The windshield had been sealed away in his notebook, and yet 柏木信也 could not stop thinking of it. In the second-floor guest room of the inn "Mitarashi-sou," the Mitarashi River flowed quietly beyond the window, receiving the pale light of a winter morning, while the blue ridge of Souryou-dai sank into thin mist on the far bank. Upon the desk lay the notebook, open since the previous night. At the very top of its blank space, written in hasty characters, was only the subject line of an article withdrawn three years prior—not its contents, but the subject line alone. He had written it last night. Telling himself it was externalization to avoid flight, he had inscribed it in pencil. His mobile vibrated. A message from 小暮真帆. 柏木 opened it. The investigation results concerning 石田賢一 had been sent in bullet points. More than forty years in service to the 天ヶ崎 household. His name appeared multiple times in the records of regional events in Hinomori City—the volunteer roster for the Mitarashi River lantern-floating ceremony, the records of the municipal park's planting committee, the condolence registers of the chamber of commerce. But there was not a single record of him speaking, she had added in one final line. 柏木 took up his pencil and drew a line beneath that sentence. There existed a certain kind of human who could pass more than forty years without leaving a record of speech. Silence was a capacity—silence maintained not by accident but by deliberate will was nothing less than evidence of knowing something. That logic moved 柏木 on this morning. As he put on his jacket and moved toward the door, there came a presence in the hallway. The proprietress, 堂本芳江—sixty-seven years old, her short white hair neatly arranged, a woman whose voice was always rounded and gentle—was just then walking past. "Oh, are you heading out already?" she said. "Yes, just for a bit," 柏木 replied. "To Souryou-dai, perhaps? The slope from the bus stop is quite steep there. At this time of year, fallen leaves pile up and the ground becomes slippery underfoot." "Thank you for the warning." 柏木 nodded. A thought crossed his mind—that the gradient of the slope was not the issue—but he did not voice it. The proprietress's kindness was simply kindness to be received as such. That single breath of exchange lightened, ever so slightly, the heaviness that had begun to settle over the morning air. ＊ He descended from the bus at "Souryou-dai Entrance" just after nine o'clock. The paved road began and continued into a thicket of mixed woodland. As the rooftops of Hinomori receded behind him, the trees grew denser. The December light hung low, slanting white through the gaps in the branches. Beneath his feet, as the proprietress had said, fallen leaves lay accumulated. Each step produced a dry sound. As he climbed the slope, the air transformed. Humidity fell, and stone walls began to appear at the edge of his vision. In the way the moss-covered stones were stacked, he could discern the construction methods of an older era. Beyond them, a hedge continued, and presently a cast-iron gate emerged from among the trees. The 天ヶ崎 family residence—positioned at the summit of the Souryou-dai hill in the suburbs of Hinomori City, a compound of some four thousand eight hundred square meters where a Meiji-period Japanese-style building and a mid-Showa Western structure were connected by a covered corridor. The cast-iron gate of the main entrance was painted black, its surface bearing fine floral casting patterns. As he climbed the slope, 柏木 looked down upon the town. The rooftops of Hinomori and the white building of Rokugatsu-do Construction lay arrayed in the low light. The sensation that as investigation deepened, retreat became more difficult, overlapped strangely with this spatial ascent. One step at a time, climbing toward a place from which descent would be harder. That was all it was. ＊ When he pressed the intercom at the main gate, a woman's voice responded after a moment. "The master of the house is absent today. Regarding interviews, we request that you apply through the public relations department of Rokugatsu-do Construction," she said. The voice was calm and distinctly closed. 柏木 offered his thanks and made as if to depart. But he did not leave the gate. Instead, he began to walk along the perimeter of the property from beside the main entrance. The hedge continued. Near the boundary between stone wall and hedge, there was a gap. Through it, a corner of the garden became visible. An old man stood there. He wore dark navy work clothes. His back slightly bent, he moved pruning shears with deliberate care. White, short hair. Eyes of a gray that was calm yet contained within it a certain sharpness. Fine wrinkles marked the corners of his mouth, and a small scar remained on his left ear. For a man of eighty-two years, the straightness of his spine seemed slightly incongruous. The old man was aware of the visitor's presence. He did not turn his face, but the movement of his shears changed subtly—the movement of a person who was directing his awareness while pretending not to. 柏木 called out across the hedge. "Forgive the intrusion," he said. The old man turned slowly toward 柏木. "And who might you be?" asked 石田賢一. His voice was quiet and courteous. "Are you 石田賢一?" asked 柏木. "...Yes, that is so," replied 石田. 柏木 withdrew a business card. 石田 did not take it. It was not a refusal to take it—his gaze confirmed the card's contents, then returned to the pruning shears. That was all. To accept it would be to retain a record of the conversation, a judgment that lay within that gesture. 柏木 returned the card to his pocket. He chose to continue speaking without introducing himself. He had learned something once in his years as a reporter—when the other's lips were sealed, one's own name could shift the air. A name fixes a situation. Before it is fixed, there remains space for something to move. "You're tending the garden," said 柏木. "Every morning," replied 石田. "Have you served the 天ヶ崎 household for a long time?" asked 柏木. 