The train departed Hagino Station on schedule the following morning. At 6:12 a.m., the ordinary train—a two-car composition in pale green—pulled away, and Kashiwagi Shinya boarded. For a weekday morning, the interior was sparse. Two high school students. One elderly man. And Kashiwagi. The seats were worn blue, their corners stained with fine grime that had settled into the window frames. The heating was excessive, and the difference between it and the outside air induced a drowsy languor. Kashiwagi placed his luggage on the window seat and spread his notebook across his lap. But he wrote nothing. He arranged in his mind once more what he had confirmed the night before. Four names. Human connections to Rokugatsudou Construction. Police processing. The silence of newspapers. A circle with a twenty-kilometer radius drawn upon a map. When he lined these up, something like an outline seemed to emerge. But an outline was merely an outline—not the substance itself. The train began to move. The suburbs of Hagino City flowed past, then gradually gave way to rice paddies and fields, and soon hills increased. The sky hung low, clouds thick. The color of a December morning. When the train approached the Takasu Mountains—the mountain range running along the prefectural border between Hagino and Mukurogi, with elevations between six hundred and nine hundred meters—the scenery beyond the window suddenly darkened. Cryptomeria plantations buried the slopes, narrowing the sky. That this mountain range divided the cultural spheres of the two prefectures was something Kashiwagi had thought while studying yesterday's map, and now he felt it anew. Hagino and Mukurogi were neighbors, yet somehow distant. The terrain made it so. Beyond the mountains, the quality of light shifted subtly. It might have been an illusion. Yet to Kashiwagi, the clouds seemed slightly whiter than in Hagino, and the air felt faintly more humid. Perhaps a river was near. The Mitarai River—a first-class river running north and south through Mukurogi Prefecture—perhaps he had entered its watershed. It was a habit from his days as a reporter, this tendency to think such things. Wherever he went, he sought to read the air of the place. He had thought such sensitivity might have dulled during his three-year absence, but it lingered with unexpected persistence. 7:54 a.m. Hinomori Station. Stepping onto the platform, the wind was cold. Colder than in Hagino. Beyond the ticket gate, a small tourism information board stood directly ahead. Maps and photographs and bullet-pointed attractions. Kashiwagi stopped and glanced at it. "Hinomori City's Architectural Heritage—A Tour of Rokugatsudou Construction Projects" He paused, involuntarily. Municipal Hospital. The branch of the Prefectural Art Museum. The expansion wing of Central Elementary School. Photographs were arranged in sequence. Ah, so the "attractions" of this city were things built by Rokugatsudou. A wry smile began to form at the corner of his lips. He suppressed it and walked out toward the station avenue. ＊ The inn "Mitarai Lodge" stood on the banks of the Mitarai River. An old wooden two-story establishment, its outer walls once white plaster, now faded to pale gray by years of rain. When he opened the front sliding door, the scent of tatami and aged wood greeted him. The proprietress—Doumoto Yoshie, a small woman in her late sixties—emerged from within. "Do you have a reservation?" "Kashiwagi. I'm planning to stay one night." "Yes, we have you down. You've come from far away." "From Hagino." "Ah, over the Takasu. That is a distance." As she wrote in the register, the proprietress asked his purpose. The tourism board lingered in the corner of his mind. "Research for a corporate history. I'm looking into a local company, somewhat." Even as he spoke, he measured the lightness of those words. "Research for a corporate history" was not a lie, but neither was it true. If anything, it was a word distant from the truth. The proprietress did not press further, simply handing him the key with "Please make yourself comfortable." The room was on the second floor, a corner room facing the river. When he opened the window, he could see the hills across the way—the Souryou Heights, as they were called, hills in the outskirts of Hinomori City. The winter ridgeline, stripped of leaves, lay beneath the gray sky. Kashiwagi looked at it for a moment, then set down his luggage and went out again. ＊ Hinomori Municipal Library stood about seven minutes' walk south of Hinomori Station. A reinforced concrete two-story building facing the Citizens' Park along the Mitarai River. Opened in 1982. The rounded corner of the outer wall, chipped away, bore the sediment of forty years. A handwritten sign at the entrance read "Local Materials Room—Second Floor." Kashiwagi climbed the stairs. The second floor was quiet. From the children's section on the first floor, only small voices drifted faintly; here, there was almost no human presence. Light from the windows cast thin shadows between the shelves on the floor. Kashiwagi surveyed the room. The dust on the shelves was not uniformly distributed. It was something he noticed—a habit acquired during his years as a reporter. Most shelves bore a thick, even layer of dust. But one section was clearly different. The section where microfilm editions of local newspapers were arranged, and the adjacent shelf holding corporate histories of regional enterprises. There alone, the dust was thin. Or rather than swept, it bore the accumulation of someone touching it regularly. (Someone uses these shelves.) At the counter stood a woman. Hair of blackish-purple fell straight to her shoulders, and bright green eyes fixed upon Kashiwagi. She gave the impression of being in her early twenties—or perhaps younger still—yet possessed a composure utterly at odds with that age. The absolute absence of disorder on the counter spoke