Akiko got home the following night to another note from her landlord, reporting claims of excessive noise. She had no idea what that was talking about, and put it on one side; she had more immediate things to worry about. Naoyuki had emailed her to check that she was all right, but she was still disturbed by the vision. She could easily come up with things it might mean, but she did not like any of the ideas it suggested. For almost an hour, she seriously considered not going to the shrine, but her steadily building tension convinced her that she would have to go if she was going to sleep at all.

Her lack of sleep was catching up with her again, so she decided to take a risk and go to the shrine a bit earlier than normal. She paused at the bottom of the steps, straining her ears for any sound. She could hear the drip of the water into the basin, and the leaves rustling in the occasional breeze, but other than that, the shrine seemed to be quiet. Stepping as quietly as she could, she hurried up the steps and into the shrine, quickly rinsing her hands and mouth and then going to pay her respects. As she turned away from the shrine, she noticed that there was still a light on in the shrine house. She almost ran down the steps and into the cover of the woods.

In the darkness under the trees she felt a lot safer from discovery, but she quickly realised that there was no way she could do any cleaning without using her torch. The light from the shrine grounds was enough to see where the main tree trunks were, but everything around them was merely degrees of shadow. She glanced back at the open area, but she couldn’t see anyone moving about. Making sure to direct it away from the house, she turned her torch on and cast the beam around, looking for rubbish.

There was a flash of orange from a bush, and Akiko turned the torch off as she made her way over, turning it on again to confirm that the orange was an empty senbei wrapper. She picked it up and put it in her rubbish bag, then shone the torch around once more.

As she walked through the darkened woods in between each use of the torch, she was very aware of the trees around her. She could feel the shapes of their roots under her feet, her footing slightly unsteady as she tried to move around them, and their lower branches caught at her hair and clothes, as if trying to caress her. The smell of wood and leaves filled the air, cleaner and clearer the further into the wood she went, and the gentle creak of the trunks and branches as the settled in the night air was almost a lullaby. Every time she turned the torch back on, the trees seemed to draw back from her even as they sprang into full visibility.

Her bag becoming full, Akiko turned back towards the open area, and she could see the shrine building clearly through the trees before she realised that she had been turning the torch on while it was pointed in that direction. Putting it away, she walked as quickly as she dared towards the exit, hoping she had not been spotted.

As she emerged from the woods, Shiraishi was waiting for her.