Published at 4th of December 2019 10:30 am

Volume 2, Part V: Spiral Paradox - III

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

The next day I wake up in the morning to a clock screaming nine o’ clock in my face.

Jesus Christ, I am so fucking late.

I rush to the office, carrying a package much too heavy with me in a bag shaped like the container to a bamboo sword, to find that Miss Tōko and Shiki are already in and expecting me.

“Sorry I’m late, everybody.” I set the package to stand against the wall and pause to catch my breath, inhaling deeply like I just ran in a marathon. While I reckon the length of the bag to not even exceed a meter, something heavy is definitely inside it, something steel maybe. When I got out of the house, it only took 100 meters for it to turn my arm numb. As I’m rubbing my smarting shoulders (both of them, since I had to keep changing) and stretching my tired arm muscles, Shiki approaches me.

“Hey, ‘morning, Shiki. Nice weather today, isn’t it?”

“Mmhmm. They say it’s going to be like this for a while, so I suggest you get some exercise in while you can.” Shiki just wouldn’t be Shiki unless she got her morning rudeness out of the way. She’s dressed in a very fancy looking white kimono, which contrasts quite vividly with her red jacket, or it would if it wasn’t on the sofa, looking like it was thrown there with abandon. Her obi today is patterned, in contrast to her usual taste. Designs of falling leaves decorate the sash, and even the edges of her sleeves are adorned with little designs of mitsuba and red autumn leaves. “Mikiya, who owns that?”

Her white finger points to the bag rested against the wall.

“Oh, that? Something Akitaka was supposed to give you. You were out last night when I visited you, and who could it be waiting at the door but Akitaka? We caught up on things for an hour, but when it looked like you weren’t coming back for a while, we decided to leave. It was then that he entrusted me to give you that. I think he said it was a Kanesada or something?”

“Kanesada?” Shiki burst out suddenly. “As in the swordsmith-that-inscribes-the-Kuji-on-his-swords Kanesada?” Her face is positively beaming as she immediately approaches the bag and retrieves it with one hand with little difficulty. She begins to pull the string to open it, doing it gingerly as if she was peeling open a banana. It isn’t long before she strips the upper part of the cloth, revealing a long, thin piece of seemingly years old steel. We can only see maybe ten percent of the entire thing, but now there is little wonder as to why it made my arm numb just carrying it around. This piece of metal, about two rulers or longer in length, is further wrapped by cotton cloth, and from what we can see, two holes are set towards the end. It also looks like there are some characters carved in the surface of the steel, but I can’t see them from where I am.

“What in holy hell was Akitaka doing with this?” I’ve never seen her sound this happy or awestruck. She can barely even contain the look of delight on her face. It’s kind of weird and not altogether disturbing to see her unabashedly enjoying herself with this and not the little random things in everyday life.

“What is that, Shiki?” She turns around when I ask the question to reveal the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on her face.

“Wanna see? It’s a blade the likes of which you’ll rarely see these days,” she says as she begins to extract the blade completely from the bag, but Miss Tōko stops her.

“Shiki, I know that’s an old piece of history. Don’t even think of pulling that out unless you want to cut down the ward around this place.” Shiki freezes as soon as she says that. “It’s impressive and all, and I can even read the Kuji: ‘let the warrior-god light my way.’ It’s cool. But the wards that I’ve put up won’t be a match for a sword with that kind of history.”

With Miss Tōko’s words that seemed like they were warning of some great tragedy if we disobey her, Shiki has little choice except to put the blade away again.

“Eh, fuck it. I don’t think Mikiya’s all that interested in swords anyway. I mean, it doesn’t even have a hilt yet. Akitaka and the others in that house must all be getting senile if they even forgot about that.” Much of the blunders of Akitaka can mostly be attributed to his age, which has only recently passed thirty. If anything, he has a lot to grow into. Still, he’s been helping Shiki ever since she was only ten years old, so I don’t think it’s particularly fair of her to call him senile.

Shiki parts with the blade as if she’s parting with a good friend, feeling the two holes near its end fondly. Only upon later research do I find out that the holes are for fitting the hilt in later. It looks remarkably well preserved, maybe coming from the 16th or even 12th century. If so, it could qualify for an important cultural property, but something tells me Shiki has no intention of handing it over to a museum.

