The Third Night - Tsugaru

“This happened in February three years ago, when I went to Aomori.”

Fujimura was the third to speak.

I still remembered how she used to doodle in her college-lined notebooks whenever there was downtime in English class. Her intent scribbling piqued my interest, and when I looked over it was to see a landscape of the Kamo Bridge, drawn entirely from memory. I was extremely impressed, but she only muttered, “I just liked drawing when I was a kid.”

Apparently she wasn’t quite as fervent about it as she had used to be. “I’m more into the appreciating side of it now,” she told me.

After graduating she had gone to work at an art gallery in Ginza, which didn’t surprise me.

What follows is Fujimura’s story.

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My husband likes trains, and once or twice a year he goes on a train trip with his friends. I usually join them if my schedule happens to line up. My dad used to subscribe to train magazines, so I guess trains were always in my blood. My husband says that I must have iron tracks for veins. When it comes to the travel plan I’m strictly hands-off though, and where we go is up to my husband and his friends.

I heard that their trips used to be like forced marches, sticking to strict timetables and focusing only on the train rides, but after I started coming along they eased things up a little. Kojima always joked to my husband, “You’re going soft, man!”

Kojima is one of my husband’s coworkers. He always comes on these trips, and even arranges all the tickets and lodging. He comes over to our place a lot, always with a bottle of his favorite wine in hand, and even comes to my gallery to see exhibitions from time to time. He’s like a little brother to me.

One day the three of us were sitting around drinking, when the topic of night trains came up.

“You’ve never ridden a night train before, Reiko?” Kojima asked, sounding surprised. “That’s too bad.”

“We can’t let that slide,” my husband declared.

Kojima nodded. “For night trains, you just gotta start from Ueno.”

“That’s the one. The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country…”

“It’s winter or nothing, and winter means Akebono.”

All of this went completely over my head. “What are you guys talking about?” I giggled.

Kojima explained, “Akebono’s the name of a sleeper train.”

Akebono runs between Ueno and Aomori. It departs from Ueno Station at 9 P.M., passing north through Echigo-Yuzawa along the coast of the Sea of Japan, and arrives in Aomori at around 10 the following morning. Now was the time to ride it, my husband and Kojima urged me, because the long-running route was due to be abolished. In other words, they just wanted to ride it themselves.

“Let’s do it then,” I replied.

“Kojima, count on you for the tickets?” asked my husband.

“Affirmative!” Kojima said back.

That was how they always were.

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One early February night, my husband and I went to Ueno Station.

A desolate air hung around Ueno Station at night. The lights on the platform felt dim, and a chill wind was blowing into the station from the darkness of night beyond the tracks.

When I at last I saw the blue, old-fashioned sleeper train slide into the station, a terribly forlorn feeling took hold of me. It felt as though I wasn’t in Tokyo anymore, but was standing alone in some remote village in the north.

“Why does this make me feel so lonely?”

“That’s the awesome thing about night trains,” my husband said happily. “The traveling feeling is just the greatest!”

But I didn’t think this loneliness was the same thing as the traveling feeling my husband was describing. It felt more raw than that. It was more like the shadows that stretched over the dirt path along the reservoir on the long way home, back when I was in grade school. I didn’t understand why I was feeling this way. My mood clouded over for some time, but when Kojima appeared on the platform, the usual bottles of wine swinging from his hand, the lonely feeling lifted from me and vanished.

It appeared he’d come straight from work; beneath his coat he was still wearing a suit.

“If it’d taken any longer I might have missed the train!”

But the fact that he’d still remembered to get wine to drink on the train was so like him. He’d bought the wine at a liquor store near his workplace and stowed them with his travel bag in a locker.

As we boarded the train and looked for our room, Kojima said, “How about you and me switch rooms, Reiko? Mine is much better, it’s on the side where you can see the ocean.”

So we swapped tickets.

At 9:15 the train left the station. We were only passing through Tokyo, but from inside the train the scene felt completely different. The three of us gathered in Kojima’s cramped room and clinked wineglasses together as we looked out the windows.

“Tomorrow we’re riding the Tsugaru Railway all the way to the end.”

I asked him what was at the end, but Kojima just said, “Uh, I dunno?”

“Hell if I know,” my husband shrugged.

This happened a lot, but still I could never help feeling incredulous.

“Riding to the last stop is an act of great significance,” Kojima argued. “You can’t just snooze your way through life and wake up when you get to the end of the line. I refuse to live my life that way!”

“Bravo, Kojima, bravo!”

“Thank you, thank you. So, how early do we get up tomorrow?”

Kojima and my husband excitedly peered at the timetable.

Whenever we were on these trips, these two were always finding excuses to look into the timetable. I loved seeing them like that, and sometimes I’d jump in and say, “Let’s try a different route,” or “I want to spend more time here!” Whenever I did, the boys would always look kind of bewildered, but they always looked so happy to bury their noses in the schedule and rejigger the itinerary.

Tomorrow we’d ride the steam train down the Tsugaru Railway, and once we arrived in Aomori we’d visit the Sannai-Maruyama ruins before checking into the hotel. When we finally looked up from making our plans, the train had already passed Ōmiya Station and was heading for Takazaki. We turned out the lights inside the room and watched the gorgeous lights of the unfamiliar streets stream by outside the window. I felt the loneliness from Ueno Station return.

My husband took a sip of wine and sighed, “Night trains always make you feel like you’re going far away.”

Pale streetlight gently washed across our faces.

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“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country. The earth lay white under the night sky.”

These are the famous opening lines to Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country.

“The earth lay white under the night sky: that’s a fantastic line. Great description,” my husband mulled as we passed through the tunnel to Echigo-Yuzawa.

By that time we had already emptied two bottles of Kojima’s wine. Fatigue seemed to have set in; my husband was yawning constantly, and even Kojima was unusually quiet. The tunnel walls pressed in close outside the window, and the pitch black room felt suffocating.

My husband suddenly touched my hand. “Any second now.”

