The First Night - Onomichi

“I went to Onomichi five years ago. It was in the middle of May, a weekend, and the weather made it feel like it was already summer,” Nakai began.

As I’ve already mentioned, Nakai was a grad student when he was attending the English conversation school. Even after I departed from Kyōto and lost contact with everyone else, he was the one person I still kept in touch with. I’d even gone to his apartment in Suidobashi for dinner and had his wife’s cooking a few times before.

“The reason I was going all the way over there was to bring back my wife. She’d…changed.”

What follows is Nakai’s story.

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It started two weeks before I went to Onomichi.

When I came home from work the lights were out, and the hallway leading to the living room was as dark as a tunnel. It all felt very ominous. My wife had just quit her job so she was home most of the time, and she always let me know if she was going to go out at night. But I didn’t find anything resembling a note in the living room.

I tried calling her, but her phone just kept ringing.

I hope she didn’t get in some sort of accident, I thought with a shiver of suspense, waiting until, at last, someone picked up.

“Hello?” came a small voice.

A wave of relief went through me when I heard that voice, but when she said she was in Onomichi I was taken aback. She informed me, sounding distinctly irritated, that she had left Tokyo in the afternoon and found lodgings in Onomichi.

“I’m going to be here a while,” she said.

I was shocked. “What are you doing in Onomichi?” I asked, but there was only silence from the other end. Pressing my ear harder to the phone, I faintly heard the sound of water dripping into a washbasin.

A sudden wave of fury swelled within me. I had a responsibility to her as her husband. How could she just leave home without a word of explanation? And what was I supposed to tell my in-laws if they called?

When I said all this to her, she sighed. “Responsibility? Who cares?”

And then she hung up.

I stayed there dumbfounded for a while, but at the same time another part of me was thinking, I knew it. Honestly, I’d started to feel something was off about her demeanor since the middle of April.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but every so often a cold look would come across her face. It was like she wasn’t quite there, and if I tried to ask her anything she would give only the vaguest of answers. If I left her alone she would eventually pop back to her usual self. Every time I asked her if I had said something wrong, she just looked at me in confusion. I couldn’t tell if she really hadn’t noticed what had happened, or if she was just playing dumb.

Stil, there was something that felt very wrong about that cold look on her face. For a moment, it felt like there was a completely different person sitting there. I asked her if she was feeling alright, which she claimed she was. But I was convinced that there had to be a reason for that look on her face.

“If something’s bothering you, why don’t you just tell me?”

My wife seemed hurt that I would ask her such a thing. “If you keep feeling something’s off, maybe it’s just you?”

“It can’t just be me!”

“But how do you know that for sure?”

She was convinced that it was my problem, and I was convinced that it was hers. The more we argued about it, the more she retreated into her shell. I knew there was a problem, but I couldn’t quite grasp what it really was. It infuriated me to no end.

So it went, until my wife left home.

At first I was furious. Have it your way! I thought. But after having a little time to cool off, I began to reflect on the way I had acted. Thinking about it calmly, my wife had a point. Why had I been so quick to interrogate her like that? Hadn’t I just been taking out my own frustrations on her?

For two weeks, she and I continued our exchanges over the phone, and I started to feel like the warmth was returning to my wife’s voice.

“I’ve slept so well ever since I came here,” she told me. “I really think that coming here was the right thing for both of us.”

“You might be right.”

“You should try to get enough rest too. You’ve been kind of strange lately. Though what I would really recommend is taking a trip somewhere far away.”

“How much longer are you going to be there?”

“...I don’t know. I don’t want to rush things.”

My wife was staying at a house on a hill, helping out at a general store run by a woman she knew. Apparently, from her room on the second floor she had an uninterrupted view of the city of Onomichi as well as the islands out in the Seto Inland Sea.

“Where did you meet her?” Whenever I asked about the woman, my wife was always noncommittal. That troubled me. I had never heard so much as a word about my wife knowing anyone in Onomichi.

“If you’re so worried, why don’t you come here and see for yourself?”

“...You’d be okay with that?”

“You’ve never been here before, right?”

“I guess not,” I immediately lied.

　　　　　　　◯

Onomichi is a city in Hiroshima prefecture that lies on the coast of the Seto Inland Sea.

I exited the ticket gates and walked into the plaza outside the station. Across the water cranes loomed over the shipyards on Mukaishima, and boats went back and forth over the sparkling ocean waves. I had been born and raised in a town far away from the sea, so I felt like I had come a very long way from home.

I looked out at the ocean for a while longer, before crossing the train tracks of the Sanyō Line and heading into the hills.

My wife was supposedly working at a general store called The Seabreeze Company. The online homepage was extremely rudimentary, and judging from the timestamp it hadn’t been updated in a long time. I had my doubts whether it was even still in business, but just in case I printed out the map and brought it along.

The maze of sloped streets was already perfused with the scent of summer.

Onomichi is a strange town. From the seaside it looks small, but beyond the hills are more hills, and each path branches off into many other little paths. The deeper in you go, the more it feels like you are wandering into a labyrinth.

Amidst this diorama of alleys threading behind houses, stone steps overgrown with grass, and old drain spouts, only the campaign posters for the lower house elections stood out as bizarrely vibrant.

“Was it like this before?” I wondered to myself.

Contrary to what I had told my wife, I had been to Onomichi just once before.

It was during summer vacation in grad school. After going home to Kyushu, I hopped off the train at Onomichi on my way back to university and spent half a day wandering around. Obon had just ended, and the heat was stifling. Broiling sunlight beat down on the long path up the hill, and even the sea breeze that swayed the trees in Senkōji was parched. It was like being in a daydream. There was something unreal about my memory of that August afternoon, and strangely enough, even though I was back in Onomichi not the slightest hint of nostalgia welled up within me.

