Friday was a terrible day at work. Akiko was utterly exhausted, to the point that even Megumi sounded sympathetic when asking how she was, and the documents she had prepared were not quite right. Mr Kanayama explained the problem, but Akiko couldn’t see how she could have got that wrong. She managed to get the corrected parts to the meeting before it finished, but she could tell that Mr Kanayama was disappointed.

Even though she knew that she should work late to try to improve his opinion of her, she just couldn’t keep going past five. She fell asleep on the train home even so, waking up with a start at the stop before hers. There was another note from the landlord when she got back, something about a water leak, but she barely had the energy to pull her futon flat and collapse onto it.

The ground was pleasantly warm under her feet as she walked around the shrine precincts, the blades of grass tickling slightly. With every step, her awareness of the grass became more intense, more precise, so that she could feel the shape of each blade, all its imperfections, bends, tears, and insect bites. And then they started to dig into her feet, sharp pricks that got stronger, turning to cuts that drew blood, flowing warm and sticky over the soles of her feet, the grass now lancing into her feet and crumbling to dust within the wounds…

Akiko sat up sharply, drawing a shuddering breath. Her heart was racing, and she reached down to massage her feet without thinking. Despite her exhaustion, it was clear to her what she had to do. She would get no peace otherwise.

Despite her convictions, she still hesitated at the foot of the steps, remembering the previous night. Clutching her rubbish bag and torch, she made her way carefully into the shrine precincts, straining all her senses for any sign of trouble.

After purifying herself and making her initial prayers, the only problem she found was that her torch wasn’t working. That wasn’t really surprising, now that she thought about it, but it still restricted her to looking for rubbish in the open area. The air was very still, and even the animals seemed to be resting; apart from Akiko herself, the only sounds were those of distant cars, and occasional sirens. Her footfalls sounded loud to her, and she kept glancing nervously at the shrine house, but there was no reaction. When she started jumping at her breathing as well, she realised that she was over-reacting, and tried to relax.

She found a few pieces of litter for her bag, but the area round the front of the shrine was quite clean now. Still unsettled, she decided that she had to go around the back, even though that was darker and near the rocks.

The stones were a dark mass in the night, with no sign of a light within them. The air stayed still, and the ground remained steady under her feet. She looked up, and hundreds of stars shone down. She bent to pick up a piece of litter, and then straightened sharply at a rhythmic noise. She looked first at the stones, but they remained unmoving. And then she placed the noise.

Someone was coming up the steps into the shrine.

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For a moment, Akiko’s instinct was to hide, but she quickly suppressed it. She wasn’t doing anything wrong in the shrine, and if she hid things would just look more suspicious if she were spotted. And Shiraishi was in the shrine house, so if there was a problem she could always call for help. Cautiously, she walked round the side of the shrine to see who it was.

A young man stood at the top of the steps, under the torii, looking around as if searching for something. He looked in her direction and, a moment later, walked over to the water basin to purify himself. As he stepped into the light, Akiko recognised him; Mr Takenaka’s son. She couldn’t remember his given name, though. She hung back while he went to pay his respects at the shrine, but stepped forward as soon as he turned away.

“Good evening. Mr Takenaka, isn’t it? What brings you here so late at night?” It was hard to be sure in the gloom, but Akiko thought that he blushed a little before replying.

“Oh, I just couldn’t sleep, so I came here for a change of location. And to ask for success for the business. What about you?”

“I’m just cleaning again. I suppose your father told you?”

“Yes, er, no, I mean…” There was an embarrassed pause. “I mean, yes he told me about you cleaning yesterday, but no, he didn’t say that you would be here tonight.”

“Well, he didn’t know that.”

“No.”

Silence fell again, and stretched, becoming more and more awkward. Finally, Akiko felt she had to break it.

“Well, I should get on with the cleaning. I want to get home relatively early today.”

“I’ll help you!” The offer was made very quickly and enthusiastically, and the younger Takenaka followed her round the back of the shrine, glancing at her to see what she was doing and then going to collect rubbish himself.