“Old swords build up their own mystery and belief around their ancient history, and so become weapons capable of even cutting spells shaped from the Art,” explains Miss Tōko. “So don’t take that thing out again. I won’t be responsible for any eldritch horrors you may unleash spiriting you away.” After she says this, she breathes with a sigh of relief. “So, Kokutō, let’s hear your reason for being late.”

“Oh, sorry about that. I was busy looking up the stuff you requested last night. Still I have the names of the residents of Ōgawa Apartments, as well as some other information you might be interested in.” The recent spread of public spread of the Internet makes investigating things even easier these days. I got totally into it last night, and before I knew it, it was the break of dawn. All I needed to do was search, supplement it with some things I asked from cousin Daisuke, and I got whole load of information without even needing to head down to the Housing Bureau.

“I told you that you could do it in December, didn’t I? Someone’s eager to start. Well, let’s hear it.”

“Of course. The Ōgawa Apartment building is unique even among all the high rises in Kayamihama. You can take a look at the weird design blueprint yourself later. Construction took place from 1997 to 1998, and three parties managed the process. You, Miss Tōko, handled the east lobby. I have the list of the construction workers on the building, as well as the construction timeline, if you need them.”

From my bag, I produce the thick stack of printouts I made for her and lay them out atop Miss Tōko’s desk. For some reason, her eyes are darting over each stack with a look of stress.

“The building’s weirdness actually comes from it actually being two buildings combined and connected with each other. If you look at the blueprints, it’ll make sense. It’s two half-circle, ten-story buildings facing away from each other, and looking at it from the air, you’ll see they form a full, seemingly unbroken circle. At first it was supposed to be some kind of company dormitory, and the first and second floors were supposed to be recreational and relaxation facilities. Due to the recent recession, however, they’ve been tightening their belts and stopped operation of those. Discounting the first and second floor, each floor of each building has five units, making for ten units each floor. Each unit is designed similarly, with three rooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen, and the architectural design is mixed Japanese and Western design. The water piping and plumbing is sort of built clumsily, so they’ll probably have a leak in the lower floors in the next ten years, if not already. There’s a parking space outside that’s good for forty cars, and another underground parking lot for another forty. More than enough for the number of present residents. When the original people who owned it fell into hard times, the entire thing was bought by a new guy. It was his plan to turn it into a residential high rise instead of a company dormitory only this year. They were advertising up until March, but they only managed to fill up a little over than half of capacity. The west wing is due for a renovation at some point. Here, the blueprint.”

I place more documents on top of the desk, to which she blinks once, twice, before the frown on her face worsens.

“The buildings are separated into an east and west building, but the lobby on the first floor is normal. And there’s only one elevator. It’s a surprisingly faulty piece of equipment for such a big building. Guess we know where the budget didn’t go. According to reports, it didn’t even work until May. As for the rooms, the order goes from the six o’ clock position going counter-clockwise, room 01-05 in the east building, then 06-10 in the west building. There’s roof access but it’s off-limits. Third floor residents from room-to-room are: Sonoda, vacant, Watanabe, vacant, Itsuki, Takemoto, vacant, Haimon, vacant, Tōenji. Fourth floor: vacant, vacant, Sasaya, Mochizuki, Shintani, vacant, vacant, Tsujinomiya, Kamiyama, Enjō. Fifth floor: Narushima, Tennōji, vacant, vacant, Shirazumi, Naitō, Kusumoto, vacant, vacant, Inugami. Sixth floor: —”

“Alright, enough already,” Miss Tōko declares, raising her hands as if in surrender and perhaps a little bit of exasperation. “Man, you go all out when I let you go freestyle. You probably have what hand the residents use to pick their noses or something in there.” She motions a hand to give her the list, and I hand it over to her. “I mean, it wouldn’t really surprise me if it did.”

“Thanks. I was getting tired of reading it anyway.” As soon as she casts her eyes on the list in her hands, she gives a long whistle, a rare exclamation of impressed surprise.