I wasn’t sure if the map was simply poorly made, or whether it was just my terrible sense of direction, but I went the wrong way and ended up taking a very roundabout path. After walking for about twenty minutes, I finally found a path that was marked on the map. It was a steep road that led up past a cemetery. On the right was a grove of trees, and on the left were houses lined up like a giant staircase. I hoped fervently that I wouldn’t have to keep climbing further once I reached the top of this path.

On my way up I ran into a strange man.

He was dashing madly down from the top of the hill. Very nearly running into me, he caught himself and stopped dead, his mouth open in surprise. Even in this heat, he had on a proper concierge’s uniform. His bulging eyes were opened wide, and his face was slick, as if he had splashed water on it. As I bowed slightly and passed by him, he turned his body to the side and murmured in a low tone, “Excuse me.” He smelled rather unpleasant.

After we had passed each other, I turned back to see the man dashing down the slope again. It was like he was chasing something, or maybe running away from it. There was something arresting about that pitiful sight, and I stopped there on the slope for a while, watching him until he disappeared before resuming my climb up the hill.

The general store that I eventually reached looked nearly deserted.

The building was a blue-roofed house, and next to the frosted glass sliding door was a carved wooden sign that said, “The Seabreeze Company”. Yet there were no signs that anybody lived there. Fallen shingles were scattered underfoot, and the potted plants lined up by the door were as dry as a desert. I reached out and slid the door open with a snap. A dusty, sandy smell came wheezing out. Inside I could see a dim corridor and a staircase, but frankly it resembled a grotto more than it did any kind of place where humans would dwell. From somewhere deep within, I faintly heard the sound of water dripping into a washbasin. Was this really where my wife was staying?

“Hello?” I called with trepidation, feeling like I had just dropped a pebble into a deep, deep hole. “Is anyone there?”

I strained my ears, and at last from the darkness at the top of the staircase I heard a breezy voice reply, “Coming!”

White, delicate feet pattered down the worn wooden staircase, and a familiar, pale-skinned face appeared in the gloom. My wife was wearing a white summer dress that I had never seen before.

“Hey there, stranger. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I had finding you,” I mumbled, suddenly bashful.

But she just frowned at me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

My wife tilted her head quizzically and asked, “...Who are you?”

　　　　　　　◯

After talking with the woman at the entrance, it turned out that she indeed was not my wife.

Yet the resemblance was so close that I couldn’t believe it was pure coincidence. Maybe they were related by blood in some way.

But the woman said she didn’t know anything about my wife. In fact, the store was no longer even in operation.

“It’s been closed for about half a year already,” she said.

I was quite surprised when I heard that.

“Do we really look that alike, your wife and I?” she giggled. She didn’t seem to doubt my story at all.

Apparently she had used to run The Seabreeze Company, selling handmade goods. Her husband worked at a business hotel by the station, and she had decided to open up this store to bring in some extra income, though few customers ever came by. When I heard that, I couldn’t help but think of the concierge I had met coming up the slope.

None of it matched what my wife had described. “I’m pretty sure this is the only Seabreeze Company around here,” said the woman.

I tried calling my wife, but her phone wasn’t on.

“Has your wife ever been to this store before?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s funny.”

“Well look, I’m sorry for raising all this fuss.”

“Hold on,” said the woman as I turned to go. “Since you’re here, why don’t you take a look at my goods? There’s still a lot of it left.”

She lightly took hold of my arm. “I know it’s a mess, but why don’t you come on up?”

The way her words came out so briskly was just like my wife. The flow swept me up, and before I knew it I was walking through the front door.

I put on slippers and padded through the dim corridor, reaching a dining room. Beyond it was a ten-tatami room containing a dresser and a television. The doors to the garden veranda had been left wide open. In contrast to the rest of the house this room was bright, like a shoal rising amidst the murky deep. Up here on the hill, I had a sweeping view of the city and the sea beyond the blooming azaleas.

“I’m sorry, I haven’t tidied up at all,” she said, not sounding particularly sorry. “Wow, you’ve really worked up a sweat! Let me get you something to drink.”

I sat in the room drinking tepid barley tea.

“This your first time in Onomichi?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

For some reason I found myself telling the same lie again.

The woman brought in a cardboard box and laid out some goods in front of me to peruse. They were all simple, artless crafts, the kind of things you might find at a Saturday flea market: flower-shaped coasters, shopping bags, each still with a faded price tag attached.

“They’re cute,” I managed to say.

“How about a gift for your wife?” she coaxed, looking into my face.

The resemblance with my wife was just too uncanny. The way she knit her eyebrows as she poured the barley tea, the way her eyes turned up to look into my face, it was all exactly the same. It felt as if my wife had come with me to Onomichi and we had snuck into an old house to play at teatime. I couldn’t possibly have forgotten what my wife looked like after just two weeks. Maybe she really was my wife, pretending to be someone else to test me. That was how similar they looked.

But I said nothing, and at her suggestion purchased a brooch.

“Oh no, I’m out of change!”

“That’s alright,” I said, waving it off.

“Sorry,” she apologized, her tone cajoling.

We talked idly for a little while.

“This house seems like it’s got a lot of history.”

The woman looked around the room. “That’s why we can rent it so cheaply. Lucky for us, really.”

She told me that this house had belonged to an old couple. After the husband passed away, the wife had moved in with her married daughter on Mukaishima and rented out the old house. The old woman was still quite healthy, and occasionally took a boat over from the island to inspect the house. Whenever they chatted over tea she would always bring up her granddaughter. Apparently when she had still lived in this house, her granddaughter, who had been in high school, often came here from Mukaishima to play. To the old woman, that was a dear, unforgettable memory.

“She told the same story every time. Almost like time had stopped for her.”

“That’s what happens when the years start coming on.”

“It felt like time might stop for me, too.”

Suddenly she turned to the veranda, listening carefully.

“Hey, do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“There’s a train coming through.”

And just as she said, I could hear the faint reverberation of a train in the distance.

“At night I turn out the lights on the second floor and open the window. You can see the lights of the trains running along the ocean. It’s beautiful. Sometimes freight trains come through, all blacked out...those are kind of scary.”

