The Final Night - Kurama

The rain falling on the inn in Kibune gradually subsided to a drizzle.

“We should get going soon,” Nakai murmured, almost as if he was talking to himself.

The waitstaff looked dubious as they tidied up the remains of the stew. It wasn’t exactly unwarranted. We had told them we were here to see the Kurama Fire Festival, yet here we were, hardly looking as if we were making ready to go out.

Takeda and Tanabe unfolded a horse racing form and made their predictions for tomorrow’s Kikuka-shō, while Fujimura lay down in the next room to sober up. I suspected that at this rate the festival might end before we got there, yet I couldn’t bring myself to get up. Maybe everyone else felt the same.

Nakai took a beer bottle and poured it into my glass. “You liked Hasegawa, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t we all?”

“...Yes, I suppose that’s true. Of course it’s true,” Nakai admitted, with a smile.

　　　　　　　◯

When we all got up at last, the rain had stopped.

The staff drove us down to Kibuneguchi, where we boarded an Eizan railcar. There were scant few passengers, but the floor was extremely muddied up and the air inside the cars stagnant. While we had been gathered around the stewpot at the inn in Kibune, this little railcar had been busy carrying vast hordes of tourists.

By the time we reached Kurama Station the festival was over.

“Looks like we missed the party,” Takeda said.

There was a long line of tourists in Kurama Station for the return train, and the normally sleepy mountain station was filled with a feverish air. As we made our way along we came across police officers directing tourists through town. Dampened torch cinders lay scattered on the asphalt, rustling mournfully as we tread them underfoot. We stood at the foot of the stone steps of Kuramadera for a while, watching the bustle of the festival ebb away. The atmosphere was like that of a burden being lifted from your shoulders. Nobody said it, but it felt like while we listened to the rain back in the inn, we had been waiting for the festival to end.

Finally, Nakai proposed, “Why don’t we take a stroll back to Kibuneguchi?”

“Will the weather hold up?” Fujimura glanced up at the sky. Not a star was visible in the sky.

“But you saw how crowded the trains are,” pointed out Takeda.

Tanabe nodded in agreement. “Personally, I’d rather not get squashed like a sardine in a tin can.”

“Then let’s get walking!”

We started off, following behind Nakai.

Gift shops and houses lined the road through the temple town. Kids played around little bonfires lit in braziers by the entrances, and for a while the festival fervor lingered in the air. But five minutes down the road the houses grew sparse, and the bustle of Kuramadera died away. Nighttime chill oozed out from the cedar grove on the left side of the path. Owing to the festival traffic restrictions there were no cars, and the asphalt road was deserted.

“Pretty quiet road here, huh?” Fujimura muttered.

What if this nighttime road leads to another world, and what if Hasegawa is living there? I wondered. In the ten years since she had disappeared at the Kurama Fire Festival, her whereabouts had remained completely known. It felt like the dark hole that had swallowed her up still yawned somewhere here in Kurama.

Before I realized it Nakai was walking beside me.

“Tomorrow, why don’t we all go to see Kishida Michio’s engravings?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Pretty crazy coincidence, huh?”

I thought about the stories that everyone had told at the inn in Kibune.

It had all started with Nakai’s story about the picture drawn by Kishida Michio that he had seen in the business hotel in Onomichi. Everyone had come out with remembrances of their own travels: Onomichi, Okuhida, Tsugaru, Tenryūkyō. They had all been common, unremarkable travel stories. Unremarkable, that is, except for the curious fact that they all revolve around the engravings of Kishida Michio’s Night Train.

In Nakai’s case, he had gone chasing after his wife who had left home, but stories like that weren’t so uncommon these days. Takeda, Fujimura, Tanabe, they’d all come back without incident from their travels.

But there was a chance that they wouldn’t, whispered a voice inside me.

A hole might open up unexpectedly in the midst of a journey and swallow you up. That possibility was always there.

Just like Hasegawa had been swallowed up that night—

An Eizan railcar came through on the other side of a cedar copse flanking both sides of a mountain stream. We all stood at the side of the road, transfixed at the sight of the train running through the depths of the night. The high pitched clickety-clack of the wheels mixed with the sound of the rushing stream before receding into the distance.

It felt like a scene out of a dream, and it reminded me of the engraving by Kishida Michio that I had seen earlier in the day in the window of the gallery.

　　　　　　　◯

Earlier in the afternoon, I had heard a strange tale from Yanagi, the owner of the gallery.

“Kishida had a mysterious, unpublished work.”

Kishida Michio started the Night Train series ten years ago, the same year that Hasegawa had disappeared. And in the following two and a half years until his death, he produced forty-eight works.

When he had still been alive, Kishida had intimated to Yanagi of the existence of an unpublished series. It was a counterpart to Night Train, a series of copperplate engravings entitled Dawn.

Where Night Train depicted an endless night, Dawn portrayed a single morning, Kishida had supposedly said.

“The patrons of the salon were most eager to view it.”

“Salon?”

“At the time, Kishida’s home played host to a number of people who would gather there late at night. That gathering was called the ‘Kishida Salon’. Of course, I was one of that number.”

“So, has anyone ever seen Dawn?”

“Not a single person.” Yanagi smiled.

After the Eizan railcar passed by on the other side of the cedar trees, the area became quiet once more. We started to walk again.

This Dawn intrigued me. Night Train was already a lengthy series at 48 pieces, so its counterpart, Dawn, must be pretty substantial itself. However, Yanagi told me that even after going through all of his possessions they had failed to find a single trace of Dawn among them. Had Kishida been fibbing and poking fun at them? Or had he secreted them away somewhere in a hidden studio?

I approached Tanabe. “About Kishida…”

When I asked about Dawn he laughed, scratching his stubbly chin. “I’m fairly sure that was just a joke of his.”

“So he was just pulling everyone’s leg?”

“Real odd character, he was.”

Bit by bit, Tanabe described the nights he had spent at the Kishida Salon. There was a tenderness in his voice. A vision filled my eyes, of people gathering at a house and conversing happily until it was nearly dawn. And at the center of it all, Kishida Michio—that strange copperplate engraver, on his neverending journey through the night.

