Prologue: Remnants of a Distant World

A shrill noise brought the pleasant calm to an end. Raizou Takakura reluctantly pried open his heavy, tightly shut eyelids. The body pillow was soaked with drool, the towel blanket was twisted beyond recognition, and he couldn’t even tell which side was which anymore. The source of the racket was still blaring beside his pillow.

Raizou set his alarm to a random tone every day, and today’s pick was a time bomb theme. It suited a morning that felt like being chased out of bed, and his expression darkened. His bleary eyes were useless, but his right hand, groping blindly, finally caught its prize.

He got through the tedious confirmation screen, and the obnoxious alarm fell silent. After yanking out the charging cord and setting the phone on the desk, he finally hauled himself out of bed. The old bed creaked as if in protest, and for some reason it irritated him to no end.

“Haa… I feel so sluggish.”

Maybe it was the overtime that had dragged on so late. Raizou tried to pin down the cause of his exhaustion. The email had gone out just before the date rolled over, meeting the deadline with barely a moment to spare. Relief and a sense of accomplishment should have made for a bright morning, but all that greeted him was the same listlessness that had lingered since last month. Sunlight streamed through the open curtains, dazzling and cheerful, a sharp contrast to his mood. He narrowed his eyes and let out a small sigh.

He hadn’t been himself lately. Calling it terrible shape would hardly be an exaggeration. When he rolled his neck, it gave a loud snap. Hoping to change his mood, he headed for the sink. The worn-out floor creaked with every step, harmonizing with the sound of his bare feet. The man in the mirror was Raizou Takakura, thirty-three, single. He had the wrinkles you would expect at his age and dark circles from built-up fatigue. As a small act of defiance he tried smiling, but his aged face, naturally, didn’t change a bit.

“Must be nice having a baby face.”

Even as a new hire, people had mistaken him for a mid-career employee. He still remembered how badly he had flailed when someone on site asked him about the upcoming schedule. To shake off the sluggishness, he turned on the faucet, splashed cold water on his face, and fixed his hair. When he looked back at the sink in front of him, he noticed, of all things, a considerable amount of fallen hair scattered across it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He had never dyed it, never let it grow long, and had lived a clean-cut life with an honest head of hair. What on earth did his follicles have to complain about? Raizou vented his bitterness at his own hair, but it came to nothing. A barren result, fittingly enough. He took milk from the fridge and a cup from the shelf, then sat down at the table. Before eating, he reached for the remote and switched on the morning news program, a habit by now.

“Regarding the incident in XX Prefecture, YY City, where a group of young people who had gone to film a video went missing, it has come to light that contact has been lost with thirteen Ground Self-Defense Force personnel who were taking part in the search.”

“Off the coast of Yokohama Port, the container ship NTR, owned by XYZ Trading, and the Ero Sarline, operated by Sarline Company, have sunk. The exact cause is unknown, but both ships appear to have taken a severe impact to the hull below the waterline before going down. There is also suspicion that an unidentified submarine collided with them-”

“It’s unsettling, isn’t it? Strange phenomena keep happening all over the world. Just recently there was that fuss in Tokyo over an unidentified aurora, and it really feels like the world has come off its hinges.”

A commentator with a shrill voice appeared on screen. Raizou didn’t particularly like the man, but he agreed with what he had said. Ever since the end of last year, strange things had been happening all over the world, on land, at sea, and in the sky.

There were the sketchy special programs, like the middle-aged woman calling herself a shrine maiden who spread her arms wide to commune with God. There was the interview with a man whose beloved dog had been carried off by a green, humanoid monster. There was the story of a mountain where every plant and animal had been wiped out in an instant. Raizou rather liked watching dubious news like that on TV. It all smelled fishy, but somehow it still drew him in.

“Hmph!”

He ripped open a bagged bun from his stockpile with exaggerated force and shoved it into his mouth. It was gooey, with a sugary assault of sweetness that never let up. He had tried the new melon chocolate caramel cream bun from his favorite convenience store, and he realized right away that it was a mistake. Grimacing, he washed what was left in his mouth down with milk. He went on with the rest of his morning prep at that lazy pace until the ticking of the clock caught his attention. It was nearly time for the rapid commuter train.

After brushing his teeth, he moved on to the finishing touches. More than ten years of practice had made the morning routine second nature. He pulled on black socks, buttoned his pressed dress shirt in record time, threw on his suit, and fastened his watch, and he was ready. He had also finished checking his three sacred treasures: business card case, smartphone, work bag. As long as he had those, he could talk his way through any situation, and he was oddly confident about that. He worked his worn leather shoes on, straightening the heels, and headed out.

He knew the old door took a knack to close. You had to lift it slightly and turn the lock fast. Either the hinges were to blame, or the whole apartment building had aged so much that the door frame had warped. It had to be one or the other. The stifling heat outside made him flinch for a moment, but he pushed out without hesitating. He made his way down the narrow hallway and the stairs, already out of breath. He never used to be like this in his twenties, he thought wistfully. His footsteps were far from rhythmic. Three steps remained. As he went to take the next one, something in his body went wrong, and he cried out.

“Ugh, aah? Aaah, aaaah!!”

It came out of nowhere. A sudden, intense pain struck his chest without warning, and he clutched it. Gritting his teeth, he all but tumbled down the rest of the stairs. He grabbed at the wall and anything else within reach, trying to get to his feet, but he couldn’t bear the searing pain or the feeling of his body being crushed, and he collapsed to the ground. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. He couldn’t breathe. Dizziness piled on top of his warping vision, and cold sweat wouldn’t stop pouring down his forehead. His breathing wouldn’t steady, his limbs wouldn’t listen, and all he could do was stare up at the sky.

The hair he had fixed before leaving was now filthy with dust, and his half-open mouth was smeared with drool. He reached out for help, but of all days, there was no one around. The edges of his vision flickered, and his field of view slowly darkened and narrowed. He had no idea what was happening to his body, but he understood one thing. If this kept up, he would die. I don’t want to die. Not yet. I still want to live. As his body gave out on him bit by bit, Raizou slowly raised his right hand. It trembled like a newborn fawn’s, painfully comical, but he couldn’t even spare a laugh.

It was a clear day. The weather forecast had said to watch out for the heat and for heatstroke, he vaguely remembered. The cicadas he had hated so much for their racket didn’t reach his ears at all. All he could hear was his ragged breathing and his heartbeat growing faint. Perhaps because his vision was going dark, he began to see things. The ground he lay on turned black and began to swirl, and countless little shadow people poured out of it.

The shadow people surrounded Raizou and tried to drag him into the hole. It was like a scene out of some travel tale. Ah, a hallucination. So this is finally the end. Faintly, he heard someone cheerfully calling his name, but he couldn’t even make it out anymore, and Raizou’s consciousness cut off with a snap.