“I’m sure the view here at night must be incredible.”

Lowering her voice conspiratorially, the woman whispered, “I mostly stay on the second floor.”

“Why’s that?”

“Whenever I come out on my own, my husband gets mad. He gets this ugly look on his face if he even sees me come down to the first floor. That’s partially why I had to close the store. Whenever I see him coming back from work, I run and hide on the second floor and try not to breathe too loud.”

At first I thought she was joking, but her face was dead serious. It was a strange tale, and feeling very unsettled I said nothing.

I became aware of another weird sound. It was the sound of bubbling water, like someone gargling water in their mouth.

“Do you hear that funny sound?”

“Funny sound?” She suddenly rose to her knees and glared out at the azaleas in the garden. Her expression was like a mask, and on seeing that look I became very uncomfortable. It was the same look that had been bothering me since April, the same look I had seen on my wife’s face.

“Excuse me for a second,” the woman muttered, rising to her feet and stalking out of the room. In a moment I heard creaking coming from the staircase to the second floor. The footsteps were heavy, like they belonged to some sort of monster. As I listened, the footsteps suddenly ceased, and the house went quiet.

I passed the time admiring the azaleas.

But no matter how I waited, the woman did not return.

After fifteen minutes had passed, I got tired of waiting and carried the tea tray to the dining room. The table there was large enough to seat four people, and was covered with a dirty tablecloth with a large brown stain. The shade of the lamp hanging from the ceiling was covered in dust. In spite of that, the cupboard along the wall was still filled with plates and bowls. Next to the cupboard was a black old-fashioned rotary phone. When I attempted to wash the cup, though, I noticed the rusty sink was also covered in dust and completely dry, and when I wrenched open the faucet handle not a single drop of water came out. A shiver of horror ran through me.

“No one could possibly be living here!”

I tiptoed through the corridor to the front entrance.

The staircase to the second floor bent to the right, and the wood-paneled walls were swallowed up in the dim light. I called out, but no reply came, like I was casting my voice into a bottomless void. What was she doing up there? In fact, did she even exist at all? It was utterly silent, as if I had been alone in that house from the start.

It was in that moment that I suddenly awakened to how rotted this house truly was.

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I fled from the house and ran up the slope. After putting in a little distance I turned and saw the blue-roofed house. Part of the roof was collapsed, curving inward like an antlion nest, and in the middle of that pit was a black hole. The sight disgusted me; I had never seen anything like it. I kept walking, and this time I didn’t look back. It was already half past four.

The path led up to Senkōji Park. The azaleas in the park were in full bloom, and the wind rustled through the green leaves of the trees. Twilight was creeping into the sky over the modern-looking city art museum and the adjacent restaurant. Here the tourists were plentiful, and I felt like I had returned to reality at last.

I went into the restaurant on the hill and ordered a cup of coffee.

I called my wife again, but her phone was still off. It just didn’t add up. Why would she purposefully turn off her phone on the weekend that she knew I was coming? Was she trying to avoid me? Yet she had been the one to invite me here. Where could she be? If I couldn’t call her, then I was lost.

“Wasn’t it like this that summer too?” I reminisced, thinking back to what had happened five years ago. That summer I had visited Onomichi and drank coffee in this same restaurant, and waited for someone who I couldn’t reach.

That person had been Hasegawa.

Just before summer break, Hasegawa and I had gotten to talking after English class one day. She had mentioned that she came from Mukaishima, and that her grandparents lived in a house in Onomichi. Her stories fascinated me: the way Onomichi looked like a mysterious island from the pier on Mukaishima, how the old town in Onomichi was like a maze, and so on. I decided to stop off at Onomichi on my way from Kyushu back to Kyoto. Hasegawa also told me that she would be going home for Obon.

“If you’re free, why don’t we go out for tea?” I suggested.

“Sure thing!” she cheerfully agreed.

I called Hasegawa the morning I set out from Kyushu, and we made plans to meet at the restaurant in Senkōji Park. But after I arrived in Onomichi and reached the restaurant, Hasegawa didn’t show up. I called her, but no one picked up. Later on I learned that she had forgotten her phone at home. She was helping out at her grandparents’ home when she realized that she was late for our appointment. Messing up like that wasn’t like her at all.

She was painfully apologetic when she finally arrived, thirty minutes late. She had run all the way here under the blazing sun and was soaked in sweat like she had just come from working in the fields. As she dejectedly wiped herself off with a towel, I thought to myself that she looked very different from the reliable Hasegawa that I was used to seeing in class on Friday nights.

“I’m so sorry,” she kept apologizing. Somehow the novelty of the whole thing made me happy.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s not like I had anything better to do today.”

“How could I be so stupid!”

“You were probably just relaxed, being back at home. It happens.”

“But still, I’m really sorry. Never again, I promise!,” she said, giggling like a little girl.

We talked for a while at the restaurant before taking a walk around Senkōji. From the temple we looked down on the town below us and watched the tourist-filled cable cars go up and down the ropeway. Cicadas trilled in the lush summer foliage below us.

Hasegawa plopped down on a bench next to the bell tower and said, “Kind of makes you feel small, doesn’t it?” There was a slight hint of petulance in her voice. Here in her hometown under the sweltering heat, Hasegawa seemed looser than I had ever seen her in Kyoto.

“You live on Mukaishima, right?”

In reply she raised a slender arm and pointed at the island.

“Right around there. You get over by ferry.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s just like any old suburb.”

After sitting on the bench for a while admiring the view of the ocean, we slowly made our way down the long slope from Senkōji. Hasegawa saw me to the gates at Onomichi Station.

“See you in September!” she called. The sight of her standing on the other side of the gates played over and over in my mind all the way until I reached Kyoto.

That was two months before she disappeared.

I had taken her disappearance hard, and what made it even more unbearable was that I had no idea what had happened that night in Kurama. It was so painful that I had done all I could to forget everything involving her, including that night in Kurama and my previous visit to Onomichi.