The train came out of the long tunnel. The earth lay white under the night sky.

The change in the scenery was so abrupt, like we had wandered into another world, that I sucked in my breath. The countryside that unfolded on the other side of the window was dressed all in white. The houses were buried in snow, their lights twinkling like illustrations from a fairy tale storybook, and even behind the thick windows of the train I could almost feel the wintry silence that enveloped the mountain village. Light reflected from the snow through the windows, bathing the car in pale light, and for a moment everything felt magical.

“I’d love to be standing out there myself,” I sighed, looking out at the snowy landscape. “I’ll just have to watch it go by today, but someday…”

“In my experience, wishes like that tend to come true,” Kojima said. “Whenever you think ‘I wonder if I’ll ever stop at this station’, or ‘What was that thing I saw from the train?’, you inevitably end up going there afterwards. Even the places that you think you’ll never pass by again. It’s very strange, almost like fate is pulling you there.”

“Kojima’s such a damned romantic.”

“I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

“Sounds like someone’s got iron train tracks for veins!” I teased, and my husband and I looked at each other and laughed.

That was when it happened.

The room was suddenly illuminated bright as midday. The pale light streaming through the window vanished, and Kojima’s stunned face was flushed with light red as a kidney bean. It only lasted for a moment, and all my husband and I saw as we looked back through the window was a blazing conflagration throwing up sparks through the darkness of the forest as it receded into the distance. Once it vanished completely, the car was again steeped in the pale light reflected from the snow.

“What was that?” my husband muttered.

“It looked like a house fire,” Kojima gasped, his eyes wide.

He told us that as the train went by a break in the trees, he had seen a burning house in the snow-covered clearing.

“It seemed so peaceful for there being a fire,” he reflected. With the red light flickering over the snowy field and the barren trees, it had all seemed like a dream. “There was a woman standing by the house. I think she was looking this way and waving.”

“Stop that, Kojima!” For some reason a shiver went up my spine. How could anyone possibly be standing there waving at a passing night train with their house burning right in front of them? Then again, maybe she had been trying to get help.

But my husband wasn’t having any of it. “He’s just got women on the brain again.”

“Come on, not in front of Reiko,” Kojima grumbled. “I am a gentleman.”

“Even gentlemen let their minds wander now and then.”

“My thoughts are purely virtuous, I assure you.”

“Why would anyone try to get help from a train in the middle of the night, anyways? If you’ve got time to wave at a train, you’ve got time to call the fire department.”

“It didn’t look like she was waving for help. It was like—” Whatever Kojima meant to say died in his throat. “Ah, forget it,” he muttered.

Not long after that we all retired to our individual rooms. Not being used to the swaying of the night train, I had a hard time falling asleep. As I tossed and turned in the confined bed, the image of the burning house looming in the darkness replayed over and over in my mind, as vividly as though I had seen it with my own eyes.

Eventually I gave up and got out of bed, watching the nighttime landscape streaming past my window. I drank from a bottle of water I had bought at Ueno Station. Classical music was playing quietly from a speaker on the wall, mingling with the monotonous sound of the wheels going over the rails.

At around 2 A.M. I went to use the restroom.

After washing my hand I was going back to my room when I saw Kojima. He was standing near the train coupling, staring outside through the small window. His eyes were glazed over, like he wasn’t fully awake.

“What’re you doing there, Kojima?”

“I was feeling a little suffocated, is all. Must have had too much to drink.” His eyes were strange as he looked at me. “Just can’t get to sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see that house.”

“You mean, the one that was on fire?”

“You really didn’t see it at all?”

“I was looking at you two, and it flew by so quickly.”

“Your husband doesn’t believe me at all, but I know what I saw. There was a woman standing beside the burning house. Waving at me just like this, like she was beckoning me or—” He sighed, and trying to play it off as a joke said, “Man, what was in that wine?”

“If you’re really not feeling well let us know.”

“Thank you. I’ll be fine, I think.”

Before I went into my room I looked over one last time at Kojima. He was leaning against the juddering wall looking lost, like an abandoned child.

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We arrived at Hirosaki Station on the Ōu Line just past 9 the following morning.

The Tsugaru Railway is a local line that links Goshogawara Station to Tsugaru-Nakasato Station, passing the birthplace of famed author Dazai Osamu. The journey from Hirosaki to the start of the line in Goshogawara would take about half an hour. We hurriedly debarked the sleeper train and boarded a normal train on the Gonō Line.

As the train swayed along my husband kept yawning. For all his love of night trains, he couldn’t actually fall asleep on one.

“It’s plenty fun staring out the window, that’s all,” he said, refusing to admit defeat.

I’d eventually managed to fall asleep, so I was feeling refreshed. Then there was Kojima, who looked surprisingly nonchalant as if he had forgotten what had happened the previous night.

We got off the train at Goshogawara Station and moved to the Tsugaru Railway platform. Standing there, the chill of the northern morning and the snow dancing in the wind blew away whatever remained of our drowsiness. On the other side of the fence, the town of Goshogawara looked as if it were being squashed down beneath the grey clouds. A lone young station worker holding a signal flag stood in the ditch by the tracks, his long boots crunching the snow beneath them as he gazed intently at the approaching stove train. Taking in the sight from up there on the frozen platform, I could practically feel the cold of the north seeping into my bones.

“Feel that cold? We’re really in Aomori now!” my husband said happily, as if we couldn’t tell that for ourselves.

The train cars were all old-fashioned, almost like we had gone back in time. The wooden floor slats were damp with slush, and flakes of snow drifted in from the gaps in the ancient window frames. But around the coal stove the air was hot enough to make your face go red. We took the seats by the stove and bought a small bottle of sake from the train attendant, passing it around. Day drinking is one of the pleasures of traveling, my husband remarked with satisfaction.

