[Creative Award Work] Soul Debt Deed

Soul Debt Deed
(Konpaku Taishaku Shomon)

Dai Usami

Synopsis

Late one night, a stranger visits the home of tax accountant Toru Sonezaki. The man, who identifies himself as being from the 'Collection Agency,' presents a 'Soul Debt Deed'—a declaration that Toru must repay a debt for a sin committed in a past life within forty-nine days.

Toru's past life was as a village headman named Zenemon, who monopolized rice granaries during the Great Tenpo Famine, causing thirty-seven people to starve to death. That debt has passed through seven reincarnations to reach Toru in the present. Day by day, his body is eroded by hunger, and memories of his past life come flooding back as dreams.

There are three ways to repay the debt: pay with his life, surrender all his memories, or provide a joint guarantor. Toru considers naming his closest junior colleague, Nishimura, but realizes that would be repeating the same sin as Zenemon.

At that moment, the thirty-seven ghosts appear and tell Toru, 'That's enough.' Toru chooses the second method, surrendering all his memories to settle the debt. However, at the end of the story, the man from the Collection Agency appears before Nishimura. The chain has not yet ended.

Soul Debt Deed　　　Dai Usami

One
That night, Toru Sonezaki was in a sea of numbers.
Tax return. Sole proprietor. Depreciation.
On the dining table were three stacks of receipts. One calculator. One half-finished cup of coffee.
It was already cold.
He checked the clock. It was twelve minutes past midnight.
Toru was forty-two. He was a tax accountant working at a mid-sized accounting firm in Tokyo. Single. No hobbies. Few friends. Yet, he was alive.
Being alive meant, in short, processing numbers. Counting other people's money, calculating other people's taxes, and balancing the books of other people's lives. That had been the forty-two years of the human being known as Toru Sonezaki.
Wake up in the morning. Brush teeth. Do not look at himself in the mirror. He doesn't look because there is no need to. He knows the same face as yesterday is there.
Ride the train. Walk from the station to the office. Sit at the desk. Open the computer. Input numbers. Go to a diner at noon. Input numbers again in the afternoon. Go home in the evening.
In that repetition, Toru sometimes thought of strange things.
Each of these numbers holds someone's life. Behind the sales figures, there is a person who sweated. Behind the expense figures, there is a person who bought something, used something, and consumed something.

But to Toru, they were just numbers.
Numbers have no temperature. Numbers have no scent. Numbers have no emotions.
Toru's life didn't have those either.
His fingers hitting the keyboard moved with forty-two years of habit. Independent of his own will, his fingers picked up numbers, aligned digits, and produced answers. There was no longer even a need to think. His body did it on its own.
Suddenly, he looked at his right hand.
The tip of his index finger was slightly hardened. The aftermath of a pen callus. The small bump that formed during his student days had become part of his skin over a quarter of a century.
What had he been holding with these fingers?
Calculator. Pen. Mouse. And that was all.
He took a sip of coffee.
Cold. A faint bitterness spread over his tongue. That was the only taste it had.
Outside the window, it was dark. Several lights could be seen in the windows of the apartment building across the street. In each of those lights, there was someone who had a place to return to.
Was the light in Toru's room a 'place to return to' for anyone?
No.
This was just a place where Toru slept. Not a place to return to, but a place to go back to. Since there was no one waiting, he wouldn't call it returning.
Toru became a tax accountant when he was twenty-four. He could no longer remember why he chose this job. Perhaps it was because he could get by without talking to people. Numbers do not betray. While numbers do not perceive one's feelings, they also do not hurt one. As long as he faced only numbers, life would pass by mostly flatly.
Flatly.
Yes, it had passed by flatly.
No mountains. No valleys. Just flatly.
At that moment.

—Ding-dong.

The intercom rang.
It was past midnight. This was not a time for a decent visitor to arrive.
Toru placed his coffee cup on the table and stood up. He peered at the monitor by the entrance.
A man was standing there.
Black suit. White dress shirt. No necktie. He was holding an old leather bag in his right hand.
A face.
He had a face.
But—
He couldn't remember it.
Even though he was looking at it, the memory slipped away the moment he saw it. There must have been a nose. There must have been eyes. There must have been a mouth. But the moment he looked away from the monitor, he could no longer remember what kind of face it was.
He looked at the monitor again. The man was not moving at all.
He was standing straight in front of the camera. As if he knew he was being watched.
No.
It was a face that knew it was being watched.
Toru pressed the microphone button on the intercom.

'Yes. Who is it?'

A voice returned.
'I apologize for the late hour.'
It was a polite voice.
Low, soft, and every word was smooth. A voice like a government office counter. No, even more polite. It was a voice like an attendant at a funeral home.
'I am from the Collection Agency.'
Collection Agency.
Toru frowned.
It was a name he had never heard. As a tax accountant, he considered himself well-versed in debt collection mechanisms. He had the list of debt collection companies based on the Servicer Act in his head.
But the name 'Collection Agency' was nowhere among them.
'What kind of collection?'
'I would appreciate it if we could meet and I could explain.'
Toru's finger stopped on the intercom.
He shouldn't open it. He shouldn't open the door to someone visiting after midnight.
But.
He opened it.
Toru didn't know why he opened it. He thought about it many times afterward. Even after thinking, he didn't know.
However, there is one thing he can say. When he reached his finger toward the button, his fingertip moved on its own. It was the same as when he typed numbers. His body moved before his will. As if this moment had been reserved since long ago.
He opened the door slightly, keeping the door chain on.
The fluorescent light in the hallway shone white behind the man. The man stood in that light.
He bowed deeply.
The angle of his waist was exactly forty-five degrees. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Then, he slowly raised his face.
Toru looked at that face.
As expected, he couldn't remember it.
Even though he was looking, his recognition couldn't keep up. The parts were there. The arrangement wasn't strange. But the whole thing didn't form an image. Like a face reflected on the water's surface, it was wavering. No, it wasn't wavering. It was shifted. Something was just slightly shifted.
'You are Mr. Toru Sonezaki, aren't you?'
Toru nodded.
The man opened his bag.
It smelled of old leather. A dry, dusty, yet somehow sweet scent. Deep within the scent of tanned leather, there was a sign of something much older. The scent of soil. The scent of bone.
The man took a piece of paper out of the bag.
Paper.
No.
It wasn't paper.
It looked like Japanese paper, but it wasn't. It was thick. It was yellowed. The edges were uneven, and the fibers from when it was made remained as they were.
The man held it out.
Toru accepted it.
The moment he accepted it.
His fingertips went numb.
It wasn't a numbness like electricity. It was duller. Deeper. A sensation as if something cold was passing through his bones. From his fingers to his wrist. From his wrist to his elbow. It vanished in an instant.
But even after the numbness faded, a strange sensation remained on his fingertips. Even though he was holding paper, he didn't feel like he was holding paper. A strange texture, as if he were sandwiching his own skin with another layer of skin.
Toru looked at the paper.
It was written in brush calligraphy.
The ink was dark. Each stroke was thick and powerful. But there was a slight tremor in the shape of the characters. Was the hand of the person who wrote it trembling? Or was the writing itself trembling?
What was written was this.