Five years on, and here I was again in Onomichi. Remembering Hasegawa was making my mind go down all kinds of dark paths. Hasegawa and my wife had always resembled each other. If the hole that swallowed Hasegawa was still open, then maybe it had swallowed my wife too…

Don’t be stupid! Flustered, I shook those thoughts out of my head.

Paying my bill and leaving the restaurant, I exited through the main gate of Senkōji and went down the hill. It was the same path that Hasegawa and I had taken. Red and blue banners fluttered along the guardrail, each bearing an entreaty to Thousand-Armed Kannon. Below me I saw the city, fresh sprouts of greenery poking out between the roofs of the houses and temples. The Seto Inland Sea sparkled silver beneath the intense sunlight, and the silhouette of the distant islands were hazy and blurred.

It felt like a scene from a dream.

　　　　　　　◯

I took the ropeway down the mountain, then walked through the long shopping district, heading for my hotel. I wasn’t planning on giving up until I had talked to my wife.

The hotel was along the stretch of downtown that was built along the Sanyō Line, in a little nook surrounded by hole-in-the-wall bars and diners. The train tracks ran right behind the dingy business hotel, and freight trains rumbled on interminably.

The lobby was deserted, and there was no one behind the reception desk. In front of the desk was a cart piled high with local specialties like kamaboko and dried foods, as well as an assortment of handcrafted goods. The faded price tags all said, “The Seabreeze Company”.

I kept calling, but the concierge did not appear, so I gave up and sat down on the sofa.

Beside the sofa was a potted plant, but given that most of its leaves were black and drooping, its presence only made the lobby feel even gloomier. The effect was heightened by the dark, moody landscapes hanging on the wall. Among them, one of them resembled a black hole in the wall.

I rose from the sofa and approached it.

It seemed to be a copperplate engraving. Below it was a white plaque with the title and artist written in magic marker: Night Train——Onomichi, by Kishida Michio. It was composed entirely of white in startling relief against a velvet black background, depicting an uphill path going by a row of darkened houses. Halfway up the path burned a single lantern, and under its light stood a faceless woman, waving her right hand as if calling out to me. Looking at it made me feel like I would be sucked into the picture, and for reasons that I didn’t understand it was both unsettling and yet somehow familiar.

“Do you like it?” said a voice behind me.

It was the concierge. Wearing a uniform that resembled a musty scarlet rug, he peered intently into my face with his large eyes. His face was slick with sweat. I soon realized that this was none other than the man I had passed by earlier on the hill.

“It is a very striking piece. I’ve been intrigued by it too, ever since it was hung up in this lobby.” Here he seemed to snap back to himself. “I apologize for the wait. This way, please.”

As he checked me in, every so often he glanced up at my face.

“Do you come to Onomichi often?”

“No, this is my first time,” I lied, again.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, lowering his gaze again. “I had a feeling that I’d seen you somewhere before…”

“That’s probably from when we passed each other earlier. I saw you running you down the hill.”

The concierge nodded slightly. “I see. So that was what it was.”

I pointed at the cart in front of the desk. “Those crafts there, are they from a local shop on the hill?”

“Yes, exactly. My wife ran a shop, as a sort of hobby.”

So the woman in that house really did exist. I was suddenly ashamed of myself for having run out of there like I had seen a ghost. But I still couldn’t believe that anyone could live in that house on the hill.

“I visited the shop just a little while ago.”

“Oh, did you?”

“I’m afraid I was very rude to your wife. I just left without saying goodbye…”

Upon hearing my apology the concierge frowned at me. “My wife?”

“Yes, I met her at the house.”

“...There is no one in that house.”

“Oh, come on now. She was showing me all of her handicrafts.”

The concierge peered at me with those big eyes of his. It was an unnerving look, like I was staring into a deep grotto.

“There is no one in that house,” he repeated, forcing the words out. He seemed to be afraid of something. The light reflecting on the sheen of sweat made him look drenched, and his unpleasant odor prickled at my nose. “My wife has gone. I am the only one who lives in that house.”

The tone in his voice made me uneasy. “...My mistake, then.”

“Yes, it must have been. I am quite sure of it,” he quickly replied, looking closely at my pallid face.

　　　　　　　◯

The air was hot and stifled inside the narrow hotel room. The wallpaper was faded, the furniture all outmoded.

I took a shower to wash off the sweat and then sat on the bed, exhausted as though I had just gone hiking in the mountains. Then again, I had just gone walking up and down the hills of this town under the early summer sun.

I took out the brooch from my bag and stared at it. It was inside a small, clear pouch, with a sticker that said “The Seabreeze Company”. I had bought it from the woman in that house on the hill, and so it was the only irrefutable evidence I had of what had happened in there.

Still, nothing had made any sense since I had arrived in Onomichi. A woman living in a ruined house on a hill, who resembled my wife so much they could have been twins. Her husband, who insisted that no one was in that house. And my wife, around whom all this revolved, who was still unreachable and whose location I still did not know.

I called my wife once more, but her phone was still off

Lying down on the bed I stared at the smudged ceiling, and tried to remember what my wife had been like in Tokyo. But it was no use: for some reason all I could think of was the face of the woman in that house, and the way she had acted.

“Maybe she really was my wife,” I thought to myself.

For two weeks my wife had been living in that house. Then why would the concierge have told me such a baldfaced lie when he said that no one was there? Why would he try to muddy the waters like that? He had to be hiding something. And likewise, my wife had to be hiding something as well. That was the only way anything made sense.

Once that thought passed through my mind I couldn’t take it anymore.

I got up and threw open the heavy curtain, looking down on the Sanyō Line which passed behind the hotel. As I stared down at the train tracks, I remembered the time my wife and I had taken a night train. It had been at the beginning of April that year, and on our way from Kyushu to Tokyo we must have passed along the tracks that lay below my window, speeding along in the dead of night.

