The edge of the mirror was rusted. Each time he brought his face close to the washbasin, that brownish stain entered the corner of his vision. Three years since moving in, and something he had never once minded now caught his eye this morning. Or perhaps he had minded it all along, only refusing to acknowledge that he minded. This room held many things of that sort. 柏木信也 turned the faucet. Cold water fell into his palm. He washed his face, dried it with a towel, and looked in the mirror once more. Fifty-two years old. Black hair beginning to silver. Deep brown eyes. A frame somewhat lean, bearing an impression of wear. A small scar near his left eyebrow—from a fall at a reporting site in his twenties. With a thin stubble left unshaven, he chose again today a white shirt and black slacks. The gray jacket hung on the back of a chair. Every morning, the same order. The same clothes. Or rather, he had long since stopped choosing at all. From the neighboring room, the sound of a television drifted through. Fourth floor, Hagino Prefectural Housing, Minami-dai Complex. The reinforced concrete building, erected in 1978, had thin walls through which the sounds of the adjacent life flowed unfiltered. Today's neighbor appeared to be watching the morning news. The announcer's voice reached him low and muffled through the wall. 柏木 listened without quite listening as he switched on an old coffee maker. Beyond the window lay a parking lot, and beyond that, a thicket of mixed woodland. The leafless trees stood motionless beneath a gray sky. As a December morning landscape, it was perfectly, utterly without charm. In one corner of the room sat a bundle of old documents. Packed in a cardboard box, unopened for three years. Upon it lay a single ID card. Faded from sun exposure, its color bleached away. Toyo Hochi Newspaper—a national paper with branch offices in all forty-seven prefectures, its circulation ranking third nationwide—Social Affairs Division. The expiration date had long since passed. 柏木 did not look in that direction. He drank a cup of coffee and put on his jacket. ＊ The editorial office of the Hagino Daily News occupied the third floor of a mixed-use building called "Daini Hagino Building," along the station-front avenue. The building had no elevator. 柏木 climbed the stairs. When he opened the floor door, the smell of old paper and ink drifted out. The editorial office of a regional paper with a circulation of eighty-five thousand—a cramped space where twelve reporters and editors crowded together—was a place where 柏木, appearing only two or three times a month, was known by fewer than half the staff. His contact, Deputy Editor Tsurumi, was on the telephone at a desk in the back. 柏木 stood before him and offered an envelope. The manuscript for the year-end shopping street report—six pages in four-hundred-character units. The reporting had been done the previous Thursday, walking for about an hour through the arcade shopping street near the station, speaking with several shop owners. Tsurumi continued his telephone conversation while accepting the envelope. He made no move to check its contents. He simply placed it in the tray beside him. The call ended. "Thank you very much," Tsurumi said. A man in his mid-forties, bespectacled and somewhat portly, always wearing a slightly weary expression. "About next month's New Year's shrine special—" "Yes." "We'd like you to cover two shrines: Hinashima Shrine and Omakuri Inari. We need the number of worshippers and comments from the chief of the parishioners." "Understood." "We'll run it in the New Year's issue, so if we could have the manuscript by year's end—" "Yes." That was the extent of their conversation. Nothing more, nothing less. Tsurumi was already reaching for the telephone again. 柏木 gave a slight bow and left the editorial office. As he descended the stairs, 柏木 tried to ascertain what he was thinking. Not anger. Not sorrow either. The man who once chased the Prime Minister through the corridors of the official residence, drawing out a single piercing remark—that man now counted worshippers at shrines. The gap had long since outpaced his capacity for feeling. Long since. The prose of a hollowed-out reporter. When had he thought that? When had he accepted it while thinking it? Outside, the air was cold. ＊ On the way home, he stopped at a convenience store. Not that he had anything particular to buy. It was something like habit. He made a circuit of the shop and took a single canned coffee. On his way to the register, his feet stopped before the newspaper rack. Several regional papers were displayed. Next to the Hagino Daily News lay the Kuwaki Daily Newspaper—a regional paper based in Kuwaki Prefecture, which bordered Hagino Prefecture, with a circulation roughly equal to the Hagino Daily News, just under eighty thousand. It was widely read from the prefectural capital, Hinashima City, through rural and mountainous areas—a paper 柏木 did not ordinarily reach for. But today, for no clear reason, he did. Had he been asked why, he could not have answered. His hand simply moved. He purchased it along with the canned coffee and sat on a bench outside the shop. A cold wind brushed his cheek. He turned the pages. Prefectural bidding results. Agricultural shipment volumes. The opening of a nursing home. The usual pages of a regional newspaper. And then, in a corner of the social affairs section. The headline was small, less than four columns wide. "Women Continue to Go Missing Throughout Kuwaki Prefecture—Police Treat Cases as Runaways" 柏木's eyes stopped there. He read the article. Within a single week, four women in their twenties had disappeared in succession throughout Kuwaki Prefecture. In each case, contact with family and workplace had suddenly ceased, with reports filed from various locations throughout the prefecture centered on Hinashima City. The Hinashima Police Station of the Kuwaki Prefectural Police were handling each case as an individual runaway, and denied any connection between them. That was all. The article contained nothing more. Fewer than a hundred characters. 