Everything Hirota Masami had said and done was worth thinking carefully about. Ma En didn't believe any of it had come from a state of "complete unawareness of what was happening" — but equally, referencing what the Room 3 neighbor friend had described, he didn't believe Hirota Masami was consciously aware, as she said these things, of how they related to the Room 4 Ghost Story.

In the time he'd spent around her, he'd come to feel quite certain of this: Hirota Masami had no interest in the Room 4 Ghost Story. She knew of it — but only that.

Her behavior was full of contradictions. If you hadn't been pursuing the ghost story, investing significant effort in it, and actually encountering those bizarre things firsthand — no one would detect anything unusual about Hirota Masami.

If he were forced to describe it, he felt it was as though another Hirota Masami existed inside her — in her subconscious, in her inner world. Something like the early signs of a split personality beginning to form. But since what was involved was "a monster," he couldn't draw easy conclusions.

Even having lost his memories, even with his thinking fundamentally different from his past self — he still clearly remembered how his past self had defined things bizarre and uncanny: to analyze "monsters" using the framework for analyzing "people" might feel, at first, like it was arriving at the same place by a different route. But it would inevitably arrive at a moment where placing too much weight on "human behavior" caused him to overlook the fact that what he was dealing with was not human — and the cost of that oversight would be irreversible.

If the analytical frameworks for humans could produce accurate results when applied to things bizarre and uncanny — if correct answers about "monsters" could be reached that way — then these things wouldn't be genuinely bizarre and uncanny. "Monsters" wouldn't be monsters.

The category of "monster" had always had a fuzzy, imprecise quality in common usage. People even described gifted individuals, or people who didn't fit standard expectations, as "monsters," didn't they? Humans enjoyed dramatizing the extraordinary. But this didn't mean they genuinely failed to understand what "monster" strictly meant.

Most people lived in ordinary worlds and looked at ordinary things, and this ordinariness had long since become the default setting for their thinking.

That default setting deceived them: in the strict sense, monsters don't exist — they're only the fears of a frightened mind taking shape.

Ma En felt that his old self had always been trying to prove this was not an imaginary fear, that it was real. And his recent self, for a stretch, had accepted that it was imaginary. Every subsequent event had demonstrated: the old self was right. The present self had been wrong.

He acknowledged this. Acknowledging one's own error was, for a Party member like him, not the difficult part. The difficult part was insisting you were right when you weren't. The real danger was always one-sided self-certainty.

Acknowledging this error also helped him understand, more precisely, what the most critical factor had been in transforming his old self into his present self: those genuinely bizarre and uncanny things that existed objectively in this world, those uninvited visitors that seemed to have traveled from somewhere dark and far in the cosmos.

Now those things had been given an external framework he could somewhat accept — "whatever exists in the vast unknown universe, all of it is possible, isn't it?" — and that helped.

Since what humans currently knew about themselves was insufficient to fully understand even the planet they lived on, it was entirely natural that this narrow knowledge was even more helpless against the deeper unknowns of the cosmos — things more strange, more terrible.

Using humanity's current self-understanding, failing to accurately grasp these entities from the cosmic dark — was also entirely natural.

The science-fictional imagination was no longer imaginary. Monsters were real, and one of them was inside the woman he'd been with, having a relationship with — inside her body, her consciousness, or through some other means that exceeded both those fixed categories of understanding.

If the threads seen from that aerial perspective in Sanchoumoku Park weren't a hallucination — then those threads might also exist inside Hirota Masami. The contradictions she kept exhibiting were the manifestation of that existence.

But Ma En knew clearly: unless he could prove the threads existed to someone else using other means, all his current hypotheses held no validity for anyone but himself.

In others' eyes, he was simply talking to himself, saying deranged things.

This was what was most paralyzing about confronting something bizarre and uncanny like this — about facing these monsters.

He was isolated.

And humans — who became extraordinarily fragile the moment they were separated from human society — had had their most vulnerable point struck in exactly this way.

He had only his own observations, his own guesses, his own knowledge and judgment, to analyze something that existed objectively in the world, that was profoundly affecting people, that only he could perceive. He couldn't help but wonder:

Do the scientists who go first — who look for new theories, who take apart the fundamental nature of things — do they also feel this?

Those scientists who took every decisive step in human history, who were only acknowledged as correct after their deaths — did they spend every day and night enduring this particular fear of not being believed?

