“I guess that’s fine, then.”

  “For a second there, Mitsurugi looked like she was gonna pass out.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Why?”

  Miyoshi squinted back at me.

  “That was a five-billion-yen orb, duh!”

  Ah. I guess that’s why Saito freaked out and started pointing frantically at the door—to keep me from using any more orbs.

  “Well, I guess that means we should go ahead and let Saito use Super Recovery too, then.”

  Miyoshi shot me a weak smile that practically screamed Fine, whatever.

  “So where’s our other mastermind, Asha?”

  “She was super excited about getting to play an extra, so she’s changing in her cabin. I’m sure her young maiden’s heart won’t let her come out to say hi in a shabby outfit.”

  Something about the way she said things with that weird grin on her face made Miyoshi seem like some creepy middle-aged guy. You should try to learn a bit about the “young maiden’s heart” thing yourself.

  “So I guess Asha was the woman in the red dress?”

  “Wait, that again? There was no woman in a red dress, Kei.”

  I was suddenly at a loss for words. No woman in a red dress? Then who was— No, no, no. I have to be careful. This kind of last-minute twist is totally something Miyoshi would try to sneak in...

  If I could trust her at her word, the only plotline they set up was the whole thing about the secret cult of Dagon, with the sacrifices and the trading. Supposedly the local legend about the mermaids had been unexpected, and she had worried for a while that I was going to veer off course toward thinking the whole thing was about vampires.

  “Can I talk to you alone for a second, Miyoshi?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  I pulled her aside and we went up to the open deck, where nobody else was around. The bustle of the party faded gradually into the distance, soon replaced by the soft sloshing of the ocean waves. I looked up at the villa on the hill, its silhouette blotting out some of the starlight, then pulled out the Six Mon Ships trading list I had found there.

  “Are these real?”

  “The very last page is a spillover from the page before it, right?”

  “Yeah, the one with the entry for this year’s date on it.”

  “Exactly. We added on that last page ourselves,” Miyoshi admitted.

  “What about the rest?”

  “The rest are bonafide historical documents, I’d say.”

  I fell silent for a moment, resting my back against the railing.

  “So do you think the people they were trading with will be coming back this year?”

  “It read to me like something happened twenty-four years ago, and all trading came to a halt at that point. I doubt they’ll be back.”

  I guess that means we’ll never know who exactly the locals were trading with.

  “So were you able to figure out what they were trading?” I asked.

  “Well, it only happened once every twelve years. I figured it might be nothing but a ritual of some kind, or maybe they were just trying to mess with people,” she replied.

  Without a word, I pulled out a polypropylene container with what looked like a slice of squid inside it—the substance I had found in the underground chamber of the abandoned shrine.

  “Could you Appraise this for me?”

  Miyoshi took the container, which had seemed empty at first, peered into it, then looked back to me, her expression tightening.

  “You’re taking this really seriously, aren’t you,” she stated plainly.

  “I’d love to be able to chalk this up to being a joke, if at all possible.”

  Tilting her head at my odd choice of words, Miyoshi opened the container and checked the contents. She raised her eyebrows for a brief moment, then immediately closed it and shoved it back into my hands, like she wanted to get it out of hers as soon as possible.

  “Where did you get that...?”

  “I’d rather not introduce any bias,” I insisted.

  Hearing my response, Miyoshi let out a sigh, then leaned against the railing.

  “This village sure has been a strange place...” she murmured. After standing there for a while in silence, she abruptly turned to face me again. “Do you really want to know, Kei?”

  “Do I really want to know?” she asks... Knowing Miyoshi and the others came up with this whole thing, if she’s trying to keep it up a bit longer, then I need to keep playing along with them until the game’s over. And on the off chance this thing really is what the evidence suggests—

  I slowly shook my head.

  “You know, it seems like I’m always foisting these problems on you, Miyoshi.”

  She let out a soft giggle.

  I opened the container, pulled out the last piece of whatever the substance was, and stared at it for a moment.

  “Ashes to ashes, I guess.”

  With that, I flicked it into the ocean. It traced a gentle curve as it disappeared into the darkness, eventually hitting the water with a tiny sploosh. And thus, the legend was returned to the sea whence it came.

  The sound of the waves rising and falling kept cycling over and over, like some sort of endless requiem for those who had been given eternal life.

  “Hey, Kei.”

  “What?”

  “What do you think would happen if one of the fish around here ended up eating that thing?”

  “What...?” You know, if we compare body weight versus quantity consumed, I feel like that could end up pretty frightening. But still— “Maybe that would be the start of a brand-new legend for Wakasa,” I offered.

  ***

  After that, we returned to the site of the party and focused on sharing drinks with all of the people who had come all the way out there to celebrate. Then, after it had gotten well into the night and it was almost time to wind things down, I went over to ask Asha a favor.

  “Hey, Asha.”

  “What is it, Kaygo? Are you excited to have seen me again?”

  “Absolutely. All this craziness excited me so much, I almost want to start handing out spankings.”

  “Wow! That could be a valuable experience!”