There was a darkroom in Kishida’s house, and that’s where he waited on ideas for Night Train to fall upon him. Strange, isn’t it?”

“It sounds almost like developing film.”

“I went in there with him once. It was the most bizarre feeling. That little room gradually started to feel bigger and bigger. And eventually I didn’t even know where I was anymore.”

From behind us we could hear the cheery laughter of Nakai and the rest. Tanabe took a brief glance backward, scowling jokingly, “Do they mind?” But when he looked forward again his expression was serious.

“I feel like I’m still in that darkroom,” he said. “Just every so often.”

“I think I know what you’re talking about.”

We came to a place where the road split in two. The splashing of the mountain stream echoed around us.The path to the left led down towards the city of Kyoto, and down the path to the right was Kibuneguchi Station. Without hesitation Tanbe and I took the right-hand fork and walked towards Kibuneguchi Station. After a short distance, Tanabe turned around and frowned, “Huh? Why aren’t they following us?”

I looked at the red lamp on the fire station.

Ten years ago—

We had lost sight of one another amid the throngs of the Kurama Fire Festival. I recalled the torches throwing off embers, the men in loincloths and their feverish zeal. Thick smoke drifted up through the air. The darkness of the night felt even deeper once I passed beyond the torchlight. How had I lost sight of Hasegawa? I had been staring straight at her, had been so sure that we had been holding hands. I feel like I’m still in that darkroom—the feeling Tanabe had expressed, I knew that feeling too.

I suddenly snapped out of it. “Why don’t we call the inn and ask them to pick us up?” I suggested.

But Tanabe didn’t reply.

I turned around to find the asphalt road empty beneath the streetlamps. The only thing I could hear was the loud rushing of the stream.

I kept waiting, but my friends did not show up.

　　　　　　　◯

Passing under the elevated Eizan railway track, I ventured towards Kibuneguchi Station.

Up a short stairway was a path leading to the ticket barrier, illuminated in glowing fluorescent white. On a bench before the shuttered kiosks sat several young men and women, whispering in hushed tones. They resembled us from ten years ago. They looked my way with suspicion, before eventually boarding a courtesy car from one of the inns that had come to pick them up. Once they left, the station became as quiet as an abandoned ruin.

The darkness of the mountains pressing in around me unsettled me more and more. I continued to wait, and not a single one of Nakai or any of the others showed up.

“What is going on?” I sat on the bench and called Nakai. The ringing tone sounded as though it was coming from another world.

“Yeah, hello?”

I almost felt let down when I heard Nakai pick up, his voice booming cheerily. He seemed to be drunk. I could hear tinny music and whispering voices coming through the receiver. It reminded me of a low-key hotel bar. The sounds were entirely out of place here in the midst of these dark mountains. It’s not possible, I thought to myself in confusion. He’d been walking with me just a little while ago.

“Nakai, where are you right now?”

“Who’s this?”

“What do you mean? It’s Ōhashi.”

“...Ōhashi?”

“I’ve been waiting for you guys in front of the station.”

The moment I said that Nakai went quiet on the other side. His silence was buried in the soft background noise of the bar. It almost felt like he’d put the phone down and gone away somewhere, but pressing the phone to my ear I could make out his shaky breathing.

After a while, I heard him mutter uncertainly, “You said Ōhashi?”

“Yes, Ōhashi. Who else would it be?”

“...This isn’t funny,” he said, before abruptly hanging up.

The buzz of the bar vanished, and I was left alone in the silent station.

I stared at the phone in my head, dumbfounded.

Pulling myself together I dialed Tanabe’s number, which didn’t go through. After that I tried Fujimura. The tone kept ringing for a long time. Just as I was about to give it up, I heard a soft voice answer, “Hello?”

“Fujimura?”

“Who is this?”

“Where are you right now?”

“I’d like to know who this is first.”

“Look, you guys got me, alright? It’s Ōhashi.”

As soon as she heard my name Fujimura sucked in her breath.

“...Ōhashi? You’re really Ōhashi?”

“What are you talking about? We came to Kurama together, didn’t we?”

Fujimura didn’t say anything. The line went as silent as the station. The silence brought to mind an empty hallway in a spacious apartment. Fujimura’s face came to mind, the same face that had just been with me: cheerful, and yet somehow weary.

A moment later I heard her again, her breathing irregular. “What are you talking about? That was all the way back when we were in school. Ōhashi, where were you all this time?”

I had no idea what she was talking about either.

“Ōhashi? Can you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Kurama. I’m in Kurama.”

When next she spoke, there was a tinge of fear in her voice. “...Are you really Ōhashi?”

Suddenly unnerved, I cut the line. Still squeezing the phone I stared at the grey floor underneath the fluorescent lights. Even if I called Takeda it’d just be the same thing, I thought. Just in case I called the inn, but was informed that there were no reservations that night under the name Ōhashi. I mumbled something back and hung up. It was like even the trip to Kurama had been erased.

I stood up from the bench and went outside the station.

Around me I heard only the eerie rushing of the stream. I went back underneath the train tracks, but there was no trace of any of them. In a little while I heard the sound of wheels on the track coming from the direction of the city, and an empty Eizan railcar came into view. The train stopped briefly at Kibuneguchi Station, then lurched off for Kurama. Its bright windows passed behind the gloomy trees.

I watched the train go, feeling utterly lost.

　　　　　　　◯

From Kibuneguchi Station I took the train back to Demachiyanagi.

It was hot and stuffy inside the carriage, which was fully loaded with tourists on their way back, and my head felt fuzzy as though it was filled with cotton wool. Looking at the dark windows I saw a pale face loom out from the passing cedar trees. It took some time before I realized that it was my own face reflected in the window.

I thought that by going somewhere, anywhere that was bright and crowded, I might be able to recover a semblance of reality. Maybe I’d get a room at some hotel in the city, or drink the night away at the first bar I saw, and tomorrow I’d be telling everyone about the funny dream I’d had. That forlorn hope was all I had to cling to.

Arriving at Demachiyanagi I walked off towards the Kamo River.