柏木 read it again. A third time. The canned coffee grew cold in his hand. Four. In one week. Centered on Hinashima City. Police treating them as runaways. Something caught in his throat. Something thin and sharp, like a small bone. ＊ He returned to the apartment in early afternoon. 柏木 pulled a road map of Kuwaki Prefecture from the closet. He had purchased it several years ago; the creases had multiplied and it was worn. He spread it on his desk and took a red ballpoint pen from the pen stand. He read the article again. He marked on the map the place names listed as the disappearance locations of the four women. First point: central Hinashima City. Second point: a residential area in northern Hinashima City. Third point: a small town adjacent to Hinashima City. Fourth point: a settlement some ten kilometers further south. Four red dots lined up on the map. 柏木 gazed at the map for some time. The four points appeared scattered, but they were not. Imagining a circle drawn with Hinashima City at its center, all four points fell within that circle. A radius of approximately twenty kilometers. Too narrow to call it mere coincidence. 柏木 opened his notebook computer. The names of the four women were not listed in the article. But searching the web version of the Kuwaki Daily Newspaper, scattered throughout a week's worth of archives were brief articles on each case. The names of the missing women. Their ages. Twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-six. 柏木 wrote the four names in his handwritten notebook and began searching for each one. The first—there was a description of her working at a facilities company within Hinashima City. Searching the company name, a page appeared listing it as a secondary subcontractor of Rokugatsu-do Construction. Rokugatsu-do Construction. A comprehensive construction company headquartered in Hinashima City, Kuwaki Prefecture, which for more than half a century since its founding had undertaken the region's public infrastructure. It consistently ranked at the top in public works contracts within the prefecture, having undertaken major public buildings including the Kuwaki Prefectural Government Office Annex and Hinashima Municipal Hospital. It held dozens of affiliated enterprises and subcontractors under its umbrella, deeply rooted in regional employment and economy, and was also known for its thick connections with successive Kuwaki prefectural governors and prefectural assembly members. A name unknown to no one in the region. 柏木 continued. The second—related descriptions were sparse. Yet the name of a construction office where she had worked before disappearing appeared once. Searching it, the office was found to conduct business at a property under the management of an affiliate of Rokugatsu-do Construction. The third—she had been directly employed by a Rokugatsu-do Construction subcontractor. A record of this remained in the cache of a local job recruitment site. The fourth—information was scarce. But tracing fragmentary SNS records, traces remained of multiple exchanges with employees of Rokugatsu-do Construction affiliates in the months before her disappearance. All four women had existed within the human network of Rokugatsu-do Construction. Too perfectly arranged to be coincidence. And with that certainty came something else, rising from the depths of his chest. Not memory, but sensation. A certain night three years ago. At the Social Affairs Division of the Toyo Hochi Newspaper, 柏木 had been writing a single manuscript. The result of months of accumulated reporting. The flow of illicit funds connecting a major general contractor to the political world—an article touching the core of that power structure. It was one step from publication. Then the telephone rang. As 柏木 would later learn, the secretary of a politician whose name was to appear in the article had applied direct pressure to the management of the Toyo Hochi Newspaper. The next morning, he was called to his superior's office. The manuscript was withdrawn. The reason given was "insufficient fact-checking," but everyone in the editorial office knew it was merely a pretext. 柏木 said nothing. Whether he could not speak or chose not to speak, he did not know even now. Three years had passed in that not-knowing. When he pressed his seal to the resignation papers, he did not know whether he was ending something or fleeing from something. His hands stopped above the keyboard. In his chest, there was a sensation like rust. It resembled a revulsion directed at himself, yet could not be reduced to that alone. More complex sediment, three years' worth, lay settled there. The wind cried outside the window. The sound of the trees in the thicket swaying reached him from afar. ＊ Night came. 柏木 remained motionless for a long time with the map and the notebook bearing the four names spread before him on the desk. He drank a cup of coffee. After it had grown cold, he poured another. The television in the neighboring room had gone silent at some point, and the night of the Minami-dai Complex was quiet. So quiet that he could hear the sound of his own breathing. There was no reason for 柏木 to pursue this matter. What the Hagino Daily News requested of him as a contract writer was reporting on local events, features on shopping streets, and next month, counting worshippers at shrines. The disappearance case in Kuwaki Prefecture was not merely outside his jurisdiction—it was in an adjacent prefecture. The police called it runaways. When a matter involved a regional influential enterprise, both administration and media tended toward caution, and the national media had not yet moved. He had no evidence, no authority, nothing. And above all, he was the man who had withdrawn his article three years ago. And ye