Departing from Goshogawara Station, the train crossed through endless fields of white. Snow fell continuously from the ashen sky above, and with the snow that the train was heaving into the air it looked as though we were traveling through a blizzard. Beyond that silvery veil, dull houses and factories hugged the earth, like matches strewn across the countryside. Half-buried farm sheds and sluice gates passed by the window.

Staring out at that landscape, Kojima mumbled, “What was the deal with that burning house, anyways?”

I started in surprise. “You’re still going on about that, Kojima?”

“It wasn’t so much the house as that woman waving her hand.”

“That too.”

“Well according to your little theory, Kojima, we’re going to end up going back there, ain’t that right?”

“No, well, I don’t know about this one. I can’t see us ending up going to a lone house somewhere in the mountains of Echigo-Yuzawa. And anyways, that house has probably burned to ashes by now.” Kojima directed his gaze outside the window. “But that woman was beautiful.”

“…I knew that was what it was.”

“When it comes down to it, I’m just a dreamer.”

The conductor came walking down the aisle and wordlessly added more coals to the stove. My face was burning with the heat of the stove and flushed from the alcohol. I put it up to the window and smelled something like frozen dew, taking me back to my childhood days.

Tsugaru-Nakasato, the terminus of the line, was a small station, and it was but a few of us who straggled out of the train.

In the waiting room past the ticket barrier, two diminutive old women were sitting on the benches that surrounded the stove. In their long boots and shawls, they looked like two peas in a pod. Their black silhouettes stood out in sharp relief against the dazzling light streaming through the frosted glass doors.

“Let’s take the next train back. That’ll give us about thirty minutes,” Kojima suggested. “Why don’t we do a little walking?”

So we all went down the long path stretching out from the front of the station.

Passing in front of the town hall, here and there we saw little stores and barber shops and pachinko parlors. I saw an old estate with trees growing grandly in the garden, and thought to myself that this must have been a flourishing town, once upon a time. But there was hardly anyone out and about. Only trucks blanketed in grey snow drove by, and the town was so silent that all we could hear was the sound of our footsteps and breathing. Dirty snow was crusted up on the side of the wet asphalt, and the fluttering snow was starting to come down harder now.

My husband brushed off snow from his head and scarf like a little boy.

It felt like we were walking through a dream.

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“Let’s go down this way,” Kojima announced. “Come on, over here!”

Kojima hurried ahead into the mouth of an alley by an old-fashioned, long abandoned barbershop. We followed behind, my husband wearing a suspicious look on his face. There was something kind of strange about the way Kojima was acting. This was supposed to be his first time visiting this town, but it almost seemed like he was walking with a specific place in mind.

The alley led between houses and apartment buildings into an empty lot covered with snow.

“The hell’s he up to?” my husband wondered, sounding exasperated.

Kojima was heading towards a house on the other side of the lot. It was a very typical sort of house for these parts, two stories with a gabled roof. The green roof tiles were faded, and on the white walls there was a large stain like the shadow of a giant. Thick curtains were drawn over the many windows, and it didn’t show any signs of being lived in. It looked like a long-shuttered mountain bed and breakfast, and no sooner had that thought occurred to me than a sudden shiver went down my spine.

“I’ve seen this house before.”

I didn’t know what made me think that. My husband didn’t seem to have noticed my consternation though, and he approached Kojima, who had come to a standstill, calling out, “What’s wrong?”

Kojima turned around, a dull look in his eyes. It was the same look that I had seen on his face last night. He wasn’t even bothering to brush away the snow that was piling up on top of him. He studied our faces without saying anything, then turned to face that mysterious house once again.

“Reiko, don’t you remember this house?” he asked. “It’s that night house.”

A shock went through me.

A memory came back to my mind, of the art gallery near the end of last year.

The gallery I worked at was putting on an exhibition featuring a copperplate engraver, Kishida Michio. We were displaying Night Train, a series he had produced holed up in his Kyoto studio, but the man himself had been dead for three years. His works were managed by Yanagi Gallery, also of Kyoto. Our manager had had a close relationship with this gallery since the days of the previous owner, which also explained why this exhibition was being held in Tokyo. I was put in charge of making the arrangements with Yanagi Gallery. Among that series of works called Night Train was a mezzotint entitled Tsugaru. The house in front of me now looked exactly like the house in that picture.

I remembered now that on the last night before the opening of the exhibition Kojima had come to visit the gallery, and we had looked at that engraving together.

“Why did you come here, Kojima?”

“Just because.”

Kojima kept looking up at the house, not moving a muscle.

My husband and I went under the boxlike concrete garage to escape the falling snow. We looked around as we brushed off the snow, but it was almost empty. Along the damp walls sat a rusting child’s bicycle and an oil drum with cinders at the bottom.

“Makes you want to light a bonfire, doesn’t it?” My voice echoed off of the dreary walls. “Do you think it’s abandoned?”

“Looks that way. But that’s not important right now,” replied my husband, his voice terse. “What’s wrong with Kojima? What was he talking about earlier?”

My husband frowned when I explained about the mezzotint. “That’s some coincidence there.”

“That’s why I’ve been feeling odd, ever since I saw this house.”

“So that artist must’ve come here before. Don’t know why you’d want to draw a house like this, though.”

A pounding sound came from the direction of the front door. We looked outside the garage only to find that Kojiro wasn’t standing there anymore. He must be trying to talk to whoever lived here.

“The hell’s he doing?” muttered my husband.

My mind went back to that beautiful engraving once again.

On a backdrop of velvet darkness that evoked an endless night was a house with a gabled roof, drawn in shades of white. A faceless woman leaned out one of the windows on the second floor, waving her hand. It was almost as if she was calling out to me from within the engraving.

My husband suddenly spoke up urgently. “Doesn’t that sound funny to you?”

At his words I became aware that Kojima’s knocking had gotten strangely loud. The heavy thumping reverberated all the way over here in the garage. What was he doing? That sound was the sound of someone who had gone off the rails, like he was being driven by fear into trying to break the door down.

“What’s the matter with him?”

