They had soba noodles and cake for lunch. On the way back, Ma En bought apples and bananas as gifts for Asuka's family. The prices staggered him — most fruit in Japan cost several times what it did in the homeland, and was sold by the piece. Asuka had been happier about the fruit than about the cake.

He found himself missing home. If summer came and he wanted a watermelon, he'd be paying nearly ten times what it cost in the homeland. The gap made the need for income feel urgent. Kamishima-san's guarantee meant the private school position was all but secured, but how much would the salary actually be? Daily expenses would be manageable. But eating freely, treating people to high-end yakiniku, buying gifts, sending fruit — at this rate, his wallet would run thin.

He had some savings, but he still felt the pressure to find supplemental income. Whatever he earned at the school would never match the benefits he'd pulled in at his post office back in the homeland.

A horse doesn't grow fat without night grass.

Ma En carried the fruit beside Asuka, watching the genuine happiness on her face while his mind ran calculations on side income. If not for his Party membership — still in place, still drawing international funding — these past two days, and possibly the next several months, would have been far tighter. The more he thought about it, the more he appreciated the decision he'd made years ago: accepting the post office job, joining the Party at the first opportunity. One of the smartest moves of his life.

Now the membership had entered re-evaluation. He'd need to perform. He'd always intended to, but the urgency had never been this sharp.

"You really won't let me walk you to your building?" Asuka was still on this. The desire was palpable.

"No need. Your family's shop is on the way back — I've only got a few minutes' walk past it." Ma En said. "Why do you need to go all the way to my building and then double back?"

"My house isn't at the shop," Asuka said.

"Then where is it?"

"Not telling you." She added: "But from home to the shop, I pass right by where you live."

"Don't show up knocking on my door." He said it lightly, but he meant it. At her age, she'd be sensitive to every shade of tone and expression — pushing too hard would only hurt her.

"Depends on whether you keep your promises." She paused. "Even if you're busy — once a week is doable, right?"

"Mm. Call me." He didn't refuse. He didn't dislike girls like Asuka, and even with the danger in mind, if he couldn't maintain a friendship at the frequency of once a week, that would be genuinely sad. He'd never been that isolated, and he didn't want to start. He didn't dwell on the future. He always prepared for the worst, but that didn't mean living inside a fixed image of catastrophe.

He'd done that imagining back in the homeland, once. That kind of preparation didn't need to be carried every waking moment. Otherwise life became impossible.

When they reached Ichiraku, the lunch rush was still in full swing. Rows of suited office workers packed the counter and tables. These were company employees from nearby, Asuka told him — and when they couldn't leave the office, they ordered delivery.

"If I'm at the shop, I'm usually the one who runs it out." She shook her arms and rolled up her sleeves. Ma En noticed the faint lines of muscle definition. Compared to most girls he'd met, Asuka had some real strength.

She pulled him through to the back room. About ten minutes later, her father finished a round in the front and came back, shooing Asuka out to work.

"You went to all this trouble — and brought gifts." The father eyed the fruit on the table. "Fruit's expensive, isn't it?"

"Mm. Got a shock," Ma En said honestly.

"Did Asuka give you any trouble?" The father opened the packaging as he spoke, picked up an apple, and bit into it. He chewed slowly, as if tasting. "Mm. Sweet, juicy. That's good."

"No trouble. We went to Sanchoumoku Park but didn't enter the cemetery." Ma En saw no reason to hide it. Asuka was his friend, but the people who lived with her — the people genuinely responsible for her — were her family. Her father ran the shop. If there was potential danger, he needed to know.

"Didn't go in?" The father seemed surprised, but pleased. "Good. I don't really believe the rumors either, but less trouble is better."

"Asuka wanted to go. I talked her out of it. I walked the perimeter and felt uncomfortable — so I'd suggest she not go alone in the future." Ma En was straightforward. "Maybe I'm being oversensitive. But I wanted to tell you — if she insists on going, it would be better to stop her."

"...You actually sensed something? Are you the type with some kind of psychic sensitivity?" The father looked taken aback. "I went there myself, back in the day. Asuka gets her personality from me, honestly. But I didn't feel anything strange. You really did?"

Psychic sensitivity. Ma En hadn't heard the term used this way before, but the meaning was clear enough — someone who could see ghosts. The father's framing wasn't quite right, though. Ma En hadn't seen anything from the world of ghost stories. He didn't believe in ghosts — at least not in the way people imagined them.

