of having the same thing occurring before him again. Yes, indeed he had experienced this before. When it had been Gotouda Shuuji, it was exactly this same pattern.
When Toshio rushed to the Gotouda house, waiting on the front porch were Tamo Yuuko, Yuuko's fater Tamo Sadaji, and the Drive-in Chigusa's Yano Tae. One side of the sliding door was left opened, Tae sitting in that small space with Yuuko and Tamo Sadaji standing on either side of her.
"Doctor." As Toshio pulled onto the lot and stood out of his car, Sadaji ran up to him. "---Sorry about this."
Nah, Toshio said looking at Tae in the corner of his eye. "Tae-san was the one to find her? Where is Fuki-san."
Tae pointed inside from the balcony. "Inside. ...In the living room."
Toshio nodded and had Tae stant. "Lead me there, please. The door is open? Did Tae-san open it?"
"No, it was opened, but. When I called there was no reply, so I went inside."
Toshio patted Tae's shoulder and gave another nod. ---It was summer, she may have left one sliding door opened to let the breeze in. It was only natural to do that in this village.
Tae stood still flustered, cutting through the living room to the entryway. Past the entryway was the inner corridor, and there was the family altar. Around the family altar was a pile of offerings. They were offerings for Shuuji who had just died before. Down the hallway separate from that was Fuki's bedroom. In that bedroom was laid out one futon, with Fuki's body stretched out within.
There was nothing particularly off around the futon, the cuff of her cotton nightwear was turned upwards but nothing seemed particularly disturbed. Her thin summer bed blanket was over her stomach as if neatly folded there. Without many signs of her sleep having been disturbed, in an instant Toshio resolved that it was not a suicide. In truth when on the road to the Gotouda household, he had predicted as much but looking near the futon there was no cup or sign of any medication or drug about.
Sitting beside the futon and opening his medical bag, Toshio motioned for Tae to sit, too.
"Tae-san, around what time did you come?"
"Uhm, about an hour ago. When I left the house, it was about nine thirty, around then."
"You called out from the porch and came right inside, yes? ---And then?"
"I thought she wasn't doing well.... That is, on Wednesday, she had seemed ill. Sluggish, like. I was worried about that and came yesterday to see how she was doing too but when I had, she was asleep, so."
"Wednesday---the eighteenth?" Taking out his stethoscope, Toshio asked again. "She seemed sick you said, how did you mean?"
Tae shook her heead, seeming troubled. "As I said, she seemed sluggish. She didn't have an appetite either. Could I say incredibly depressed, I wonder?"
"Yesterday?"
"She was asleep. I came, called out and had no answer, and when I came in she was asleep. Today just the same way, the sliding door was opened like that..."
Toshio nodded and urged her on. From the inside of Fuki's body all sounds had ceased.
"I went to her bedside and called out to her I don't know how many times until her eyes opened. She seemed so much worse than Wednesday, so I said, should we call the doctor, but. Fuki-san said no, after all. If I think about it now, she said it as if in a delirium; I asked about her futon, if it was dirty and such but didn't get any response. But, she very clearly said not to call the doctor. Just that part was very clear."
"I see."
"It was Saturday evening, I think. The hospital was closed at that time, and Fuki-san said no herself, but I thought maybe I should have you come anyway even if she wasn't happy with it, but I thought I should see how she did until night time. She had a fever, but she did drink a few sips of water a couple of times, but she didn't take a bite of the porridge I made, just sleeping away, and I said I'd come again today and left for the night. Then, when I came again this morning, it was like this...."
"How high was her fever?" Toshio asked Tae, mildly irritated.
"It was 38.5 or abouts, wasn't it?"
"This morning, did you touch anything around here?"
No, Tae shook her head. "I called and there was no answer, and she was sort of cold. It didn't seem like she was breathing, so I thought, what has this become. I didn't know what to do! I went to the living room and thought to call an ambulance. But, they say an ambulance won't take a dead person, will they? If I called them and she was dead, there wouldn't be anything they could do, so I thought that I should call you, doctor, but then I thought she seemed dead, but it's possible she isn't actually dead! I wanted somebody to see her but it looked like the house next door was still sleeping, and going through the trouble of waking them up is, well, yes? So when I was thinking that I should ask my daughter, I went in front of Tamo and there was Yuuko-san."