“Look at this. It has their immediate family, place of employment, previous residence. Jesus, Kokutō, if you ever became a detective, everyone would line up to get your ass into asset forfeiture.”

“Nah, the guys there do far better than me regularly. I mean, I haven’t even checked half of the families yet.” I was supposed to, but sleep demands got the better of me. In the end, I could only check thirty out of the total fifty residents of the Ōgawa Apartments with any detail. The remaining twenty I only have names and their immediate family tree.

Miss Tōko quietly reads the list I gave her, but since the middle of reading the list of names, she’s been looking at the list with a grim face buried in reflection. Finally, when her glare can no longer contain itself, she speaks.

“Tōko, lemme see that list for sec, will you?” She gets up from the sofa and walks behind Miss Tōko, sneaking a look at the list over her shoulder. “Thought so. No one else has a name that rare.” She clicks her tongue, in approval or annoyance I can’t say. “Sorry folks, but I gotta head in early today. Got any wheels I can use, Tōko?”

“I guess there’s the 200cc motorcycle in the garage.” “Riding a bike with a kimono. Right. That’s comfortable.”

“Well, if you aren’t too picky, I have clothes in the locker. They’re a bit big for your size, but they’re probably better than damaging that valuable kimono of yours. Don’t take the Harley out. I haven’t taken the sidecar off it yet.” Shiki nods in assent before grabbing her leather jacket and making off with the bag with the sword blade inside. The sound her kimono makes as she leaves is like an ominous snake. I don’t like it.

“Shiki!” In the height of my disquiet, I call out to her. She turns her head back toward me, looking for all the world like she just remembered a prank that is about to be played on her.

“What is it, Mikiya? Don’t tell me there’s a bad stain on my kimono?” She says it with all the weight of someone just going to do a bit of shopping. Why did I call out to her? What am I supposed to say?

“Er, nothing. I’ll drop by in the evening, and we can talk about stuff then.” “Um…okaayyy. Wait—evening, right? Sure, I’ll be there. See ya later.” She waves a hand in a short goodbye before she closes the door to the office entirely.

It has been one hour since the rare event of Shiki borrowing Miss Tōko’s motorcycle, and me and Miss Tōko decide to pay a visit to the Ōgawa Apartment buildings to see for ourselves. It’s thirty minutes toward Kayamihama, and it doesn’t take us long before her beloved Morris Minor 1000 car is cruising down the coastal bay road, giving us a good clear view of the west coast and the harbor with its loading bays. Kayamihama itself can already be seen from here, with its high rises set against the backdrop of even taller buildings further inland. The scenery of buildings going up and down is almost graphically 8-bit in its solidity.

The apartment complex we’re looking for lies smack in the middle of Kayamihama, a circular building to stand apart from the square and rectangles of the area; visible from far away but it takes quite some time to get to. Finally we arrive, and it looks even bigger up close than it is from afar.

Its ten floors make it unusually tall compared to everything else where it shares the reclaimed land, and a brick fence to dissuade intruders surrounds the grounds. A long, thin path extends from the parking lot to the entrance, all the way inside to the lobby, making it look like some bizarre Taj Mahal.

“Huh, can’t seem to find the underground parking. Oh well,” says Miss Tōko dismissively. Having no intention of paying the parking fee, she instead parks her quaint old car well outside the apartment grounds. “Let’s go,” she announces before lighting a cigarette and starting to walk. As soon as I get out of the car and step onto the ground, a slight dizziness takes over me, but it’s nothing I can’t handle. Probably the sun today. I walk a little behind Miss Tōko, and I sneak a look up at the roof of the building, only increasing my sense of vertigo. I quickly catch up to her, and we enter the lobby together.

One step inside, and I feel my stomach start to churn. The walls, all a cream color, are maintained with the same immaculate, clinical cleanliness as the floor. It’s all very impressive. And yet, I get an overwhelming unease that threatens to spill into outright disgust at it. A bad premonition that tries to override my mind. The inside of the building is warm like a person’s breath, in stark contrast to cold air outside. The heat coils and warps around my skin in a way that makes me think of the claustrophobia of a womb.