At the confluence of the Takase and Kamo Rivers is a sandbank known as the Kamo Delta. I sat down at the very tip and gazed at the Kamo Bridge and the lamps that illuminated it along the guardrail. The night was getting on and there were few pedestrians, but it was a welcome change from the mountains of Kurama.

A young couple hopped along the stepping stones across the river.

I had done that with Hasegawa, once. That night Nakai had taken us out to Kiyamachi.

At the time Nakai often took us out to eat after English class. We usually stuck to the neighborhoods around Demachiyanagi or Hyakumanben, but that night we had taken a rare outing to Kiyamachi, where we whiled away the time until the wee hours of the morning at a bar where one of Nakai’s acquaintances worked. On our way home from the bar Hasegawa and I strolled along the Kamo River. The rest of our companions probably stayed behind to keep drinking.

From Shijō Bridge we walked north along the river.

“Whaddya say we walk it off?” It had probably been Hasegawa who had suggested that.

As we walked further on and the clamor of Shijō faded into the distance, it began to feel like we were descending, she and I, into the depths of the night. We told each other silly jokes, gossiped about our English school classmates, and talked about books we had read and movies we had watched. I was surprised at how close Hasegawa felt to me that night. When I first started attending the school, I wasn’t very comfortable around her, though she was in the same class. We were both shy, and once class ended we treated each other like perfect strangers. I was almost more used to hearing her speak in English than in Japanese. But that night, I didn’t feel any of that distance at all.

That night she told me about the cosmonaut.

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin once famously said, “The earth was blue.” These days pictures of the Earth aren’t uncommon, and we take that blue-ness for granted. But what the cosmonaut claimed really took him by surprise was the blackness of space beyond. It was impossible to understand how black, how empty was that darkness unless you saw it with your own eyes. Gagarin’s words really referred to that bottomless void. Whenever Hasegawa thought about that profound darkness, that darkness that couldn’t be conveyed in a photograph, she felt both frightened, yet also enthralled.

“All the world’s in perpetual night,” she said.

We eventually made it all the way to the Kamo Bridge. I watched as she crossed the stepping stones over the river. The night is ending, I thought to myself. Nothing had happened in particular, but that night I finally realized that I had fallen for her.

This was in September, and the Kurama Fire Festival had been the month after. Who was it that suggested we all go together? I wondered if it had perhaps been me.

When I snapped out of it, the couple had crossed the river and were gone. There was no one else around me. I stared vacantly at the lights of downtown far off downriver.

My phone rang. It was Nakai.

I answered resolutely and heard a voice calmly say, “Ōhashi, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“...Where are you right now?”

“I’m by Demachiyanagi.”

What are you doing there, we’re all at Kibuneguchi Station waiting for you! For a second I let myself hope that those words would burst out of his mouth. But that wasn’t to be.

“Well, do you think you can come by Karawamachi Sanjō then?”

Nakai told me the name of the hotel he was staying at, and to meet him at the bar on the first floor.

“You make sure to be there. I’ll be waiting.”

　　　　　　　◯

I took the Keihan Line from Demachiyanagi down to Sanjō.

“You make sure to be there. I’ll be waiting.”

There had been something in Nakai’s voice that had brooked no refusal.

He’d given that impression to people ever since his student days. That forcefulness made him feel reliable, but now that I thought about it he’d only been a grad student at the time. There’d been something forced about it, like he was trying too hard to act like a reliable mentor. His behavior after Hasegawa disappeared only confirmed that suspicion. It was like something had snapped inside him, and afterwards that confident demeanor had never come back.

The hotel he was staying at was just up the boulevard from Kawaramachi Sanjō.

Entering the lobby, I was blinded by the light of a dazzling chandelier. I knew that I had ridden the trains on the Eizan and Keihan lines to get here, but that didn’t stop me from feeling now like I had been abducted from those mountains by a tengu. It was like part of me had been left behind in those mountains. At the end of the lobby, at a dim, cavern-like bar, Nakai was drinking alone. When I saw his large, rounded back, I let out a relieved sigh. It felt like everything was okay now.

“Nakai!” I called. “Thanks for waiting.”

When he saw me, Nakai looked dumbfounded.

“You’re really Ōhashi?”

“Who else would I be?”

“I didn’t believe it when I heard you on the phone. It’s like I’ve run into a ghost.”

“Weren’t you just with me in Kurama?”

“...That was ten years ago.”

I shut up.

Both Nakai and Fujimura had said the same thing.

“Well, why don’t you just take a seat. What’ll it be?”

I gave my order to the bartender. Nakai had traveled here with his wife two days ago. His wife had gone to bed early in their room.

“So you’re telling me that you haven’t been to Kurama once?”

“Since the incident, I haven’t been once,” he replied, looking at me carefully. “Where were you? What have you been doing for the past ten years?”

“Ten years?”

“Yeah, it’s been ten years.”

“...Mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Now hold on. It’s me that asked for an explanation.”

“Look, I have no idea what’s happening.”

Nakai sighed, and began to explain what happened ten years ago.

One night ten years ago, Nakai had gone with his friends from English school to see the Kurama Fire Festival. They took the Eizan Railway to Kurama and were engulfed by the crowds swarming in the temple town, watching men with torches go by.

At some point in the proceedings, Nakai lost sight of me. At first it didn’t worry him. He assumed that I had snuck off with Hasegawa to rest somewhere. But after the festival ended and the human tide began to go out, he caught sight of Hasegawa, frowning and looking around the area. Eventually Fujimura and the others also began to murmur, “Ōhashi’s not here!”

Everyone went with Nakai to the station, waiting patiently for me to show up. But I didn’t. As the lines for the Eizan Railway dwindled, the din of Kurama went quiet.

“In the end, you never showed up.”

With no other choice, they went to the police.

Their slim hopes that perhaps we had merely missed each other on the road evaporated the next day. Notified of what had happened by the university, my family came to Kyoto. The disappearance was reported in a tiny corner of the newspaper. But no leads turned up. They discovered no motive for me to disappear, found no clues. And just like that, Ōhashi disappeared.

“You’ve been missing for the last ten years.”

　　　　　　　◯

I put my elbows on the counter and buried my face in my hands.

“But that’s completely different from what I know.”