　Soul Debt Deed　No. 721
　Lender　　　Unknown
　Borrower　　　Toru Sonezaki (Present Life Name)
　Principal　　　One Life
　Interest　　　Fragments of memory every generation
　Repayment Deadline　Forty-nine days from the presentation of this deed

Toru laughed.
'What is this?'
He laughed out loud. Something like this was a scam. A new type of spiritual business? Are they trying to sell him an urn?
'I understand your feelings.'
The man didn't change his expression. No, he didn't even know if he had an expression. Within that unrememberable face, he felt as if something had moved slightly.
'However, the deed is genuine. The repayment deadline is forty-nine days. We will count from today.'
Toru thrust the paper back at the man.
'Please go home.'
'Understood.'
The man bowed deeply again. Same angle. Same number of seconds.
'Also, the deed will remain in your possession, so please check it.'
'That's why—'
Toru looked at his hand.
He should have returned the paper.
He thrust it back at the man. He definitely thrust it back.
And yet.
The paper was in Toru's hand.
He raised his face.
There was no one in the hallway.
The air outside the door was chillingly cold. It was too cold for a night in May. It was as if someone had just left the refrigerator door wide open.

Two
The next morning.
Toru stood in front of the washbasin.
He turned the faucet. Water flowed. He washed his face with cold water.
He wiped his face with a towel and looked in the mirror.
And.
No voice came out.
Left eye.
The color of the iris of his left eye had changed.
His right eye was brown. The usual brown.
But his left eye.
It was gray.
A cold gray, like iron, like a cloudy sky. Toru stared at that eye. The left eye in the mirror was staring back at Toru.
Staring back.
That's what he felt.
Even though it was his own eye reflected in the mirror, he felt as if it wasn't his eye. An older eye. A colder eye. An eye that had seen something. An eye that had seen something and remained calm.
Toru blinked.
The gray eye blinked too.
Of course. It's a mirror. It's his own eye.
But.
Just for a split second. From the moment he blinked until the eye in the mirror blinked, there was a split-second—
Shift.
It's just my imagination.
Toru tried to think that.
He left the washroom and returned to the living room. The stack of receipts from last night remained on the table just as it was. And next to it.
That paper was there.

Soul Debt Deed.

It wasn't a dream.
Toru picked up the paper. The numbness was gone. But the temperature of the paper was strange. It was neither cold nor warm. The same temperature as his body heat. A temperature as if it were part of his skin.
Toru threw the paper in the trash can.
He took off his shirt to take a shower.
At that moment.
There was a discomfort on his back.
Below his left shoulder blade. There was something there.
He returned to the mirror. He twisted his back and reflected it.
There was a bruise.
No.
It wasn't a bruise.
It was a scar.
An old scar. Three long, thin wounds as if cut by a blade. They were running diagonally. As if it were a wound that had healed long ago, the skin was raised and white.
There is no such wound.
In Toru's forty-two years of life, there was no memory of being cut by a blade. It wasn't a surgical scar either. Until yesterday, there was no such thing.
Toru touched the scar with his finger.
It was cold.
The temperature was clearly lower than the surrounding skin. The coldness transmitted to his fingertip was unnatural. As if, beneath the scar—
There was ice.
That was the sensation.
Toru pulled his finger away. A faint dampness remained on his fingertip.
He brought that dampness close to his nose.
There was a scent.
It was the scent of soil. The scent of cold soil wet with rain. A scent he shouldn't be smelling in an apartment room in the city.
Toru washed his hands at the washbasin. He lathered soap and scrubbed many times.
Even so, the scent of soil remained deep in the wrinkles of his fingers.
He looked at the trash can.
The deed was not there.
He looked at the table.
It was there.
The paper he should have thrown away earlier had returned to the table.

Three
From that day on, the strange occurrences began.
At first, it was small things.
The taste of food became bland.
Toru ate lunch at a diner near his office. Ginger pork set meal. The same menu as always. It should have been the same taste as always.
It had no taste.
No, it wasn't that it had absolutely no taste. It was distant. The taste was far away.
The food was on his tongue. He was chewing. He was swallowing. But only the sense of taste was separated, as if by a pane of glass.
He could feel the texture of the meat fibers unraveling between his teeth. He could see the sheen of the sauce with his eyes. But that sheen did not reach his tongue. It was no different from chewing sand.
Toru stopped his chopsticks.
“Was it not good?”
The owner of the diner called out.
“No. It’s fine.”
Toru forced himself to eat. Every time he swallowed, the back of his throat felt dry.
He drank water.
The water had no taste either.
That night.
Toru bought groceries at the supermarket and went home. He opened the refrigerator to put the things he had bought inside.
There was a smell.
The smell of decay.
A sweet, heavy, sticky smell. It clung to the back of his nose and wouldn't leave. It descended to the back of his throat, inducing a feeling of nausea.
Toru looked inside the refrigerator.
The pork he had bought just yesterday. Inside the pack, it had turned gray. The drip was brown and cloudy, foaming.
Eggs. Black spots were floating on the surface of the shells.
Cabbage. The outer leaves were melting. Brown liquid had pooled at the bottom of the vegetable drawer.
Milk. The carton was bulging.
Everything.
Everything he had bought just yesterday was rotten.
Toru recoiled involuntarily.
The decay seemed to be progressing from the inside. Even though the surface still kept its shape, it was crumbling away from deep within. Just like the carcass of a beast that had had its internal organs removed.
Toru closed the refrigerator.
And then, he realized.
He was hungry.
Fiercely hungry.
His stomach was contracting. The pain of an empty stomach as if it were chewing on itself. Toru pressed his abdomen.
He had eaten the ginger pork set meal at noon. The taste was bland, but he had certainly eaten it. And yet.
He was hungry.
Even when night came, he couldn't eat anything. He put the newly bought groceries into the refrigerator.
The next morning.
That was also rotten.
That morning, Toru woke up to the sound of his own voice.
He was saying something.
It wasn't sleep-talking. The moment he woke up, his mouth was still moving.
His lips were moving on their own, spitting out words.
They were unknown words.
Not Japanese. Not English either. Not any language Toru knew.
But they were words. They were a sequence of sounds that held meaning. There was intonation. There was grammar. He was speaking to someone.
Toru could not stop his mouth from moving.
Ten seconds. Twenty seconds.
Eventually, his mouth stopped.
It became quiet.
Toru, while staring at the ceiling, searched for the sensation of the sounds that remained in his mouth.
The way he used his tongue was different. He used the back of his tongue more than in Japanese. His throat vibrated.
He didn't know what he had been saying.
Even though he didn't know, his body remembered.
This was not the words of the seventh Toru. It was the sixth. Or the fifth. Or perhaps it was a language used by some Toru from even further back—older than the era Zenemon lived in.
Interest.
Instead of fragments of memory, the remnants of another life were seeping out.
Toru picked up the notepad by his pillow. He gripped a pen.
He had intended to write to record the words he had just spoken.
But.
His hand wrote something else.
It was kanji.
It was kanji he had never seen before. Even older than the old character forms. Angular, hard characters like oracle bone script.
Toru did not know those characters.
But his hand knew.
His right hand, which held the pen, wrote four characters regardless of Toru's will.
He didn't even know how to read them.
Toru stared at those characters for a while.
Eventually, he closed the notepad.
Looking at them made the back of his head feel restless.
A feeling that he must not read these characters welled up from the bottom of his body.
If he read them, he wouldn't be able to return.
That conviction ran with a tingle along the nape of his neck, where the fine hairs grew.