  You’re not supposed to respond to that with a “Wow!” You’re supposed to be a rich girl from a good family. It’s definitely a great thing you’re fully recovered now, but if your father is letting you get involved in madness like this, he might be spoiling you a bit too much... Er, I guess it’s kinda late to be concerned about that though.

  “Well, I’m just glad you’re still feeling well. On that note, there’s actually something I was hoping to get from you.”

  “Oh? You want Asha?”

  “That’s not where I was going with that...” If I were, I knew exactly what the future would hold for me: Ahmed wearing a devilish grin as he stomps me out of existence. I’m too young to die.

  “Are you truly an adult male, Kaygo? Where are your guts?”

  They’ll be spilled out all over the floor if I asked you something like that!

  “So what is it you would like?”

  “Well, I was hoping you’d be willing to give me a red dress.”

  Hearing that, Asha’s eyes went wide for a moment.

  “What?! Kaygo, I didn’t realize you had such a hobby!” she replied in a strangely delighted voice, eyebrows raised with interest.

  “I have nothing of the sort!”

  “But I fear my dresses will not be an appropriate size for you,” she continued.

  “For the last time, I don’t plan on wearing it!”

  “Oh? Then who will?” she asked, her eyes probing me.

  “Who...? Uh, well... The legendary Princess Tsubaki, I guess?”

  “Kaygo, you are a rich man, so it makes sense for you to give gifts to a courtesan, but would it not be rather cheap to present her with a stranger’s dress?”

  Courtesans were the elegant flowers of the demimonde in France. The Japanese equivalent would probably have been the famous high-class hostesses of Ginza. No, there was absolutely no way I’d be gifting anything to someone like that.

  “Again, you’ve got the wrong idea.”

  “Very well. So what sort of dress would you like?”

  What sort, indeed? Hmmm. Well, she was likely a first-class lady back in her day, so if I was going for a matching modern design, I’d want something rather elegant. Those were not the days of plain-looking dresses.

  “I’d like something gaudy. Maybe you have one you don’t think you’d ever wear?” With that Papa Bear of hers, I guarantee she has gorgeous dresses ordered for her by the dozen.

  “I certainly do. I have many red dresses to match the rubies you gave me. How many shall I give you? Ten?”

  “Ten is definitely way more than necessary.”

  After that, Asha brought out a still-unworn bright red dress that was both gorgeous and had an air of nobility to it.

  “Say hello to Violetta!” she chirped as she handed it to me.

  ***

  Later that night—actually, just before dawn—I disembarked from the ship and walked over to Tsubaki Shrine by myself.

  The shrine stood there enveloped in starlight and the sounds of insects, giving off the aura of a true sanctuary.

  This shrine has no torii gate. That means it lies entirely within the world of the mundane.

  Since there was no water basin for purification, I washed my hands with water from a plastic bottle I had brought with me instead. The shrine had no box to place offerings in either, so I placed the container with the dress in it by the entrance to the main hall.

  “I don’t know whether you’re still around, but considering over four hundred years have passed, if you are, I imagine you’re pretty exhausted, right?”

  I put down a bottle of red wine and some chocolate next to the dress, took a step back, bowed twice, and clapped twice.

  “Take care of yourself,” I whispered, then gave one final bow.

  If having someone believe in you could make you a god in this mundane world, I honestly didn’t hate that concept.

  Annotations

  Samson and Delilah: A grand opera based on the story and characters from chapter 16 of the book of Judges in the Old Testament.

  The tale is about a colossal nitwit of a hero named Samson who falls in love with a duplicitous woman named Delilah. She asks him three times to tell her what his weakness is, but despite the fact that he openly questions her intentions, she nags him daily, calls him a liar, and insists that he doesn’t truly love her, which causes him enough anguish to break his spirit and make him spill the beans in the end. Naturally, it ends up being a trap, just as he had initially suspected. Way to go, dude.

  “The Met” referred to by Miyoshi is, in this case, the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, whose conductor at the time was James Levine. Plácido Domingo was a part of the famed operatic singing trio called the Three Tenors, alongside Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras. On August 13, 2019, just four days after this story takes place, Domingo was accused of sexual harassment by multiple female colleagues.

  Castle of Sand: A full-length novel written by Seicho Matsumoto. (Also released in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates.) The culprit’s father contracting leprosy was the spark that lit the story’s fuse.

  Ro Shigaraki: A character who appears in Sukeban Deka, a work by Shinji Wada. He’s an old man who’s been alive for at least two hundred years, and is basically the final boss of the series.

  Y’ha-nthlei: Have fun pronouncing this. Y’ha-nthlei is the name of the underwater city of the Deep Ones. It’s located in the waters beneath Devil Reef, about a mile and a half off the coast of Innsmouth.

  Day 3

  The next morning, our ship departed from the port of Sukusu.

  Miyoshi and I stood out on the open deck, watching the village recede into the distance. The cliff where the hotel was situated jutted out into the ocean and had a very distinctive shape, due to the granite being eroded by the waves. In short, it looked a bit like some grotesque, toppled giant, with a bunch of tentacles growing out of its mouth and a building on the back of its head.