Were they really the way history books described them — facing denial from all sides, insisting on their own correctness until they died?

Were they also lonely? Did they ever feel that only they held the truth?

Ma En licked his lips. He felt them crack-dry.

He felt himself in an extremely weakened state — yes, more fragile than he'd been at four years old, just becoming curious about strange and uncanny things.

The more weakened he felt, the more clearly he understood: he was not a genius.

He was not capable of what the novels described — relying on his own intellect, absorbing all existing human knowledge, synthesizing and innovating, then using theory-backed scientific methods within less than two months to completely dissect entities capable of interstellar travel and make definitive choices about their survival.

That was what a genius in a novel could do. But that was the real fiction.

As for himself — if he hadn't had the Room 3 neighbor friend, he'd have been truly on his own.

The more he observed Hirota Masami, the more worried he became about the Room 3 neighbor friend. The thought that "this earthquake and the fire at the building are not pure coincidence" kept growing, claiming more and more space in his complex internal accounting.

Hirota Masami seemed to know something, in a hazed and diffuse way — but if she wasn't consciously aware of this, or if she simply wasn't willing to say it, he couldn't force it. He certainly had methods to compel someone. He wouldn't use them.

Working around the edge, testing every possibility with care, maintaining every connection — this was exhausting work.

While talking easily with Hirota Masami, he was working like a weaver: selecting, from the countless threads around him, what he considered objectively valid, and weaving it into something he considered closest to objective truth. Nothing could verify whether his conclusions were correct. Only himself. Only himself — he had to keep going.

"Is it hot today?" Hirota Masami said. "Your hand is very sweaty."

He became aware of his own hand — and instinctively started to withdraw it from hers. She held on.

"It's fine — it really is warm today." She laughed gently, and shifted the topic: "The wooden carving you mentioned to the manager just now — is it the one you keep in the bedroom?"

"Yes. Why?"

"For some reason, it feels familiar to me." She said it like this.

"...Do you think you've seen it somewhere?" He blinked deliberately to cool his overheating mind. "Your hometown?"

"I'm not sure." Hirota Masami drew the last word out, half-playful. "That's why I say it feels familiar — because I don't know."

He didn't push. He came at it differently: "Do you think that carving has any artistic value? I paid quite a lot for it. I'd like to think it was worth it."

"Artistic value?" She considered. "Marginal. Third-rate craft. I actually think something that unresolved has no purpose. Someone probably made it after their mind went sideways — not something excavated. Those things never are."

"So it's a copy of something — a reproduction?"

"Mm. In Akita, people did similar things. So-called artists and writers — though I should say, only by their own reckoning, never by anyone else's — would make a big point of talking about what they saw in dreams or in artificially induced mental states, then painting it, carving it, writing it down. Quite a few of them deliberately sought out substances or methods that would put them into altered states of consciousness. They called it 'exploring the spiritual world.' But what they ultimately produced was never well-received." She walked and complained simultaneously. "Whenever someone criticized their work, they'd erupt — make all kinds of strange statements. I've heard that both the conservative impressionist associations focused on emotional expression and the more radical abstract associations focused on symbolic meaning have already refused to admit these people."

As she said this, she turned to look at him, something like a warning in her expression: "Darling — don't become like them. It's truly insufferable. Everything they make comes from their own imagination. They're frauds — trying to depict real things, but only producing their own projections, and in doing so, trying to prevent people from reaching the truth. Looking to their work for something real is a waste of energy."

Though Ma En felt Hirota Masami's argument was somewhat imprecise — even incoherent — he caught the critical point: "So what they depicted in dreams or in induced states actually does have a real-world prototype? Is that what you mean?"

"Hmm... I'm not sure." Hirota Masami answered in a vague, hedging way. "But I think the carving you bought is probably something like that."

"So the carving itself has no use, but it's a reproduction of something that actually exists — that's what you're saying?" Ma En nodded. "Then it needs a specialist to look at it more carefully. Maybe someone who knows what the prototype is."

"Someone might know... but darling, I think this kind of spiritual-expressive art is better not pursued too deeply." Hirota Masami said dismissively. "Look at the carving's form — anyone can tell the prototype isn't something that would make a person happy. Why do people always pursue things that are going to hurt them? Are those things really that important?"

