Ma En could sense clear differences between his present self and his past self — one of them lay in how he approached things. His past self would probably have moved to obtain information on Professor Mitarai through his own means. His present self had chosen to work through the people around him. He wouldn't claim one approach was superior to the other. But without question, his past self had operated with far more caution and in far more complicated circumstances, because the intelligence available then had been almost nothing — which meant he likely hadn't trusted Hirota-san or the Room 3 neighbor the way he did now.

Were Hirota-san and the neighbor worth trusting? Ma En knew — and understood that his past self must have known the same thing — that sometimes you simply had to trust certain people before any work could move. Everything carried risk. Choosing what to believe was a risk each person had to absorb themselves. In the worst case: misjudge and you die. Choose wrong and you die. Trust no one and you also die. To survive, to win, you had to walk that narrow, contradictory line.

You couldn't trust indiscriminately. And you couldn't refuse to trust anything. Difficult, wasn't it? But that difficulty was correct. Nothing in this world was genuinely simple. Every appearance of simplicity was an illusion.

Ma En had to trust his own judgment — not merely trust Hirota Masami herself — but the two kinds of trust weren't isolated from each other, and there was no reason to treat them as separate things. Weighing whether to trust himself more or to trust Hirota-san more was beside the point entirely. If someone asked him that question, he'd have nothing but contempt for them.

So —

Once he'd made the request, he said nothing more about Professor Mitarai and shifted the subject instead: "I think we should go downstairs. Have a proper meal at the restaurant."

"Of course — I'm hungry too." Hirota-san got up from the sofa and retrieved the full suit and tie Ma En had bought that afternoon. She laid everything out neatly folded. He'd half-expected her to say something about the new clothes — something like why are you wearing these again, weren't the ones I chose good enough? — or about the deep red hat, which she had given him, and which he'd passed on to Asuka and now had back. By any ordinary reading, she'd have said something about that.

But Hirota-san asked nothing and said nothing. She simply handed everything over naturally, as if none of it required explanation. How could she truly not mind? Ma En wondered — and just as he was about to offer the excuse he'd prepared, the words wouldn't come. The moment he met her eyes, he saw in them such patience and warmth, such quiet understanding, that the explanation died before it left him. Offering it would only have been an act of bad conscience, a protest-too-much. So he said nothing.

He felt, deeply, that Hirota-san simply understood. And whatever he might say in response would fall short of what she was giving him. The only honest thing was to accept it.

"Thank you." He said it sincerely as he took the clothes from her. "I'm so glad I met you."

"..." Hirota Masami bent forward slightly and pressed her palm to his forehead. "Why are you suddenly being so formal? Do you have a fever?"

She'd barely finished the sentence before she started laughing at herself, a stifled sound escaping between her teeth.

Ma En felt slightly wrong-footed — he couldn't identify the joke — so he laughed along anyway.

After that, Hirota-san helped him dress with great care: jacket, trousers, collar adjusted, hem smoothed, tie knotted. Her palms passed gently over every small crease in the fabric — details Ma En had never noticed or thought to notice. She had an eye for exactly the things he'd always overlooked when dressing himself: the tuck of his collar, the fall of his hem, the elastic of his waistband, the seam on his sock. Under her hands, the whole outfit settled into something that felt, genuinely, more comfortable than anything he'd worn in years.

It took Hirota-san a full ten minutes to bring Ma En's appearance to a state she found satisfactory.

"There." She stepped back and looked at him. "Ma En-san really can't be separated from this, can he?" Her tone carried no reproach — if anything, it sounded like a quiet apology to herself for having been too hasty earlier, when his old things had been discarded.

Ma En didn't feel it was her mistake. She had only done what he'd asked of her that morning — it was he himself who had wanted his old things gone, he himself who had thrown away the black umbrella; everything that had changed in him had been his own will, his own action. He couldn't blame anyone for that, even accounting for all the strange and uncanny pressures that had driven those choices. He didn't want to excuse his own mistakes, and he didn't want Hirota-san to feel she'd done something wrong.

Ma En drew her into his arms — the first time he had ever initiated an embrace.

"Only by wearing the clothes you chose could I work out what I actually wanted." He said it quietly, close to her ear. "You showed me another world and let me walk into it. So I was able to look back at the world I came from at a different angle. That's a good thing — at least, I think it is. Because I'm like everyone else: when I discard something, I tend to condemn it entirely, as though it had become nothing but a stain on me. But that's wrong. In everything I once had, my most genuine self was always preserved — even in what's old and left behind, there's still something beautiful that had been forgotten. You're the one who helped me find those genuine and beautiful things again. The most real things."