Four
The third day.
Toru had a dream.
In the dream, Toru was another person.
He was wearing a kimono. It was a fine kimono. The texture of silk. The weight of the obi.
He was sitting in a large tatami room. The tatami was new. The smell of rush grass soaked into the back of his nose.
It was the end of summer. The light coming through the shoji screens was still strong. But there was a shadow in the color of the light. Signs of autumn were mixed into the edges of the light.
In front of him was a ledger. He was holding a brush. He was writing numbers.
It was the amount of rice.
The number of straw bags. The number of sho. A vast amount of rice was recorded in the ledger.
This man—Zenemon—was smiling faintly while writing in the ledger.
This year's harvest was bad. The whole village knew it. But Zenemon's storehouse had reserves from last year. Three years' worth of rice was sleeping in that storehouse.
The villagers would come begging. They would bow their heads, asking him to share the rice.
Zenemon had no intention of giving it to them.
Rice meant money. Rice during a famine sold for three times the price of a normal year. The domain's merchant would come to buy it. Money would come in. If he had money, he could buy land. If he had land, he could harvest more rice.
In Zenemon's head, the same numbers as in the ledger were lined up.
Only numbers were lined up.
The faces of the villagers did not come to mind. He didn't remember their names either. Just the hands that tilled the fields and the backs that paid the land tax. That was all the villagers were to Zenemon.
Numbers without faces.
It was the same thing Toru had been facing for forty-two years.
Outside.
He could hear a sound from outside.
At first, he thought it was the sound of the wind. But it was different.
It was a voice.
A low, weak, intermittent voice.
Toru—no, this man—stood up. He opened the shoji screen.
There were people in front of the storehouse.
Not just one. Five. Ten. Twenty.
There were more.
Some were sitting. Some were crouching. Some were collapsed.
They were emaciated.
Their cheeks were sunken, their eyes were hollow, and their collarbones were protruding as if they were about to pierce through their skin. A child was clinging to its mother. The mother's arms were so thin they couldn't support the child's weight.
They were starving.
These people were starving.
There was a smell. It was the smell of humans. The smell of grime and dirt, and deeper still, the smell of those whose bodies had begun to eat themselves. Sour. Sweet. Heavy. Even though they were alive, they were beginning to rot.
That was.
It was the same smell that had drifted from the refrigerator in Toru's apartment.
He heard a voice.
“Master of the village.”
It was a raspy voice. It was an old man's voice. It must have been the village elder. The man who once led the festival songs with a thick voice was now saying it as if squeezing it out from the back of his throat.

“Rice.”
“Even a handful will do.”
“Just for the children.”

A young mother's voice said. She had a baby strapped to her back. The baby was not crying. It no longer had the strength to cry.

“My child hasn't eaten anything for three days. I have no milk either. Please. Just a handful.”

The voices overlapped. The voices of many people. The voices of dozens of people.
The wave of those voices surged up to Zenemon's feet. But Zenemon's feet were firmly rooted on the tatami. He did not take a single step forward.
The man inside Toru closed the shoji screen.
“It is my rice.”
The voice was low. It was cold. It was a voice with the same temperature as the numbers in the ledger.
“I will not hand over even a single grain.”
The shoji screen closed.
The smell of rush grass filled Toru's nose.
He could hear voices from outside.
The crying of children.
That.
Eventually.
Disappeared.
The voices disappeared.
The silence of humans who could no longer even cry filled the area around the storehouse.
Zenemon sat back down in the room and continued writing in the ledger.
Only the sound of the brush echoed in the room.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
That sound resembled the sound of chewing grain.
Zenemon felt nothing while listening to that sound. No guilt. No hesitation. There was only the regular movement of the hand writing the numbers.
Toru was inside that “nothingness.”
Inside a heart that felt nothing while letting people die. Toru realized that he had always been there.
Toru woke up.
His whole body was drenched in sweat.
The sheets were damp with his body heat. But the sweat was cold. It was a coldness as if he had bathed in well water.
And.
There was a smell.
The smell of rush grass.
The smell of tatami was indeed drifting inside Toru's apartment room.
Toru got up.
He looked at his hand.
There was a black stain between the thumb and index finger of his right hand. It was ink. An ink stain that you get when holding a brush.
He ran to the washbasin. He scrubbed with soap.
It didn't come off.

Five
The fifth day.
Toru visited a local internal medicine clinic.
“Lately, no matter how much I eat, I don't feel full. And my weight has been dropping suddenly.”
The doctor examined Toru's body. Blood test. Urine test. Abdominal ultrasound.
The results came out the next day.
“No abnormalities were found in particular,”
the doctor said.
“Your blood sugar level is in the normal range, and there are no problems with your thyroid function. There are no abnormalities in your digestive system either.”
“But I've lost three kilograms. In just four days.”
The doctor looked at Toru from behind his glasses.
“Are you under stress? Are you getting enough sleep?”
“I am sleeping. It's just, I have dreams—”
Toru started to say, then stopped.
I have dreams of a past life. There is a man who comes to collect a soul debt. All my food rots. The color of my left eye has changed.
There was no way he could say that.
“I've been having more dreams.”
“It might be stress-related. Observe it for a while, and if it doesn't improve, I will refer you to a larger hospital.”
Toru left the examination room.
While walking down the hallway, he happened to look at his face reflected in the window glass.
He felt that the gray in his left eye was darker than it had been in the morning.
It's just my imagination.
Toru tried to think that.
But.
His left eye in the window glass, even after Toru looked away, for just a moment—was looking at him.
That night, Toru opened his computer.
He typed words into the search bar.
“Collection Agency”
The search results were displayed. Pages about debt collection. Advertisements for law firms. Explanatory articles on the Servicer Act.
The man's “Collection Agency” did not appear anywhere.
“Soul Debt Deed”
The result was zero.
Not a single hit.
Toru stared at the screen with his hands on the keyboard.
It doesn't exist.
The collection agency is not recorded anywhere in this world. No one uses the term Soul Debt Deed. There is nothing in the sea of the internet that proves the existence of that man.
But there are three scars on Toru's back. The iris of his left eye has turned gray. The food in his refrigerator rots every day. Even if he throws away the deed, it comes back.
Toru searched for one more thing.
“Tenpo 7 Tango Famine Village Headman”
The result came out.
It was a page on local history. An old-fashioned website run by an individual.
Toru opened that page.
The text was small. The background was pale yellow. The font was old.
In it, there was one line of text that pierced Toru's eyes.