Akiko found herself looking over at him repeatedly, a suspicion as to his real reason for being there slowly forming in her mind. She caught him looking her way a couple of times, but he always looked away immediately.

She let the search for litter in the darkness distract her from the question of the best way to let him down gently if he asked her out. Just tell him about Naoyuki? That might be easiest, but it was a bit harsh. Come up with some other story? She knew she wasn’t good at that.

A shadow on the ground proved to be a pebble, not rubbish, although the next suspicious shape was a coffee can. She could hear Takenaka moving around, his footsteps, occasional muttered comments, just a bit too quiet to make out, and even, after a time, his breathing. And then she realised that she could smell him, too, a distinctly human smell on the air, quite unlike the natural smells of the shrine.

She stood up, her bag mostly full, and walked over to him.

“Well, I’m done for tonight. Let me take what you’ve collected.” He handed the rubbish over, filling her bag up, without managing to say anything coherent.

“Thank you for your help.” She thought about saying something like ‘see you again’, but decided against it. He might have wanted to say something, but he had not managed to put it together before she was on her way out down the shrine steps.

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Akiko was woken the next morning by the insistent ringing of her cell phone. She lay in bed for a while, waiting for the answering service to get it, but after a moment it started ringing again. Whoever it was, they weren’t willing to wait. Sighing, she crawled towards it, pulling it back into bed with her before looking to see who was calling.

Naoyuki.

Quickly, she picked up.

“Hello, Naoyuki?”

“Yes. Akiko, we need to talk. Come to the cafe near the station as soon as you can.”

“What?” Naoyuki sounded upset and angry, and Akiko had no idea what it could be.

“Just come, OK?”

“OK.” Her answer came a bit slowly. “But…” Naoyuki had already hung up, before she could ask what it was about.

For a moment she didn’t get out of bed, but she quickly realised that she was falling asleep, and forced herself to sit up, and then stand. She’d better get going.

A quick shower and can of coffee from the vending machine later, she was almost awake, and ready to talk to her boyfriend. When she got to the cafe, he was pacing outside, looking at his watch, and when he saw her he came hurrying over.

“What took you so long? Come on, we need to talk.” He grabbed her arm, and almost pulled her towards a bench at the back of the park, a long way from almost all the people there.

“Naoyuki? What is it?”

“You’ve been back.” It was clearly an accusation, but not one that made any sense to Akiko.

“What?”

“You’ve been back to the shrine. Someone saw you.”

“Well, yes…”

“I told you not to go there!” He was very nearly shouting, and he suddenly looked around, dropping his voice to avoid drawing attention. “I told you not to get involved with Shinto.”

Akiko thought that that wasn’t entirely accurate, but she was mostly puzzled by the vehemence of his reaction.

“I’ve only been once or twice…” she began, but Naoyuki cut her off.

“What will people think of you? Come to that, what sort of person are you? Going to that sort of place, and after I said not to!” He sounded almost incredulous, but Akiko was just getting more and more confused.

“It’s a shrine…”

“Exactly! People haven’t gone to shrines for decades!”

“Lots of people go at New Year’s.”

“That’s different, and anyway you should go to a temple then.” He stopped, taking a deep breath and obviously struggling to get himself under control.

“Look, I just want you to promise me that you aren’t going to go back again. Ever.”

Akiko looked at Naoyuki. He seemed completely in earnest, equal parts disappointed and angry, and she was at a loss. Why on earth was this so important to him?

“Naoyuki, why…” she began, but he cut her off again.

“Just promise, OK?”

For a moment, she thought that she would be only too happy to never go again, but she didn’t think that the kami would allow that. The thought of explaining the problem to Naoyuki passed briefly through her mind, instantly rejected.

“I’m sorry, really, but I can’t.” Naoyuki looked really shocked.

“Well… Well then, I’m not sure I can keep seeing you.” Akiko almost stopped breathing for a moment, and Naoyuki hurried on. “Call me again when you’ve thought about it some more. Or I’ll call you.” So he wasn’t dumping her just yet, then. “But really, you can’t go to the shrine.”

He started walking away, and although he looked back a couple of times, as if he were going to say something more, he never did.