Ma En was not saying this to be kind, and he was not performing. In the two days and a night that had passed, more had happened than he could easily account for — each event forcing him to examine himself from a different angle, to revisit what he'd once had and what he now had, including what had remained constant throughout. His past self hadn't changed. So when change came, he'd been able to locate — or rather, to confirm — what mattered most to him.

"My dear," he continued, "you've made me more like a person and less like a machine running silently on its own assumptions. You've made me think. Made me look at the world and at myself again, and see how vast everything around me truly is. You've made me ashamed of the certainty I used to carry so easily, made me recognize my own narrowness..." He paused. "I have no idea how to describe any of this. No description would be adequate for what you've done for me — or for how much it matters."

"Ma En-san..." Hirota Masami lifted her face and looked up at him, her cheeks flushed deeper than usual, her eyes soft and unfocused.

"Believe me, Masami." He kissed her lightly. "I'm only telling you the truth."

"Ma En-san..." Hirota Masami's body went slack against him. She felt as though her chest had been filled — suddenly, completely — with something warm and sweet, so full it overflowed into every part of her. She had been hungry not a moment ago; she felt nothing of it now. She didn't want to think about anything. She only wanted this man's voice to never stop. Yet even as she wanted it, she could no longer make out the words — only the voice itself was enough, and it had already dissolved every bone in her body.

They stayed like that, wrapped in each other in the quiet of the living room, while the television program continued speaking to no one.

"Masami."

"Mm?"

"Why do you sometimes call me Ma En-san?"

"Because Ma En-san is Ma En-san." Hirota Masami seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. "I can't call you 'my dear' in every situation — some things depend on the moment."

"Is there no other way to address me?"

"I thought about quite a few." Hirota Masami considered. "None of them felt right. Ma-kun? Ma-san? En-chan? All strange. Ma En is Ma En — the name doesn't divide well, but you can't just say 'Ma En' either. Ma En-kun? That's even worse. So Ma En-san it is. I like it: Ma En-san, Ma En-san—" She began to sing it with a kind of operatic excess, as if savoring a private romance. "Ah, Ma En-san — why are you Ma En-san? You see? Isn't that terribly romantic? Like something out of a period drama."

Ma En looked at her expression — childlike and bright — and couldn't find anything to say. He'd only had a passing thought about it; he hadn't expected such a simple answer.

After a beat, he said: "If you like it."

"Well, actually — sometimes I'd like you to call me Masami-san, not just Masami. Of course, Masami is perfectly fine, but when I call you Ma En-san and you reply with Masami-san — doesn't that have a certain quality? Like a period drama?" Hirota Masami presented this with the easy confidence of someone stating the obvious, leaving Ma En with absolutely nothing to say. He couldn't locate this alleged quality anywhere; the thought had genuinely never occurred to him. But this particular quirk of hers — the slight, strange fixation on it — was oddly impossible to dislike. If anything, it was one of the things that belonged entirely to her.

"Ma En-san—" she said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"No, no! You're supposed to reply: Masami-san." She reached up and pinched his cheek lightly. "Again."

Ma En shrugged helplessly. He wanted to ask if she was still hungry — but she was so thoroughly invested in this that he wasn't given the opening.

"Ma En-san."

"..."

"Say it."

"Masa... Masami-san." He said it, but the feeling of any drama or period piece remained entirely beyond him.

"Ma En-san."

"Masami-san." Still deeply awkward.

"Ma En-san..."

"Masami-san..."

"Ma En-san!"

"Masami-san!"

By the end of it, Ma En had at least learned to match her register. Hirota-san's expression was blissful, her eyes half-closed with satisfaction — she varied her intonation each time she called his name and he had to follow each one. They went through the exchange several more times, at different pitches and with different weight, until she had fully had her fill.

"Thank you, my dear — for humoring my nonsense." Hirota Masami stopped, and touched his face, warm and unhurried. Without waiting for his reply, she added: "I'll just touch up my face and then we can go eat." She moved away from the living room and turned toward the bathroom.

She left the door ajar. Ma En could see the edge of her silhouette moving, and heard: the sound of the toilet, then water running — a rush, then steady — and he'd heard somewhere that Japanese women were generally self-conscious about sounds like these being overheard, though Hirota-san evidently wasn't. After that: the zip of her handbag, the click of a compact...

