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A few minutes later, we rose slowly away from the fuyu-kyu. The mist cleared as we gained altitude, pooling below us like a great ocean whose ghostly waves rolled over the hills and treetops that sprawled from Mt. Fuji's still snow-capped head. We hovered high above the Shinu camp, while Tetsuo entered the coordinates for our journey into a large console. Before me, lights sputtered and flashed on the navigational display, a round monitor with target-like green markings.
"Looks like Fuji-sama's decided to play the wily mistress today," Tetsuo tutted at the controls, then gazed up at the mountain through the round tinted glass of the cockpit. When finished with the console, he grabbed the steering mechanism—two hand grips, studded with various buttons and mounted on a long rod—and tilted it slightly to his left. As we swerved away from Mt. Fuji, I had my first real glimpse of the fog-shrouded land below.
I had never seen such a dense forest before. What the fog didn't obscure from view was deftly secreted by an impenetrable blanket of tightly-spaced, overlapping canopy that stretched for miles. If not for our navigational indicators, I wouldn't have known where we were at all, for the forest looked the same in every direction.
"It's not far now, just over the narrowest point of the lake."
"Would that be anywhere near Lake Shoji?"
Tetsuo flashed me a rueful smile. "Based on your description, near enough; but don’t worry, Renata, the area's been abandoned for years. Unless the soldier's got spelunking equipment on that belt pack of his, he'll have to travel above ground."
"At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if he could see in the dark." Arms crossed, I slumped back in my seat. We flew in silence, until dark water began to wink at us through holes in the blanket of mist.
Tetsuo eased the pod into a smooth downdrift that took us low over Saiko's placid surface. Through the mist, I could make out the dark hulks of a group of buildings, then the outlines of pitched roofs, many of which had already lost their battle with time and gravity and pitched themselves into the lake. As we glided further inland, I could see more abandoned structures slowly succumbing to decay on a vine-choked stretch of land. Behind them the forest rose like a wall, dark and forbidding.
Finally, Tetsuo set the pod down on a level patch. "What was this place?" I asked, already unlocking my five-point harness.
"Some kind of waystation for travelers, I think. What earthquakes didn't destroy; the forest reclaimed. There are even more ruins on the other side of the lake. No, wait, Renata." Tetsuo stayed my hand, when I reached for the switch to unlock the over-wing exit. "The cave entrance is just beyond those buildings over there. While the cloaking shields still hold, I want to make sure it's safe." He punched a button on the console and another monitor winked to life, one that rendered objects outside in unnatural hues.
"Thermographic scanner activated," an electronic voice sputtered through bursts of static.
Tetsuo placed his hand over a small knob and began panning the area. "Blues and greens mean we're good to go. Anything in the warmer end of the spectrum and— Whoa!"
We both started as an orange mass strode into the field of cold blues and greens. A decidedly large mass with molten yellow pits for eyes. A cloud of tiny green specks swarmed about its head and neck. Soon, another, although much smaller orange shape, joined it.
"Oh, they're alright," Tetsuo chuckled. "Get a good look at 'em now, because you won't see any, once you're inside the woods."
The doe eyed her surroundings warily before she and her spotted fawn bounded away, taking the cloud of midges with them.
Tetsuo continued his scan, but found no vertical heat-producing masses on site. When his inspection also failed to produce any sign of a stolen hoverboard in the immediate vicinity, satisfied, he allowed us to exit the pod. "Watch your step," he cautioned. "The tarmac around here's been badly broken up and with all this ground fog, it's hard to spot the fissures beneath the vines. Don't want you twisting an ankle before you get started."
With Tetsuo in the lead, nudging vines away with the toe of his boot, we picked our way gingerly across the once-paved lot until we reached what might have been an entryway to one of the larger buildings. One of its dark support columns had splintered in two and the small roof atop them now hung dejectedly at a dangerous angle between them, effectively barring any hope of ingress. The wide windows that flanked the entry, their sills green with mold and devoid of glass, stared out like sightless eyes. Here, Tetsuo turned, following the length of the sagging dwelling, until a narrow corridor appeared between it and a smaller structure. The long grass that lined it, while wind-tossed, hadn't been trampled. Pleased with this find, Tetsuo motioned for me to follow him between the buildings.
As we left their musty-smelling boards behind, treading the vestiges of what might have been a walkway, the forest loomed around us. Not far inside the woods, grass turned to loose rock and our path pitched sharply, funneling us down to an enormous fissure that gaped like a ragged black maw. Exposed roots of maples and needle conifers crawled above its craggy surface, while thick vines cascaded down one side. After scrabbling over slippery ledges and skirting boulder-sized chunks of stone, we finally arrived at the mouth of the cave.