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It was already evening when Akiko woke up on Sunday, the week’s lack of sleep finally catching up with her. Saturday night’s visit to the shrine had been completely uneventful, and she’d been in bed before two am; she looked at the clock telling her it was already after five in disbelief. Her cell phone was blinking at her, indicating numerous messages, which meant that she had slept through that, as well. And her body still felt heavy as she dragged herself to the phone.

Twelve missed calls. She called up the details, her heart sinking as she went through the list. None from Naoyuki; twelve from her mother, the most recent only half an hour earlier. She sighed, realising that there was no way to get away from calling back. Even so, she didn’t make the call immediately. There were so many reasons why she didn’t want to have a conversation about her marriage prospects just then.

Sitting up and shaking herself, she placed the call.

“Hello, Akiko?”

“Yes, Mum. How are you?”

“So nice to hear from you. It’s ages since you called.”

“Mum, it can’t be more than a couple of weeks.”

“That was me calling you. I don’t know how long it is since you called me.” Akiko had to admit that she wasn’t sure, either, but she wasn’t about to say that.

“Anyway, Mum, I’ve called now. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine.”

“And how’s Dad?”

“Same as ever. Looking forward to retiring.” Akiko smiled, briefly. She could easily imagine.

“I’m sure he is.”

“And looking forward to being a grandfather. He says he’ll have lots of time for grandchildren once he’s retired.” Akiko stifled the groan, keeping it silent. Her mother wasted very little time.

“Mother, I’m not even married yet.”

“And when can we expect to hear wedding bells? How is that nice young man?”

“He’s fine, Mum.”

“Fine? That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic. Are you having problems? You really need to find the right man soon, so if he isn’t the one, you mustn’t mess about.”

“Mum!” Akiko was a bit more forceful than she’d intended. “There are no problems. Everything is going well. I don’t know whether we’re going to get married, but I don’t know that we aren’t. There’s just nothing to report.” Even as she said it, she felt guilty. Right out lying to her mother felt wrong, even though she couldn’t think of any alternative. There was no way to mention the problems without raising a whole set of issues she just couldn’t talk about. She wondered if she’d ever find anyone she could talk to about the events at the shrine, and realised that her mother had started asking another question.

“…at work?” was all Akiko heard.

“I’m sorry, there was interference. What was that?”

“How are things going at work?”

“Oh, the usual. More overtime than normal last week, so I’m very tired today.” Akiko saw an opportunity, and seized it. “Actually, I’ve only just woken up, so I really need to get something to eat. Talk to you again later.”

She hung up before her mother could press her any further.

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“Who’s the big cheese?” Megumi whispered. Akiko shushed her, but she also wanted to know the answer, sneaking peeks over her shoulder as he was shown into Mr Kanayama’s office.

“Taro Wakabayashi,” Satomi whispered. “President of Wakabayashi Construction, and head of the Wakabayashi Group.” Akiko looked blankly at her.

“Never heard of him,” Megumi said, saving Akiko the trouble.

“No, well, it’s not like Mitsubishi or anything. It is, however, the biggest construction company around here, by a significant margin. If Mitsubishi were building something here, they’d probably contract with Wakabayashi for it. The other companies in the group cover a wide range of businesses.”

“And he’s a potential new client?” Akiko asked.

“Right,” Satomi agreed. “Hence all the bows from everyone.”

“Ah.” Nodding in understanding, Akiko risked another glance at the office. Mr Wakabayashi had seemed to pay attention to every employee when he came into the office and they were all lined up to bow to him, which certainly suggested that he was taking them seriously. “Here’s hoping he brings us lots of business.”

“And pay rises!” Megumi added. Akiko shushed her again, but couldn’t help smiling. A pay rise would, certainly, be very nice.

The meeting went on for a long time, which Akiko supposed was a very good sign, and she was soon concentrating on her work again. It was supposed to be simple data entry, but the spreadsheet was telling her that the company had lost billions on one contract, and that was clearly not the case. She started chasing the calculations back from cell to cell, trying to find the mistake, but there were no obviously superfluous zeroes. She started working a few bits out by hand, deciding that the error was likely to be in one of the formulae, and as she did so the screen saver kicked in, leaving her monitor dark.