He let those sounds drift from his attention and turned back to the recorded program. He studied the image of Professor Mitarai, the man he intended to visit. The professor's build ran slightly to heaviness; his skin was smooth and pale; his hair, a little on the longer side, was combed neatly and caught the light with a faint sheen, gathered into a ponytail at the back of his head. The overall impression was of someone comfortable and well-kept, yet slightly careless about his appearance — sleeves rolled to the elbow, a cowboy hat tilted back on his head. It was genuinely difficult to determine whether this man spent most of his time behind a desk doing archival research, or out in the field.

When the host raised the history of the haunted spot, Mitarai spoke easily and at length, citing quite a few sources the average person wouldn't have encountered. But several of his remarks felt familiar to Ma En, and he placed them quickly: he'd seen them in the regional folklore publications he'd bought at the bookshop. He couldn't determine whether those amateur folklorists had drawn on Mitarai's research, or whether Mitarai had drawn on those same publications.

Either way, Ma En reflected, without watching this tape and hearing Mitarai speak, he never would have recalled those materials at all. And he had a feeling the books themselves were now gone — a thief had come through, then the earthquake, then the building sealed. He'd had no time to salvage anything; it was only occurring to him now. At least he hadn't lost the contents of his own memory.

Even so, he couldn't see how his fragmentary recollections of those sources, combined with what Mitarai was saying here, gave him any meaningful advantage in his current situation.

One thing was clear, though: Professor Mitarai knew a great deal about Sanchoumoku Park — which meant the Room 4 Ghost Story would be well within his scope of awareness. He was the right age for it, and had every professional reason to be paying attention to it. As an archaeology professor and folklorist, the ghost story occupied a certain place in the park's history. It would have been unusual for someone in Mitarai's position not to know it.

Yet in this paranormal variety program, Mitarai had said nothing about the aspects of Sanchoumoku Park that seemed connected to a cult. On the few occasions the host edged toward those topics, Mitarai hadn't taken the bait — he only smiled and nodded, then redirected the conversation into more formal historical exposition.

Ma En understood: whatever Mitarai knew, this program was not where those secrets would surface.

The host was an accomplished entertainer. Among the guests were two beautiful women — one youthfully famous, one gracefully in her prime — as well as an actor and a singer; all but Mitarai were either charming or refined, each contributing something distinct, drawing the eye and ear even for viewers who had no interest in haunted spots. Mitarai, by contrast, contributed little to the entertainment and had little enough opportunity to. He gradually became invisible — sitting upright, taking small sips of water, smiling and nodding as the conversation moved around him.

The program felt, to Ma En, more like a talk show with light content than anything genuinely paranormal.

As for Terahana-san — the camera returned to her face frequently, but she offered little. A mostly blank expression, with occasional flickers of something neutral or cool. High school age, apparently — slightly detached, or perhaps simply reserved; Ma En couldn't find the right word, and he didn't find her remarkable one way or the other. Whatever quality was supposed to have captivated the entire country, he couldn't locate it. She didn't strike him as more compelling than the woman sitting beside her — his girlfriend.

Hirota-san appeared on camera often, and Ma En was unsurprised. She was strikingly beautiful, composed, stylish — her voice clear and pleasant, her manner warm and witty, her presence never merely decorative. The camera tended to frame her from the shoulders up; unlike Terahana-san, whose footage was largely focused on her face.

All in all, Ma En decided, his girlfriend was better.

By the time Hirota-san came back from the bathroom, the program had reached its end. Ma En hadn't gained much of substance from it. He listened in quiet as the audience's final applause faded.

"Still watching?" She came around from behind the sofa, leaned against the back, and draped her arms around his neck from above. "Time to eat."

"Right." Ma En pressed the remote without hesitation.

The image compressed instantly into a single contracting thread of light.

A blink later, all that remained in the screen's reflection were the two of them.

She came around the sofa toward him and handed him a round-brimmed hat and a long umbrella with a hooked handle. He took the hat in one hand and settled it on his head, then gripped the umbrella — the way a gentleman might carry a walking stick — and she took his arm and drew herself close against him.

Their paired silhouettes receded from the edge of the screen.

The television held only an empty sofa, a tea table, and open notes.

The soft click of the closing door echoed through the empty living room. Outside, the night wind moved through the curtains like a breath.

TOBECONTINUE……