By the time Akiko got home, having left the sets of papers for Mr Kanayama, it was already late enough to go to the shrine, but as she pulled off her shoes she decided to skip it and just go to bed. Although the weird thing with the colour copying was hard to blame on tiredness — those first few sheets <em>had been</em> colour— the numerous other mistakes that had doubled the length of time needed were not. She felt exhausted, and it was having an impact on her work. Surely the shrine could wait one night. Akiko pulled off her clothes and wrapped herself in the futon.

The ground in the shrine was heaving, rippling like the surface of the sea, throwing up bits of litter and threatening to suck Akiko under. She struggled to remain upright, but lost her footing, and then dirt fell on her face.

Akiko jerked awake, sitting up in the futon, which had fallen over her face. She was shaking, and she got out of bed, putting her pyjamas on while she calmed down.

The waters around the shrine stank, and Akiko could not identify some of the things floating in them. Given what she could identify, she didn’t look too hard. The waves undermined the torii, and it collapsed into the filth with a great splash. Akiko jumped backwards, but some drops of the foulness landed on her, burning against her skin as she tried to brush them off, leaving red marks behind.

She turned, to see that the waters had started to undermine the rear of the shrine building. The timbers groaned in protest, and then started to shriek. A blast of wind brought a wall of stench that made her gag, and a cloud of droplets that scorched her skin. She realised that Tamao was still in the shrine, and ran forward, as the fetid water lapped at her heels.

Breathing hard, Akiko forced her eyes open. She was drenched in sweat, but she stayed lying in bed, refusing to move, sure that she would be asleep again soon.

She was flying over Kawasaki, a landscape of slums and urban decay. A group of homeless huddled round a fire in a car, and a group of youths were beating another as he cried for help, ignored by passers-by. She passed over the shrine, the house a burnt-out shell and the shrine itself missing part of its roof, the precincts covered with litter. Her angle of view changed, and as she saw the man using the inside of the shrine as a toilet she was suddenly falling from the air towards the rubble and broken glass of a collapsed factory.

Akiko’s scream woke her up. She looked at her watch in the light from outside; three am. She didn’t feel as though she had slept at all, and was sure that she wouldn’t. She put the light on, and started gathering the things she needed to go and clean the shrine.