He hesitated before answering: "Perhaps because they have no choice."

"Is that so?" She was uncommitted. "I'd say they want to prove they're different from other people, chasing novelty, seeming to seek the truth but really just being a group of lunatics, pitiful people."

"That's an extreme position. The desire to discover the nature of things, to pursue truth — that's always been the engine of human progress." Ma En said. "Nothing grows by going along with the surface of things."

"No, darling — you've got it wrong." Hirota Masami seemed to relish this kind of debate; her eyes were bright, alive. "The individual doesn't need to pursue these things. Humanity does. Because humanity needs it, the individual is compelled to. And those who pursue truth are humanity's sacrificial offerings."

Ma En drew a quiet breath. He felt something strange move in that formulation.

From what position does she speak, to describe the relationship between "a person" and "humanity" this coldly?

He was certain it wasn't from a position that endorsed it.

The two of them went quiet for a stretch. Then Ma En asked first:

"Masami — you seem to dislike humans a little?"

"No. I don't dislike humans." Hirota Masami looked at him with full warmth. "I'm worried about you, darling."

Another silence.

"I'm worried about you too, Masami." Ma En said. "I've encountered some trouble. I'm afraid it might end up touching you. The old me might have wanted to know the truth behind this trouble — but the current me doesn't want the truth. I just want to find a resolution. But without approaching the truth, there's no way to find one."

"Trouble?" Hirota Masami looked startled. "What trouble? Is it serious? Does it have something to do with that carving?" She furrowed her brow, visibly concerned. Ma En now felt his own response had been excessive.

So she really is saying it without conscious awareness? She doesn't understand what's happening?

"I understand — I'll go find out more about the carving for you—"

"No!" Ma En cut her off immediately, without a beat. "Absolutely do not do anything."

"Why? If the person I love is in trouble, do you really think I can just sit still and do nothing?" She pushed back.

"Don't ask why, Masami." He couldn't find a reason in that moment — only managed: "Consider it a man's ugly vanity. Let me handle it myself. I'll handle it."

An overwhelming, wordless intuition struck his chest. He knew — he had just made a serious mistake.

"Promise me, Masami. Absolutely do not do anything." He let go of her hand. He set down the briefcase and umbrella. He took hold of her shoulders with both hands. "Trust me. Leave it to me. Don't pay attention to the carving."

Hirota Masami held his gaze for a long moment, then turned her head away with slight displeasure. "Fine. But darling — you have to promise me too. Don't do anything dangerous."

I promise you — he wanted to say this, could not bring the words out. He felt his composure being put to an extreme test. The mistake had come from a lapse of vigilance, a moment of being moved. He no longer knew what the correct response was.

The Room 4 Ghost Story's whirlpool was turning faster, spreading wider — as if possessed of some inexplicable gravity, drawing every person near him into it.

Like something wanting to swallow them all.

In this moment, Ma En missed his old self desperately. No — more than missed: he finally felt the rightness and the necessity of who his old self had been. The old self's way of thinking had an advantage over the present self in navigating things bizarre and uncanny — not in combat strength, but in the natural caution that came from absolute self-discipline. The old self wasn't unkillable. The old self made mistakes. But the old self would never have let an inadvertent lapse cause a problem to grow.

He picked up the briefcase and umbrella from the ground, took Hirota Masami's hand, and quickened his pace. He no longer felt "another version of himself catching up from behind." What he felt now was the need to change himself — a transformation that the present him would find painful, a transformation that negated the present him. No one understood better than he did the pain of negating and remaking oneself. But against the danger now facing the person beside him, what was that pain worth?

He tightened his grip on the briefcase until his fingernails pressed into his palm.

A faint, half-formed premonition was pushing at him, urging: faster, faster. He didn't know how fast the ghost story's whirlpool was spreading, didn't know what the enemy was planning, whether they'd actually have the patience to wait until August and do nothing before then. He only knew: he had to do something. Even if what he had to do was transform himself.

Then both their beepers went off, stopping them both mid-step.

Hirota Masami looked at hers, gave him an apologetic smile. "I need to go to the office right now."

"It's fine — I'll book us a room." Ma En answered, and heard his own beeper. He looked at the message. It was from Katsura Masakazu, personally.

"You're not free either, it seems." Hirota Masami smiled.

"I'll take care of it," Ma En said — and meant both things at once.