"Huh, it's another move." Natsuno stopped.
"Hn?" Said Tohru who came out to buy his usual cigarettes, stopping. "Ah, really."
Just coming out of the Mutous house was a harvested field and across that field could be seen a truck easing in around a row of houses. Natsuno checked his wrist watch immediately.
In coming home from school, he came back together off of the bus with Tamotsu. Since then he'd stayed close with Tamotsu going back to the Mutou's house, being fed dinner by them before going back to his own house. Just when he was thinking of leaving, Tohru's father had returned. It seemed lately the hospital was busy, with Mutou returning so late. Not just late, it seemed he was bringing work home too. He'd even caught sight of their mother Shizuko helping with it. He worked this late, he thought looking at his wrist watch and it was already ten o'clock. Just as he thought, the hand on his watch was passing eleven. No matter how you thought about it it was a late hour to be moving.
"Takasago movers again." Natsuno said to himself, making Tohru tilt his head.
"Again?"
"Just last time there was a move at a weird hour wasn't there? That was Takasago movers too."
"Did something like that happen?"
"Are you already going senile, you old fart?" Sighing deliberately to be heard, Tohru's fist came flying out at him. Laughing at that, he dodged, separating from Tohru. While heading on the night road to his house, he'd thought that something was off.
The summer of continuing deaths. When that about ended, now it was movings being sighted. No, maybe nothing had ended. Mutou's returning home so late the sun had set was proof of that. Anyway, it's busy, Mutou grumbled. Bust meant that there were just that many patients, that the number of people who were sick was increasing. Actually, he'd also seen a lot of funerals. He didn't know who all they were for but it was indeed proof people were dying.
This was what happened when the village was exposed to depopulation. A lot of moves. ---But, he couldn't make sense of the fact that those moves were all separately at night. And then there was the fact that they were all with the same moving company, what was that?
He returned home feeling unsatisfied. As he came in to the entryway and took off his shoes, his mother poked her face in bitterly, looking as if she were fresh from the bath.
"Welcome back. The Mutous' again?"
"Yeah."
"Again and again, being treated to dinner over there. They're in the neighborhood so can't you at least come back for dinner?"
Yeah, he gave as a half hearted answer.
"Or at least if you came home once then went back out? Honestly, which family do you live with!"
Which family nothing, Natsuno murmured in his heart. This wasn't a "family." They were the ones who refused to take on the form of a married couple, refusing to be a family in the first place, weren't they, he thought. This was nothing more than a place where two adults, a man and a woman, gathered together with a child. He didn't plan to criticize his parents way of life but he was disconcerted by the way they declined the obvious while at the same time being indifferent to the way they themselves demanded the obvious.
Without looking at his mother giving idle complaints, once he tried to return to his room she called out to stop him.
"Hey, a post card came for you." His mother pointed above the shoe rack.
"For me?" Natsuno took the post card in hand. "---What is this?"
It was a late summer greeting. Passing his eyes over the writing, once he knew it was Megumi, his brows furrowed.
"Sending a late summer greeting now, that's weird, isn't it? Who is she, this Shimizu-san girl."
"Don't read other people's postcards."
"Oh my, but since it's a post card it can't be helped can it?"
He stared at his mother coolly then lowered his eyes to the postcard.
---Shimizu Megumi.
"Isn't it from Shimizu-san's daughter? That."
"....Probably."
"That's not good. Why is a post card coming now? It's creepy."
"Probably somebody's prank," he said heading directly to his room. He turned on the light in his room and looked again at the postcard.
Without a doubt, this is that "Shimizu Megumi," he thought. But, Megumi died in the middle of August. There was no reason for the dead to send him a post card, and no matter how he thought about it, it was too late for a late summer greeting card. Megumi might have written it before she died. And some kind of accident happened that least it it being delivered now, then?
Somehow it still felt like something was going unaccounted for but he didn't think he needed to force himself to feel creeped out. Natsuno moved to throw it into the trash----for some reason, though, he stopped.
He didn't plan to hold onto it and treasure it dearly. But, there was no reason he had to throw it away or whatever today, he thought.
Tohru bent down to the vending machine and took out his pack of cigarettes. Pocketing the change, he turned around. While walking along the night road, something felt off, he thought.
There were a lot of funerals, a lot of moves. ---Definitely a lot, he thought. There had never been this many before. He didn't want to jump to the conclusion that something that had never happened before happening was weird but he couldn't come to a satisfactory conclusion. Lately, something was strange in the village, he couldn't help but feeling. Like something was out of tune, like the wheels were turning without getting anywhere, like things had deviated terribly from where they should have been.
Unthinkingly tossing his cigarette pack in the air, he caught it as it came back down. It then jumped from the palm of his hand onto the road surface, rebounding and tumbling. It tumbled before a young man. The man picked it up.
"Ah, sorry."
"No. Here."
He didn't recognize the face of the man handing it over. He was probably a few years older than Tohru. It wasn't as if he knew all of the villagers by any means but he did indeed know those of his own generation. If it wasn't somebody he recognized, he could only think he was someone from Kanemasa.
"By chance are you from Kanemasa?"
That's right, the other smiled. "This's the first time I've met someone the same age as me. I am called Tatsumi. Good to meet you."
"Hello, good to meet you too. I'm Mutou."
"I had thought there wasn't anybody around my age in the village."
"That isn't the case. There aren't many, so the odds of encountering them are low, I'd think, though."
While answering, he thought, this is him. He was probably the rumored "young one from Kanemasa." The one who appeared at Masao's place.
"---Are you out for a walk?"
"I'm not out for a walk persay, more like loitering. It's boring inside the house but there's no place to go. I wonder what the young people in the village do to pass the time every day..." Tatsumi said, Tohru smiling.
"In the village, there's not much to do besides watch TV and sleep. Eating's about it. If you want to do anything more substantial while hanging out, there's nothing to do but go out of the village."
Tatsumi blinked. "Then, there is no choice but to go to Mizobe as expected. By car?"
"Yup."
"But, if you go out by car, you cannot go drinking, can you?"
"Well, that's what it'd be at face value."
Tatsumi sighed. "I think that it is a nice place, but as expected with no place to go, there's too much time on your hands." Saying this, Tatsumi laughed. "That said, if I walk out in the daytime, I get the feeling I've become a rare beast!"
Tohru laughed. "If you don't have someone to hang out with, there's nothing at all, in this village. That said, even if you take the trouble of going all the way out to Mizobe, I don't think there's any place you could pass the time having that much for yourself, but. Especially at night, yeah? If you go out to Mizobe, the night still ends early there too. Well, unlike the city, that's just how it is here."
"That's how it is."
"There's no major place to hang out but, even so if you like, next time, I could show you around."
"Really?"
"If you like, give me a yell on the weekend. I live in Naka-Sotoba. If you ask for the house of Mutou who works in the hospital office, they'll know right away."
"Ah---you work at the Ozaki Clinic."
"My old man does. I'm just a simple office worker, myself. It's a loud and busy house where it's hard to unwind but, if you want, come on by sometime."
Thank you, Tatsumi smiled. He looked at Tohru as if with some implication.
"I'm glad you offered. ---I will definitely visit you. Until then, best regards."