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But before an alarm bell could sound in Saeko’s mind she had drifted back to sleep.

5
There was just one locked door at the penthouse where Saeko lived.

Saeko and Hashiba woke up at the same time, just after seven the next morning. When Hashiba asked Saeko about her father once more, she took a key from the bedside table and led him to the door of the locked room.

She had sealed it off when she had married and her husband had moved in. After their divorce, it hadn’t occurred to her to unlock it. The spacious 500-square-meter flat included the living and dining rooms and six bedrooms. Keeping one of the rooms locked made it easier to keep up with the cleaning.

The quickest way to explain who Saeko’s father had been to Hashiba would be to show him this room. The sleeves of her baggy pajamas were so long that they extended past her fingertips as she held up the keychain with a single key attached and waved it slowly in Hashiba’s view.

“This was my father’s study.”

“You keep it locked?”

“My ex-husband wanted it that way.”

“Why?”

“It bothered him, I guess—having my father’s presence intrude on our lives. So he wanted me to keep it locked. That’s what he said, anyway.” Saeko twirled the key around her finger like a gunman spinning a revolver.

Perhaps her marriage would have lasted longer if they’d moved to a new place. Her husband had proposed it a number of times. He’d often complained that the apartment possessed a creepy atmosphere that was hard to describe. But Saeko couldn’t leave behind the home where she had lived with her father. It would have required her to admit that he wasn’t coming back.

“That’s weird. There’s something abnormal about you two.”
You two
, he’d said, pointing at Saeko. He was referring to Saeko and her father, of course. As far as Saeko was concerned, her ex-husband had been the strange one. But looking back on it now, perhaps she and her father really had been abnormal.

More than anything, she didn’t want Hashiba to feel that way about her.

“I guess I can understand that,” Hashiba mumbled, half lost in thought.

Saeko was in the midst of unlocking the door when he spoke. She froze and turned to look at him, mistaking his comments as an expression of sympathy for her ex-husband. “Why is that?” she demanded.

“Well, sometimes our sense of a person is even more striking in their absence. It sort of relates to the disappearances we’ve been investigating,” he answered.

And with that, he began to recount an experience he’d had in elementary school. Saeko leaned against the door as she listened to his story.

“I was born in Mishima, Shizuoka, but we moved to Mitaka, Tokyo when I was just a baby. We moved back to Mishima when I was in fourth grade. I started school there in September, right as it was starting back up after summer vacation. On my first day, they had me stand at the front of the classroom and introduce myself. At recess time, a boy with delicate features and pale skin came up and put his arm around me like we were old friends. He seemed fascinated by the idea that I was from Tokyo, and he kept asking me about life in the big city. I gave him the best answers I could come up with, and before I knew it he was inviting me to come over to his house to hang out. He seemed a bit strange to me, but I was new and I didn’t have any friends, so that day after school I took him up on his invitation.

“His house was in a quiet residential neighborhood behind the Mishima Taisha shrine. The main house was a newish western-style two-story building. But in front of the house, on the same lot, there stood an old-fashioned, one-story shack. It was surrounded by trees, and the area around it was dark and shadowy. It looked like an old woodcutter’s shack from a storybook, and it caught my eye, the way it contrasted so sharply with the fancy modern western house on the same property.

“That day, all we did was play chess and watch TV, but we got along well and from that day on, we hung out pretty frequently. Whenever I went over to his house, I wondered about the shack, and eventually I asked him what it was for.

“Right away, his face clouded over. He lowered his voice. ‘Don’t ever, ever go in there!’ he warned me.

“Naturally, I wanted to know why.

“He acted like that was the dumbest question in the world. ‘Why?’ he repeated, sounding exasperated. ‘You mean I never told you? My crazy old grandfather lives alone in there. He’s a total psycho. Don’t ever go near
there unless you want him to break your neck.’