to meticulous organization. A small mole marked her left wrist. A nameplate at her chest read "Kogomori." "Are you here to apply for access?" Her voice was polite, carefully controlled. A voice that did not rush. "I'd like to see materials related to the founding period of Rokugatsudou Construction." When Kashiwagi said this, Kogomori Maho's gaze paused for just an instant, as if confirming something. But it was truly only an instant, and then she moved. No hesitation. Three types of materials appeared on the counter. One was the forty-year anniversary corporate history of Rokugatsudou Construction. One was an administrative report issued by Hinomori City on the transition of regional industries, the Showa 40s edition. The third was a microfilm edition of the Mukurogi Daily Newspaper, ten years from 1960 to 1970. Her movements were precise. There was an accuracy to producing what was requested before it was even asked. Kashiwagi accepted the materials while quietly measuring that precision. "Would you please fill in your occupation and purpose on the application form?" Maho offered the paper and spoke quietly. It was a polite phrasing, but the question itself was clear—who are you? Kashiwagi took the form and ran his pen across it. Name. Address. Purpose—"Research on records of local enterprises." His hand paused at the occupation field. He began to write "Former—" and crossed it out. He wrote only "Writer." Maho watched that action for just an instant. She said nothing. She took the form and inserted it into the designated slot. While Kashiwagi moved to the reading room, no words passed between them. Only a quiet equilibrium remained—a mutual "I saw, but I will not touch." ＊ About an hour into reading the materials, Maho brought a cup of water. "If you would like." Brief words. Kashiwagi thanked her. She turned to leave. "This corporate history." Kashiwagi indicated the forty-year anniversary history in his hands. "The pages from the early 1960s are noticeably thinner than other periods. Fewer photographs. Gaps in the text. Yet this should be the founding era." Maho's movement stopped. It would be more accurate to say her body stopped—not merely her feet, but her entire frame seemed to stiffen slightly. Then she turned back. "...Yes, that's so." "You noticed?" "Yes." With only that, Maho returned to the counter. Kashiwagi continued reading the corporate history. Indeed, the records from the company's founding in 1962 through approximately the following five years differed in density from other periods. Diagrams appeared in place of photographs, and specific personal names were sparse. The phrase "contributed to the development of the local community" appeared frequently in abstract language. It gave the impression of a way of writing designed to avoid writing something. ＊ Spanning the lunch hour, Kashiwagi moved to the microfilm work. The Mukurogi Daily Newspaper from the early 1960s. He settled before the microfilm reader, and the mechanical sound of advancing frames echoed softly through the quiet local materials room. Articles on agriculture in the prefecture. Articles on elections. Flood damage. Construction company bids. Nearly all of it was not worth pursuing. And then, in an autumn issue of 1963, it appeared. A small article, less than four columns wide. "Young Woman from Amakizaki Branch Family Missing—Authorities Judge Family Circumstances Likely Cause of Elopement" The Amakizaki family—with their main residence in the Souryou Heights on the outskirts of Hinomori City, founders of Rokugatsudou Construction, a prominent family with deep roots in the political and financial circles of Mukurogi Prefecture for three generations—a young woman born to their branch family had vanished suddenly in the autumn of 1963. The article contained nothing more. No follow-up articles appeared. The phrase "family circumstances" had swallowed everything. Kashiwagi's hand stilled on the frame advance. (Sixty years ago. Amakizaki branch family. Woman's disappearance. Processed as elopement.) It could be overlaid with the four people now. Could be, and was. It might be mere coincidence. Sixty years was a long time, and the line connecting one case to four existed only in Kashiwagi's imagination. But— Footsteps approached. It was Maho. She had finished organizing closed-stack materials and held empty cardboard boxes in both hands. Her gaze paused for an instant as the microfilm reader's screen entered her field of vision. "An article about a disappearance." Kashiwagi chose not to be indirect. "A woman from the Amakizaki branch family, sixty years ago. Currently, there are reports of successive disappearances of young women in Mukurogi Prefecture. Do you know anything about that?" Maho's hands stopped. Still holding the cardboard boxes, she stopped. It was not a reaction of surprise. It was more like the honest bodily response of someone who had long avoided touching something. Kashiwagi quietly read the meaning in that stillness. Maho set the cardboard boxes before the shelves and, without asking permission, quietly sat in the chair beside Kashiwagi. "I know one of the four missing persons." Present tense. Not "knew," but "know." Kashiwagi silently received the shape of those words. "Their name?" "...I must refrain from sharing an individual's name for now. However, that person was a regular here. In the local materials room. They came every week and stood before the same shelf for long periods, reading materials." That shelf with the thin dust. The observation from this morning returned to Kashiwagi's mind. "When did they stop coming?" "Abruptly, one week. Without notice. At first I thought perhaps they were unwell, but afterward I heard through others that a report had been filed with the police." "The police's judgment was that the possibility of elopement was high." "...Yes. That is what I have heard." "What is your view of that judgment?"