I knew it wasn't an ice cave even before I entered. The smell hit me like a fist, its pungency so thick, I could taste it in the back of my throat. Gagging, hands over my mouth and nose, I shied away.
Tetsuo quickly shushed me. "That's just the bats. They should be sleeping now but they spook easily." Nodding at my helmet, he whispered, "Keep your light low until you're through the main chamber. At the back, it splits into a number of smaller passages. I've marked the way to the forest from there on. When the light hits a marker, you'll see this." He held up one hand. "Once you're out of the cave, take as straight a path as you can."
"Are there more markers in the woods?" I asked, adjusting the chin strap on my helmet.
"No, that's why you'll need to use the Flex-Fire. You'll know you've gone the right way when you find my old ship—well, what's left of her, anyway. Yomichi doesn't live far from there."
I still couldn't imagine anyone actually living inside the forest. "Where?"
Tetsuo took a seat on one of the large rocks. "Shortly before the Great Contagions, the number of suicides that occurred in the Sea of Silence sparked an international outrage. The government's inability to locate the bodies of many of the deceased, as well as their failure to provide accurate statistics about the number of deaths in any given year, soon made Aokigahara a favorite spot for a new breed of criminal. Posing as campers or private guides, these men and women would lure unsuspecting visitors off the forest paths and murder them. Some worked alone but those who traveled like pack dogs always had one member record their deeds, which they would later share as a form of entertainment on what was then the Internet. Those macabre 'dramas' infected world consciousness faster than you can say nokuru. In no time, the forest gained another unwanted reputation, as the place to commit the perfect crime." He mopped the sweat from his brow and swatted away some mosquitoes.
"If you can believe it, the government at that time didn't want to prohibit access to the forest. Despite its newest danger, Aokigahara was still a popular tourist destination. So, the forest service erected safety stations throughout its expanse: hostels offering food, shelter, medical help, and most of all protection. For a time, it worked, although the Contagions took care of the problem, eventually.
"In of those abandoned hostels is where you'll find Yomichi—that is, if he doesn't find you first." Grunting, he heaved himself off the rock. "While you're doing that, I'm going to scout around for signs of the soldier and boy, then see how the search for Nozomi is progressing. If you're not back by tomorrow morning, I will come looking for you. Good luck, Renata." He wrapped me in a bear hug, squashing the MBL and retracted naginata in my anorak's front pouch uncomfortably between us. "Tell your father that old Tetsuo, the worst thief he's ever seen, sends his regards."
"I will," I said, releasing him.
I watched him until he disappeared amongst the trees, then picked my way over the fallen rocks that partially blocked the cave mouth. The closer I came to it, the more the smell of bat guano intensified. Nose wrinkling, I adjusted my goggles, flicked on my headlamp, took as deep a breath as I dared, then slowly descended down a series of slippery, moss-covered ledges into its dark mouth.
Once inside, I headed down the rock-strewn, uneven lava floor, careful to avoid throwing any light into the recesses above me. Although the ceiling in the cave's immediate main chamber soared over my head, it seemed to shrink the further inward I progressed, the walls and ceiling of its lopsided lava tunnel closing in around me until I was forced to navigate one section sideways.
Growing up underground, I’d always considered myself a spelunking expert of sorts. Tight spaces, unsure surfaces, and temperature changes in the ice caves back home had never bothered me before, but with each step I took, an uneasiness, clammy as the sweat that trickled down my neck and back, grew.
I couldn't pinpoint the source of my apprehension, at first. It wasn't the preponderance of guano piles whose surreal shape and mass reminded me of speleothem, the steadily downward telescoping size of my surroundings, or the relative chill. If anything, the cave was pleasantly cool. It wasn't even the threat of setting off the colony of bats that slumbered above my head. They rarely bit humans unless they were rabid and they'd never frightened me before. Though the rock formations in this cave were unusual—wonky-shaped tunnels, stony pools sporting concentric ripples that had hardened as their magma had cooled, and shelf-like projections that resembled fallen logs—on the whole, I found all of these more interesting than anxiety-producing.
Nor did knowledge of my surroundings influence my current emotional state. Tetsuo's stories were colorful, sure, but in the end (with the bit about serial killers aside, of course), most of them were just that: stories. Aokigahara was a sprawling expanse of forest formed in the wake of a volcanic eruption millennia ago, nothing more. Yokai, drums in the night, vengeful ghosts— get real! In my experience, the living posed a far greater threat than the dead. More than once, however, I turned to see if I'd been followed, naginata ready to deflect an intruder, only to discover that I was alone. Completely and utterly alone.
But no, even that wasn't the problem, and my inability to figure it out was really starting to piss me off.