As soon as we flew out of the garage, the pounding sound stopped abruptly. Around the house with the gabled roof, silence reigned once again. The heavy curtains at the windows hadn’t moved in the slightest, and the whole edifice reminded me of someone staring out at the falling snow with their eyes shut. The front door remained closed, and Kojima was nowhere to be found.

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We circled around the house, calling Kojima’s name. Behind the house there was an empty field buried in snow which might have been a vegetable plot or a backyard, and beyond a fence there were houses interspersed among copses. The house looked the same from the rear as it did from the front, almost like it had neither back nor front. Curtains were drawn tightly across the windows, and there was no sign of anyone in there. We completed our circuit around the house and came back to the front entrance.

Brushing the snow off my hair, my husband mulled, “Kojima was pounding the door right up until we came out of the garage. There shouldn’t have been enough time for him to hide.”

“Then did he go inside?”

“It’s possible the door wasn’t locked. He might have realized that and gone inside, and watched us circling the house looking for him.”

“Isn’t that trespassing?”

“It doesn’t seem like something he would do.” My husband approached the door and tried the knob. It was locked. We called Kojima’s phone, but it was powered off.

“Hellooo, is anyone there?” shouted my husband, knocking on the door.

“Guess it’s really empty. I don’t understand.”

We exchanged glances, completely befuddled.

Things didn’t seem urgent enough to report anything to the police just yet. Kojima must have had his reasons. But we couldn’t wait around aimlessly in the falling snow for him either. “Let’s go back to the station,” my husband suggested, to which I quickly agreed. Inside the station we could warm ourselves by the stove and enjoy hot beverages while we waited.

“Sooner or later we should be able to get in touch with Kojima.” My husband led the way into the falling snow.

As I followed behind him, my legs suddenly stopped.

I couldn’t quite explain it, but I had a feeling that I had overlooked something very important. But what was it? Something was drawing me in. I turned, went up to the front door, and knocked a few times, listening close. After a moment, there was a click from inside the house.

I reached out a hand and grasped the doorknob. Something was whispering inside my head, telling me that the door was no longer locked. But I couldn’t summon the courage to open it. It felt like something was holding its breath in the darkness of the house, waiting for me to open the door so that it could catch me. I stood there with my hand on the doorknob, as if paralyzed.

All of a sudden someone grabbed my shoulder, pulling me away from the door.

“Hurry up, let’s get out of here!” came my husband’s voice, and before I knew what was happening, I was being led away, leaving the house behind. From what he told me later, I had been standing there in a daze holding the doorknob, unresponsive to his calling. I thought it had lasted for only a moment, but apparently it had been for much longer.

As we trudged through the snow, I turned to look at the house with the gabled roof as it receded into the distance. Through the veil of snow, the house appeared to have shut its eyes and returned to its slumber.

There was over an hour left before the next train, and Tsugaru-Nakasato Station was deserted. While I warmed my hands by the stove, my husband went over to the vending machine and bought us canned coffee. I felt warmth slowly spread throughout my body. My husband paced back and forth in the waiting room, brooding.

“We shoulda been on the first train out of here.”

“…It’s all gotten so strange.”

“What’s up with that house, anyways? What was Kojima doing, taking us there?”

I thought about Kojima, standing there last night on the train. Ever since that moment it was like he’d changed. I could still see the lost look on his face vividly in my mind, the way he looked like an abandoned child.

“There was something real funny about that house,” my husband mused. “When I turned around and looked at it from far away, that was the only house that didn’t have any snow piled up on top. You’d think there’d be a little at last, from the way it’s been coming down. Maybe it’s got some sort of heating in the roof. But then again it didn’t look like anybody was living there, either…”

He kept talking out loud to himself like this for a while, before trailing off with a final thought: “…Where’d Kojima disappear to?”

At that moment, I remembered the incident that happened during my college days.

I thought of the Fire Festival in Kurama that I had gone to with my English school friends, and of Hasegawa, who had disappeared that night.

Hasegawa had been one of my closest friends.

We hung out everywhere, not just in English school. I wasn’t bothered that she was a year ahead of me in school. She was majoring in Japanese literature, but she loved art just like me, so we’d often go around the city art museum on weekends, and sometimes we’d even venture out to Osaka or Kobe. At the time she was the only person that I felt free to be myself around. It was like we’d known each other since we were kids, that’s how close I felt.

Of course I was shocked when she disappeared. But I won’t deny that at the same time I had always thought to myself privately that something this like might happen with her.

As close as we got, there was always something mysterious about her. It was like at the heart of her lay a darkness black as night, and everything—her air of disquietude, the kindness she showed to everyone, the sharpness that felt like she could see right through you—came from that place of darkness. Her fondness for taking walks at night might have had something to do with it too. She’d invited me multiple times to join her on those “nocturnal adventures” of hers, and whenever we were on these walks she seemed so alive.

While going through my recollections, I realized that I had been avoiding thinking of her all this time.

While we waited in Tsugaru-Nakasato Station for Kojima to contact us, I thought of Hasegawa’s disappearance in Kurama, and began to wonder whether the hole that had swallowed her up that night still lay there in wait.

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We returned on the Tsugaru Railway to Goshogawara Station, and walked to a two-story café at a nearby intersection to have lunch before we headed to Aomori city. Plants and antiques bedecked the interior and soft music was playing; the clinking of plates in the sink and the rustling of voices around me soothed my nerves.

My husband looked disgruntled, but that was of course understandable. Kojima had finally called us while we waited at Tsugaru-Nakasato, only to inform us that he was inside that house with the gabled roof.

When my husband asked him why, he only said, “I’ll tell you later,” and quickly hung up. If he was telling us the truth, that meant that the whole time we were circling around looking for him, he had been quietly biding his time inside the house. It was just so unexpected of him. My husband suspected that he might have gotten entangled in some sort of trouble, which didn’t seem an unreasonable conclusion.

But Kojima had only laughed off my husband’s concern. “I’ll catch up with you later. Say hello to Reiko for me,” he had said, before hanging up.