“How does your story go?”

“It should have been Hasegawa that disappeared.”

Nakai looked at me, confounded. “Hasegawa came back with all of us. She never stopped worrying about you.”

“How’s she doing now?”

“I haven’t talked to her in years,” Nakai mused. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to know you’re back.”

“...Am I back?”

“Well of course you are! You’ve come back.” He sounded like he was pacifying a child. “These ten years I’ve felt like there was a part of me that was missing. Why on earth did you disappear? I’d never been able to figure it out. Tell me, please, what happened?”

But I had no answer to give him.

Had everything that had happened in the last ten years been a dream? Everything that followed Hasegawa’s disappearance—the remaining days I spent in Kyoto, the years I worked in Tokyo, my reaching out to everyone to visit the Kurama Fire Festival for the first time in ten years—had all of that been an illusion?

That was impossible. Just a short while ago both he and I had been in that inn in Kibune. I could still pull up his face in my mind quite vividly, talking about his trip to Onomichi.

“Has your wife ever left home?” I asked.

He looked astonished when he heard that. “Come on now, where’d that come from?”

“Have you ever gone after her to Onomichi?”

There was fear in his eyes as he looked at me. “...How do you know about that?”

“Tonight we all gathered at an inn in Kibune,” I said. “We were here to see the Kurama Fire Festival for the first time in ten years. You told us about what happened in Onomichi.”

“I couldn’t have! I was here in the hotel.” He tapped on the counter.

“Then how do I know about Onomichi?”

I repeated to him in detail what he had said at the inn. As he listened his face became stiff.

“How could you know all of that?” It was his turn to put his elbows on the counter. He propped up his head on his hands and stared at the row of bottles on the other side. I had seen that expression many times when I was in school, and I expected that all sorts of theories were whirling through his mind.

“Something very strange is going on here.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure.”

“Why did you call me in the first place?”

“When we were coming back from Kurama, everyone disappeared on the road. I don’t understand it myself.”

I suddenly remembered the clacking of the train wheels through the mountains, and closed my mouth. The Eizan train had been passing by the other side of the cedar trees, and I had been standing there watching it on that dark mountain road. In my mind the scene resembled a copperplate engraving. The picture in the window of Yanagi Gallery had been entitled Night Train—Kurama.

“Hey Nakai. Ever heard of an artist called Kishida Michio?”

　　　　　　　◯

I told Nakai about Kishida Michio.

About his studio in Kyoto. About the series of engravings he had created called Night Train. About the way he lived, his days and nights reversed. About the nightly visitors to his studios, the Kishida Salon.

“But I just don’t get it. This Kishida guy is already dead. And you never even met him. How could he possibly be involved?”

“Either way, I’m going to that gallery one more time.”

“Do you know how late it is already?”

“Someone could still be there. At the very least, I’ll be able to get another look at the picture in the window.”

Nakai thought for a moment before saying, “All right, then I’ll go with you.”

“Are you sure you should leave your wife here?”

“Ah, she’s sleeping in our room anyways. It’d be worse for me to let you go off alone. Can’t have you disappearing on me again.”

We left the hotel and went through the famous Sanjō arcade. I thought about the times I had walked the sleeping streets with Nakai in my student days, just like this. As we walked between the darkened buildings, I began to feel like the road was heading straight into that October night ten years ago.

When I said that, Nakai chuckled, sounding pleased. “Doesn’t it? I was just thinking the same thing. How very strange.”

“It’s all so mysterious.”

“Almost like we’ve gone ten years back in time.”

We came to an intersection featuring the brickwork cultural museum and turned south down Takakura Street. A hush lingered between the small shops and apartments, and here and there streetlamps twinkled along the stretch of road. There I found Yanagi Gallery, just as I had remembered. A closed sign hung on the glass door, but behind it I still saw light blazing brilliantly within. The owner must still be inside.

When I looked into the window I was struck with astonishment.

The picture on display was certainly one of Kishida Michio’s works, but it was a far cry from the picture I had seen during the day. The black-and-white color palette had been swapped, and the overall tone of it was bright. An Eizan railcar was running on the other side of a grove of trees under the morning sunlight. Standing on the near side of the trees was a woman, looking at the passing train with her right hand raised. The plaque beside the picture read Dawn——Kurama.

Nakai peered into the window. “Doesn’t exactly look like the picture you were talking about.”

“That’s because it isn’t the same picture.”

I opened the glass door and stepped inside the gallery.

The long interior was bathed in a soft light, and the faint scent of incense lingered in the air. Each of the mezzotints that were hung on the white walls at intervals was bright. They were like rectangular windows that opened out into a world soaked in morning sunshine. It didn’t resemble at all the gallery I had visited in the daytime.

Yanagi, the owner of the gallery, emerged from behind a partition.

“I’m terribly sorry, but we are closed for the…”

“Sorry,” I said. “I visited this gallery earlier today. I don’t suppose you remember me?”

Yanagi studied me, perplexed. It seemed very odd to me that he somehow could have forgotten me despite the long conversation we had had. But stranger still was the fact that all of the pictures on display in the gallery had been swapped out.

I pointed at the pictures hanging on white wall and asked, “Have you changed out the pictures since this afternoon?”

“No, nothing of the sort has happened.”

“That’s funny. When I came here earlier, all of the pictures were from Night Train. You told me a lot about Kishida Michio.”

“Night Train has never been displayed here.”

“That can’t be true. I saw them, right here.”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Yanagi with a forced smile.

　　　　　　　◯

“Our apologies for coming in so late,” said Nakai, clapping my shoulder. “Let’s go, Ōhashi. You’re still not quite thinking right. Get some rest. You can think it over tomorrow.”.

But I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Resisting Nakai’s attempts to drag me out, I looked at the mezzotints hanging on the white wall. “This series is Dawn, right? And there are 48 works in all?”

“Yes, that is correct. The series was created by Kishida Michio.”

The monochromatic black-on-white landscapes reminded me of radiant morning sunshine. A lone woman was depicted in each of the engravings. All of them had neither eyes nor mouth, and their smooth white mannequin-like heads were inclined to the side.