It was slow going at first, but hunched and cramped, I pressed on, until my headlamp illuminated the first glowing handprint that indicated the passage into the forest. The ceiling was so low, I had to scuttle like a crab across one of the undulating formations of ropy lava, though up ahead, at the spot where the passages diverged, I thought there might be possible standing room. I was almost there when my toe caught one of the rounded lava projections. Knocked off balance, I fell flat on my ass, screaming a string of expletives.
Curses that didn't come back to my ears, distorted or otherwise.
That's when it hit me: there was no echo in here. None at all. The cave walls simply swallowed every sound.
Fascinated by the discovery, mystery finally solved, I ran my hand over the cave's rough walls. There was a name for such volcanic rock, but it escaped me. Satoshi would have known.
I don't know how long or for how far I followed the passage. While this one proved much higher and nowhere near as narrow as the one before, with darkness and silence dogging my every step, utterly dependent upon a glimpse of the next glowing handprint to show me the way through the twists and switchbacks, time seemed to unspool around me. At least the air smelled slightly cleaner here or maybe I'd just become accustomed to the smell, but either way, I didn't mind. For the first time since leaving New Edo, I felt truly hopeful, confident that I was running to something and someone, instead of running away. Thanks to Tetsuo, I now had a definitive idea of what Yomichi looked like.
Exactly what I'd say to him when we met—if we met—I still had no idea. That future conversation sounded bizarre, no matter how many times I rehearsed it in my head:
Hey, Yomichi, I'm Renata, your long-lost daughter. You probably thought I was dead all this time. I thought the same of you, yet here we are. Tetsuo sends his regards, by the way. So... um...remember Mazawa? Mazawa from Tottori?
Although Genocidal Asshole was a more apt moniker, I realized that I had no more idea what Mazawa's given name was than I did my own father's. That latter, the kind of thing one would expect a child to know about her frigging father, was a real deal-breaker. Great...just great. Wondering how I'd get around it, I continued my silent monologue:
Well, he's Doctor Mazawa, now...
Assuming he'd know what that meant. I hoped he would, because I really wasn't up to giving a history lecture. He had to know. No way he could've lived in a vacuum all this time. Unless he'd learned to live on stone soup, there was nothing for him to eat in the damned forest, and if he really had invented something, he'd need to venture out somewhere for supplies.
He's a holodome boss and a real bastard, to boot. People hate him so much, they're ready to revolt. Well, planning it, actually...
And tucked away in Aokigahara all this time, he'd give a rat's furry crack because?
He wants your Idoron, and he's sent a soldier here to kill you. If you'll just come back to the Shinu camp with me and bring it along, you could settle an old score and put him down, once and for all. Assuming it's a weapon. It is a weapon, yes? So, what do you say, Otosan?
"Otosan," I whispered, the word still clumsy on my tongue, though from where I stood, I could've screamed it at the top of my lungs without fear of being overheard.
Not for the first time, I wished Satoshi could be here with me. Instead of me, even. Yomichi would've had an easier time recognizing his young son in a man's face (assuming Satoshi resembled him).
I turned my attention to the uneven path ahead. I'd figure out what to say later, but first, had to get there in one piece.
Then, another thought stopped me in my tracks.
Tetsuo hadn't mentioned when he'd seen Yomichi last. What if he'd moved on? What if he was dead?
Thoughts were not my friends, today. I decided to squelch my inner chatter and press ahead.
Gradually, the passage widened, then ended at the edge of a large chasm. Lined with ledges, riddled with crevices and smaller clefts, the only safe route around it was navigating the uneven lava shelves whose craggy walls were marked with luminous handprints. Here, the temperature was cooler and the air permeated with the refreshing mineral tang of water. I peered over the ledge, but even when set to stun, my spelunking light could not penetrate its dark surface. High above, wan light bleared through a tangle of twisted roots.
Hoping I was nearing the end of the cave trek, I unshouldered my pack and sat down to rest. As I was rooting around for a bottle of water, the cave's only source of ambient light suddenly dimmed. Above me, leaves rustled.
Heart jackhammering, I doused my headlamp with shaking hands. Was it Kei? How did he find me so fast? To avoid discovery, I hurriedly retraced my steps to the passage, only to lose my footing on the slick stone. I scrabbled for purchase like a madwoman, accidentally kicking my pack over the edge as I did. Before I'd regained safety in the lava tunnel's darkness, I heard it hit the water with a loud splash, a sickening finality that reverberated through me like a bell.
Food, water, shelter, and one of my MBLs: all gone in a moment's panic. Silently, I cursed myself for being such an idiot.
Still, a live idiot beat a dead dumbass, any day.
More splashes followed, rocks, twigs and thin soil from above taking gravity's path of least resistance. Branches snapped; their sound accompanied by another: a child's pathetic scream.