Ma En sat unclothed on the sofa, watching a news bulletin about Japan's economic reform conference. He reached for the remote to change the channel — and in the next moment, a brief but sudden shuddering made his hand pause. The sofa was moving. He quickly realized the floor was moving too. The tremor escalated rapidly; the water cup on the coffee table began sliding toward one edge. He caught it before it could fall — and then a second, stronger jolt made his whole body list sideways. Every piece of furniture in the room that he could see — including things fixed to walls — was swaying.

The hanging lamp made it most obvious; suspended from a single wire, the shade was already swinging past thirty degrees.

An earthquake?

He'd heard Japan had frequent earthquakes, but when it actually happened, it still felt sudden. The previous month had been completely still.

The unlockable front door crashed open with a bang. A figure flew into the apartment and called out urgently: "Darling! What are you doing? There's an earthquake! Get out of here — now!"

Hirota Masami. By the time he turned his head, she'd already rushed into the living room, dumped the bundle of clothes she was holding onto the sofa, grabbed a shirt and trousers from the pile, and dropped them onto Ma En.

"Hurry — we have to leave immediately. Where are your earthquake emergency supplies?" Hirota Masami's expression was sharp, almost to the point where Ma En thought she might be overreacting. She was already wearing her work clothes, but she'd also slung a large canvas backpack over one shoulder — enormous and utilitarian, every bit the practical emergency type, something that clashed completely with her polished professional look. The combination was almost funny.

He said nothing, and pulled on the clothes quickly. Everything Hirota Masami had bought for him was casual wear — no dress shirt, nothing requiring a belt, nothing he would ever have reached for in the last twenty-four years. Not that "no belt" was entirely accurate; the trousers she'd chosen probably could take a belt, if you considered a belt more of a decorative choice than a necessity.

In any case, none of it was anything like what he was used to. He remembered agreeing to let Hirota Masami dispose of what he'd brought from home, as a way of symbolically starting fresh. Now, with the last of his old clothes burned to ash, he found himself slightly nostalgic for the dull, rigid formality of the suits he'd worn for years.

Hirota Masami was in a hurry — the room was shaking harder with every passing second. The television news had shifted to earthquake coverage: Shizuoka, Yokohama, Tokyo, Chiba — the whole coastal line — all in varying degrees of earthquake activity. Even the news studio had been caught on camera visibly swaying, though the anchor continued to deliver evacuation guidance without any break in composure.

Without warning, the window glass nearest the street let out a sharp crack-crack-crack and split along several lines. The rattling of dishes in the kitchen intensified. Furniture not fixed in place had begun to perform something like a dance — drawers jolting free, cabinet locks that had held snapping open as if pried by an invisible hand.

Ma En had experienced earthquakes in his homeland — nothing this strong. There were areas of his country where strong quakes were common, but he'd simply happened not to be in any of them. Now, for the first time, he had actual cause for alarm. The acceleration in intensity was unmistakable; this was unlike anything he'd experienced.

"What are you still looking at?" Hirota Masami's voice had taken on an edge. She was going around shutting the safety valves on various outlets — but in Ma En's observation, this was less useful action than channeled anxiety. She would have already dragged him outside if he hadn't still needed to get dressed.

He was still calm enough to analyze this. Hirota Masami had already pulled out a backpack from the entryway shoe cabinet — he'd known it was there, but had never looked inside and had no idea what it was for. A rental bonus? Inside it was not entirely empty, but the most interesting item was a hand-crank emergency radio, which he had also never used.

Hirota Masami seemed to have known exactly where the backpack was. She pulled it open, and her expression immediately became one of pure disbelief.

"Nothing. You've prepared absolutely nothing?"

"Prepared what?" Ma En was momentarily puzzled — and then caught himself.

"This bag is for emergency supplies. And you put nothing in it?" Her voice sharpened. "I genuinely cannot believe this."

He started to say something, but the corridor outside had come alive with sound. Not just the corridor — the whole building. He moved to the window: people were streaming out of buildings in every direction.

"What are you still looking at? Get out here!" Hirota Masami had already stepped into the corridor.

In the parts of the building Ma En couldn't see, the sounds of collapse multiplied — not only his room, but the rooms to either side and above and below were producing a constant sound of things falling, as if a demolition crew had gone to work. The vibrations had intensified to the point where he felt he could hear the steel and concrete complaining.

Hirota Masami in the corridor was fighting to keep her footing, one hand on the wall for balance. Ma En moved at his normal pace — he had a sense of urgency, but nothing like panic. He had an extremely strong intuition, one that felt as though it could read the building's structural condition directly, in real time. He was certain this apartment building would be fine. Room 4 would not collapse. Even if there had been some structural risk, he felt he'd be able to estimate the timeline — and right now, that timeline simply wasn't presenting itself. Which told him the building was safe.