“From the winter of Tenpo 7 to the following spring, 37 people died of starvation in this village. Village headman Zenemon died of illness the following year.”

Thirty-seven people.
Zenemon.
Toru could not move in front of the screen for a long time.
Only the sound of the computer's cooling fan was spinning in the room.
The light from the screen illuminated Toru's face palely. In that light, only Toru's left eye was sinking into gray.

Six
The seventh day.
Toru had stopped being able to eat.
It wasn't that he couldn't eat. Even if he ate, his stomach wasn't filled.
He ate a rice ball from a convenience store. He ate a large bowl at a beef bowl restaurant. He bought three pieces of bread at a bakery and ate them.
As soon as he ate, it disappeared.
The sensation of the food that entered his stomach disappearing as if melting. The moment he chewed, swallowed, and it fell into his stomach, it became nothing. It didn't become nutrition. It didn't become energy. It just disappeared.
Toru's weight had dropped by four kilograms in one week.
His face in the mirror had changed. His cheeks were beginning to sink. Dark circles were appearing under his eyes. His lips were dry and had fine cracks.
He was beginning to resemble the faces of the villagers in that dream.
Toru realized that.
Realizing it, he felt nauseous.
He tried to vomit. But nothing came out. His stomach was empty.
He called the office.
“I'm not feeling well, so I'll be taking some time off.”
He heard Nishimura's voice on the other end of the phone.
“Sonezaki-san, are you okay? Should I bring something over?”
“No. I'm fine.”
“Your voice, isn't it a bit strange? Did you go to the hospital?”
“I went. It's nothing serious.”
It was a lie.
Saying it was nothing serious was a lie. But there was no way he could tell the truth.
He hung up the phone.
Nishimura's voice remained in his ears.
It was a warm voice.
For some reason, that warmth tightened Toru's chest. When you touch something warm, your own coldness stands out even more. Zenemon blocked the warmth of those starving people who stood in front of his storehouse with just a single shoji screen. Toru, too, had just blocked Nishimura's warmth with a single phone call.
After hanging up the phone, Toru stood in the kitchen.
He thought he had to eat something.
He didn't feel like opening the refrigerator. The things inside were rotten anyway.
Toru took a cup of noodles from the shelf. He boiled water. He waited three minutes.
He opened the lid.
Steam rose. It should have smelled like soy sauce—
It didn't smell.
Toru slurped the noodles.
Warm liquid entered his mouth. He could only feel the temperature. But there was no taste. It passed through his throat not as soy sauce or salt, but just as warm water.
Toru put down his chopsticks.
He suddenly thought.
When was the last time he felt something was “delicious”?
He couldn't remember.
Even before that man came—long before, Toru's meals were a chore. A chore to fill his hunger. Refueling. He had forgotten the sensation of enjoying taste before he knew it.
It was different when he was a child.
The miso soup his mother made. Ordinary miso soup with tofu and seaweed. The relief that felt like the back of his nose unraveling when he inhaled that steam.
The warmth of his palms when he wrapped them around the bowl. The heat that burned his tongue when he slurped it. He didn't dislike that.
That taste, once more.
Toru stared at the cup noodles.
He thought, once more.
But perhaps that taste had already been collected as interest on the deed.

Seven
The fourteenth day.
Toru had continued to be absent from work.
He had become unable to get out of bed.
He was awake. He was conscious. But his body wouldn't move.
It was hunger.
Strength was draining from the core of his body. His muscles were wasting away, his bones were protruding, and his skin was loose. The sensation that his own body was not his own body.
He was looking at the ceiling.
A white ceiling.
He saw shadows on that white ceiling.
Not just one.
Vaguely, faintly, but certainly.
Shadows in the shape of people were floating on the ceiling.
One. Two. Three.
He started counting.
Seven. Twelve. Nineteen.
They were increasing.
Twenty-five. Thirty-one.
Thirty-seven.
It stopped at thirty-seven.
Thirty-seven shadows were looking down at Toru from the ceiling.
He heard a voice.

“I'm hungry.”

It was not one person's voice. Thirty-seven voices overlapped and were heard. The same words. The same suffering.

“I'm hungry.” “I'm hungry.” “I'm hungry.”

Toru's stomach growled.
No.
It didn't growl.
The wall of his stomach was being gnawed from the inside.
Thirty-seven teeth. Thirty-seven hungers. Were chewing on Toru's stomach wall.

“Ugh—”

Toru let out a voice.
It was a voice that couldn't become a voice. His throat was dry. No saliva came out. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.
His skin was dry.
He looked at the skin of his arm. White powder was flaking off. His nails were beginning to discolor. They were yellow, brittle, and so thin they looked like they would chip if he just touched them.
He tried touching his arm. His own fingers gripped the bone of his own arm directly. There was no flesh between them. His fingers were stroking the bone, separated by only a single layer of skin.
This was no longer his own arm.
His hair was falling onto the pillow.
Not one or two strands. It was falling out in clumps. Clumps of black hair were scattered on the white pillowcase.
Toru tried to cry.
No tears came out.
There wasn't even enough moisture left in his body to become tears.
That night, he had a second dream.
It was a dream of Zenemon.
It was winter.
It was snowing. Snow was piling up on the roof of the storehouse. Under the white snow, there was rice. Zenemon knew that.
He went out into the garden.
There were no more people in front of the storehouse.
No.
There was.
Only one person had collapsed.
It was an old woman. She had collapsed face down on the snow. A thin layer of snow had piled up on her back. She no longer moved.
Zenemon looked down at the old woman.
It was a familiar face. It was the old woman who made the village's miso. Every autumn, she would deliver miso to Zenemon's mansion. She was an old woman with warm hands who smelled of soybeans, salt, and koji.
Zenemon passed by the old woman.
He checked the lock on the storehouse.
The padlock was safe.
Zenemon returned to the mansion.
While walking, he felt the sensation of snow on the soles of his feet. There was a crunching sound as he stepped on the snow.
That sound kept ringing in Toru's ears forever.
How many more people would die before spring came?
Zenemon was counting that.
Like keeping a ledger.
Like writing down numbers.
One, two, three... He was counting the number of the dead in his head, just like interest. The more it increased, the higher the price of rice would go. For Zenemon, death was a market price.
Toru wanted to scream. Stop it, he wanted to say. Open the storehouse, he wanted to say. Distribute the rice, he wanted to say.
But no voice came out. Inside Zenemon's body, Toru's will had no power. He could only watch.
What Zenemon saw. What Zenemon saw and still did nothing about.
Toru woke up.
The soles of his feet were cold.
Even though it was a May apartment room, the sensation of stepping on snow remained on the soles of his feet.
He took his feet out from under the covers and looked.
There was something white on the soles of his feet.
When he touched it, it was cold. He took it with his finger and looked.
It was melting.
It was snow.