People didn't actually want to understand ghosts. They preferred the mystery. The pleasure of ghost stories lay in the veil — the mystique of things deliberately kept unknowable. People resisted analysis. They carved out a category of "things we don't need to understand" and kept ghosts there, shielded from scrutiny. What ghost stories ultimately revealed was human psychology, not the supernatural.

The bizarre things Ma En pursued resembled ghosts in their strangeness, but he approached them as tangible existences — things that existed independent of human projection, things that could be understood, even if current knowledge fell short. Their unknowability wasn't a posture people adopted to preserve the thrill. It was real. And what made them fascinating wasn't their mystery but what they implied about the world: that it was vast beyond ordinary imagination, harboring wonders as staggering as anything an astronomer might dream while gazing into deep space.

Ancient people saw the sun every day. They couldn't understand it, so they imagined the sun god. They lived by the sun but worshipped the god. The sun was real — fixed, physical, constant overhead. The sun god was projection: a human creation layered over a natural fact. For those ancient people, the sun's greatness became the god's greatness, and the god's mystery became the sun's mystery. If Ma En had lived in that era, he would have pursued the sun — not the god.

A thousand years later, humanity still didn't fully understand the sun. It remained untouchable, unapproachable — in a sense, the closest instance of the bizarre in human experience. But its unknowability was fixed. The sun's structure, its composition, its behavior — these were problems that yielded, slowly, to accumulating knowledge. A mystery that would eventually submit to understanding.

The bizarre things Ma En pursued were different. Their unknowability wasn't fixed. It grew. They could perhaps be glimpsed from certain angles, but even before being observed, they already resided beyond human cognition. And as human knowledge expanded, these bizarre things didn't stand still — they receded further into the unknown, possibly faster than knowledge could follow.

He didn't know whether such things truly existed. But in a universe this vast, with the unknown stretching in every direction — they had to.

None of this was something he could explain to Asuka's father. The distinction was too subtle for casual conversation. If he tried, even talking himself hoarse, the man would understand only half and misunderstand the rest. And from the father's perspective, what Ma En pursued was probably no more interesting than ordinary ghosts. He'd just think Ma En was a weirdo.

"I'm not sure if it's psychic sensitivity. I didn't see anything," Ma En said carefully. "Maybe I'm just oversensitive. But I felt danger there."

"Danger?" The father frowned.

"Real danger. Like when people say a twitching eyelid means something bad is coming."

"Ah — I see. That kind of danger." The father's expression shifted. "But isn't that worse? A premonition of disaster is even more reliable than bumping into a ghost."

"I hope I'm just being oversensitive," Ma En said. "But I felt you should know."

The father bit hard into the apple several times, chewing in thoughtful silence. "I'll keep an eye on Asuka. It's just a matter of not going to the park for a while — she didn't go that often before."

"The park is fine. Just not the cemetery. If she wants to go, you could go with her — just don't let her go alone."

"When do I have time for that?" The father smiled ruefully. "But — thank you. Really."

"It's nothing." Ma En waved him off. Then: "You mentioned you went there yourself, back in the day?"

"I did." The father set down the apple core. "This was when the newspapers first started talking about Room 4 — the curse, they called it. I was like Asuka back then — fascinated by that kind of thing. So I investigated on my own. Went to Sanchoumoku Park's cemetery and everything. Found nothing. Felt disappointed, honestly. Then her mother got pregnant, and between the baby and the shop — no time, no energy. I dropped it. Since then, I just hear other people's Room 4 stories."

"You said before that every Room 4 tenant visits Sanchoumoku Park." Ma En remembered. At the time it had seemed like an offhand exaggeration — they hadn't known each other well enough for him to challenge it. But the claim's water content now seemed lower than he'd assumed. "How do you know?"

"That's a strange thing in itself," the father said. He spoke evenly, without drama. "I can't say for certain it's every single tenant. But since I opened this shop, every person who's moved into Room 4 has come here to eat. Without exception."

He paused, as if ordering the facts.

"Every one of them, for one reason or another — just like you — ends up talking about Room 4. Some of them learned about Sanchoumoku Park from me. Some from other people. But all of them, eventually, made the trip."

Another pause.

"Of course — not everyone who lives in Room 4 dies. Most of the tenants I've met are still alive and well. The cases are officially closed. What the newspapers wrote was distortion piled on distortion."

He picked up a banana, turned it in his hands without peeling it.

"But it does sound rather eerie when you put it all together, doesn't it? Less trouble is better."