In the morning light, the guest room on the second floor of the inn Otesaraisou was slowly filling with pale radiance. Across the Otesarai River, the hills of Souryou-dai still lay submerged in winter mist. That peculiar whiteness of early winter mornings—quiet, heavy, absolute. Only the sound of the river reached his ears, distant and rhythmic. Kashiwagi Shinya picked up the notebook he had left spread open on the desk, and held it once more. The chronology he had written the night before lay before him in thin pencil lines. 1993. 1998. 2004. 2011. 2017. And this year. Recruitment announcements and vanished records, repeating every five to eight years—this periodicity was something he had confirmed through yesterday's library investigation. Of the four missing women, three had surfaced in the records only once, several months before their disappearance, as "contract employees attached to the secretarial division" of Rokugatsu-do Construction. After that, nothing remained. There was hiring. There was no resignation. There was a beginning. There was no end. The meaning of that blank space—Kashiwagi still could not render it into words. The organizational chart of the secretarial division that Maho had investigated the previous evening was also transcribed onto another page of his notebook. The secretarial division had been expanded as an independent department reporting directly to the executive officers in the fiscal year following Amagasaki Ryuichiro's appointment as chairman—the third-generation head. This coincided precisely with the first recruitment announcement. It was not a coincidence that could be easily dismissed. Kashiwagi closed his notebook. The blank in the records testified to the existence of a blank. But what lay within that blank could not be read from the records themselves. One could not go beyond the documents—he confirmed again this morning the conclusion he had reached last night. To reach facts that existed outside the records, there was only one path: to confront directly those who knew the records. Kashiwagi had decided not to bring Maho with him today. The reason was simple. He was still operating under the false title of "regional industry writer," and he could not openly entangle her in this. She was a junior librarian at the Hinomori City Library, a person whose life had roots in this town. Should something go wrong, the consequences could reach her. Kashiwagi lacked the standing to bear that responsibility. In the inner pocket of his jacket lay a single business card. He had printed it himself at Hagino's apartment the day before. "Regional Industry Research Writer—Kashiwagi Shinya"—the title was false, but the name and contact information were real. The edges were slightly smudged with ink from the cheap printer. He had checked his jacket in front of the mirror. The suit he had bought three years ago, after several cleanings, had grown strangely familiar to his body. For a moment he thought he should have shaved the stubble, but there was nothing to be done about it now. The scar near his left eyebrow caught the light of the bathroom mirror. He had received it fifteen years ago during a certain field interview. When he had called the day before to request a meeting with the public relations department, the receptionist's response had been businesslike. "We can arrange it for ten o'clock tomorrow"—a polite voice without discord. Yet now, in retrospect, that smoothness might have been unnatural. As Kashiwagi descended the inn's staircase, he confirmed this once more in his mind. 　　　　＊ The Rokugatsu-do Construction headquarters building stood twelve minutes' walk northeast of Hinomori Station. Seven stories above ground, completed in 1989. The exterior walls were covered in white tile, and thirty years of rain streaks had stained them in fine vertical lines. On both sides of the main entrance, granite plaques engraved with "Rokugatsu-do Construction Co., Ltd." were set in place. The depth of the letters seemed to quietly speak of how long and how deeply this company had taken root in this town's earth. Upon entering the lobby, a security guard gave a slight bow. The receptionist confirmed Kashiwagi's name and indicated a chair for visitors. While waiting, Kashiwagi picked up a company brochure placed in the lobby. A thick pamphlet printed on glossy paper. It began with the company's founding history and the origin of its name, followed by photographs of completed projects. Hinomori Municipal Hospital. The branch of Mukugi Prefectural Museum of Art. The expansion wing of Hinomori City Hall. The annex of the prefectural government building. On the final page, the motto "Sixty Years Together with Our Community" and the smiling faces of employees arranged in neat rows. Kashiwagi gazed at the final page for some time. The contrast between the neatly arranged smiles and his own expressionless face struck him as somehow absurd. Sixty years, he thought—the words echoed quietly in his mind, and he closed the brochure gently. The waiting time was approximately twenty minutes. 　　　　