“He told me various stories to illustrate his point. The old man used chopsticks to pick the dead flies off of flypaper and collect them in a glass pot. He hated animals, and whenever a stray wandered too close, he put on wooden sandals and kicked it as hard as he could. The old man had killed two stray cats and a dog that way, my friend said. The old man also kept an air rifle by his porch and used it to shoot down crows when the mood struck him. The only thing he ate was rice with canned enoki mushrooms. He muttered to himself constantly. My friend’s mother left his meals for him on a tray in his front entryway, and the old man devoured them in minutes. It didn’t take him long, since all he ate was white rice and canned mushrooms, and he always returned his dirty dishes on the tray right where he had found them. For months, nobody in my friend’s family had seen the old man’s face. Even my friend’s mother had only heard his muffled mumblings when she left him his meals …

“As I listened to my friend’s story, a vivid image of the old man began to form in my mind. How he lived in that dark, dirty shack, rarely bathing, the hems of his garments grimy with dirt. A foul-smelling, unpredictable eccentric who should be avoided at all costs. A dangerous maniac.

“Whenever I went over to my friend’s house, I had to pass by the old man’s shack. I avoided it as best I could, but whenever I thought I heard a noise from inside, I bolted at top speed.

“My friend was good at his studies, slightly mischievous, and enjoyed teasing people. He was brilliant at coming up with ideas for new games. He was a lot of fun to hang out with, and he taught me lots of new things, so I spent a lot of time at his house, even though I was afraid of the old man in the shack.

“For two-and-a-half years, up until the time when my friend was accepted to a private junior high school in Tokyo, I spent a lot of time at his house. As far as I knew, his grandfather continued to live in the shack, though I never actually saw him. But when the wind riffled through the leaves of the trees, I could almost hear the old man gnashing his teeth. My heart pounded with terror when I imagined the old man bursting out of his house, shouting at the top of his lungs, his hair wild and messy, his tattered garments fluttering.

“Just once, I saw the old man for myself before my friend left for his private school in Tokyo.

“That day, the sky was just beginning to grow dusky as we played catch out on the lawn in the yard. My friend threw the ball and I missed
it, allowing it to roll right into the half-open doorway of the shack. I remember freezing in my tracks, terrified. I looked at my friend and gulped with apprehension.

“My friend seemed amused by my fear of his grandfather. He made no move to retrieve the ball and instead shot me a challenging look as if to say, ‘You missed the ball—you go get it.’ He had a faint smirk on his face, and he stood watching me patronizingly with his arms crossed as though he were a grown-up and I was just a kid.

“You know how boys are. We’d do anything to avoid being called a coward or a sissy. I was supposed to go over to the shack like it was no big deal, slip inside, and get the ball. So I summoned all my courage and set out towards the shack, but I was so terrified I could barely walk. Still, I was determined not to let on to my friend how scared I was. Resolving to just get it over with as quickly as possible, I crept through the door into the front entryway and looked for the ball. Inside, the smell of earth was stronger than in the yard. The air was dank and chilly. My heart was pounding.

“The ball had stopped just at the threshold where the flooring began. It was right next to a pair of carefully placed wooden sandals, their toes stubby with wear.
Those are the sandals the old man must have worn when he killed the strays
, I thought. Just then, right as I was reaching for the ball, a grimy pair of feet stepped into the sandals. Their toes and their tops were pasty white, and the toenail of the little toe on each side was a gnarled lump. Two ankles peeked out from underneath a disheveled kimono, revealing a gigantic mole right on the bony protuberance of one ankle bone. I looked up, too terrified even to speak.

“There he stood, exactly as I had imagined him. In the dim light of the entryway, he wore a dingy kimono and his face was bleary and lifeless. With a vacant stare, his jaw pumped up and down, as if he were trying to speak, and food dribbled out of it. For the first and last time in my life, my legs completely gave out. I crumpled to the floor, landing on my rear and supporting myself with my hands behind me. My throat seized up and I couldn’t find my voice to call out to my friend.

“The old man raised one foot and kicked the ball towards me. It rolled straight towards my hand. Somehow, I managed to pick it up and crawl back out of the house. Then I ran, stumbling, out into the yard where my friend was waiting. At this point, I was way past the point of worrying about looking cool. I didn’t care who called me a wimp. I dropped to all fours in the grass, panting like an animal.