The entire time on the way back to Goshogawara, my husband had a look of disbelief on his face. I sipped an after-meal coffee, pondering, “I hope he hasn’t been in an accident.”

“He’s been a little off since last night, wouldn’t you say?”

I told him about what had happened last night on my way back from the bathroom. My husband thought for a while, then murmured to himself, “A burning house, huh?”

I froze. In my mind’s eye I saw a house on fire in the middle of a snowy lot, as vividly as if I had seen it in real life.

Seeing my face stiffen, my husband took my hand. “You alright?” he asked. “That house looked like it did something to you, too.”

“When I was about to open the door, I suddenly just got so scared.”

The pounding echoed in my ears again. Had that really been Kojima knocking on the door? I had this feeling that he had already been shut in the mysterious house by then, and that the pounding sound was him trying to get out—but of course that was all my imagination, just unfounded speculation.

“Looks like it’s just going to be the two of us for now. Once Kojima catches up I’m really gonna let him have it,” said my husband, trying to cheer me up.

We returned to the front of Goshogawara Station and made arrangements at a taxi company for a ride to the Sannai-Maruyama ruins. Since we’d learned that a bus ran from the ruins back down to Aoyama Station, we’d made reservations for a hotel right next to the station.

It took 40 minutes for the taxi to get to the ruins. Passing through the streets of Goshogawara and emerging onto an elevated expressway, I saw through the fogged up windows rolling fields and apple orchards covered in snow, and on the right in the distance I could just make out the silhouette of Mount Iwaki.

As I listened to the patter of conversation between my husband and the taxi driver, I began to nod off. My intermittent slumber was fretful. Fragments of everything that had happened since last night drifted into my head and disappeared just as quickly. I knew there had to be a connection between them all, but I just couldn’t grasp what it was.

I awoke with a jolt to my husband shaking my shoulder.

“We’re here,” he said.

The taxi had stopped in front of a large, snow-covered building. The piercing air felt wonderful when I stepped outside. Inside the deserted reception area we changed into long boots and set out into the ruins.

An older gentleman in a yellow raincoat guided us through the park. Across the snow fields we saw the mounds of pit-houses rising up like igloos. Few people visited during the winter, and we were the only people walking around in the fluttering snow.

“Maybe we should’ve come in the summer,” my husband frowned.

“Not at all,” said our guide, sniffling up snot. “I enjoy winter as well. There’s a good view of Mount Hakkōda over there, covered in white. It’s very pretty.”

We saw cracks in the earth that were filled with shattered earthenware, and ruins where you could hear groundwater pumping beneath, and at last we came to the base of a strange tower constructed with thick chestnut tree trunks.

Here my husband brought up an unexpected topic. “How did we end up taking a night train again?”

“I don’t remember anymore.”

“It was near the end of last year, wasn’t it? Kojima came over to visit. Weren’t you the one who started talking about night trains?”

“Was I?”

“Don’t you think there must have been a reason?”

My husband must have been trying to piece the events together too as he walked around the ruins.

“I don’t remember anything.” When I said that he fell back into quiet introspection again.

On our way back after the tour was over, I cast my eyes into a grove of cedar trees across the snow and noticed human figures there. There were two of them, a young man with a little girl, and at first I thought they must be parent and child.

“There’s people walking over there.” I pointed.

“Where?” my husband asked, looking puzzled.

“They’re right there!” I pointed at the cedar grove, but my husband only continued to squint.

“There’s no one there.”

Yet I could see them as plain as day. They were stopped and looking over here. I was suddenly taken aback. From this distance it was a little hard to make out, but the man looked like Kojima.

“Isn’t that Kojima? Who’s that little girl?”

“I don’t see anything.”

“What are you talking about? Don’t you see them there?” I waved and shouted, “Kojima!”

The man waved back at me, as did the little girl beside him. I could distinctly see the red coat she was wearing.

I heard my husband ask our guide, “Do you see anything?”

“Weel, I don’t see anything.”

I walked forward into the snow, shouting Kojima’s name. But he just kept his hand raised, not replying or showing any signs of coming this way. And who was that girl with him? Eventually the two stepped back and vanished into the depths of that dark cedar grove.

“What was that all about? Didn’t he hear me calling?” I muttered to myself, when a vivid image flashed into my mind, of a reservoir embankment dyed by the setting sun. Atop that embankment walked a grade-school me, a long shadow trailing behind. Beside me walked another girl.

That girl was Kana.

　　　　　　　◯

When I was a kid I lived overseas because of my dad’s work, until the spring of my third year in elementary school when I moved to a Tokyo suburb. I spent the rest of my childhood in that town until I went to college in Kyoto.

My house was at the end of a sprawling new residential development on a hill, overlooking a large reservoir. It was an old reservoir that had been there before they developed the area; in summer countless turtles swam laps there, and in winter migrating birds made it their encampment. The thick reeds growing at the water’s edge were a little creepy, and I heard whispered rumors about the ghost of a drowned child that would appear there at sunset.

A little path ran along the top of the embankment, and that was the path I would take on my way home from school.

We were forbidden by the teachers from taking that path to and from school, but the approved route was just too long and roundabout. I’d never been a goody-two-shoes, and I always went home alone anyways. I’d just come back from overseas, so maybe I just wasn’t used to school in Japan yet. That path was where I met my classmate Kana for the first time.

I think what brought us together was how isolated we both were. Kana refused to talk to anyone she didn’t like, including the teacher. With my frustrations at being in an unfamiliar school, I looked up to Kana’s aloofness.

On top of that, we both had a shared love of drawing. Yet Kana didn’t seem to have any interest whatsoever in joining the art club, or being praised in art class. The only person she would show her drawings to was me. I took that as a point of pride.

Kana’s house was below the embankment. It was a cheerful house that stood alone in a lot surrounded by trees, exactly the type of place that I would expect Kana to live.