Onomichi. Ise. Nobeyama. Nara. Aizu. Okuhida. Matsumoto. Nagasaki. Tsugaru. Tenryūkyō. As I looked at each work in turn, I felt a strange flow, a rhythm. It was like morning spreading to each of these far-flung cities in Japan, and a woman lingering in each.

I remembered the story Yanagi had told me during the day—the rumor of Kishida Michio’s mysterious posthumous work. The series whose existence Kishida had intimated to Yanagi, but which had never been shown to anyone.The counterpart to Night Train, the series of copperplate engravings: Dawn.

Night Train and Dawn.

It was then that I finally realized.

Dawn and Night Train were two sides of the same coin. In my world what had been Night Train was in this one Dawn. When I had lost sight of my friends on our way back from the Kurama Fire Festival, I had stumbled into the world of Dawn. If Night Train didn’t exist in this world, then obviously it wouldn’t be put on display.

But who would believe such a story?

“Kishida Michio would understand,” I murmured.

“But isn’t he dead?” Nakai objected.

“That certainly cannot be the case,” Yanagi interrupted. “I just spoke to him today.”

Nakai and I looked at each other.

Kishida Michio was alive.

“Could you get in contact with him?” I asked.

Yanagi frowned. “It is already quite late…”

I couldn’t blame him being wary of us.

I pleaded with him to believe me, to at least connect us through the phone, and at last he relented. I heard him talking on the phone from behind the screen.

“This is Yanagi. I’m terribly sorry to be calling you at this hour.”

It seemed to have been Kishida’s wife who had answered. I caught bits and pieces of the conversation. Yanagi continued to explain the situation for some time. When he eventually brought up the names of Nakai and me, he seemed taken aback by the response from Kishida’s wife.

“Is something the matter?” he asked, sounding concerned, and there was a brief silence. At last his head popped out from behind the screen, a perplexed look on his face.

“His wife wishes to speak with you.”

I took the receiver and put it to my ear. Kishida’s wife spoke in a whisper, and to my surprise, her voice was quavering.

“...Ōhashi?”

I had heard that voice before.

“It’s me. It’s Hasegawa. Do you remember me?”

　　　　　　　◯

The taxi drove through the night, heading north up Karasuma Street.

Looking through the window Nakai mused, “Something very strange is going on here.”

Even as he accompanied me through the night, Nakai’s thoughts seemed to be in a jumble. That was quite understandable. For me it was as though I had tumbled down the rabbit hole. The worlds of Dawn and Night Train seemed to have begun to careen into one another.

“It’s been ten years since I heard her voice.”

“How did it feel?”

“Very strange. It doesn’t feel like it’s been ten years.”

Still staring out the window Nakai said, “You liked Hasegawa, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t we all?”

“...Yes, I suppose that’s true. Of course it’s true,” Nakai admitted, and I could almost hear him smiling.

The lights of downtown faded into the distance as we continued on, the long wall of the Kyoto Gyoen National Garden on our right. At Dōshisha University the taxi turned right onto Imadegawa Street, eventually approaching the dark embankments of the Kamo River. It was around 1, and there were few cars on the road. Coming to the end of shadowy trees along the street ended we saw the river spreading out below us, its banks lonely and deserted; on the other side twinkled the lights of the houses across the river.

“Must be around here,” muttered the driver, peering at his GPS.

We got off the taxi at the end of Izumoji Bridge.

Kishida Michio’s residence-cum-studio was in the residential neighborhood on the embankment to the west. Among the other darkened houses on those sleeping streets, that house alone was still throwing off lights from the windows. The sight of those lights streaming forth from that house filled me with relief, like a weary traveler coming into view of an inn after wandering the wilderness.

The building was timeworn, but its exterior and the trees around it were well kept. Around the front door was a border of small green tiles. After Nakai pushed the buzzer we heard footsteps pattering inside, and a thin man opened the door.

“We apologize for calling on you at such a late hour. “I’m Nakai, and this is Ōhashi. Would you happen to be Kishida?”

“That’s me. I’ve been waiting for you.” His voice was composed as he beckoned us inside. “Come, they’ve arrived!” he called up to the second floor.

The stairway light came on.

In a moment white, delicate feet pattered down the worn wooden staircase, and a familiar, pale-skinned face appeared. Standing there was none other than Hasegawa. She stopped halfway down the stairs, looking down on us with shock.

Sounding bashful, Nakai murmured, “Hey there, Hasegawa. It’s been a while.”

“Nakai! I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Sorry for dropping in on you so late. I’m pretty shocked myself. Here, look who I brought with me.”

“It’s been a long time, Hasegawa,” I said.

Hasegawa still looked like she didn’t quite believe her eyes.

“...Ōhashi?”

It didn’t feel like it had been ten years since we had last seen each other. She hadn’t changed a bit, and I didn’t feel like I’d changed a bit either.

“Well, come up,” Kishida urged us.

From the room next to the foyer came a vinegary, medicinal smell. Kishida bustled over, turning the lights on and showing us inside.

“Here is where I keep my studio.” It looked like he’d done a total conversion of the room. At first glance it resembled a small workshop. Tools lay scattered around the roughly ten-tatami space underneath cold fluorescent lights. In the shelves along the wall were sheaves of paper and tools and medicine bottles, and the old workbench was just as crowded. In the center of the room stood a heavy-looking machine with a large handle attached. Lines extended out from it, several newly pressed mezzotints dangled from them like laundry hung out to dry.

“Come, this way,” said Kishida, inviting us into the living room.

　　　　　　　◯

The cozy living room was filled with warm light and the aroma of coffee. From the kitchen Kishida chortled, “Almost like a party, isn’t it? How nice it is, having midnight visitors.”

“Tomorrow’s a holiday. Stay up as long as you want,” said Hasegawa in a singsong voice.

I sat down on the sofa that faced the garden. Watching the married couple preparing coffee in the kitchen a strange feeling came over me. Maybe it was the peculiar atmosphere that Kishida and Hasegawa cast. Nakai also seemed to be getting comfortable. Accepting his cup of coffee he said, “I don’t know why, but it doesn’t feel like this is our first meeting.”