Lightning from outside flickered in the reflection of the windows, but the thunder was inaudible. Akiko finished her calculations, without finding the error, and looked back at the monitor, reaching for the mouse.

Through the windows, she could see a cloudy sky with patches of blue, darkening towards rain, while the reflections of the window in the monitor were dominated by the black clouds and lightning flashes of a major storm. She glanced over her shoulder; very different weather in two parts of the sky was not impossible. However, although the clouds were darker, and starting to rain, there was no storm. She looked back at the monitor.

The rain in the reflected windows was heavier, and she could see motion in the distance, glimmering with every flash of lightning. The glimmers came closer, and she could see that they were the reflections off a churning wall of water, a tsunami rushing towards her, buildings collapsing as it passed over them.

Tsunami don’t get that big, she thought, or come this far inland.

The wave in the reflection reached the windows of their building, shattering them as it struck.

The lights went out.

Moments later, they flickered back on, accompanied by the sounds of computers restarting and muttered curses from the other workers. The windows reflected in the monitor matched the direct view, but Akiko realised that she couldn’t stay any longer.

Claiming illness, she hurriedly left the office.

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It was raining steadily by the time Akiko reached Tamao Shrine, but at least it wasn’t too heavy. She’d bought a light rain coat from a convenience store, and it seemed to be keeping her largely dry. She reflected that the rain would reduce her chances of meeting anyone at the shrine, for which she was grateful; she could feel herself starting to blush at the mere thought of explaining to anyone why she was there in the afternoon.

As she climbed the steps, she intended to go straight into the woods, where she couldn’t be seen, but as she passed through the torii she found that the shrine building demanded her attention, and she couldn’t bring herself to forgo paying her respects. She quickly rinsed her hands, then walked as quickly as she dared to the shrine, ringing the bell, bowing, clapping her hands, and bowing again, as instructed. She paused a moment, looking into the gloom within the shrine, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. She hurried from the veranda before anyone could see her.

Within the trees, she felt a lot calmer. The leaves blocked most of the rain, and the sound of drops running off them and hitting the ground was soothing. The scent of wet soil filled the air, and, when Akiko stood still to listen, she could hear an occasional scurrying, as some small creature hurried about its business.

She looked around, as her eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, and started gathering rubbish, the garish colours of the packaging standing out against the natural tones of the woodland floor. With no particular plan, she just wandered into the woods, picking up rubbish as she came to it, feeling that the further in she was, the less likely she was to be spotted.

Her bag was about half full when she found herself looking at one of the largest trees she had ever seen. Its trunk, looking almost as though it was formed of three or four trunks coiled together, was wider than her outstretched arms, and as she looked up into the canopy she realised that the rain was entirely blocked, the layers upon layers of green leaves stretching high into the sky. She looked back down at the trunk, noticing the rope tied around it, decorated with folded strips of white paper, and felt an urge to touch the bark.

She thought she was resisting the urge, which was completely irrational, but she found herself walking towards the tree and raising her hand. The bark was slightly warm to the touch, rough with the scars of years, and as she ran her hand over it the sensation sent shivers up her arm and down her back. Stepping back, she put her rubbish bag on the ground, and then placed both hands on the bark. Her tension seemed to drain out of her, into the tree, and she relaxed against it.

She was at the bottom of the shrine steps, with a full bag of rubbish, before it struck her that she had paid no attention to whether anyone saw her on her way out. With a stab of panic she looked back up the steps, but there was no-one there. She seemed to be safe.

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The sense of calm stayed with Akiko as she made her way home, only to suddenly vanish as she turned a corner. Her stomach was churning, her heart pounding, and her breath coming in gasps, as if she had just run up a hill. She put one hand on a wall for support, and just stood there, looking around, while she calmed down a bit.

