Chapter 14: What the Ministry Buried in 1972

The archive attendant, Kimura, arrived at eight forty-five as he always did, and Natsuko had been waiting on the concrete step outside the district records office since eight twenty, her father's canvas bag in her lap, the complaint log pressed against her hip through the fabric.

She had not slept.

Not properly. She had walked Reiko home from the shrine at close to two in the morning, both of them quiet in the way people are quiet after witnessing something that hasn't yet found its category, and then she had stood in her own kitchen in the dark and drunk three glasses of water and written six pages of entry 44 standing at the counter because she could not bring herself to sit down. The act of sitting felt like settling. Like accepting the night was over and the evidence was gathered and now she could rest.