Eight
The twenty-first day.
Toru moved to the entrance as if crawling.
He opened the door.
A man was standing there.
The man from the collection agency.
He was in the exact same appearance as the night they first met. The same black suit. The same white dress shirt. The same old leather briefcase.
And the same face he couldn't remember.
“How have you been since then?”
A polite voice. The voice of a funeral home guide.
Toru looked up at the man while sitting on the floor.
“Help me.”
His voice was raspy.
Did the man—change his expression? Something moved slightly within that face he couldn't remember.
“Unfortunately, helping you is outside the scope of our duties.”
“What is... happening?”
“Shall I explain?”
The man sat down on the threshold of the entrance without waiting for Toru's permission.
He placed the leather briefcase on his lap. He opened the briefcase.
There was that smell. Dry leather. Dirt. Bone.
The man took something like a thin booklet out of the briefcase. It was a ledger. An old Japanese-style bound ledger.
“This is the record of the soul debt in the past life of Toru Sonezaki.”
The man opened the ledger.
“Tenpo 7. Year 1836. In a mountain village in Tango Province.”
Tenpo. The Great Tenpo Famine.
Toru knew that term. He remembered reading it in a textbook.
“Toru Sonezaki's past life—his name at the time was the village headman, Zenemon—was in a position to manage the village's rice storehouse.”
“I know.”
Toru said.
“I saw it in a dream.”
“Is that so? That is proof that the repayment of memory is progressing.”
The man turned the page of the ledger.
“The poor harvest of Tenpo 7. The village's total harvest was less than 30% of a normal year. Zenemon monopolized the rice in the storehouse and refused to distribute it to the villagers.”
The man's voice was indifferent. It was a voice like reading a report.
“As a result, from the winter of that year to the following spring, 37 people died of starvation.”
Thirty-seven.
It was the same as the number of shadows floating on the ceiling.
“Among them, children under 15—eleven people.”
Toru closed his eyes.
The scene from that dream floated behind his eyelids. People crouching in front of the storehouse. A mother clinging to her child. The silence of those who could no longer even raise their voices.
“Zenemon died of an epidemic the following year. Age at death, 53. However, the debt of the souls of 37 people does not disappear with death.”
The man closed the ledger.
“The soul debt deed is valid beyond reincarnation. Zenemon's soul repeats reincarnation, and after seven lives, it reaches the current Toru Sonezaki. Fragments of memory have been collected as interest in each generation, but the principal—one life—remains unpaid.”
“Seven times.”
Toru muttered.
“Seven times worth of interest. Does that mean that in seven lifetimes, parts of my memory have been lost?”
“That is correct. Memories of a past life are usually erased at the time of reincarnation, but memories erased as interest on a debt deed are collected separately from the usual erasure. This accumulates, and in the current Toru Sonezaki, it has manifested as physical symptoms.”
Toru suddenly realized.
“Who are you?”
The man answered while putting the ledger back into the briefcase.
“I am an officer of the collection agency.”
“That's not what I meant. Are you—human?”
The man's hand stopped for a moment.
“Answering that question is outside the scope of my duties.”
The man stood up.
“I believe it is time for you to decide.”
“Decide what?”
“The method of repayment.”

Nine
The man held up three fingers.
Index finger. Middle finger. Ring finger.
Those three fingers looked strangely large in Toru's field of vision. Each finger had weight. The weight of meaning before it became words.
“There are three methods of repayment.”
The first finger—the index finger—remained.
“First. Repay with your life.”
It was a quiet voice.
“By Toru Sonezaki ending his life, you can apply it to the repayment of the principal. However,”
the man paused slightly.
“Since we repay one life with one life, the principal will disappear. However, the interest for 37 people—the memory of starvation—will be carried over to the next life. Since interest is added for each generation, the Toru Sonezaki of the next life will carry an even heavier debt than in this life.”
Even if I die, it doesn't end.
Toru chewed on the meaning of those words.
“Second.”
The middle finger remained.
“Repay with memory.”
“Memory.”
“You can apply all of Toru Sonezaki's memories to the repayment. Name, date of birth, faces of family, professional knowledge, language ability, all experiential memories that constitute your personality. You will hand them all over at once.”
“That is—”
“Your body will survive. Your heart will beat, and your breathing will continue. However, the inside will be empty. The human known as Toru Sonezaki will effectively cease to exist.”
To die while still alive.
That was the second choice.
“Third.”
The ring finger remained.
The man's mouth moved.
Did he smile—? Within that face he couldn't remember, the area around his lips seemed to rise slightly.
“Appoint a joint guarantor.”
“Joint guarantor.”
Toru's voice trembled.
“You will designate someone to take over the debt in place of Toru Sonezaki. A new deed will be issued for that person, and a similar forty-nine days will begin.”
“Does that mean that person will—suffer the same fate?”
“That is correct.”
The man lowered his three fingers.
“Those are the three methods of repayment. There are 28 days remaining. If none of the methods are chosen by the deadline, the first method—repayment with life—will be automatically executed.”
The man bowed deeply.
“I look forward to your consideration.”
And then, the man disappeared.
He didn't leave.
He disappeared.Only the smell of leather remained on the threshold of the entrance.

Ten
The twenty-eighth day.
Toru spent most of the day lying on the floor.
His body had become like a withered tree. His arms were thin, and his ribs were protruding enough to be counted one by one. His knee joints looked strangely large. That wasn't because his knees had grown, but because his thighs and shins had wasted away.
Hunger was no longer pain.
It had gone beyond pain and become existence itself.
The human known as Toru had become hunger itself.
When he breathed, his ribs creaked. When he blinked, the back of his eyelids rubbed like dry sand. Every time his heart beat, his internal organs swayed within his pelvis.
When night came, the thirty-seven shadows came.
They had begun to come not from the ceiling, but closer.
On the wall. On the floor. On top of Toru's body.
When the shadows overlapped with Toru, the memories of the hunger that those shadows had experienced in life flowed into Toru's body.

One shadow had the memory of eating dirt. It was an old man. The man who had been the strongest in the village had finally crawled out into the garden and scratched at the frozen earth with his fingernails. He put the dirt in his mouth. Gravel hit his teeth. It made a crunching sound. He tried to swallow, but vomited. There was nothing to vomit, so only stomach acid dripped from his mouth. The stomach acid was yellow and burned his throat. The last thing he saw was his own hand. He had never seen such a thin hand. He could not believe this was his own hand.

One shadow was the memory of a young man. He had a wife and child. His wife was the first to become unable to move. The man chewed on the last straw and dripped the squeezed-out water onto his wife's lips. The straw water was bitter. But his wife drank it. She drank it and opened her eyes slightly. She tried to say something. It did not become a voice. Her lips moved. It looked like they moved to say, 'Thank you.' The man cried. No tears came out. The next morning, his wife was cold. The man held his wife's hand and died three days later.