There was nothing obvious to cause such a reaction; just houses, some cars, and a building site. She looked around again, but it still seemed to be an absolutely typical Kawasaki scene. Despite the absence of anything frightening, her body refused to calm down completely. She tried taking a few deep breaths, and nearly retched. There was a scent of rot on the air, decaying meat and sour milk mixed with faeces. She searched for a source, and found her eyes drawn to the building site.

The sign said “Wakabayashi Construction”, which meant more to her now than it had that morning, and the workmen seemed to be clearing the land ready for building. Men with chain-saws and a digger were in the process of cutting down a bamboo grove, the tall stems falling to earth with a crash to be dragged away as the digger pulled up the roots.

The odour still nagged at her, and at the edge of hearing Akiko thought she could hear someone screaming. It seemed to be coming from the building site, but even as she drew closer she realised that that wasn’t possible; quite apart from the fact that the workmen would have heard it, the screaming was from too far away.

Still, something about the work held her attention, and she had been examining the scene carefully for some time before she realised what she was doing. With no idea of what she was looking for, she couldn’t say why she had to keep looking, but she couldn’t look away.

There was a flicker of motion at the edge of her vision, but when she turned to look it was just an area of bamboo stumps, waiting for the digger to root them up. Another bit of motion, this time at the base of a falling stem of bamboo, but, again, she couldn’t see anything definite when she looked again. The stench of rot was getting stronger, although she had become somewhat used to it, and the screaming continued, an almost-inaudible accompaniment to the scene.

The shape of the bamboo became intensely clear to her, each stem stretching up to the sky, deep green and ringed, proudly proclaiming its life and its place in the world, until the chain-saw bit into the base, bringing it tumbling down to earth. The fall of each stem started to affect her like a physical blow, a poke in the stomach that got stronger with every death. She found herself holding on to the chain-link fence for support, desperate to look away, but unable to.

And then she saw something else in the rapidly-disappearing grove, something moving between the dying stumps, jumping eagerly from one fallen stem to the next, as if feeding on them. The workmen were oblivious to its presence, but Akiko could see it getting bigger.

It was black, the black of mould on a wall that hadn’t been cleaned for years, the black of mildew on an old bath, of rotten clothes left in a gutter for months. Every time it jumped, there was a stronger wave of the rotting stench, and every time it crouched over a stump the sound of screaming got thinner, as if one voice among many had been silenced.

She couldn’t make out a shape for it at first; it seemed to have too many legs, and then too few, and she wasn’t sure whether it had a head at all. It never stopped moving, and although it was darker than the gathering gloom it was still half-lost in the shadows. She felt her heart and breathing speeding up again as her fear built up.

What was it?

It stopped, then, in the middle of the devastated grove, and somehow she knew that it had turned towards her. She saw light within it, the light of smoky fires, and there was a chemical reek as two points of light, eyes, she realised, fixed on her.

Her whole body shivered, as if a dozen cold, slimy hands caressed her skin at once, probing at her body, touching her everywhere. Nausea rose within her, as she felt dirtier than she ever had, and the eyes got bigger as the thing left the grove to approach her, the stench getting stronger with every step it took. Akiko couldn’t move. It was as if she was in mud up to her knees, mud through which worms were crawling, brushing against her skin, stinging her if she tried to take a single step.

“It’s a tragedy, isn’t it?”

The sensations all vanished at the sound of the voice, and Akiko turned to see an old woman standing next to her, looking at the grove, where the workmen continued to fell it.

“Yes.” Akiko couldn’t manage any more. She still felt filthy, contaminated, but there was nothing holding her legs any more.

“I remember when there were groves like that all round here, you know. That was one of the few that were left, and now it’s gone, too.”

“It’s a real shame. I’m sorry, please excuse me.” The woman nodded, as Akiko turned and walked away from the building site, picking up the pace as she remembered the thing within the grove, getting faster as her fear returned, until she was running home as fast as she could.

As soon as she got back to her flat, grabbing the note the landlord had left on the door and dropping it in the hallway, she started the bath, pulling her clothes off as quickly as she could and dropping them straight into the washing machine before washing herself in the shower.

She had been soaking in the bath for half an hour before she began to feel clean again.

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