Chapter 2: Three Days of Wrong Weather

The first day, they didn't tell anyone.

This was a decision that happened without being made. Tetsu had gone down the maintenance ladder on the shrine's east face and found only soil — packed, damp, undisturbed — at a depth that didn't account for the cold that had come up through the gap, or the sound of the sea that shouldn't have been audible from that angle, or Junpei. He'd called down twice. His voice had come back to him in a way that felt less like echo and more like the dark simply returning his words, unwilling to keep them. When he'd climbed back up, his knees were shaking in a way he didn't mention, and no one asked.

Natsuko had opened her notebook and looked at a blank page for forty seconds. Then she'd written: 3:14 p.m. J. falls through inner precinct floor, northwest panel, third plank from altar steps. Below that: no signs of structural collapse. Below that: sound of sea. Below that, in smaller letters: Tetsu found nothing below.