I used to come over to her house and draw pictures with her. Her room was on the second floor. It was just like an artist’s studio with its wooden floor, and it was nice and cool even in the summer. She would strip off her uniform and throw herself down on the floor to draw, so I did the same. I felt like doing that made my pictures better. The room felt wonderfully cool like we were underwater, and from the window came the wind blowing over the reservoir, carrying with it the cries of cicadas.

Lying there resting her drawing hand, Kana looked like a gorgeous mermaid.

　　　　　　　◯

We took the bus from the Sannai-Maruyama ruins back to Aomori Station.

Swaying on the bus, I thought about the figures I had seen on the other side of that snowy field. The girl holding hands with Kojima had looked exactly like Kana. But that was impossible. It had been nearly twenty years since I had played with her. And neither my husband nor the man guiding us had been able to see them.

“Just what was that?” I thought to myself. It was such a hazy story that I was hesitant to tell it to my husband.

After doing some shopping at a souvenir shop near Aomori Station, we checked in to the hotel. Kojima hadn’t arrived there yet. Around five, the streets of Aomori were already getting dark.

My husband looked out the window anxiously and murmured, “How did this happen?”

Lying on the bed, I felt an indescribable loneliness. It was the same loneliness that had overtaken me at the start of the journey, when I was waiting for the train at Ueno Station. I wouldn’t be feeling this way, if only Kojima was here, I thought. We’d be going out to dinner, talking about our plans for tomorrow…

My husband walked over from the window and lay down on the other bed. We both stared up at the ceiling, neither of us speaking. I was starting to nod off, when my husband mumbled, “That house in Tsugaru-Nakasato.”

“Hmm?”

But my husband didn’t continue. I turned over in bed to see him glaring at the ceiling, his forehead creased.

“What’s wrong?”

“…Nothing. I must have seen it wrong.”

“Don’t just bottle it up on your own, talk to me!”

“All right, I’ll say it. Did you see someone looking out from the windows?”

I shuddered and sat up. “Why would you say something so scary?”

“You didn’t see it?”

“I didn’t see anything!”

“It was when we were leaving that house in Tsugaru-Nakasato—”

My husband had been walking away when he realized that I wasn’t with him. When he turned around, it was to see me standing at the front door with my hand on the doorknob, not moving. As he hustled back, he thought he saw a curtain move at one of the second floor windows. It was almost like the sleeping house had cracked an eye open. And when he looked up and squinted at the window, he saw a figure between the curtains.

“Was it Kojima?…no, of course it wasn’t.” If it had been Kojima, then my husband wouldn’t have been so worried. He would simply have opened the door and gone with me to get answers from Kojima.

“It wasn’t Kojima. I think it was a girl.”

“A girl?”

“…I think so.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“The curtain closed pretty quickly, and I couldn’t get a good look. And you were acting all weird. It was so creepy, all I could think of was getting away from that house as fast as I could.”

He seemed to be hiding something, though. It felt like he had actually gotten a good look at the person at the window, and just wasn’t telling me about it. The way he was talking so haltingly, like there was something stuck at the back of his throat, wasn’t like him at all.

Right then his cell phone rang.

He swiftly got up from the bed and grabbed it. “Where are you?” he asked. A beat later I heard his voice rising as he demanded, “What are you doing?”

I got up and listened in on him going back and forth with Kojima, and realized that Kojima was still in the house in Tsugaru-Nakasato. Finally my husband hung up, his expression clouding over.

“He’s not getting here until nighttime.”

“He’s still over there?”

“That’s what he told me.”

That meant that the figure I saw at the ruins hadn’t been him. That was a small relief. But I still had no clue why he was still at the house, or what he was doing there.

“What about dinner?”

“He said for us to go ahead and eat.”

“What’s his deal, anyways?”

“He didn’t explain anything. I never knew he could be so inconsiderate. Catch up with you tonight, my ass.”

“Don’t be so angry.”

“I’m just mad because I’m hungry. Let’s go get dinner.”

　　　　　　　◯

The Japanese restaurant that Kojima had made a reservation for was on a small street branching south from the main boulevard going east from Aomori Station. The trampled snow underfoot was frozen solid, and my husband was there to support me whenever I was on the verge of slipping. We gingerly waddled through the backstreet, and it was with a sense of relief that we finally reached the restaurant.

The food was delicious, but with Kojima weighing on our minds the conversation was lethargic. We needed to make plans for tomorrow, but just couldn’t get in the mood. My husband seemed to be shouldering a burden all of his own. But the same could be said for me; even after learning that the figure that I saw at the ruins couldn’t have been Kojima, in my mind I saw the little girl disappearing into the cedars over and over. Before I knew it I found my thoughts gravitating towards Kana, my childhood friend from school.

Kana was a mysterious child.

Something that mystified me, now that I was thinking about it, was that I had no memory of ever having met her family. It was almost as if she lived in that house all by herself. Whenever I asked about her family, she would silently leave the room and hide somewhere. That always made me feel very downhearted. And when I was about to cry, Kana would come back unexpectedly, plant a kiss on my cheek, and go back to drawing. I was scared of upsetting her, and so I learned not to ask any unnecessary questions.

The other mysterious thing was that the other kids in class called her a liar. As far as I knew, though Kana was a capricious girl, she had never told a lie. When I asked the other kids what she had lied about, they would only chant, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” I secretly stewed on her behalf.

My husband broke in on my thoughts. “What’s on your mind right now?”

“Something from a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“From elementary school. I used to have this mysterious friend.”

“You mean Kana?”

His reply took me by surprise. “How did you know?”

“I probably heard it from your mother.”

“Why would she tell you about that? My mom hated Kana.”

“That’s not the way I heard it.”

I couldn’t quite put it into words, but my mom had always opposed me playing with Kana. Now that I thought about it, forcing me into art class had probably been her way of separating us.

　　　　　　　◯

My mom had found an art school for kids by the station, and told me I was going to start attending classes there. I resisted, but she had already done the legwork and enrolled me there. That was the first and only time that she had ever done anything like that without consulting me.