石田 answered while moving his shears. "Forty-three years," he said. There was pride in that voice. A pride that seemed to quietly cherish the weight of time itself. But 柏木 perceived something else in the way those words were carried—they were too precise. Not forty years, but forty-three. That exactitude was the excessive meticulousness of a person who had long carried something within, unspoken. 石田 did not cease his pruning. 柏木, watching the fall of branches, measured the timing of his words. The branches fell in orderly fashion. The cuts were uniform, the tree's form beautifully shaped. This was not the work of someone trained as a gardener, but the quiet mastery of someone who had faced the same tree for years, made tangible. "It's beautiful work," said 柏木. The words had not emerged as mere courtesy. He meant them truly—and that sincerity sounded in his tone. 石田 paused for a single beat. He did not turn his face, but he replied. "...Thank you," he said. After that brief utterance, the air between them shifted, ever so slightly. Its hardness diminished. ＊ From there, 柏木 took a circuitous path. He spoke, slowly and carefully, of how precious the 天ヶ崎 household was to Hinomori City. The foresight of the founder, 天ヶ崎 Sousuke, who had established the construction business in the postwar reconstruction era. The trust in public works that his son had built. The municipal hospital, the branch of the prefectural art museum, the annex wing of city hall—he named, one by one, the buildings that Rokugatsu-do Construction had undertaken. This was not calculation. He had recognized that the pride in 石田's voice was genuine, and so he spoke to that pride with honesty. "The history of Hinomori and the history of this household have become one," said 柏木. "...I believe that to be so," replied 石田. There was a faint warmth in his voice. 柏木 continued. He said, quietly, that he was actually researching the history of water control. In the context of investigating regional industry, he had come across records of the Mitarashi River's embankment construction. The large-scale water control projects spanning the Showa thirties and forties—how they had altered the topography of this region—he framed it in that context. 石田's pruning shears continued their slow movement. "There should have been a major construction project in the middle reaches of the Mitarashi River," said 柏木. 石田 did not answer. But his silence was an answer—there was no gesture of denial, only the continuing movement of the shears. "Some sixty years ago—around Showa thirty-eight, I believe," said 柏木. The year 1963 emerged from 柏木's mouth. 石田's pruning shears stopped. It was not a stop born of surprise. It was not a hurried cessation. It was the reflexive freezing of a human being when touching upon a place that must not be touched—the kind of thing that comes from bodily memory, beyond the reach of will. Ten seconds passed. 柏木 did not press. In twenty-five years as a social affairs reporter, one of the things he had learned in the field was the use of silence. Silence was not emptiness. Silence was pressure—and the one who could maintain it was the one who could open the other's mouth. But 柏木 had another reason. That night three years ago, when he had deleted the half-written article with his own hands. That night, he had failed to remain silent when silence was required—or rather, the opposite. He had remained silent when he should not have. That regret held 柏木 still now. The sound of wind passing through the garden trees. A bird calling in the distance. Those two sounds alone occupied the space. Beyond the hedge, 石田 stood with the pruning shears in his hands. His back had curved slightly. At last the old man lowered the shears. Facing the hedge, he did not turn toward 柏木. His mouth moved. "That girl...it was not an elopement," said 石田. His voice was barely more than a murmur. Yet it reached 柏木's ears with perfect clarity. In the instant those words emerged—石田 himself recognized it. The old man's color changed. A different kind of stillness from the rigid silence of before appeared upon his face. The face of a human being whose own words have escaped, irretrievable. 石田 said nothing more. The sound of pruning shears being placed in a tool box. Metal touching wood—a dry sound. Then footsteps, measured and deliberate, moving toward the residence's sliding door. 柏木 did not call him back. There were forty-three years of service. Within that span of time, 石田 had guarded something. 柏木 calculated in an instant the cost of breaking that guard here and now. To call him back would be to spend the old man's remaining years in a state of pursuit and entrapment. One would need that much resolve to call him back, and 柏木 did not yet possess it. And—the recognition that he had already received sufficient struck him still. A single word had fallen. That was enough. The sliding door closed. Only 柏木 remained in the garden. Wind blew. The cut edges of the pruned branches lay white and orderly arrayed. ＊ As he descended the slope, 柏木 withdrew his notebook. He positioned his pen. But he could not write. For 石田賢一's words to function as testimony, the speaker's name and a description of the circumstances in which they were uttered would be necessary. But what had emerged was not testimony. Testimony is language spoken with the intention to speak. What 石田 had released was like an accident—something suppressed for forty-three years leaking outward for a single moment. The resistance to treating it as testimony was what stayed 柏木's hand. 柏木 stood for a time, pen in hand, watching the winter light slanting through the trees. Then he wrote in his notebook: "Sixty years prior · elopement denied · germination of internal testimony"—nothing more. ＊ He returned to "Mitarashi-sou" just after noon. Upon the desk in his room, he arran