We had been returning from a Buddhist memorial service in Kyushu. It had been a pleasant time, and my wife had been in good spirits, as she normally was. “I want to feel like we’re really traveling!” she implored me, and so we took the night train.

That night we turned out the lights in our room and stared out at the night sky through the window. Black mountain silhouettes and lonely village lights flowed by, and each time we passed through another unfamiliar station my wife’s face was bathed in pale light. As we listened to the clacking of the wheels over the rail joints, it was like we were passing through the bowels of night.

Looking out at the solitary streets passing by, my wife said, “It feels like dawn will never come.”

Now those words seemed like an omen of what was to come.

　　　　　　　◯

It happened about a week after we returned on that night train from Kyushu.

I returned home late one night to find that my wife had already gone to bed. Making as little sound as possible, I showered, then lay down softly next to her.

As I was drifting off, I was suddenly assaulted by the sensation of my face being pushed into a basin full of water. Struggling to breathe, I tried to fight off whatever it was before sitting straight up in the futon, gasping in the light of the room.

I looked at my wife beside me. She was sleeping just like a doll, and her eyes were shut tight, but I could hear a strange sound coming from between her lips. Her tongue seemed to be clicking in her mouth, making a sound like the sound of dripping water. That must have been what caused my dream.

Listening closely, I noticed that in between her tongue clicking I could hear sounds that resembled words. She seemed to be talking to someone in her dream. The words grew gradually louder, almost like she was cursing at someone, and I felt a sudden pressure come over the room.

“Hey, you okay?” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Immediately she growled like a beast and sat up, reaching out to grab me. The look on her face was like that of a completely different person. With a gasp she snapped back to her senses and leaned back in shock, staring at my face without blinking. We sat there for a while holding onto each other’s arms, in utter disbelief. Finally my wife sighed and covered her face with both hands.

“I was having such a terrifying dream!”

The dream went like this.

My wife was sitting in a six-tatami room, lit by a tiny lightbulb. The room was as bare as a prison cell, containing only a small bureau and a large washbasin.

She felt like she had to get out of that room, fast. Yet impatient to leave as she was, she found that she was unable to move at all.

She was sitting on the tatami, her eyes fixed on a half open sliding screen. Beyond it she could see a staircase leading down, which must have meant she was on the second floor of a house. To get outside she needed to go down those stairs, but there was something frightening about looking at that stairway, and she couldn’t bring herself to stand up.

In a little while she heard the sound of someone slowly creeping up the stairs on all fours. It was a horrible, lingering sound, the sound of someone slapping and peeling off their hands and feet from each step, one by one. My wife laboriously dragged her heavy body over to the side of the bureau. She knew that there was no point in hiding. Then the horrible sound abruptly stopped, and a nocturnal hush stifled the room.

No one came.

My wife let out a breath of relief.

But in the next moment she became aware someone was watching her from the darkness of the staircase.

The person was staring directly at her, only his head visible above the top stair. The face looked slick and shiny, as if it was dripping with water. My wife let out a scream of terror, but the person’s expression didn’t change, and he only cocked his head to the side and continued to stare.

“That face...it looked exactly like yours!” said my wife, before going quiet.

Following that incident my wife started to have frequent nightmares. Many times I was woken by the sound of her moaning in the throes of a dream. But she never spoke of what she saw in those dreams again.

I suggested to her that the unknown issue she refused to talk about was what was giving her those dreams. But her view was exactly the opposite of mine. She said it was because I was always talking about this nonsense that she was having nightmares.

　　　　　　　◯

I eventually fell asleep on the bed.

When I woke up it was dark outside the window, and I struggled for a few seconds to remember where I was. Right, the hotel in Onomichi. I turned on the lights and looked at the clock, whose hands were just passing 7 P.M. The nap had left me feeling a little calmer.

My cell phone rang. I expected it to be my wife, but I didn’t recognize the number, and when I picked up the other end was silent.

“Who’s this?” I asked impatiently.

But I didn’t hang up right away. I had a feeling that it was my wife that was on the other end of the line, not speaking. For some reason I imagined her sitting on the tatami in a dark room somewhere with the shutters closed. Maybe I was just being reminded of the dream my wife had seen. Finally, from the speaker I heard a faint, petrified whisper.

“It’s me. We met this afternoon...do you remember?”

“At The Seabreeze Company?”

“Yes. That was me.”

It was the concierge’s wife. I couldn’t imagine my wife pretending to be someone else over the phone.

“I need your help.”

“What do you mean? Help with what?”

“I’m scared of my husband,” she whispered. “I’ve been locked on the second floor all this time.”

“But that’s…”

“Will you help me?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because I feel like I can trust you.”

“If you feel like you’re in danger, you should go to the police. I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t think this is something I can help with.”

“So you’re going to run away?”

“This has nothing to do with running or not running.”

“...I need your help. It has to be you.”

As she said those words I heard a pounding at my door.

“Just a second. Someone’s at my door.”

“It’s my husband.”

“Surely not…”

I walked to the door and looked through the peephole.

Standing in the corridor was the concierge. He was so close to the door he was practically stuck to it, and the fisheye effect of the peephole made his head bulge out like some kind of ghastly monster. His thinning hair was plastered to his head with sweat. He looked like he was about to cry, and it was his own head he was using to strike the door, producing that dull pounding sound. What was the matter with him? I pushed on the door with my left hand, holding my breath as I continued to look through the peephole.

On the phone the woman said, “Hello? Is everything okay?”

She must have been calling from the second floor of that house on the hill. The darkness in that room was almost oozing out of the speaker. I suddenly froze.

How did she know my number?

She had to be my wife after all. This had to be some kind of scheme of hers, pretending to be a stranger. But there was no point in trying to hash it out over the phone. I needed to meet her face to face and get it out of her.

In the calmest tone I could muster I said, “What do you want me to do?”

“There’s a sushi place called Kitsune downtown by the station. Go there and wait for me. I’ll come down the mountain.”