One shadow was the memory of a thirteen-year-old girl. She was waiting for spring. If spring came, wild vegetables would sprout. If she could just endure until then—. The girl climbed the mountain behind her house. On a slope where snow still remained, she peeled the bark off a tree. She chewed on the inner bark of a pine tree. The bitterness of the pine resin spread throughout her mouth. No matter how much she chewed, it did not become soft. The fibers got stuck between her teeth. Still, she chewed. She swallowed. Her stomach cramped. The girl crouched at the base of the tree. She looked at her palms. Her hands were black with pine resin. With these hands, until last autumn, she had been weaving. The weaving method her mother taught her. Stretching the warp threads and passing the weft threads. The sound of the reed hitting, ton, ton. She wanted to hear that sound one more time, she thought. That was her final thought. Spring was still fourteen days away.

One shadow was the memory of a child. He remembered the day his mother's milk stopped coming. He sucked on her nipple, but nothing came out. He cried. Even if he cried, nothing came out. In his mother's arms, his consciousness faded. The last thing he felt was his mother's body temperature. That alone was warm.
Toru accepted each of those memories with his own body.
Every time he accepted one, something was lost from Toru's body.
It was suffering. But, strangely, in that suffering, Toru was 'touching' them for the first time. Not as numbers, not as nameless bales of rice, but as the final thoughts of each individual. What Zenemon had never once tried to see, Toru was now seeing with his own body.

Eleven
The thirtieth day.
The intercom rang.
It was not the man from the collection agency.
'Sonezaki-san! I know you're in there!'
It was Nishimura's voice.
Toru did not move. He could not move.
'I haven't been able to reach you for two weeks. You don't answer the phone, you don't reply to emails. I'm worried.'
On the other side of the door, there was the sound of Nishimura searching for something.
'It's open—'
He had forgotten to lock it. No, he no longer had the energy to lock it.
The door opened.
Nishimura entered.
'Sonezaki-sa—'
The voice stopped.
Nishimura saw Toru lying on the living room floor.
He saw him and gasped.
'What... is this?'
Nishimura's face turned pale.
He was looking at Toru's body. Toru's body, which was emaciated, with ribs protruding, hair falling out, and lips cracked.
'I'm calling an ambulance.'
'Stop,'
Toru said in a raspy voice.
'There's no point in going to the hospital.'
'What are you talking about? In this state—'
'Nishimura.'
Toru looked into Nishimura's eyes.
With his brown right eye and gray left eye.
Nishimura stepped back.
'Your eyes... Sonezaki-san, the color of your eyes—'
'Go home.'
Toru said.
'Please, just go home.'
Because if you are here. Because if I am looking at your face.
I might end up choosing the third option.
Toru did not say that.
He could not have said it. But it was certainly inside Toru. A 'dark thing' with the same weight as when Zenemon guarded his storehouse. The impulse to sacrifice the warm human in front of him in order to save himself.
'Go home.'
He said it again.
Nishimura stood still for a while.
Eventually, he placed a convenience store bag on the table.
'I'll leave some porridge and Pocari Sweat.'
'...'
'I'll come back tomorrow.'
Nishimura left.
The sound of the door closing was heard.
Footsteps receded down the hallway. The sound of pressing the elevator button. The sound of the door opening. The sound of it closing.
Then, silence.
Toru looked toward the door for a while.
The convenience store bag Nishimura had left behind shone white on the table.
Toru crawled closer.
He opened the bag.
A retort pouch of porridge. A plastic bottle of Pocari Sweat. And—a canned coffee. Low sugar.
The usual one.
Toru opened the Pocari Sweat. He put it in his mouth.
He could taste it.
It was faint. Distant. But it was definitely sweet.
He swallowed.
The moment it hit his stomach, it vanished.
It was the same as always. Nothing remained.
But Toru kept drinking.
Even though he knew it was meaningless. Even though he knew it wouldn't reach his stomach.
Because it was something Nishimura had bought for him.
For that reason alone, Toru drank.
He did not open the canned coffee.
He placed it on the table.
Maybe a day would come when he could drink it. Maybe not.
Toru looked at the ceiling.
The thirty-seven shadows were quiet during that time.
While Nishimura was there, the shadows did not move.
As if.
As if they were watching Nishimura.
Quietly.
Motionless.

Twelve
The thirty-fifth day.
Toru was beginning to forget his own name.
What was it? Sonezaki. Sonezaki, what?
Toru.
Toru Sonezaki.
It took three seconds to remember.
Fragments of his memory were being collected as interest.
He understood with his body what the man had said.
His mother's name stopped coming to him.
He remembered the smell of that house in the countryside. The smell of miso soup. But the name of the person who used to make that miso soup—
It wouldn't come out.
It was gone.
Toru muttered toward the ceiling.
'Moth—'
The rest did not come out.
The fortieth day.
Toru was obsessed with a certain idea.
The third method.
Joint guarantor.
Toru picked up his smartphone.
Seven percent battery remaining. He had no energy to charge it.
He opened his contact list.
Names were lined up.
Ito. Uchida. Omori. Kato.
Names of colleagues. Names of business partners. Names of acquaintances he occasionally went drinking with.
He had few friends.
Toru scrolled with his finger.
Nishimura.
Shuhei Nishimura.
That day. Nishimura, who left the convenience store bag on the table. Nishimura, who said, 'I'll come back tomorrow.'
In fact, Nishimura had come three more times after that. Each time, Toru had said 'Go home' from behind the door. The third time, Nishimura was crying. He had said, 'Why do you refuse help?'
Why.
That is.
It is to protect you.
Toru's finger stopped on Nishimura's name.
It stopped.
It did not move.
Toru tried to picture Nishimura's face. Nishimura smiling. Nishimura at an izakaya, raising a draft beer and laughing, 'Good work!' Nishimura silently placing a canned coffee on Toru's desk during the busy tax return season.
He remembered one night.
The end of March, when the busy season was over. Invited by Nishimura, they went to an izakaya in front of the station. It was a wrap-up party for just the two of them.
The shop was crowded. The smell of oil. The foam of draft beer. The laughter of the people at the next table. Toru had placed himself in that kind of human warmth for the first time in a while.
With his third beer, Nishimura suddenly had a serious look on his face.
'Sonezaki-san, why did you become a tax accountant?'
'Why... because I can make a living.'
'Is that so?'
Nishimura popped an edamame into his mouth.
'I looked up to you, Sonezaki-san.'
'To me?'
'When I joined the company, you were my mentor, remember? I made my first tax return document, made a huge mistake, and got yelled at by the client.'
He remembered.
'At that time, you bowed your head to the client for me. After that, you didn't say anything to me. You just taught me how to fix the document.'
'That's obvious. Getting angry doesn't fix the document.'
'Those words made me very happy.'
Nishimura laughed.
The hand that put down the mug was on the table, very close to Toru's hand. That hand was full of blood and looked warm. Toru unconsciously pulled his hand onto his lap.
'You are cold to numbers, but warm to people, Sonezaki-san. You probably don't realize it yourself.'
Toru could not say anything.
Cold to numbers, warm to people.
It was the first time in his forty-two years of life that he had been told that.
Zenemon was cold to both numbers and people. Toru—what was he like?
Why did he bow his head to the client back then? Was it because it was his job? Or.
He didn't know.
But Nishimura had remembered it. Something Toru himself had forgotten.
Should he make this Nishimura take on this?
This hunger. This suffering. This death of thirty-seven people.
Toru closed his smartphone.
He closed it.
And opened it again.
His finger was trembling.
Not because of hunger. Not because of fear.
Something dark inside him was trying to move his finger.
Zenemon.
Were you like this too?
While watching thirty-seven people starving in front of the storehouse, did you think like this?
In order to survive. In order to protect your own things. To sacrifice someone else—
Toru placed his smartphone on the floor.
The screen went dark.
Toru's face was reflected on the darkened screen. An emaciated face. A gray left eye. It looked very much like Zenemon's face.