Kishida seated himself on the sofa and grinned. “I hear that quite often. Perhaps I am simply openhearted.”

“It’s because you’re so absentminded.”

“Or because I’m so absentminded.”

“No, that’s not all it is. Doesn’t it seem like we’ve had gatherings here like this before?”

“A cozy feel, then?”

“A Kishida Salon, you might call it.”

Kishida smiled at my words. “I like that. I may have to hang up a sign.”

Everyone seemed to take the fact that I had returned after ten years in stride. As I sipped piping hot coffee alongside them, I suddenly felt quite at home here in this world.

“What’re you up to these days, Hasegawa?”

Hasegawa had had ten years of her own. After graduating college she’d spent time working as a substitute teacher at a local high school, before being hired on as the Japanese teacher.

“And then five years ago I married him.”

“And you’re still a teacher?”

She nodded. “Of course.”

I accepted those ten years of hers without question. They had existed, just as surely as my own ten years existed.

“So what about your last ten years?”

At Hasegawa’s prompt I finally began to tell my story: about Hasegawa’s disappearance ten years ago in Kurama; my life in Kyoto after that; how I had gotten a job and moved to Tokyo; and all the strange things that had happened in Kurama after visiting with everyone for the first time in ten years. The only thing I left out was that Kishida had died.

Every so often Hasegawa and Nakai interjected with questions, but Kishida listened silently until the very end.

“An interesting tale,” he said thoughtfully once I had finished. “So that is why you think that my works hide some secret. And that is why you have come here.”

“I know it sounds like there’s some sort of magic in your pictures.”

“But I’m afraid I can’t use magic. I will admit, that I have on occasion thought about Night Train—” He paused and pondered for a moment before continuing. “In the place you come from, my wife disappeared, yes? Was I living in this house alone then?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“How terribly lonesome. I can hardly imagine it.”

I didn’t understand how I had come to pass through the works called Night Train into this world. Kishida had done nothing more than create these artworks. But I wondered how Night Train, how Dawn had come to be in the first place. When I inquired, Kishida said, “Just a moment,” and got up.

He returned shortly from his studio carrying a single mezzotint.

“This is the first work in Dawn: Onomichi.”

It depicted a hillside town in the light of morning. From the second story of a house on a hill, a single woman was leaning out a window and waving her hand. She seemed to me to be fairly young.

“It was in Onomichi that I first met my wife. That would be, oh, thirteen years ago now.”

And Kishida began to tell us the tale of his trip to Onomichi thirteen years ago.

　　　　　　　◯

This happened in February, about half a year after I had come back from my studies abroad.

My mother had passed away in hospital at the end of the year, and I was feeling terribly down. I had been so fired up, so convinced that my career was about to begin in earnest, which only made the blow worse.

For the first month of the new year I put my hand to nothing, but around the second month I began to remodel the house that my parents had left me, and slowly but surely was recovering my ambitions.

At that time an acquaintance of mine, an art professor at a college in Onomichi, extended an invitation for me to come visit. A token of his concern, I assume, for my despondent spirits. He had been a mentor to me in art school, and I had heard that he returned to his hometown around the same time that I had left for England.

“There’s an art museum at Senkōji Park in Onomichi. I’m holding my students’ graduation exhibition there,” he told me over the phone.

Going to Onomichi might be nice, I thought to myself. Between my part-time job and my mother’s hospitalization, I hadn’t had the chance to leave Kyoto since I came back to Japan, and I hadn’t seen my friend in some years.

I at once set off for Onomichi. My friend met me outside the ticket barrier at the station.

Both of our lives had changed greatly, so there was no shortage of things to talk about. We spent the afternoon at the art museum and walked around Senkōji, and in the evening we chatted over dinner at a ryōtei by the sea.

“When I was a kid my grandpa would always take me here whenever there was something to celebrate,” my friend reminisced fondly.

With the window open, the dark, lapping ocean waves seemed as if they might slosh inside. I remember it being a rather mysterious ryōtei.

When we had exhausted the usual topics of conversation, my friend asked suddenly, “So what were you talking with her about?”

I understood immediately what he meant.

We had been going around the museum exhibition in the afternoon. There were few visitors besides ourselves, and the museum was hushed and still. In each exhibition room college students sat on metal folding chairs and held their breaths. We walked around before them, looking up at the exhibits with a vague air of solemnity.

Entering the Nihonga exhibition room, we came across a lone high school girl standing in front of a large painting. The painting was a self-portrait in front of a long window; through the window was a detailed starry sky, as though it faced out into outer space. A red muffler was wrapped around the girl’s shoulders, and a Snoopy plush dangled from her bag. We weren’t supposed to interfere with visitors, so taking care not to enter her line of sight we tiptoed around the exhibit hall.

Before too long we heard a strange voice going, “Ah, ah, ah!”

Turning around to see what it was, we espied one of the art students halfway out of her chair.

“What’s wrong?” asked my friend, to which she pointed a trembling finger towards the floor of the room. Sitting there was a lean, grey cat. It was right beside the girl who was looking at the painting, like they were peacefully contemplating it together.

“W-what do I do, professor?”

“Just chase it out, go on!”

At this point the high schooler looked down at her feet and let out a small yelp, finally noticing the cat’s presence. The cat’s gaze remained fixed on the painting.

“Friend of yours?” I asked.

The girl giggled. “Nope, first time.”

“Then we’ll just have to purrsue it from the room,” my friend declared, and together with the student he began to chase it from the room. After chasing it round the room for a while the two of them went after it as it escaped into the corridor, leaving only me and the high schooler in the room.

It was starting to feel awkward when the girl asked uncertainly, “Are you a professor?”

“No, I’m not. The other guy was. I’m just his friend.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah. What about you? Do you know one of the students?”

“Not really, I just kinda wandered in here. I was going over to my grandma’s house to visit when I saw they were having an exhibition.”

She went back to staring at the painting.

“You’re really into this painting, huh?”

“Well, not exactly…”

She told me about an interview with a cosmonaut she had read.