“Got it. I’ll be there.”

I hung up and looked again through the peephole, but the concierge had vanished. I got dressed and cautiously exited my room, but I made it through the corridor and down the elevator without seeing any sign of him.

The lobby on the first floor was dark and still, and only the lights at the front desk continued to blaze. As I crossed the lobby the phone at the desk began to ring, but the concierge did not appear. I had a feeling that ringing phone was a very ominous sign.

My eyes fell on the copperplate engraving hanging on the wall.

I don’t know if humans see things differently at night, but something had changed on the engraving. Something had appeared that I hadn’t seen there during the day, like it had been painted with invisible ink.

At the top of the slope I noticed a house. It looked just like that house on the hill, and in a darkened window on the second floor was something that resembled the shape of a person. I put my face up close up but couldn’t quite make it out. Maybe it was nothing more than an accidental smudge.

　　　　　　　◯

Onomichi’s downtown is an antiquated, old-fashioned shopping arcade that stretches along the tracks of the Sanyō Line. Most of the shops were already shuttered for the night, and I passed only a handful of people along the way.

I walked along, conscious of my echoing footsteps, until I saw a sign on my left that said “Kitsune”. The front of the shop was very narrow, and the interior very deep. I sat on the tatami section and ordered sashimi and beer. The clock said it was just past eight.

Some time passed, and still my wife did not show up.

I sipped my beer and waited. Of course I was angry, yet part of me was secretly relieved. It had been very irritating being dragged this way and that and having to fumble my way through the mist, but now I could put my thoughts together. I didn’t know what series of events had brought my wife and the concierge together, but it was now evident to me where the problem I needed to solve lay.

While I drank alone, the door slid open with a clatter.

“Good evening,” said the aproned chef.

I glanced over, and my mood immediately turned sour.

Standing there was the concierge. His large, rolling eyes fixed on me, and he beelined right over and sat down cross-legged across from me.

“Thank you for waiting.”

“I wasn’t waiting for you.”

We scowled at each other, not saying a word. It was like looking in a mirror. Without warning the concierge reached out and grabbed my glass, poured it full of beer, and downed it in one go.

“Aren’t you on the clock?” I asked. “You sure you should be drinking?”

“That’s not of any concern,” he replied, wiping his mouth and exhaling.

What was he doing here? Had my wife told him to come talk it over with me? His wits did seem to be frazzled. But the longer I observed him, the more likely it seemed that it wasn’t me that he was frightened of. Every so often he would look over his shoulder, keeping an eye on anyone passing outside on the street. It was like he was some kind of fugitive on the run.

After draining the glass the concierge didn’t say anything.

Impatiently, I pressed him, “What’s going on between you and her?”

“Her? Her who?”

“My wife!”

The concierge breathed out. “I’m not acquainted with your wife.”

“You’re telling me there’s nothing fishy going on?”

“Could I trouble you to keep it down? Please?”

The tables on the tatami and the counter were all crowded, but somehow the room was very quiet, like everyone was listening in on our conversation. The waiter placed another cup and bottle of beer in front of the concierge, who poured himself another drink before leaning forward and whispering, “Are you sure you haven’t made some kind of mistake?”

The pacifying tone in which he said this irritated me. “Then why are you here?”

“I was worried about you, sir.”

“You were standing in front of my door earlier, weren’t you?”

“And you pretended not to notice? That was not very kind of you.” His face arranged itself into a sort of half-smiling, half-crying expression.

My patience was being stretched thin. He was just spouting gibberish and making a fool of me. “Let’s just get to the bottom of this!”

“Why, certainly.”

“There’s no one in that house. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“Yes. There couldn’t possibly be anyone there.”

“Then who’s the woman who’s been holed up there for the past two weeks? Don’t try to pull anything over me.”

“That’s it, that’s exactly it,” said the concierge, sounding agitated. “That’s precisely why I am here.”

“Then spit it out!”

“Allow me to ask you something. Did you really see her?”

“See—”

“The woman on the second floor.”

“Of course I did. She’s my wife.”

“Come now, that’s absolutely ridiculous—” he chortled, his laughter grating on my ears.

But his face had gone deadly pale.

　　　　　　　◯

The concierge nursed his beer as he regaled me with his tale.

“We moved into that house three years ago.”

The details matched what the concierge’s wife had told me in that house on the hill during the day. The concierge worked at the hotel by the station, while his wife opened a store in the parlor of the house.

For a while their lives went on uneventfully. But last year the concierge had become concerned about his wife’s behavior. Some days she would open the store, some days she wouldn’t. And when the concierge wasn’t there she often went out somewhere.

“It seemed strange to me.”

“Did you have any proof that something funny was going on?”

“None at all. But I knew. We were a married couple, after all.”

Perhaps renting that old house had been a mistake. Everything was always covered in dust, and there was a constant dripping sound emanating from somewhere inside the house. A rotten smell pervaded the air, and yet when the concierge mentioned how strange everything was, his wife would not hear of it.

“It’s just you that’s being strange,” she would say dismissively, which led to them arguing more and more often.

When she was angry his wife barricaded herself on the second floor, and refused to come down no matter how he pleaded with her. The house was usually dark when he returned from work. He would creep up the stairs on all fours to find his wife in the room on the second floor with the room with all the shutters closed. But at least knowing that she was at home gave the concierge some peace of mind.

“But in April...” The concierge’s voice faltered. “One night I told her that I wouldn’t be coming home. But late that night I snuck back. I needed to be sure. I went around to the back porch, and when I got inside I heard someone walking around upstairs. It didn’t sound like my wife’s footsteps. I went up the stairs slowly, and heard my wife talking with someone.”

But when the concierge peeked up through the doorway, both the voices and the footsteps ceased. The room flickered in the illumination of the small lightbulb. His wife was shrinking into the shadow of the bureau next to the wall, staring at him motionlessly. There was a strange gleam in her eyes.

“Was someone here? I heard voices.”