＊ He was guided to the seventh floor. The moment the elevator doors opened, Kashiwagi paused for a single beat. The public relations department should be located on floors two through four, where the general business offices were. The seventh floor held the reception rooms for distinguished guests and conference rooms—he had confirmed this during his preliminary research the day before. In other words, he was now being shown not to the public relations department, but to a space reserved for distinguished guests. That fact itself was information. Without changing his expression, Kashiwagi followed the employee who was guiding him. The seventh-floor corridor was quieter than the floors below. Footsteps sounded low and muffled. The carpet was thick. Framed black-and-white photographs of completed buildings hung on the walls, arranged chronologically. From postwar reconstruction wooden buildings to late-Showa public facilities to Heisei-era large-scale complexes—a single corridor narrated sixty years of transformation. The reception room they entered was at the end of the corridor. As the door opened, light came first from the window. The rooftops of Hinomori spread before him, and beyond them lay the hills of Souryou-dai. The hill where the Amagasaki family's main residence stood. It was positioned directly in front of the reception room's window—or perhaps that was merely Kashiwagi's impression. Yet the entire space was enveloped in a sense of being placed within a clear context from the moment of entry. Heavy wooden furnishings. Unpretentious, yet carefully selected antique flower vessels. The arrangement of chairs. Everything was calculated to place whoever entered this room within a specific framework. Several minutes after Kashiwagi sat on the sofa, the door opened quietly. The moment he saw the person who entered, Kashiwagi's thoughts stopped for a single beat. Salt-and-pepper short hair. Calm black eyes. Height approximately one hundred seventy-five centimeters. The bearing of a person who carried the weight of seventy-eight years not as a burden that crushed him, but as something contained within. The face bore no expression—not from an absence of emotion, but from one who felt no need to display emotion on the surface. Amagasaki Ryuichiro had entered the room. Kashiwagi stood and offered his business card. Ryuichiro received it with both hands, glanced down briefly, and returned his own card. The gesture was without excess or deficiency. A movement that suggested no age, yet unmistakably carried the weight of accumulated time. "Thank you for coming such a distance," The voice was low and clear. For the first fifteen minutes, Amagasaki Ryuichiro spoke continuously. The circumstances of Rokugatsu-do Construction's founding. How the first-generation founder, Amagasaki Sosuke, had begun a civil engineering contracting business in Hinomori's land during the postwar reconstruction era—how the company name "Rokugatsu-do" derived from the founding month and Sosuke's literary name "Rokugatsu-an." How the second generation had deepened connections between public works and regional administration, and how he himself, the third generation, had diversified the business. His manner of speaking was smooth, yet not excessively so, functioning as the memory of one who had lived through it all. Not a citation from company history. Time had accumulated within this old man, and it emerged as words. During those fifteen minutes, Kashiwagi spoke only what was necessary. Affirmations. Small questions for confirmation. The motion of his pen as if taking notes. Throughout, he was thinking. This person had never once questioned whether Kashiwagi was truly a "regional industry writer." He had seen the business card. He must have read the title. Yet he asked nothing in return. This was not an absence of skepticism—to Kashiwagi, it appeared as the composure of certainty. This man already knew who Kashiwagi was. Or he had sought to know and deliberately chose not to ask. That choice—not to ask—was part of the power that controlled this reception room. 　　　　＊ Outside the window, clouds moved thinly. The quality of light shifted minutely. The ridge of Souryou-dai's hills showed a sharp outline for an instant, then retreated into haze. Kashiwagi paused his pen on the notebook, then spoke, affecting a natural flow. He mentioned the name of one of the four missing women—a twenty-four-year-old woman who had worked as an office clerk at a subcontracting company of Rokugatsu-do Construction. It was the first proper noun Kashiwagi had uttered aloud throughout three days of investigation. The air in the reception room changed. The change was not dramatic. It was as if the temperature had dropped by a single degree, or the density of the room had increased infinitesimally. Amagasaki Ryuichiro's expression did not move. Not his mouth, not his eyebrows, not the lines around his eyes—not a single molecule shifted. Yet the hands folded on his lap became still in their form. Not a stillness that came from the cessation of motion, but one that was actively imposed. A stillness that was the result of control. And in the depths of those black eyes, there dwelt a light peculiar to one who knew the weight of secrets spanning decades and had grown accustomed to bearing them. A single breath of silence flowed. When Ryuichiro opened his mouth, the quality of his voice had not changed. Low and clear. Yet his words carried the weight of a conclusion borrowed in the form of a question. "It seems you have not come from Hagino for the sake of regional industry reporting," It was not a question. It was a statement that gently presented the fact that he already possessed the answer. Kashiwagi looked at his notebook for a moment. Then he set down his pen and met Ryuichiro's gaze. There was hesitation. But it was not hesitation about whether to speak, but about how to speak. "I was formerly a reporter with the Toyo Hochi Newspaper, in the social affairs division," After he finished speaking, the room fell silent. The Toyo Hochi Newspaper—a national paper headquartered in Tokyo with a circulation of approximately three million two hundred thousand, known for investigative reporting in its social affairs division. Kashiwagi had spent twenty-five years in that division from the time of his employment, handling multiple investigative reporting series. Three years ago he had resigned, and now worked as a contract writer for the Hagino Daily News, earning a fixed monthly stipend of approximately one hundred twenty thousand yen writing about community events and shopping districts. The gap in titles was something Kashiwagi himself knew better than anyone. In that single character—"former"—three years were compressed. Ryuichiro's response was silence. Yet within that silence, Kas