“My friend knelt down next to me. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. His smirk was gone, as was the arrogant stance. In fact, he seemed vaguely frightened as he placed a hand on my shoulder.

“ ‘I … I saw your grandfather,’ I finally managed to say.

“My friend looked up towards the old hut and was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘You couldn’t have.’

“ ‘He rolled the ball back to me with the toe of his sandal!’ I insisted, tossing the ball over as proof.

“My friend twisted sideways, dodging the throw.

“ ‘He couldn’t have!’ he said again, this time more forcefully.

“I didn’t get it. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

“ ‘He doesn’t exist. It was just a story.’

“ ‘What are you talking about?’

“ ‘My grandfather died long before I was born. We just use that shed for storage. Nobody lives in there,’ he told me.

“My friend apologized for lying to me and explained the circumstances. In kindergarten, he’d often had friends over to play. They always thought the shed was a great playhouse, and they were always messing things up inside. But there were valuable ceramic pots and such stored in the shed, and my friend’s father had told him, ‘You’re welcome to have your friends over to play, but I don’t want you kids messing around in that shed. If any of those ceramic pieces ever gets broken, you’re going to have to pay for them.’

“Desperate, my friend came up with the idea of pretending that his grandfather lived there. He figured it was the best way to keep his friends from going near it. At first it was just a simple lie, but over time he started to flesh it out, adding details about his grandfather’s idiosyncrasies. Those quirks became more and more exaggerated, and the old man developed into a creepy character. Before long, he had fabricated the perfect scarecrow to ward off mischievous playmates from exploring the shed.

“When he had finished explaining, my friend and I slowly approached the hut. We had to make sure that there really was no old man in there, of course. At this point, I think my friend was actually more frightened than I was. I guess I was already starting to understand what I’d experienced.

“There was nobody inside. My friend and I peeked in through the front door and listened, but we didn’t hear anything. And there were no wooden sandals there, either. It was slightly comical, seeing my friend so afraid of the phantom he’d invented …”

Hashiba had been leaning against the wall, but as he finished his story, he straightened up and placed one hand on the wall just next to Saeko’s head.

“Do you know what I think it was? For two-and-a-half years, I completely believed the story about the grandfather in the shed. Based on the information my friend had given me, I’d developed a complete mental picture of the old man. He didn’t exist, and of course I never saw him. But that made him all the more real to me. My imagination gave birth to and fed this being, fleshing him out, filling in the image of his terrifying face.

“And then when I went after the ball, in a panic, I actually came face to face with this figment of my imagination. It was a bit of a hallucination, I suppose. No wonder the phantom old man looked exactly the way I’d imagined him.

“Now, suppose things had gone differently. Suppose I had never learned the truth. My friend would have gone away to his junior high school in Tokyo. The grandfather would no longer have a reason to exist, and my friend would have tried to expunge him. ‘One day, my grandfather up and took off,’ he would have told us. ‘Nobody knows what happened to him.’

“Then we would have investigated the shed and found nobody there. As far as we were concerned, his grandfather would now be a missing person. The person who had lived in the hut all that time had disappeared. It would never have occurred to us that he hadn’t existed in the first place.

“Since we’ve been investigating these missing persons cases, every now and then, I wonder: did the Fujimura family really live in that house in Takato to begin with? I know it sounds crazy. But maybe we won’t be able to solve this mystery unless we question the assumptions we take for granted.”

Saeko was reminded of the debate between Einstein and Bohr.

“So the Moon exists when we’re observing it and doesn’t when we aren’t?”

With that extreme formulation of the Copenhagen Interpretation, Einstein had denied the possibility that things only existed if there was someone there to observe them. On a quantum level, it sometimes appeared that the mind of the observer influenced the state of the object. It was the interplay that mattered; Saeko herself had considered the possibility that the world was built through its interaction with a cognizing subject.