“Of course not,” his wife said, letting out a cackle. “This place is empty.”

Those words sent a tremble through the concierge.

His wife suddenly sprang out from the shadows, knocking him aside, and flew down the stairs with terrific speed. The concierge rushed after her, but when he reached the front door it had been thrown wide open, and his wife was nowhere to be seen. She hadn’t even put on her shoes, and so the concierge ran out barefoot as well. For a brief moment he caught a glimpse of her white silhouette whirling by the light halfway down the slope. Through the sleeping streets his wife dashed, quick as the wind.

She wove in and out of his vision as he chased her. Reaching the path leading down from Senkōji to the Sanyō Line, he stopped a moment to catch his breath and looked down towards the bottom. His wife was flying down the winding path, approaching the railroad crossing.

“That was when the train came,” said the concierge. I felt a shiver go down my spine. “She stood in front of the tracks and looked back at me. I’d never seen such a cold look on her face, not once. It didn’t look human.”

The concierge wiped a bead of sweat away.

“And then she jumped.”

　　　　　　　◯

“So your wife killed herself?” I asked in a low voice, but the concierge chuckled scornfully.

“Who can say?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The train never stopped, and after it passed there were no remains. In other words I was the only person to see her jump. Who would believe me? My wife disappeared then, and the house has been empty ever since. That’s why I was so surprised when you talked about my wife. It just couldn’t possibly be true.”

After the concierge finished talking I found myself feeling extremely vexed. Was he really telling me the truth?

“Do you live alone in that house?”

“How could anyone live in a house like that?”

“But didn’t you go there this afternoon?”

“I just wanted to check. I had a feeling that maybe, just maybe, my wife had come back.”

“...Did you look on the second floor?”

The concierge shook his head fearfully. “The shutters are all closed in that room. It’s dark, empty. Just thinking about that bureau in the corner gives me the willies. I can practically hear my wife cackling again. I don’t nearly have the courage to go up those stairs,” he said irritably, before going silent again.

What in the world was going on here? Why was he telling me his story so urgently? The number of customers had dwindled, and the silence in the restaurant had changed. Now it was a sort of silence that made me think of being locked in that dark room on the second floor of that house.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Why indeed?”

“I’m not interested in your household affairs.”

“Yet you were listening so very carefully,” he retorted. “You’ve worked up a pretty good sweat there.”

I realized that I was in fact perspiring very disagreeably, just as he was.

The concierge put a grubby handkerchief to his mouth and looked at me pointedly. “Sir,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where my wife would be?”

A great loathing filled me as I stared back at this creepy man. I was beginning to think that he was the source of all this trouble. Every word that came out of his mouth was rubbish.

“I know exactly where your wife is.”

The concierge flinched at my response. “Where do you mean?”

“You know damn well where I mean. The second floor of that house.”

“That’s impossible. There is no one up there.”

“You’re right, no one lives there anymore.”

“Then…”

“Your wife is dead. You killed her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are you telling me I’m wrong?”

“Then who was it that jumped in front of the train?”

“You know the answer to that, too.”

Unable to find a reply, the concierge wheezed, his large eyes widening. His face turned white as a sheet before my eyes, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had passed out right then and there.

After a moment he stood up and staggered out of the restaurant.

　　　　　　　◯

I thought back to the night my wife and I had taken the night train.

“It feels like dawn will never come.”

No sooner had my wife spoken those words than the train passed through Onomichi Station. Lights burst forth around us, outside the window the deserted platforms whizzed by, bathed under fluorescent light.

“Have you ever been to Onomichi?” asked my wife, reading a sign with the station name as it went by.

“Nope, never,” I lied, for some reason.

Past Onomichi Station, the Sanyo Line passed through an old neighborhood of shops and houses, built almost right up to the tracks. I saw stone steps leading up to temple gates, and narrow paths creeping in between the houses. In a moment the slope was gone, but the sight stayed in my mind, like a mystical tunnel leading to an unfamiliar land.

We stared out at the city going by outside our windows, but as the train passed by the bottom of the long slope leading up to Senkōji, I saw a woman standing by the signal lights at the crossing. It lasted no more than a split second, but it seemed to me that she had been waving at me.

An image flashed into my mind, of a slope bathed in August sunshine. I was remembering that one summer in grad school when I had stopped in Onomichi to see Hasegawa.

After looking around Senkōji, we had walked down the hill. The path zig-zagged through old neighborhoods, the bright sunlight reflecting off of it almost blinding. The sky over the Seto Inland Sea was a shade of almost dizzying blue, and it felt as hot as a sauna. Hasegawa’s pale face and shoulders floated in the shade of her parasol, almost ethereal.

As we descended the slope, we talked about what we planned to do when we got back to Kyoto, and gossiped about our classmates. Hasegawa told me she wanted to go back as soon as she could and start studying.

“That makes sense. Undergrad exams are in September, right?”

“I just can’t help slacking off when I’m back here.”

“That doesn’t sound like you at all.”

“Really?”

“You always seem like you’re on top of things.”

“I don’t like it when people say that. I’m actually not on top of things at all. I just keep it hidden.”

“Why?”

“That’s just how I’ve always been.”

“So you try to keep things hidden?”

“That’s right. So when I was late today...I still can’t believe myself.”

“I don’t think it would be a bad thing to show that side of you,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted. “If you ever want to talk, I’m all ears.”

“I don’t know. I do have a lot on my plate.” Halfway down the slope she stopped walking. She was looking at the town spreading along the coast, towards Mukaishima, from which she had crossed the sea to get here. But it felt like she wasn’t really looking at that seascape, but rather at something else. I stood there, unsure how to react, until her mouth curled into a smile.

“But you’re only interested in problems you can solve, anyways,” she remarked, starting back down the slope.

Maybe she had just blurted the words out as they popped into her head; maybe there wasn’t any deep meaning behind them. After all, she was just a twenty year old college student I had only known for six months. But right then I felt that she had seen right through me, and I almost stopped dead in my tracks.

