Mitarai Sanshirou — folklore professor, or possibly archaeology professor, he couldn't recall precisely — but the instant the name surfaced, the Room 3 neighbor friend's words came flooding back: there was intelligence that only certain people received; there was a mechanism in place ensuring it could never spread widely; those people would willingly share it with some others, but that didn't mean they were easy to find, or that extracting the intelligence from them was simple.

"In this world, in people's minds, in the complex circulation of material and information, there is a mechanism ensuring this intelligence remains secret. And we can always see the surface of this mechanism, but we have never gone deep inside it."

He heard his own voice saying these words aloud. He caught himself — and went cold.

That was not something he had chosen to say. The realization brought genuine alarm. He shook himself clear of it immediately — but the alarm persisted. He knew with certainty: he did not have a habit of murmuring to himself. At the postal service, the most important professional quality was silence. You kept your mouth shut when you were drunk, when you were asleep; there was a specific test for it, and workers who talked in their sleep were dismissed. This was not something he'd developed the habit of violating.

The state he'd just been in felt foreign. Not his own murmuring, but the sensation of something using his mouth to speak at him.

He dismissed this thought immediately. Going in that direction helped no one — it would only compound confusion and fear.

"What was that?" The manager asked, looking at him with a puzzled expression. She didn't seem to have caught the content of what he'd said.

"...Nothing. Do you have a way to reach Professor Mitarai?" Ma En said sincerely. "I have some questions about the carving I'd like to ask him."

The manager looked mildly troubled.

"I'm afraid not. He seems to have changed his phone number — I'm not clear on where he lives now. The last time I ran into him was by complete coincidence; if he hadn't greeted me first, I'd have walked right past him."

"Then never mind — it's nothing urgent." Ma En dropped it immediately. "Did he say anything when he gave you the carving?"

"He said some things, but I didn't really register them. Something about the carving being from an ancient indigenous artifact, excavated from a rural ruin somewhere. He was just saying it — I didn't believe it for a second." The manager was quite certain. "That man always seems to find antiques in the countryside, but if it were really that easy, he'd be wealthy by now. Last time I saw him, he seemed rather strapped for money — still that same disheveled look, despite being a professor."

"An indigenous artifact?" Ma En frowned, glancing at Hirota Masami beside him, and asked: "Did he say anything specific about where it was excavated?"

"No, definitely not. And don't be fooled, Ma En-san — that carving has nothing of the antique about it. It's clearly some third-rate modern craftsman's work. Looking strange just means it's being called art." The manager was dismissive. Ma En didn't have access to what expression had been on the manager's face when she'd first handed him the carving — if he could compare the two, he might find something useful. Even with this thought, he still inclined toward believing the manager had no deep connection to the ghost story — at most, a peripheral figure.

Mainly because believing that was considerably more settling.

He hadn't extracted anything more before the work crew at the building entrance began calling the manager over. She apologized quickly and walked toward them — she had the busiest few days of her professional life ahead of her. Ma En and Hirota Masami left together, hand in hand.

The road back to the hotel district took them through earthquake aftermath. They saw more toppled buildings, construction crews, garbage trucks and heavy vehicles, fire crews and police — every trade involved in disaster response was already at work. Watching the activity, Ma En also noticed that the number of people available for all this across the entire district seemed slightly thin. Enough on a typical day; a full earthquake had shown them it wasn't.

No constraints anymore?

The thought passed through his mind unbidden. This city and the coastal cities nearby had tied up the government's attention, energy, and manpower.

Even a natural earthquake could be exploited by an enemy. And if this weren't a natural earthquake at all — if some inconceivable degree of premeditation had gone into it — then the enemy's real move was beginning. Between the two possibilities, the latter was obviously the more fanciful one. Still, a bad feeling moved through him, and he couldn't do anything about it right now.

"Not going to work today?" Hirota Masami asked.

"Waiting for the school's notice. But this earthquake was strong enough that they'll probably cancel classes." He turned it back to her: "And you? A magazine, even after an earthquake, probably still needs people in?"

"Same — waiting for word. There was supposed to be a meeting today, but the earthquake may have pushed it. They'll probably want earthquake coverage first — some quick interviews." She said it matter-of-factly.

"You work at a fashion magazine, right?" Ma En had a mild puzzlement. "What does an earthquake have to do with fashion?"

"It only overlaps with fashion somewhat — we really focus more on people than on the fashion itself." Hirota Masami explained. "Something like — interview fashion-world figures about their earthquake responses, organize activities around earthquake themes. The subject is the earthquake; the framing is the people in the fashion world. That's more or less the approach."

"Will there be disaster relief donations?"

"The earthquake was strong — quite a few houses have collapsed already. This area seems relatively intact, but other places will be different. It depends on the damage assessment. Generally, charity work of some kind always follows something like this." She said this with noticeably less enthusiasm than the rest of the conversation — as if she had her own private thoughts about the fashion world's charitable activities.

The topic didn't interest her. Ma En moved it along: "Masami, where is your hometown?"

"Akita — very rural. The buses only run every four hours there."

Her answer gave Ma En the brief sensation he'd already heard this, given this exact same answer before.