In the end I unwillingly began to attend the school.

Kana didn’t like that at all. “You’re just trying to get better than me! You’re just trying to brag!” she would say, and things gradually got awkward between us. More and more often Kana started hiding when I came over to play. It made me feel so lonely. On the other hand, some of the other girls from school attended that same art class, and making friends with them helped me start to enjoy going to school a little more.

As I settled into school, Kana started being absent more and more frequently, and eventually she stopped coming at all. I was worried, but didn’t go visit her house, afraid that she would say something hateful to me. I started walking home the long way with my other classmates, and I no longer took that path along the embankment of the reservoir.

The last time I visited Kana was on a winter’s day.

The embankment was buried in snow. I dug in my feet firmly step by step as I walked along, careful not to slip and fall. Surrounded by withered trees, the lot was undisturbed even by a single footstep, and at the end of it was that house. A tingle went up my back, and my feet suddenly refused to take another step.

There was nothing cheerful about the house anymore.

Those green gables looked loathsome, under the snow falling from the grey sky. The giant-shaped mark on the white walls seemed ghastly, and thick curtains were drawn over the bizarrely numerous windows.

It looked like Kana’s house had its eyes shut, slumbering.

　　　　　　　◯

I was dumbfounded when the memory of that winter’s day came flooding back. How could I have forgotten about that all this time?

When I regained my senses, my husband was staring at me with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I was just remembering something.”

“I’m feeling kind of bloated. Why don’t we go out for a walk?”

“Good idea.”

We walked out into the cold nighttime streets.

The back streets were still and quiet beneath the fluttering snow, and the lights of the bars and izakaya glistened on the frozen ground. As we plodded along we looked up and saw icicles the size of a small child hanging from the eaves of an abandoned house.

“One of these things falls, they could kill you,” my husband said in a chipper tone, his voice echoing through the dark tunnel-like alleyway.

Walking through the frozen streets, there was still a mystery I couldn’t get out of my head. The house in Tsugaru-Nakasato where Kojima had disappeared looked exactly like Kana’s house.

We passed by shuttered shops and old mixed-use buildings on our way through the street. The snow piled up at the side of the road soaked up the light of the orange street lamps. A bus went by, filling the street with the crunching of snow chains over the icy road. The snow brushing my cheek reminded me of that winter day, and my last visit to Kana’s house.

What happened after that? The question flitted through my brain.

Why couldn’t I remember? Had I gone inside the house that day? Why didn’t I see Kana after that ever again?

“So, what did my mom tell you?”

“About what?”

“Kana.”

“Eh, not much. Just that she was kind of weird.”

“You’re sure that’s all?”

“Snow’s coming down harder,” my husband remarked, looking up at the dark sky. “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country—”

When I heard those words, I clearly saw the scenes from the night train flash before my eyes again. A snowy landscape, straight from the pages of a fairy tale storybook. And a ball of flame passing by in an instant, throwing up brilliant sparks in the midst of the darkness. I could picture the burning house Kojima had spoken as if I had seen it myself.

That was because it was the same thing I had seen in elementary school.

That winter’s day, the embankment of the reservoir had stretched out long and pale before me. I ran up it pell-mell and turned around to see the trees lit up in the darkness. Kana’s house was burning, throwing up countless sparks into the pitch black sky. Flames frolicked behind the glass windows as though they were alive. I stood there on the embankment, panting heavily, watching the house burn.

I was the one that set that house on fire. As that realization spread through me, I unconsciously came to a halt.

We were passing by a large building that looked like some kind of market. There was a sign that said “Aomori Gyosai Center”, and light was leaking out beneath the half-closed shutters. When I looked into the market, I saw a girl running down the passageway.

“Kana?”

Hearing my whisper, my husband turned around in astonishment.

　　　　　　　◯

I ducked under the shutter into the market.

Shops lined both sides of the passage like festival booths. Business had long since ended for the day, and none of the shopkeepers were to be seen, let alone customers. The old fluorescent lights cast their cold light on the damp concrete floor and the tarp-covered counters. I called her name once more.

“Kana?”

There were any number of places to hide in the darkness behind the counters. My eyes flicked left and right as I slowly walked forward. From banners to hand drawn depictions of tuna, all sorts of advertisements dangled from the ceiling. But in the dimmed lights of the market, all this gaudy paraphernalia looked on the contrary ominous and eerie.

My husband caught up to me, and his voice echoed against the low ceiling. “What’s the matter?”

“There was a little girl here.”

“There are little girls everywhere.”

“It was Kana.”

My husband sighed and looked around the market. “First Kojima starts spouting all that crazy stuff, now you. Gimme a break. Explain to me how exactly your friend from elementary school could have appeared looking exactly the same?”

“I’m the one who set fire to Kana’s house.”

When I said that my husband closed his mouth. Yet he didn’t seem terribly surprised to hear me say that. A moment later he asked, “Is that what you really think?”

He stood there on the path looking at me. The look in his eyes was composed, and it felt like he was looking straight into my soul. He said, almost pleadingly, “There was no burning house.”

“How can you say that?”

“Kana was just a figment of your imagination. She’s just another part of you.”

I didn’t understand what my husband was saying.

“Your mother told me that you were having trouble fitting in at school. Kana was an oddball, proud, good at art: in other words, she was you. The kid everyone else in class called a liar? That was you.”

In shock I mumbled, “I don’t believe it.”

“The reason Kana disappeared was because you didn’t need her anymore. All of that happened in your own fantasy world. Just think about it. How could some grade schooler set fire to her friend’s house without anyone realizing it?”

In the chill emanating from the wet concrete, I felt like my body was freezing to the core. My husband seemed to be doing his best to calm my fears. But still I wasn’t satisfied.

“No, you don’t understand anything!”