“Maybe part of me is like that.” It was all I could do to admit that. And I went down that long, burning slope after her.

I think that I’d always been dimly aware of that side of me, but was scared that someone would point it out. It felt like Hasegawa was telling me, you’re the kind of person that runs away at the first sign of trouble, the kind of person that shrinks away when you’re needed the most.

I snapped out of my reverie in the train car, to find my wife with her forehead pressed silently against the windowpane. Her expression was oddly cold, and I felt like the person in front of my eyes was a stranger. She didn’t respond when I called out to her, and it was only when I reached out and shook her shoulder that she seemed to realize where she was.

“What?”

“You okay? You were really out of it.”

“What? Really?”

“Yes, really.”

But she continued to stare out the window with a slightly puzzled expression. Faint city lights washed over her face, and were gone.

The train ran on and on through the blackness of the night.

I looked out the window once again. Who was that woman standing by the crossing at the bottom of the slope? It had only been a brief glimpse, but she reminded me of Hasegawa. But that was impossible. Hasegawa had disappeared at Kurama five years ago, and was still missing to this day.

My wife abruptly broke into my thoughts. “You didn’t see anything scary out there, did you?”

“Scary?”

“A woman,” said my wife. “She was standing at a crossing. You didn’t see her?”

“...No, I didn’t notice anything,” I replied, shaking my head. “What was scary about her?”

My wife thought for a moment before answering.

“...It was almost like I was looking at myself.”

　　　　　　　◯

I hurriedly paid my bill and left the sushi restaurant.

The shopping district was still, and the concierge was nowhere in sight.

I ran into an alley leading through the buildings and emerged onto a street. Across the roadway was the Sanyō Line, and on the other side of the crossing stone steps led up to the temple gates, and from there up through the houses on the hillside.

I need your help. Her words echoed in my ears.

I no longer cared why my wife had changed, or what it had to do with the concierge. The important thing was that my beloved wife was asking for my help. I needed to rescue her from the second floor of that house, and take her away from Onomichi as soon as I could. I should have come to this town earlier. I should never have let go of my wife.

I’m not a person who runs away from trouble, I thought to myself. I’m not.

I quickly ran over the crossing and through the deserted temple.

The hillside neighborhood felt nothing like it did during the day. The lamplit stone steps and crossroads were like the gloomy corridors of an aquarium. Only my footsteps echoed loudly through the silence.

As I proceeded ever closer to that house on the hill, I began to notice the ruins. It was easy to tell them apart, because they were empty voids where no lamplight could reach. Blue sheets hid the crumbling walls, and old roof tiles were piled before the doors. The more of them there were, the darker the streets became.

After walking for a while I looked back and saw the darkened coast spreading out beneath my eyes. In that moment I knew the night as I had never known it before. It felt like the dawn would never come.

When I arrived at the path leading up to that house on the hill, an inky silhouette came oozing out of the shadow of the ruins. It was the concierge.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to the house.”

“Please don’t. There is no one in there.”

“I’m going to get my wife.”

The instant those words left my lips he hurled himself at me.

The next thing I knew, I was being pinned down on the road. The concierge was straddling me, his hands wrapped around my throat. His enraged face was mere inches from my own, and drops of his sweat fell onto my brow. But I wasn’t afraid. What I felt was not fear, but fury. It was a fury that I had never known before, a fury that spread like fire from the lightless depths of my soul, transforming my entire being.

I reached out with my right hand and felt a heavy shard of broken tile. Wrapping my fingers around it, I smashed it against the concierge’s temple. The feeling was indescribable. I heard a groan. I hit him again, twice, three times, until the groans stopped. He went limp. I pushed his motionless body aside and sucked in a violent breath.

After a time I willed myself to get to my feet.

The concierge was lying by the side of the road, his body curled up, his eyes shut. The look on his face was miserable, and I almost expected him to burst into tears. Just to be sure, I bashed his head in one more time. The only response was a sound like a sigh, that quickly vanished into the darkness.

I tossed aside the tile, and looked down at my bloodsoaked hands.

　　　　　　　◯

I walked up towards the house on the hill.

The lights had been extinguished in the houses on the left side of the path, and on the right side all was dark in the forest. A lantern glinted in the middle of the path, but beyond it was only a lightless tunnel.

In the darkness I looked at my hands, wet with blood.

It played over in my head again: the physical feeling of smashing his head in, and the last sigh that had escaped him. It had sounded almost like a sigh of my own. At that moment I was finally sure of it—that my wife’s transformation had also been my own.

I looked up toward the top of the path and saw the figure of a woman in a white summer dress appear in the midst of the gloom. She was waving her right hand beneath the light, smiling at me. It was my wife. She had been waiting for me.

“You came for me. C’mon, let’s go home.”

She started walking up the slope beside me.

Yes, I realized, we were going home to that house.

“You were on the second floor, weren’t you?”

“Yeah, I was there the whole time. It was so dark in there, like a locked room.”

“You don’t need to worry anymore. I took care of him.”

“Serves him right!” she chuckled to herself, before raising her head and looking up. “Oh, there, I can hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“The train, running along. You can see it from the second floor.”

I heard the clanging of the crossing at the foot of the mountain—

The night train was coming through.

Why had I been so worried about bringing my wife back? What a fool I had been. I hadn’t understood a thing. But at least I hadn’t run away. As those thoughts went through my mind, a gentle sorrow welled up within me, and I stopped in my tracks.

My wife looked back at me. “What’s wrong? Can’t walk anymore?”

“I was just feeling sad.”

“It’s only a little bit farther, come on!”

“Yes, you’re right. Let’s go home.”

I reached out my bloodstained hand, and my wife took it. And when she did, all of my sorrow melted away. The black night enveloping us felt like a sweet, familiar blanket. I squeezed my wife’s hand tight, and this time I didn’t intend to let go.

And hand in hand we went home, to the house on the hill.