That said, Hirota Masami's urgency was not something to take lightly.

When he went back into the bedroom, she shouted again: "Where are you going? Get out!"

He didn't answer. He stuffed money, all his documents, and some of the books and papers from the bookshelf into the briefcase, then picked up the black umbrella and walked out.

The shaking had grown worse — most of the visible window glass seemed to shatter simultaneously, as if each pane had been struck hard several times over. The floor's movement made the concrete building feel like something being kneaded. Looking out through the broken windows, the high-rise buildings in the distance were swaying visibly.

He quickened his pace. From Hirota Masami's perspective, this still looked like dawdling — as if he had no idea how dangerous earthquakes could be. It was only now that she remembered: her boyfriend was a foreigner. He'd only been in Japan for a month.

Seeing what he was carrying — a briefcase and a black umbrella — Hirota Masami didn't know what to say. She wanted to be angry; she felt too drained for it. She grabbed Ma En's hand and ran in the direction opposite the elevator, but the shaking was so violent she was constantly off-balance and would have fallen several times without Ma En catching her.

"Don't worry — this building won't collapse," Ma En said, supporting Hirota Masami steadily, and cast a quick glance down the corridor. Rooms one and two were empty, doors open. Room 3 showed no sign of activity whatsoever — door pulled firmly shut. Ma En felt certain the neighbor friend hadn't left, and equally certain that the man had no need to. With that body, those vines filling every surface — if the whole building came down, he'd be fine. Thinking of what he'd seen spread across every surface of Room 3, Ma En suspected Room 3 was actually the most structurally reinforced room in the entire building.

Room 3 was also the only one with a door that could lock. All the other doors were open — including Room 5, nominally empty, which had always given Ma En an odd feeling. He glanced inside as they ran past. Standard furnishings, the same as any other unit. Clean. No trace of anyone having lived there.

They took the fire stairs down. By the time they reached the lower floors, they seemed to be the last people left in the building. Three floors down, a violent scraping and crashing came from the elevator shaft — the car had fallen. Shortly after, smoke began to seep from one of the floors; something had caught fire. Through the stairwell, neither the smoke nor the sound was very strong, but the thundering of two people spiraling downward on the stairs was sharp and clear.

When they emerged outside, the street had cracked open — a fissure stretching more than ten meters long. Vehicles were jammed together, alarms going off in ragged chorus. Not far away, several wooden buildings had collapsed. Traffic signals were flashing in confused patterns; a few power lines had snapped and were throwing sparks — the hazard zone was obvious. People were streaming, alarmed but focused, toward a common destination. Hirota Masami pulled Ma En into the flow.

Someone with a bullhorn was maintaining order, indicating the shelter point. In Ma En's field of vision, everyone moved quickly but with an exceptional quietness and self-discipline — a scene very different from what he'd imagined. Each person appeared to know where to go and what to do. Many people carried large bags like Hirota Masami's; but nobody was carrying a briefcase and a black umbrella like Ma En's — he stood out, yet not a single person spared him more than a glance.

He looked back at the building. It was swaying, visibly — all the windows he could see were broken — but the walls held no cracks. The structural frame showed no sign of coming apart. What was more alarming were the three units showing fire and smoke; even from outside and without a full view, it was clear the flames were spreading. An additional fire he couldn't see was apparently burning on the other side of the building.

One of the visible fire points was on the twelfth floor. If the fire climbed, it would go directly into Room 2. If it reached that far, Room 3 and Room 4 would become uncertain.

By any normal standard of judgment, an earthquake was one of Japan's frequent natural events, and a fire was simply what earthquakes often produced. Nothing in any of this required a human hand. But Ma En still couldn't separate the timing from the ghost story in his mind. He told himself firmly: possibly just my own bias. Whatever either event means for the ghost story, I can only know after it's all over.

At the same time, he tested the other direction: wasn't he being forced — linking this earthquake and fire to the ghost story only because his mind was primed to see everything that way?

While Ma En turned this over, Hirota Masami held his hand with a grip that was practically pulling him along. There were more violent aftershocks mid-transit, briefly disrupting the flow of people — but overall, the long procession moved quietly and orderly into open space. When the two of them reached the nearby plaza, it was already packed with people, all of them silent, faces drawn with strain. Hirota Masami found a space and finally exhaled; her expression softened.

She'd been silent since they'd left the building, only clutching his hand and moving forward. Now she said to him: "This should be safe. Don't worry — we'll be fine."