I recalled Kana’s room. The summer breeze blowing through the window ruffled the curtain as Kana and I drew pictures, lying with our bellies against the cool wooden floor. It was a precious, beautiful scene, from a sweet world all our own. I understand the logic of what my husband was saying, but I couldn’t let that logic erase Kana, lying in that room like a gorgeous mermaid. That would be like killing her twice for me.

“How do you explain that house in Tsugaru-Nakasato?” I challenged him. “That was Kana’s house!”

“That’s impossible. That must be your own projection.”

“Why did Kojima disappear?”

My husband grimaced, like the question had taken him by surprise. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.”

“Then what about the figures I saw at the ruins? It was Kojima and Kana holding hands. If that house is Kana’s house, then they must be in there with each other!”

My husband’s face was growing steadily paler and more strained. “W-what are you trying to say? You don’t mean…”

“Someone was looking out the window after Kojima disappeared. You saw who it was, didn’t you?”

“I already told you, I didn’t get a good look.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying!”

“You are lying. Who was it?”

“But…but it’s impossible. It’s not possible!” My husband wrung out his words. “It was you looking out the window!”

From behind me I suddenly heard the sound of boxes toppling.

When I turned around, Kana was standing at the end of the passage. She hadn’t changed a bit from the way she looked in school. Her drenched red coat glistened under the fluorescent lights. She smiled and waved a hand at me, before sliding open a door and dashing out the rear of the market.

“Kana, wait!” I shouted, running after her.

Behind the market was an empty lot buried in snow. It looked like the site where a demolished building had once stood, like a gaping white hole in the town. At the center of the lot stood a house with a gabled roof, every single window blazing with light. That light shook me to the core like the crash of a cymbal.

It was Kana’s house.

　　　　　　　◯

Last December we had finished up preparations for the exhibition of Kishida Michio’s Night Train at my gallery. The artworks had been shipped over from Yanagi Gallery in Kyoto, and the delivery and placement had been finalized. Outside the windows the Ginza backstreet was dark, but the interior of the gallery was flooded by an almost otherworldly brightness. The mezzotints hanging on the milk-white walls brimmed with the mysterious aura of night.

Kojima came walking in.

“Evening, Reiko.”

“Oh, Kojima!”

“I got off work early, so I went shopping in Yūrakuchō. Thought I’d drop in while I was at it. Senpai’s going to be late tonight, something about trouble at one of the branches…” He chattered away, peering at the engravings, before folding his arms and exhaling. “Pretty mysterious images, aren’t they? I like it.”

“They’re by Kishida Michio. He passed away though, three years ago.”

If you looked at those engravings for a long time a strange feeling would come over you. It was like beyond those rectangular holes bored into the milky walls lay a world of endless night. There were forty-eight works in the Night Train series, and according to Yanagi of Yanagi Gallery, this exhibition in Tokyo was the first time they had all been displayed together. Onomichi. Ise. Nobeyama. Nara. Aizu. Okuhida. Matsumoto. Nagasaki.

“Did you ever meet Kishida, Reiko?”

“I’ve heard a lot about him, but I never met him. He seemed pretty eccentric.”

“And he spent his whole career creating this series?”

When Kojima asked me that, I recalled the anecdote that I had heard from Yanagi of Yanagi Gallery a few days earlier.

As a matter of fact, Kishida Michio had created a counterpart to the Night Train series in secret, entitled Dawn. If Night Train was a depiction of eternal night, Dawn portrayed a single morning, according to Kishida Michio himself. But Kishida had never actually shown Dawn to anyone before he passed away.

Sounding fascinated, Kojima wondered, “Where is that series now?”

“I don’t know. After Kishida died, the gallery organized his belongings, but they didn’t find anything related to Dawn.”

“So he was lying?”

“To this day no one knows.”

“Sounds like he really was eccentric, this Kishida Michio guy.”

As Kojima and I looked through each engraving in turn, I found my feet rooted to the floor when I came to one in particular. It was entitled Night Train——Tsugaru.

It depicted a house with a gabled roof on a stark white background. A faceless woman leaned out one of the windows on the second floor, waving her hand. Of all the forty-eight works on display this one felt the most homey, and at the same time the most unsettling. As I stared at it I began to feel like I was suffocating, and yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Kojima looked at me with concern. “Something wrong?”

“This picture just really grabs me for some reason. I don’t know why.”

“Looks kinda like a mountain villa, doesn’t it? Do you think it really exists somewhere in Tsugaru?”

“Want to know another secret about Kishida?”

“What is it?”

“All of these pictures are scenes from a journey, but actually, Kishida never went to any of these places.”

“Seriously?”

“He didn’t travel.”

“That sounds unbelievable. He even titled them after places and everything,” Kojima said incredulously. “So there is no house like this in Tsugaru, then.”

“I don’t know. Coincidences happen.”

I reached out and traced my finger along the outline of the house. The faceless woman leaned out of the window.

“Kishida always went to bed before sunrise and woke up after the sun went down. He would only meet his friends at night. He lived in a world of continuous nights, and put what he saw into his work…that’s why it’s called Night Train.”

“A world of night, huh?” Kojima muttered, sounding almost impressed. He looked like he wanted to add something else, but in the end refrained, and continued just to stand next to me looking at the engraving.

“Why does this look so familiar?” I murmured, staring straight at the picture. “Maybe this house is built in my own world of night.”

　　　　　　　◯

I dashed over the snow, heading for that house.

From far away I could hear my husband’s voice ringing in the air, but I didn’t look back.

I saw a window on the second floor swing open from the inside and a female figure lean out. The light that issued forth from the window was so blinding that I saw her only as a black shadow. But even so I knew that it was Kana. She threw her arms open to me, welcoming me into the house.

That was when I finally realized.

Kana had been calling out to me since the moment I saw that mezzotint in the gallery in Ginza. The night train that had departed in the dead of night from Ueno Station had been bound for this house. Now, Kana’s house had come back to life, shining brilliantly in the darkness of the night. All the curtains were thrown open, every window blazed with light.

It was as though it was burning from the inside.