Toshio let out a breath. Why didn't you tell me to look at her yesterday, why didn't you call an ambulance right away, or why didn't you at least call me yourself? There were things a plenty he wanted to say but saying any of them now after the fact would be meaningless.
"Uhm... Is Fuki-san?"
"Yep, she's dead." he ended up saying a touch coldly. ---It was the same when it was Shuuji. He couldn't suppress his irritation; why did old people these days least so much up to their own layman's judgments? If they're not looking good, why don't you have a doctor see them? Making their own suppositions based on experience, not wanting to bother the doctor, things are going bad around them and they handle it all wrong, all of that in itself just made everything worse. Yes---Murasako Mieko had been like that.
"Yesterday, did she have a cough?"
"No... Not that I noticed."
"Did she use the bathroom?"
"While I was here, she was bedridden."
"Mention any pain, say anything in particular hurt?"
Of course not, Tae said shaking her head. "If she'd said something like that, I'd have called you, Doctor! She had a fever but she seemed to just want to sleep. She said a few things as if she were delirious but, her fever wasn't high enough to be in a delirium, yes? So, she must really be that tired, I thought."
"I see," Toshio mumbled. Breath stopped, heart stopped, blood pressure zero. Her pupils were dilated and didn't contract when a light was shone in them. Rigor mortis was setting in over her entire body stiffly already.
"She died sometime last night. And not too late, either."
She died about twelve hours ago. Right around last night at ten o'clock or so, he thought.
"Oh... that's..."
Toshio moved his face near Fuki's mouth. No particular odor. As far as he could see, on what was visible of her face and limbs there were no particular external wounds or bruises. There were age spots here and there, and a few bug bites caught his eye, a few of them festering. But she did have several edema. Just in case he put his hands in her hair, feeling about but he didn't feel anything like a wound or a lump. Her cornea were not yet opaque. Her arm folded over herself was already completely stiff and couldn't be unwound. Peeling off the top of the futon, he lifted up the lower portion of her night clothes. Fuki had summer underwear on but he looked beneath that too. The skin beneath the underwear was so white it was blue, and postmortem lividity was mild but didn't give way to the touch. So it had been about twelve hours since she died. There were no traces of incontinence in her futon or her bedclothes.
Nothing particularly strange or unusual could be found. At the least, it was clear that she didn't die from an external cause, so the answer to why she died was inside of her. Right now all he could do was guess but last night, the fact that she hadn't gone to the bathroom while Tae was there and yet there were no signs of incontinence meant something vital, he thought.
With her in the condition stated when he'd asked Tae about the last time they'd met, and with no signs of incontinence, it was extreme oliguria, or alternately anuria. Thinking what that meant with the edema, it was possibly renal failure. Guessing by her muddled mental status, he had strong suspicions about it being uremia or hyperkalemia.
Uhm, interjected Tamo Yuuko. "What's happened with Fuki-san?"
"Probably acute renal failure. ...If we do an autopsy, we'll know for sure, but."
"Is that right?"
Yuuko made a complicated expression. She looked like she didn't know whether to smile or whether to grimace. Sadaji looked the same. Most likely everybody was thinking the same thing. Fuki had just lost her son and her brother and sister-in-law. She herself was aged, and after so many successive sorrows, she seemed rather lost with herself. There was a possibility of suicide that they couldn't discount and, in reality, if she'd died by hanging it wouldn't have been all that much more unsettling.
"Fuki-san was an old girl. And every day it's been so hot. ...Heartbreak must have got to her, huh."
He spoke as if convincing himself. Age, heat, and depression had nothing to do with it; if it was renal failure and she'd been seen right away by a doctor, she might not have died like this, Toshio thought, but ultimately didn't voice.
Gotouda Shuuji, Murasako Hidemasa. Gotouda Fuki. ---All in about half a month.
Toshio left the community of Kami-Sotoba and wiped at a light sweat he'd formed.
The village is surrounded by death...
"....That's stupid."
Just what did he think was happening? Japan had a countless number of them here and there, mountain villages that were in decline and dying out, and this village didn't have one single difference to them. It wasn't some city at the forefront of change. Everything that was here was equally harmless as it was useless. Here---there was absolutely nothing anywhere that made it necessary for anything to happen here.
But, Toshio said to himself. "....The bunch of them are getting taken out by the exact same thing."