“Just your imagination playing tricks, Kokutō,” whispers Miss Tōko close to my ear, and somehow it stops the dizziness. With much better faculty for thinking now, I give the building another look over. The lobby in the middle seems to be the only thing connecting the two buildings, which will become even more noticeable in floors above the second, as it becomes the only way to transition between the east and west building. We can’t seem to find a manager’s or caretaker’s office here in the fourth floor.

In the middle of all this stands a tall pillar that runs through the centerline of the building; it’s spine. Within this hollow pillar is the elevator, and winding around the elevator chasm is the spiraling staircase. Having the entire thing encased in a single structure repeats the same feeling of claustrophobia earlier.

“Not the most pleasant of buildings, this one,” I comment.

“Reminds me of that Jack Nicholson movie in the hotel. There’s just something really wrong about it, isn’t there? It isn’t a particularly unique thing though. All the little things that go into a building’s architecture can be deliberately designed to toy with your mind. Everything from the color of the walls, to the location and style of the stairs. Change these around in little, but noticeable increments, and it’s enough to drive the ones who pass through it every day to go mad as their pattern recognition goes crazy.” Miss Tōko approaches and enters the waiting elevator, and I follow her. “Which floor, good sir?” she says in good humor.

“Hmm, maybe we could start with the fourth floor.”

“All right. Up we go,” says Miss Tōko as she allows her eyes to wander and look over the structure of the elevator. Even the elevator carriage is circular, twisting inside the spine of the entire structure. Since she seems disinclined to push the button herself, I find the “4” among the buttons labeled “B” to “10” and push it.

Immediately, the elevator springs to life, and I can feel its movement through the building; I can even hear it produce a relatively loud, artificial sound, maybe a clue as to how decrepit the entire mechanism is. The sound combined with the elevator’s circular shape make me feel as if I’m descending instead of ascending. Before long, the elevator’s door opens again to admit us to the fourth floor lobby. The first thing we see in front of us is the corridor that leads to the east building, corresponding with the apartment’s south-facing entrance, just as the blueprint had indicated.

“Follow that corridor and it’ll lead you to 401-405,” I observe. “Keep going and you’ll eventually reach a dead-end confronting the west building’s outer walls.”

“And you get to the west building only by coming back here and going on the opposite corridor behind the elevator right?” Miss Tōko asks.

“Yeah. It’s a weird layout. They should have just connected the corridors for convenience.”

“They probably wanted some unique flavor. I don’t know. Uniqueness always takes a backseat to practicality for me. But I guess how you waste cash is what distinguishes one rich person from the next.” She sighs then turns to me, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “So, Kokutō, what reason did you have for picking the fourth floor? Going to pay a visit to the family that supposedly died?” Her surprising query echoes all along the cream colored walls of the lobby, reflecting off the clean walls and floor like the light above. It’s a room where the time of day becomes unclear, as I sense it changes little in night or day. It is only now that I notice that we never met anyone ever since we stepped inside, and were it not for the lights and the general feel of a maintained space, you’d never know anyone lived here.

“Ma’am, where did you hear—”

“I told you I have a detective friend, didn’t I? Some burglar came in and everyone was already dead, right? I wasn’t able to catch the name, but I knew you were going to go see it for yourself.” Well, she’s right. It’s the reason I woke my cousin Daisuke up in the middle of the night last night, after all. “So, you going or what?”

“Well, that’s what I was planning, but now that we’re here…” I’m kinda scared. Before I came here, I thought the entire thing might even be kind of fun, but now even being here is an uncomfortable experience I’d rather not go through, which only adds to the strength of the butterflies fluttering in my stomach. And yes, I am well aware of the fact that it is broad daylight.

“Now’s the time to go if you’re going, Kokutō. As for me, I want to try using the elevator by myself. Let’s meet later in the floor above this one. Use the stairs. And oh, it might be better to close your eyes as you go. See you later.” I watch her until she gets on the elevator and closes, the lights above the entryway going all the way up to the tenth floor, blinking as they go. I watch it in a daze, unsure exactly what I should be doing, and I realize I’m all alone in the lobby. Now, even my breathing is accentuated by the oppressive silence in the room where time no longer seems to exist; a vacuum world adrift in space in a unique flavour of mixed claustrophobia and agoraphobia. I never knew a building could feel this separated from the outside world.