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin once famously said, “The earth was blue.” These days pictures of the Earth aren’t uncommon, and we take that blue-ness for granted. But what the cosmonaut claimed really took him by surprise was the blackness of space beyond. It was impossible to understand how black, how empty was that darkness unless you saw it with your own eyes. Gagarin’s words were really referring to that bottomless void. Whenever the girl thought about that profound darkness, that darkness that couldn’t be conveyed in a photograph, she felt both frightened, yet also enthralled.

“All the world’s in perpetual night,” she murmured.

What a strange girl, I thought to myself.

　　　　　　　◯

I told all this to my friend at the ryōtei by the sea.

“She enchanted you, is that it?”

“Nothing of the sort.”

“Did you get her name? Where is she from?”

“She said she lives on Mukaishima. Her grandmother’s house is in the hills of Onomichi.”

Outside the window was the darkened sea, and beyond it could be seen the lights of Mukaishima. All the world’s in perpetual night. Her words were caught in my mind. They were the kind of words that wormed their way into your mind on a quiet night in an unfamiliar town, alone with your thoughts.

After leaving the ryōtei I parted with my friend in front of Onomichi Station, crossing the tracks and heading up into the hills. The inn I was staying at was by Senkōji Park.

It was very late now, and the hillside was entirely quiet. I walked alone, through the stone-floored alleys lit by orange lanterns and across the deserted temple grounds. Onomichi was an old town, and it felt like the dark depths of its tangled slopes and alleyways led to another world. My breath puffed out white before me, and as I climbed the slope the seaside town receded far behind me, and the night sky approached steadily overhead.

I came up to a long slope.

The inn should have been right up that slope, but in stark contrast to its daytime semblance it was permeated now in a darkness so thick I doubted whether I could make it through. It was lit only by a single lamp halfway up.

After climbing for a time, I looked up and thought, “Oh my.”

Beyond the light stood a white figure in the darkness. Though difficult to make out, the face seemed to be that of a woman. Suspicion crept into my mind. The mysterious figure stood still in the darkness, staring directly at me. I stared back resolutely, and shortly after, the figure turned nimbly and vanished into the darkness.

I stood there petrified, a sudden shiver going up my spine.

What on earth was that?

I scanned the darkness but saw nothing. It was all horribly unnerving. But the inn lay at the top of the slope, so I had no choice but to continue. After grappling with indecision for a moment, I set off fearfully once again up the path, but met no one.

At last, seeing the lights of the inn come into view, I let out a sigh of relief. I turned around to see the lights of Onomichi glimmering below.

Far away in the distance I heard the rumble of a train passing through.

A strange feeling abruptly came over me. It felt like I was suspended in the air, in a world of midnight. I had never felt the night to be so deep, so vast, as I did at that moment. All over the world, in far flung cities and towns, untold multitudes of people were dreaming, enveloped by the same night through which I was wandering at this very moment. Perhaps this eternal night was the true form of the world.

It was then that the phrase popped into my mind: Night Train.

　　　　　　　◯

I spent a sleepless night in the inn, unable to shake off a feeling of desolation.

Tossing and turning in the futon, I seemed to recall that strange figure I had seen on that dark slope whispering something to me. I was quite sure it had been a woman. The moment when she swiftly turned and vanished into the darkness played over and over again in my mind. That sense of unease reminded me of an engraving I had seen in England.

It was an antiquated work that hung in a black frame in the office of the master to whom I was apprenticed. It depicted a manor house, and had been created around the turn of the 19th century. My master’s father had been employed at a firm that specialized in topographical paintings, and had bought it up from a local dilettante on one of his collection trips into the English countryside. At first glance it seemed ordinary and unremarkable in composition, depicting a manor and its garden; in the foreground was a gazebo, standing inside it, a lone young woman.

“This, Kishida, is a painting of a ghost.”

What my master told me was another of those commonplace tales of haunted paintings.

Long ago, a young lady who lived in this manor had gone missing. After several years, her father, the lord of the manor, commissioned another noble, one of his friends, to create this piece. This noble was somewhat well known as an amateur copperplate engraver. But something curious happened the day after he completed the piece: the moment the noble laid eyes on it he shrieked, “The girl!” and fell into a swoon. He had only drawn the manor and the garden, and yet there in the mezzotint the girl had made a most unexpected appearance. Nobody quite believed his tale, but the artist never recovered his senses, and he died babbling deliriously to himself. According to those who attended his deathbed, he had confessed to harboring a forbidden love for that girl, claiming that in the throes of passion he had murdered her himself.

“‘Twas the ghost of the girl what showed up in that engraving of his. You let her take your heart, they say, she’ll begin to turn her head, slowly, slowly. And the poor chap that sees her face, well, into the picture he goes. You’d best be careful, eh?”

And my master winked.

Of course, I didn’t believe in tales of that sort. But I couldn’t help but wonder every time I saw it in his office. I would always check that she wasn’t looking this way. The girl in the mezzotint,, turning her head towards you ever so slowly. Eventually she would spirit me away into the picture.

That night in the inn, the story of the haunted engraving seemed to me to have a strange ring of truth to it.

Eventually I began to nod off.

I dreamed that I was in my house in Kyoto.

I was sitting on the sofa, just as I am doing now. I looked out into the dark garden, holding my breath, waiting. I don’t know what I was waiting for. As I listened, I heard a door open at the end of the hallway. From inside that dark room a person came oozing out, hiding their footsteps as they tiptoed down the hallway. It was the girl I’d seen at the museum who showed up in the living room. She came up right next to me, sat down, and whispered:

All the world’s in perpetual night.

And then I realized that I was dead.

　　　　　　　◯

When I woke up from that unhappy dream, my heart was pounding so hard it actually hurt. The loneliness, the elation I felt when that girl came next to me still lingered in my mind. I got out of the futon. Outside the window the sky had begun to turn pale.

Making up my mind to go for a morning stroll, I slipped out of the silent inn.

In the bracing morning air, the town which had seemed so dead the previous night now was coming back to life. Stray cats were stirring in the abandoned courtyards, and I saw elderly women making early morning temple visits. The sky was slowly becoming brighter, and the buildings were silhouetted in sharp detail as though they were rising up from the bottom of the sea. The streetlamps, still glowing in the morning fog, were especially beautiful. They were like the last vestiges of a night that was being harried and hunted down.