Ma En nodded. He wasn't worried about the earthquake at all. But he felt, once again, the full sincerity of Hirota Masami's care for him. He didn't have the habit of putting what moved him into words. He only tightened his grip on her hand in return. She seemed to understand the transmission, and gave him a smile — one with a little tiredness behind it.

Seeing Hirota Masami as a human woman, her tiredness was entirely understandable. And Ma En had never had any intention of seeing her as "a monster." In his view — once the root cause was removed, these "monsters" would continue living in human society exactly as they always had, indistinguishable from ordinary people. They'd always lived this way.

Rather than treating them as monsters, treating the danger concealed in the Room 4 Ghost Story as "aliens attacking human society" — it was cleaner to simply see it as "certain opportunists trying to incite the masses, manipulate opinion, undermine peace and order to serve their own hidden ends." Not treating the monsters as monsters, but treating them as unknowing members of a cult — looking at it from that angle actually produced clearer thinking.

He was better at dealing with people than with monsters.

Their hands never separated. They leaned against each other, and the people around them were also gathered in close clusters — whispering reassurances to one another, warmer toward strangers than on any ordinary day. People moved continuously between groups relaying information. Emergency supplies accumulated quickly. The atmosphere held fear and tension, but also a quiet and powerful warmth that wrapped around everyone present.

As if caught in that warmth, the earthquake continued but every subsequent tremor was weaker. He knew this was just how earthquakes worked. The shaking did diminish, but not because it had been moved by anyone's inner state. A natural disaster was still a natural disaster — its occurrence, development, and conclusion weren't subject to human will. But he didn't mind this illusion, and even found himself hoping it was the truth. He couldn't help imagining a future in which humanity had learned to make this kind of brutal natural phenomenon respond to human intention.

About fifteen minutes later, the shaking had completely stopped. No further waves. People remained in the plaza for another half-hour until, as new information about the earthquake situation came in, the restrictions finally lifted. Then, all at once, faces around them relaxed. The gathered crowd began moving back toward the streets, dispersing in all directions.

Everyone was talking about the earthquake — residual shock in their voices, and some lingering worry — but many people were already capable of smiling again.

Ma En and Hirota Masami walked back toward the apartment hand in hand. Along the way, they passed two or three collapsed buildings, though there appeared to be no casualties — only the grief and resigned acceptance of people losing property. On balance, the earthquake seemed not to have produced catastrophic impact; Ma En sensed that Japanese people had a certain everyday familiarity with this kind of event, which was probably why they'd been able to settle again so quickly.

The street-facing side of the apartment building was blackened by smoke in several places — but the fire seemed to have put itself out, and thick smoke was still rolling from several windows. By Ma En's estimate, his Room 4 appeared undamaged. But he was worried about the neighbor friend in Room 3. From this angle, he couldn't see Room 3 at all.

The building had been temporarily closed to entry — yellow caution tape was already being strung across the entrance by the manager and building security staff, who had apparently returned very quickly and were now extremely busy.

Ma En and Hirota Masami greeted the manager. Gradually, the other residents also gathered. He finally met most of them properly for the first time — all of them appeared completely ordinary. Some had apparently never even heard of the Room 4 ghost story.

"During the day, entry isn't permitted. The building seems structurally sound, but for everyone's safety, we'll need a professional inspection." The manager addressed the gathered residents: "Earliest estimate is tonight. Everyone should prepare to spend a night outside. A high-grade hotel shouldn't be affected, so perhaps stay one night there — worst case, you should be able to come back by tomorrow. If you can, I'd suggest booking now, while there's still room. Otherwise, I have a few tents here — you're welcome to manage a night in the park square, if you prefer."

Reasonable assessment, no objections from anyone, and the residents dispersed. Ma En and Hirota Masami were also about to leave when the manager called to them:

"Ma En-san — you weren't in last night, were you?"

"Correct." Ma En said without any change of expression. "I was on a business trip, came back this morning."

"You saw the state of your room. I'm very sorry — our security failed entirely. If anything was taken, please do let us know; we'll evaluate compensation. The damaged infrastructure will be repaired by the property management at no cost to you. I apologize — the earthquake and fire have created so much to deal with, it may take time, but please bear with us."

"It's fine. I understand." Ma En was genuinely unconcerned; he felt Room 4 held nothing particularly important anymore. And with so much having happened in such rapid succession, there was probably no way to judge — even with his memory — what might be missing from his room.

Right — the strange wooden carving.

"Manager — I bought a wooden carving from you."

"Yes. Is something the matter?" The manager's expression showed genuine puzzlement — no trace of unease.

"I've developed some curiosity about its origins. I remember you mentioned it came to you through someone—"

"Mitarai-san." The manager said.

Right. Mitarai-san.

Ma En remembered. Mitarai Sanshirou.