Thirteen
The forty-second day.
Toru was rereading the deed.
The text he had read many times, once more.
Soul Debt Deed. Number 721.
Seven hundred twenty-one.
That number suddenly caught in Toru's mind.

Number 721.

That means this is the 721st deed.
It is not just Toru.
Somewhere in this world, 720 other deeds exist.
720 other 'borrowers' once existed. Or perhaps, they still exist now.
Did they also spend the same forty-nine days? Were they also presented with the same three choices?
And—how many people actually chose the third method?
If someone chose the third method, a new deed would be issued for that joint guarantor as well. If that joint guarantor also chose the third, then another new deed.
A chain.
This chains.
Every time one person chooses the third, the debt does not disappear, but moves. Forever. Until someone chooses the first or second.
Toru thought vaguely.
How many 'borrowers' has the man from the collection agency seen?
Seven hundred twenty-one.
The suffering of 721 people. The choices of 721 people. He has said the same lines 721 times.
'I am from the collection agency.'
What did the other 720 people do?
There might have been a warlord who burned a village in a war. There might have been a boatman who abandoned his ship on a stormy night. There might have been an official who sealed off a plague-stricken village and burned it down along with the people inside.
Or.
Were there smaller sins too?
A small sin of just letting one life die. He could have helped if he reached out, but he looked away. He could have saved them if he spoke up, but he stayed silent.
Even then, would a deed be issued?
Zenemon's sin was for thirty-seven people. Then, are there borrowers who bear the sin of just one person?
There must be, Toru thought.
Because for the collection agency, the size of the number does not matter.
A life is a life. Whether it is one or thirty-seven. A debt is a debt.
Was that man's politeness polished by 721 repetitions? Or—was that all the man had from the beginning?
No emotions. No expressions. Just carrying out the business.
It is the same as Zenemon's ledger.
Recording and processing numbers. He does nothing more than that.
Toru thought about his own life.
Hadn't Toru also lived like that for forty-two years?
Counting other people's money, calculating other people's taxes, balancing the books of other people's lives. Just as Zenemon counted bales of rice. Just as the man from the collection agency counts the numbers on the deeds.
A human who did nothing but count numbers.
Zenemon took the lives of thirty-seven people.
That debt, after seven cycles of reincarnation, has come around to Toru.
But if Toru chooses the third, the suffering that is not Toru's sin will be passed on to someone who has nothing to do with Toru.
That is.
How is it different from what Zenemon did?
To protect his own storehouse, he let thirty-seven people starve to death. To protect his own life, he sacrifices someone else.
It is the same.
It is the same thing.
Toru placed the deed on his chest.
The paper had almost no weight. But the weight of the characters written on that paper was pressing down on Toru's chest.

Fourteen
The forty-fifth day.
Toru crawled to the kitchen and turned on the faucet.
Water came out.
He brought his mouth close to the faucet and drank.
Cold water passed through his throat.
He could taste it.
It was the taste of water.
For the first time in thirty-seven days, he could taste something.
Toru cried.
No tears came out. But he was crying.
Without making a sound, without shedding tears, something was just trembling deep in his throat.
While drinking the water, Toru was thinking.
If he chooses the first, he dies. But the same thing will be repeated in the next life. He can never escape forever.
If he chooses the second, he loses his memories. The human named Toru will disappear. But the debt will be extinguished. It will not be passed on to the next life.
If he chooses the third, Toru will be saved. But someone else will see hell.
Toru turned off the faucet.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Choose.
He must choose.
In four more days, the first will be automatically executed.
Toru returned to the living room.
On the table, there was the deed.
Next to it, there was a piece of paper.
It was something Toru had written. He had written it three days ago with trembling hands.
A will—no.
It was a letter.
A letter addressed to Shuhei Nishimura.

'Dear Nishimura-kun, 　
I am taking time off due to poor health. 　
I am sorry for the trouble. 　
The handover documents are on the right end of my desk. 　
Thank you for the canned coffee. 　
I am glad you were there. 　
Thank you for inviting me out for drinks.'

Toru reread the letter.
Leave this letter and choose the second.
Give up all his memories.
Erase the human named Toru Sonezaki.
That was Toru's answer.
If he chooses the first, the suffering will not end. If he chooses the third, he will become the same human as Zenemon.
Only the second will end everything.
Toru stood up.
He staggered. He put his hand on the wall.
But he could stand.
'That's enough.'
He said it out loud.
His voice was small, as if it were coming from far away.
'That's enough.'
Toru picked up the deed.
'I choose. I choose the second.'
The air in the room changed.
The temperature dropped.
No, it was not the temperature. The density changed. The air itself became heavy.
The man was there.
Before he knew it.
In the corner of the living room, that man was standing. The same black suit. The same white dress shirt. The same old leather bag.
'You have chosen the second, have you not?'
'Yes.'
'Understood.'
The man opened his bag.
He took out a brush.
It was an old brush. The tip was yellowed. The handle was bamboo, and the joints were discolored black.
'Please sign the back of the deed with this brush.'
The man held out the brush.
Toru accepted it.
The brush already had ink on it. It was black. It was dark. But it did not smell like ink.
Instead—
The smell of iron.
It was the smell of blood.
Toru turned the deed over.
The back was white. Nothing was written on it.
Toru held the brush.
The tip approached the paper.
A few more millimeters.
At that moment.
The thirty-seven shadows moved.
From the ceiling. From the walls. From the floor. The thirty-seven shadows gathered toward Toru all at once.
But.
They did not attack.
The shadows gathered around Toru—
And knelt.
The thirty-seven shadows were kneeling before Toru.
They were bowing their heads.
He heard a voice.

'That's enough now.'
A raspy voice. It was the voice that said 'Rice' in that dream. The voice of the old man who ate the dirt.
'That's enough now.'
'It's true that I resented you. I resented you for 180 years. I resented you across seven reincarnations. But.'
The old man's shadow raised its face.
'I'm tired of resenting you.'
Another voice. It was the voice of the young man. The voice of that man who watched his wife die and died while holding her hand.
'You suffered too. Your suffering reached us. The suffering of someone who has tasted the same hunger cannot be a lie.'
A woman's voice. The voice of that mother who was holding her child.
'My child died. But even if you die in his place, my child won't come back to life. Even if you take your memories, my child's laughter won't return.'
'Choose.'
A child's voice. A small, thin voice. The voice of that child who felt his mother's body temperature last.
'What you choose is your answer. You don't need to worry about us anymore.'
Toru could not move while holding the brush.
The voices continued.
'Zenemon didn't give us the rice. I won't forget that. I won't forget, but I've stopped being angry.'
It was the old man's voice.
'Resentment makes you hungry. Whether you're alive or dead, resentment makes you hungry. I'm full now. I'm full of resentment.'