"Do you have any customs passed down there? Stories are fine too." He said, as casually as possible. "I might be able to use them in the story I'm writing."

"Oh, gathering material? Very authorial of you." The other person let out an easy, slightly teasing laugh.

Ma En made a self-deprecating face and laughed along. "You see, I used your hometown specialty dish in the story."

"The mixed vegetables? Do you want more? That's a shame." Hirota Masami made a small regretful expression. "I left them in the kitchen."

"That's perfectly fine." Ma En said quickly. "My appetite for anything in that story is completely ruined. If you actually made the vegetables, I don't think I could get them down."

"Is that so?" Hirota Masami tilted her head and studied him in a way that felt, just briefly, more precise than casual.

"I genuinely haven't been able to get used to them." Ma En didn't embellish it — he just said it, straightforwardly. "That's really why I wrote them into the story the way I did — I apologize, since it's your hometown dish."

Hirota Masami looked at him for a moment, then let out a laugh.

"All right, stop being so serious — you look almost pitiful. You're writing a story; artistic exaggeration and invention are part of the craft. And the mixed vegetables are an important plot element — that's interesting, that's good. You wrote it so well, I'm certainly not going to be upset." She paused, then added: "Besides, not being able to get used to a regional specialty is not just you — I find plenty of local foods difficult to eat myself. Since you don't like them, I won't make them again. Why didn't you just say so sooner?"

"...I'm not great at refusing other people's goodwill." Ma En hesitated briefly, then said: "When you were happy making them, it was hard to say no in that moment. And I kept thinking I'd get used to them eventually. But I haven't."

"Darling, your flaw is being too kind-hearted." Hirota Masami set aside the light tone and said it directly. "A personality like yours is very easy for bad women to take advantage of."

Ma En turned this over briefly, started to say something, and swallowed it. In the end, he simply swung their interlaced hands lightly and said with warmth: "I've already been taken advantage of by one bad woman — you."

"Is that so? Then I'll take responsibility — I can't let another bad woman get to you."

Ma En and Hirota Masami looked at each other, and he felt that the happiness on her face was practically luminous.

"Actually, eating the mixed vegetables twice is all that matters." Her voice had become quieter. "In my hometown, eating them is a ritual for couples and newlyweds. It's the symbol of being bound to each other. It means something about fate."

Ma En felt his back go cold.

He looked up at the sky. Perhaps because of the earthquake, the clouds sat heavy and gray, full of a density the wind couldn't move. At some point, crows had settled everywhere along the street — on shop eaves, in collapsed rubble, on telephone poles — and they made no sound at all, yet gave the impression of watching him. A stray cat crossed the top of a low wall in an alley and vanished in an instant.

"Ominous," he said involuntarily.

"What?" Hirota Masami didn't follow at first — but then she noticed the crows too. "Crows and black cats are good luck symbols around here, you know."

"Lucky? Where you come from?"

"All over Japan. It's the custom."

"Hard to understand."

"Because they seem so intelligent, so mysterious, don't you think?" She said: "In mythology and folklore alike, they're always indispensable background figures. Even now, some people believe they carry both good fortune and bad fortune."

"Good fortune and bad fortune both? That's contradictory."

"Very contradictory — but that's also life, isn't it? Compared to that contradiction, pure good luck or pure bad luck starts to feel like a fairy tale. The world really is complex." She continued: "It's exactly that ambiguity and contradiction that gives them a philosophical quality — and that's why the people here like them. Darling — do you like them? Or dislike them?"

"...I don't like things that are too complicated. They make my head feel like it's been over-inflated." He made a gesture around his own head, and Hirota Masami let out a snort of quiet laughter.

"I'm not good at handling overly complex things — so I prefer to simplify what's complicated," he said.

"Is that so? Neither am I, actually." Hirota Masami said: "In my hometown, people always made very elaborate, fussy rituals out of simple things. Worshipping ancestors — they'd treat it like a major production, as if complexity showed sincerity. But really, if the intention reaches, that's all that matters. Yet they were convinced that elaborateness was the only way to express feeling, the only way to make the ancestors happy. Actually, though — what truly works is always simple."

Something occurred to her, and she raised a hand to cover a small, private smile: "Inconceivably simple."

"How simple?"

"Just say the name."

"Just say the name? When worshipping — call the ancestor's name?"

"Yes. In my hometown. Saying their name directly is the most important thing." Hirota Masami said this with genuine conviction — she truly believed it. "No embellishment necessary. Say the name correctly, say it accurately, communicate the sincerity of intent directly — that's the real way to transmit respect, to create communication. Everything beyond that is unnecessary. Or rather — it's distortion. It's like deliberately placing a dividing line between yourself and the one you're trying to reach. You appear to approach, but you aren't actually approaching."

She had her own questions about the people in her hometown: "I sometimes wonder — did those people actually want to communicate with their ancestors? Or were they only performing it? Which is why I left home. I thought — the outside world might hold a better answer."

"Did you find it?" Ma En asked. "The answer."

Hirota Masami said nothing. She only smiled — a quiet, reflective smile — looking up at the heavy sky.