  “You sure paid a lot of attention to detail,” I said, staring at the monstrosity.

  “That part was a total coincidence,” Miyoshi replied.

  Beyond the contrasting, interweaving blacks and whites of the rock formations and the bright blue summer sky, for a moment I thought I saw red camellia flowers moving amid the green of the forest near where the shrine was supposed to be. To me it almost looked like a woman with blonde hair, waving at me in her brand-new red dress.

  Epilogue

  “Will the day ever come when that indescribable creature once again crawls out from the deep crack in the earth beneath that long-abandoned shrine? How long will it be until the passion of that woman, whose love has burned strong for over four hundred years, plunges the world into madness? Will it be tomorrow? In a month? In a year? Or perhaps hundreds of years in the future?”

  “Aaand done.”

  I pressed Alt+F, followed by the S key, to save my file, compressed that file into a zip archive, then dropped it into my messaging program in a window labeled “Mayuzumi.”

  —Hi there, Mayuzumi. I just sent you the data.

  —Right. Thank you for that.

  —Okay, it’s time for me to go eat.

  —Oh? Going to Nonjaka again?

  I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment. Do I really go there that often?

  —Yeah, actually.

  —Would you mind if I join you, then?

  —What? I’m going right now, though.

  —That’s fine. I just happen to be in Shinjuku at the moment.

  “Seriously?”

  —Okay, then I’ll meet you in thirty minutes at Mina’s table on Yanagi-dori.

  —Can do!

  I closed the chat window and got up out of my seat to take a quick shower.

  “She’s always so peppy...”

  Mayuzumi was a self-proclaimed fan of mine as well as my editor, and we had been working together for over ten years. That was why it would probably be time for me to say goodbye pretty soon.

  About thirty minutes later, I walked through the entry curtains of the restaurant called Nonjaka.

  Nonjaka was an izakaya-style restaurant with several locations in my part of Shinjuku. They’re open until 7 a.m., so it was especially convenient when you wanted to be able to eat something no matter when the urge hit you. It was a laid-back joint, and the meals were perfectly adequate in flavor, size, and value. In the early morning hours, many other restaurant owners in the area gathered there. It was an ideal place to sit back and relax with some food and drink.

  When I entered the restaurant, Mayuzumi was seated at a table in the back, waving at me.

  “May I take your order?” Our waitress, Mina, swayed her elegant body as she spoke.

  “I’ll have a draft beer,” Mayuzumi said.

  “For me, let’s go with agedashi tofu, some salmon belly, and a plate of rice.”

  “Wow, you’re actually having a meal!”

  “Huh? That’s the whole reason I came here...”

  Hearing my response to Mayuzumi, Mina smiled and started laying on the pressure.

  “Maybe I should start banning anyone who doesn’t order a drink...”

  “Whoa! I guess I’ll have a draft beer as well, then.”

  Wiping my hands with a wet towel, I watched out of the corner of my eye as Mayuzumi put in an order for a few appetizers of her own.

  “Great job getting everything taken care of!”

  “Thank you. Same to you.”

  Clinking our beers together, we started eating our food, making casual small talk about what had been going on in each other’s lives.

  A while later, Mayuzumi suddenly asked me a question.

  “Speaking of which, do you remember what your very first story was about?”

  My very first story...?

  “I really don’t have the faintest clue,” I responded with a laugh, though in reality, that wasn’t true at all.

  It feels like ages ago, but I remember that story quite clearly. It was about the history of a certain shrine. Even now, I’m still not entirely sure whether it was fact or fiction. It’s tough enough for people to remember details about things that happened ten years ago, so things even older than that will inevitably start to fade and disappear—except, of course, for the things that leave the biggest impressions.

  As those idle thoughts were running through my mind, I happened to catch what she was saying as well.

  “Really? Something came to mind when I was reading this latest story, though.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Is love really sustainable for hundreds of years?”

  So she’s asking if love has an expiration date?

  “I guess if there were only two people in the world, maybe that would facilitate eternal love.”

  “Ah, so a man and a woman living in the depths of the dark world below could nurture their very own sad, eternal love,” she explained cheerily.

  I was a bit concerned to hear my editor talking about things like that—but as a fan, she got a pass.

  “Love, huh...”

  What if someone else had shown up? Someone other than her original beloved, but who would look at her in the same way? Would she have been able to resist the urge to go out into the surface world to see that person?

  When I first wrote about the origin of Tsubaki Shrine, she was definitely in love with him. She was fully prepared to accept whatever consequences there would be for her actions, no matter what the outcome might have been.

  What about now, though?

  If someone had shown up who had the ability to free her from that place, IT would have followed her out onto the surface. I’m not sure if that would’ve been the end of something or the beginning; I haven’t been involved with all that for a very long time, after all.

  I doubt I’d be surprised if her feelings had changed in some ways over time, just like how I began to experience the joy of eating again, despite the fact that it doesn’t really matter whether I eat anything at all.