The shadows slowly faded away.
One by one.
They disappeared.
When they disappeared, the outlines of the shadows took on a warm color for just a fleeting moment. The final, satisfied color of those who had died of hunger.
The last one remaining was the shadow of that child.
The small shadow was looking up at Toru.

'Old man,'
the child's voice said.
'When you are born next time, make sure you eat properly.'

The shadow disappeared.
Only Toru and the man remained in the room.
Something ran down Toru's cheek.
It was a tear.
A tear that should have been dried up flowed down in a single line.
The tear running down his cheek was warm. Where in his starved and dried-up body had such warmth remained?
Toru placed the brush on the back of the deed.
He wrote.
Toru Sonezaki.
Three characters.
The moment he finished writing, the brush crumbled in his hand. It turned to ash. It fell away from between his fingers.
The deed shone.
A white light. The characters were shining. The characters on the front and Toru's signature on the back, everything shone white, and then—
It burned.
The fire was not hot. It was a cold fire.
Three seconds until the paper burned out.
Not even ash remained.
Something moved inside Toru.
His memories were beginning to peel away.
Nishimura's face. The office address. Mother's—he could no longer remember the name. Father's back. The school gate of the elementary school he attended. The first tax return document he made. The smell of the university lecture hall. Falling at the high school sports festival. The taste of ginger pork at the diner. The bitterness of cold coffee. The lights of the apartment building across the window. Nights with nowhere to return to. The sea of numbers.
One by one, slowly—
They were peeling away.
When they peeled away, there was no pain. Just the sensation of a thin layer of skin being taken away by the wind one by one. He was becoming lighter and lighter. The weight of numbers, the weight of loneliness, the coldness of forty-two years, everything was becoming lighter.
Toru closed his eyes.
He was not afraid.
For some reason.
He was not afraid.
The child's voice still remained in his ears.

'When you are born next time, make sure you eat properly.'

Toru's lips moved.
'Yes.'
It did not become a voice.
But.
Certainly.
Toru said so.
The last memory to disappear was the taste of water.
The water he drank from the faucet that day. Cold, transparent, tasteless water. That water he could taste for the first time in thirty-seven days.
It was delicious, Toru thought.
He didn't know that water was such a delicious thing.
When that memory disappeared, Toru was smiling.

Fifteen
Shuhei Nishimura was walking down the hospital hallway.
The soles of his leather shoes tapped on the linoleum floor. The smell of disinfectant. The white light of the fluorescent lamps.
Room 304.
He opened the door.
There was a man on the bed.
He had his eyes open. He was looking at the ceiling.
'Sonezaki-san.'
Nishimura called out.
There was no reaction.
The man—Toru Sonezaki—did not move a muscle, staring at the ceiling.
His eyes are open. He is breathing. His heart is beating.
But there was no one there.
The doctor said. Severe cognitive impairment of unknown cause. There is no organic damage to the brain. But there is no reaction. Even when calling his name, shining a light, or stimulating pain. Nothing comes back.
It was Nishimura who discovered Toru. On the morning of the forty-ninth day, he visited the apartment as usual and found Toru collapsed on the floor. He was breathing. He had a pulse. But Toru was no longer Toru.
Nishimura sat in the chair next to the bed.
'Sonezaki-san, I'm here.'
There was no reply.
Nishimura took a canned coffee out of his bag. He placed it on the bedside table.
'It's the usual low-sugar one.'
He leaves one every time. Every time, it remains untouched. Still, Nishimura brings it.
Three canned coffees were lined up on the table. Last week's, the week before's, and today's. The nurse probably cleans them up. But Nishimura had asked them not to.
Maybe someday Sonezaki-san will reach out. Maybe someday, he will drink this low-sugar coffee and say, 'Thank you.'
Nishimura looked at Toru's face.
He was remembering that night.
The morning he found the apartment door open and Toru collapsed on the floor. He called an ambulance. Toru's body was unbelievably light. When he put him on the stretcher, he was light enough for Nishimura to lift him with one hand.
He held Toru's hand. It was a hand of only bone and skin. But that hand was warm.
A letter was left at his bedside. It was a letter addressed to Nishimura. It was a short letter. But when he read the last line, Nishimura cried out loud in the hallway.

'I am glad you were there.'

Toru Sonezaki was not the kind of person who would write such words to anyone. At least, not the Sonezaki that Nishimura knew.
That is why Nishimura thinks. That during those forty-nine days, something happened to Sonezaki.
When he arrived at the hospital, the doctor said: extreme malnutrition and dehydration. However, there was no explanation for why he had reached this state. There were groceries in the refrigerator. No—there were, but they had all rotted. Inside the room, there were traces of something like old paper having been burned. Even though not even ash remained, there was one spot on the floor that was strangely cold.
Nishimura did not understand anything.
He did not understand, but there was one thing he did know.
Sonezaki did not ask for help.
No matter how many times he visited, he said, "Go home." He did not answer the phone either. He was a person who could have asked for help, yet he did not.
Nishimura thought that this was not weakness.
Was he not trying to protect someone from something?
Nishimura did not know who that might be.
Toru was looking at the ceiling.
Afternoon light was streaming in through the window. May light. Warm light.
In that light, Toru's face was peaceful.
There was no pained expression. His thin cheeks had begun to regain a little color. The IV drip continued to send nutrients into Toru's body.
Nishimura stood up and opened the window a little.
The wind came in.
May wind. It smelled of greenery. The scent of grass was carried in from some garden somewhere.
Toru's lips moved slightly.
Nishimura did not notice it.
Toru's lips were forming something small.
Words.
Just the slightest movement of lips, not becoming a voice.
If there had been someone who could read it, they would have known he was saying this.

Delicious.
The wind is delicious.

Nishimura left the hospital.
He walked through the streets at dusk. The May sky was dyed red.
The road to the station. There were many people. People returning from work were hurrying home.
Nishimura suddenly stopped walking.
It was because he had noticed something.
In the corner of his vision, there was a human shadow.
A man was standing next to a utility pole.
A black suit. A white dress shirt. An old leather briefcase.
Nishimura looked at the man.
He looked at the man's face.
He could not remember it.
Even though he was looking at it, the memory slipped away the moment he saw it.
The man started walking.
Toward Nishimura.
Straight ahead.
For some reason, Nishimura could not move.
His feet were frozen.
The man approached.
Three meters. Two meters.
The man stopped.
He bowed deeply.
"At this late hour—"
The man started to say, then smiled slightly.
"No. It is still evening, isn't it."
The man raised his face.
"I am from the collection agency."
In Nishimura's hand, there was a piece of paper.
He did not know when he had received it.
His fingertips went numb.

The May wind blew across the city.
The color of the sunset darkened just a little.

(End)

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