“Man, she really isn’t coming down, is she?” I utter as I continue to watch the lights in hopes that she could return in short order. Talking to myself usually cures me of any temporary fear, but this time it has the opposite effect. As my own voice reverberates in the lobby, it returns to my ears with a tone that is practically not mine, only enhancing my unease.

Alright, enough of this. This won’t resolve itself as long as I’m here. I steel myself and start walking towards and through the corridor that connects to the east building. As soon as I go through the corridor, the disquiet that engulfed me in the lobby slips away so suddenly it’s surprising, only to be replaced by total disinterest. The corridor that runs outside the units opens to the outside, but only to a completely uninteresting view of similar looking apartments. I still stare at them as I walk along the length of the hallway, all the way to the end until I reach room 405.

It was the night on the ninth. A burglar broke into this place and supposedly reported seeing a number of bodies. He returned with a police patrolman on the same night once he reported it, but when they visited again, they only saw a family in the middle of dinner, which only made the burglar crazier. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the entire family were doing some sort of collective play, and it was all just some sort of big misunderstanding. Won’t find out till I ring this doorbell, so I do.

It produces the traditional, happy, two-tone sound. After a short while, the room opens with a creaking sound. The first thing I see is how dark it is inside. The second thing I see is someone’s arm. Then his head.

“Yes? Enjō residence. Who is it?” Standing in the doorway is a middle aged man, looking and talking as irately as anyone who gets an unexpected visitor in the middle of the day.

And so it turns out that the false alarm really was just a false alarm after all. Nothing seemed to be wrong with that Enjō family in room 405.

I return to the lobby to find that the lights atop the elevator still linger on the tenth floor. I could call it down to go up, but I can already see her finding it out and calling me too much of a scaredy cat for using the elevator instead of the stairs like she said, and so without further delay I start climbing the stairs beside it. The stairs is a spiral entwining itself around the height of the elevator chasm going upwards and ever upwards, lit by dim red lights. Though the lobby air is still cold and dead, the normality of the Enjō family gives me back some much needed backbone. And yet I can’t stop myself from thinking that the red lighting giving the cream walls much of their sinister air feels like a quivering torch flame lighting the way in an otherwise dark castle. Little nooks and corners of the stairwell it’s supposed to illuminate remain in the dark, and every ascending step proves to be a little gloomier each time.

I fight my imagination, which seems intent on placing some sort of feral creature at the head of the stairs, escape the melancholic feel of the stairwell and finally reach the lobby of the fifth floor…which looks exactly like the lobby of the fourth floor. I know it’s an apartment complex probably made with prefab materials and uninspired architectural design like a department store, but still, the sameness gets me somewhat down.

“There you are. Now let’s take a trip down, shall we?” From inside the lobby comes the voice of Miss Tōko. Without saying another word, she hops inside the already waiting elevator. I follow her, seeing her stand in front of the navigation panel of the elevator, waiting for me to get in. As I do so, she speaks without turning around. “Pop quiz, hotshot. If you’d look at the floor for a second…”

“Huh? Oh, okay. I just need to look at the floor, right?” The elevator door closes with little sound to herald it. In contrast, I hear the sound of the elevator mechanism operating loud and clear. It doesn’t even take four seconds to get to the destination floor that Miss Tōko punched in. The small, claustrophobic box called the elevator stops somewhere in the larger, claustrophobic space called the Ōgawa Apartments.

“Here’s the million-dollar question: what floor do you suppose we’re on?” I raise my face to look when she asks. The elevator door is open, and I see the lobby, or at least a lobby. It looks precisely the same as the other floor I was just on, except for one thing: a plastic plaque stuck to a side of the wall with the number “5” on it.

“Wait a minute. Fifth floor?” I’m sure the elevator moved. I heard it and everything. That makes me the one in error. I think on it for a moment only for the obvious answer to come drifting into my mind not a moment later. “We were just on the sixth floor, weren’t we?”