I returned to the long slope that led back to the hotel.

Halfway up, I heard the familiar sound of shutters being opened, so I stopped in place. I was before an old house with a blue tiled roof. It was a window on the second floor that was being opened, and a young woman leaned out from it exuberantly, looking out at the early morning sea. The dawn that illuminated the town suffused her cheeks with gorgeous color.

“It’s her,” I thought.

It was the same high schooler with whom I had conversed at the museum the previous afternoon.

I had never felt the morning the way I felt it now. The disquietude of night, the threatening phantom women, they all melted away, leaving only the face of the girl leaning out from that second-story window. As I stared up at her in amazement, she perceived me standing on the slope, and called out with a grin, “Good morning!”

And I thought to myself—

Daybreak had arrived.

　　　　　　　◯

KIshida pointed at the engraving on the table.

“This is what I created when I returned from Onomichi.”

He had thought that he would never see that girl again.

But as time went on, he started to lament that it had ended with them only having exchanged a few words. Even as he continued his solitary labors in his Kyoto studio, the morning in Onomichi was always in a corner of his mind. That longing only increased each time he looked at that engraving, Onomichi.

The owner of Yanagi Gallery was impressed with the work, suggesting, “Why not title it Dawn?”

The light of a single morning, washing over the town.

But he had not yet come to the decision of creating a series.

And after a gap of three years had passed, he was reunited with the girl once again.

“It was at the Kurama Fire Festival. I spotted her standing in the crowd, and I knew that I couldn’t afford to lose sight of her again.”

That night, Kishida had gone into those dark mountains to see the festival, just as we had done. I could see the scene before me as clearly as if I had been there. Torches spitting sparks, dyeing Hasegawa’s cheeks red in their light. The night Kishida found Hasegawa was also the night we lost her. That was the night that Dawn began, and the beginning of Night Train.

“After that I began work on Dawn.”

I looked once more at the engraving on the table.

“How many years has it been now?” mused Kishida. “Since that time I’ve traveled to many places with my wife.”

“We really have been all over the place haven’t we?” Hasegawa’s eyes were misty with remembrances. “All sorts of places…”

She started to list off the places they had been together.

Mornings in bustling port towns, in austere moorlands, in still samurai estates, in forests surrounded by the dripping of melting snow. Not one of those mornings had been alike.

As I listened to her reminisce about her travels, I glanced at the glass door leading to the garden. There I saw our reflections, seated around the table and chatting away. Hasegawa’s smile was so vibrant, and Kishida and Nakai were in high spirits themselves. It was like I was looking at the window of a train. It was like we were riding the night train. No matter how dark and vast the night that lay outside the window was, inside the train was warmth, friends, and light. Where were we headed, traveling through this long, bottomless night?

With those thoughts going through my head I returned my gaze to the table, to notice that the mezzotint in front of me was changing. As though the frozen stream of time was thawing, the radiant morning light was fading. The depicted landscape of Onomichi sank into twilight, and then the darkness of night. I looked up at the other three, but it seemed that the only one who could see the changes in the engraving was me.

Like it was reflecting the changes in the engraving, the living room also sank into darkness. Nakai and Hasegawa continued to talk happily, but their voices no longer reached me. Dazed, I could only watch these changes take place.

The last thing I heard was the voice of Kishida Michio.

“Just a single morning—”

　　　　　　　◯

When I came to, I was sitting in the living room alone.

The warm scene that had been there just moments ago had completely changed. The shutters were drawn over the glass door, the room was in darkness, and the only light was a pale light coming from the window of the kitchen. A layer of dust covered the furniture in the living room, and the ambience in the house was that of a ruin.

A single engraving was set on the table in front of me: Night Train—Onomichi.

The town of Onomichi was sunken into a velvet darkness. The house on the hill had transformed into a black shadow, and the girl who had raised her hand to the rising sun was nowhere to be found. Instead, my eyes were drawn to the single lamp that shone brilliantly in the middle of the long slope. Underneath that light stood a faceless young woman, her right hand raised as if calling to me. The sight brought to mind a neverending night.

After staring at that engraving for a little while, I looked around the deserted living room one more time.

Kishida and Hasegawa were still living in this house. That I could no longer see them was only because their world was hidden from my eyes, and my world was hidden from theirs. Only Kishida’s Night Train and Dawn had opened the window.

Treading softly, I went outside through the front door.

The pre-dawn air was cold as winter.

At the gate I turned around. The sight of Kishida’s ruined house pained me; piles of refuse were dumped by the entranceway, and the untended trees grew thick and tangled. The roof and the walls were stained and dirty. No one lived here now.

Standing on the road looking up at the house, I began to hear sounds from the surrounding neighborhood. The scraping of dishes on the table, the hiss of showers turning on, the rumble of motorbikes going by, the footsteps of people walking to work, the chirping of birds, the wailing of infants.

How strange that I had never heard them before, these sounds of a briskly stirring morning.

　　　　　　　◯

I went up the stone steps of the embankment and walked toward the Kamo River.

Here were people walking their dogs or jogging, their breaths puffing out white as they passed by along the riverbank. I sat down on the dirt, still wet with dew, and looked on in amazement. Breathing in the chilly morning air, I looked up at the sky, so beautiful and bright it looked as if it had been washed clean.

I doubted I would see Hasegawa again. But after meeting her again for the first time in ten years, I could recall so well the way she talked, the way she moved. Time was passing for her, just as it was passing for me.

I thought now about the four friends who had assembled with me in Kurama for the first time in ten years. Assuming that it had been me who had disappeared on the way back from the festival, not them, they had to have been worried sick the whole night. I had to let them know I was all right.

I stood up and dialed Nakai’s number. I was unsure whether the call would go through, but after it rang for a moment he picked up, his voice filled with concern.

“...Ōhashi?”

The sound of that voice seemed so dear to me now. I took a deep breath and said, “Good morning.”

I’d never felt morning so strongly as I did in that moment.

Just a single morning—

Remembering those words I squinted at the sky above Higashiyama. It was so dazzling it almost brought tears to my eyes.

From over the mountains came the light of dawn.