“Ding ding. You thought you went up one floor but instead went up two. Those kinds of stairs make it pretty easy to do if the designer really wants to. Apartments and condo buildings are strange like that. The only way you can know what floor you’re even on is through the sign on the lobby. Take off the numbers in an elevator and have someone ride it to the top of a really tall building. Do they know what floor they’re on? Don’t think so. Switch around the floor labels on the switches and it’ll be even worse, at least for someone not used to riding it every day. Hmm, now I’ve got the urge to try it in another apartment building. Like, we sneak in at night and change stuff around.”

Crazy, but just like her. With that, she closes the elevator door, presses the button marked “1”, and before long we’re getting off the elevator back in the floor where we started.

“Oh wait, why don’t we drop by and check out the east lobby for a minute?” Miss Tōko suggests. “Both wings have a lobby on this floor, right?” “Er, yes. It actually takes up the second floor too, with the space. It’s like a big hotel receiving—wait a minute, weren’t you the one that designed the east lobby?”

“Did I now?” she says in a voice which I can’t distinguish from sarcasm and genuine wonderment before she smiles knowingly at me. The central chamber which contains the elevator is connected to lobbies on either side with a corridor, and Miss Tōko is already starting to walk towards the one that connects to the east lobby. I follow her, and it isn’t long before we arrive. It’s a spacious room, with little of interest in it besides a stairs straight ahead of us that connects it to the second floor catwalk that lines the walls of the room. The state of seemingly perpetual tidiness with which it is kept reminds me of the look of an old Napoleonic ballroom, except dead and empty. The marble floors and the same cream-colored walls that decorate all of the walls we have yet seen in this building certainly complete the image.

“Guess I’ll set up here,” I hear Miss Tōko murmur to herself. “Perfect place for an emergency spell—” beyond that, her voice lowers to the point that I can no longer hear it. I watch as she takes a knee on the marble floor and let her hands wander on its surface like an archaeologist looking for any lost fossils.

“Um, what are you doing over there, ma’am?”

“Just a little something for later. By the way, did you notice anything weird when you were going up the stairs? There were signs that it moved, weren’t there?”

The stairs…moved? But, it’s inside a solid column, which means, what? That moves too?

“I didn’t say that the entire column moved. Just the stairs. You would have found the scratch marks if you looked at the corners where the stairs met the wall. Or were you really so scared as to not have your wits about you?” she asks as she continues her strange inspection of the floor.

I hate to say it, but she’s right. But it was so dark that I couldn’t see the entirety of the stairs, anyway, so I don’t think it would have done much good even if I was paying attention. “But that’s impossible ma’am. Moving that column implies that you’d need nothing short of tearing the entire building down to do it.”

“Listen to me when I’m talking, will you? I did say it was only the stairs that moved. The entire thing is like a pop-a-point pencil.”

“What the heck is a pop-a-point pencil?” As soon as I state this, her hands stop their questing movement and she stands up with a surprising agility.

“Wait a minute. You don’t know what a pop-a-point pencil is? What kind of parents brought you up, Kokutō? It’s that pencil where there are a lot of sharpened points in cartridges inside. When your lead becomes dull, you take it out and push it in the back like a bazooka, and out comes a new sharpened point without the need for cranking the handle on the classroom sharpener. Maybe they don’t sell it nowadays.”

I have no idea what she’s describing, but I guess I understand the mechanics of it well enough.

“So you’re saying that the stairs are being pushed up from below, like a piston mechanism?”

“That’s the idea. They probably left half a floor’s height on the thing, just to move the spiral. North becomes south and south becomes north. Something’s definitely up with it. But we’ll leave it for now.” She walks again, this time going out the door to the outside, and I follow her lead. As we finally exit the building, she whispers something to herself, something which I can only barely hear.

“Man, you really don’t know what a pop-a-point pencil is? And they were pretty popular when I was a kid too.

As if life truly wanted to deliver one last sucker punch to our efforts for the day, we arrive at Miss Tōko’s parked car only to find a parking violation ticket stuck to the windshield, for parking in a public thoroughfare. I guess we should have expected it, seeing as the road in front of the apartment was wide, and we were the only ones parked. Guess the traffic cops had nothing better to do.

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