⚫ October 7 / Orange Light
I don't know whether I had gone out to look for something before going to bed, but I went to the balcony and looked outside. Thinking back, I suppose I was trying to see the moon. After thinking, I can't see the moon tonight, I remembered something my wife had said earlier in the evening: Is it a crescent moon tonight?
I closed the balcony window and went to the studio to look again at the painting I had worked on that day. I don't like turning on the light in the studio once it has become dark at night. The painting looked more or less the same as it had when I stopped working on it. I turned off the light and was about to leave when, somehow, I had the feeling that I had missed something when I looked outside from the balcony a moment earlier. So I decided to turn off the light, open the studio window, and look outside once more.
The moon was nowhere to be seen. The traffic lights in the distance to the right, along with the headlights and red taillights of the cars passing by one or two at a time, were the first things that caught my eye.
Far to the left, at the edge of a ridge that looked like a horizon—a place that had originally been a small hill but had since been cleared and turned into fields—I saw a very small orange light.
The area around the tiny, dot-like orange light looked black, as though it had been painted over with a thick, dark layer, so at first I couldn't tell whether the light was floating above the ground or attached to it. But after a few seconds, when the boundary between the ground and the sky became clear, I realized that it was a fixed light in one place on the ground.
The orange light seemed to be moving very slightly from side to side.
I thought perhaps someone might be walking through the night carrying something that gave off an orange light. I also wondered whether the distance between where I was and where the light was made its movement seem slower. I rested my arms on the window ledge and watched the light for a while. It seemed too slow for a person walking, and I began to wonder if it was actually moving at all. It still seemed to be shifting slightly from side to side, but I decided that it must have been my imagination. Whenever I blinked, the shape of the light's glow changed, but its brightness seemed to remain the same.
What had that light been? Why had I spent several minutes thinking about it? Could it have been some kind of device meant to scare away animals that might eat the crops at night? Could it have been a light someone had left switched on? Had someone been camping out in the field? Had that place been a field? Or had it been some kind of path?
After all these questions came one after another, perhaps I thought that whatever the answer was, it would surely turn out to be something trivial. Or perhaps I had simply become invested in thinking about it. Or perhaps I decided that there was no point in asking any more questions. I closed the window and left the room.
It feels like it had been raining for more than a week. They had said that a typhoon was coming, but the wind was not as strong as I had expected. When the rain became lighter or stopped, I would go out for a short walk. I like looking at the clouds on overcast days and getting caught in the rain, but by then I had been gradually becoming less affected by the same weather continuing day after day.
I heard the sound of a siren in the distance, and felt it gradually coming closer. Through the living room window, I could see a fire truck passing by with its siren on. The road was filled with dark brown water, reaching roughly ankle height. A few minutes later, another fire truck of the same size passed by. Both fire trucks gave me the impression that they were not particularly large. I think I began to feel a slight sense of curiosity and something like a growing tension.
A few minutes later, the sound of a siren began to be heard again from a distance. I saw an ambulance passing by. I thought that something must have happened somewhere near the house. The rain continued without stopping. From around two in the afternoon until nighttime, the fire trucks and ambulance went back and forth along the same road several times.
On the morning of the day that, according to the weather forecast, was supposed to be the last day of the typhoon's effects, my wife, perhaps still concerned about what had happened the day before, searched for it on the internet. She found a news report saying that a woman had been buried in earth and debris from a landslide on the mountain behind her house, and that her husband had reported the incident.
The reporter delivered the report as it began to grow dark outside, the surroundings taking on an indigo color, with the sound of rain in the background. The camera alternated between the reporter and a house some distance away, filmed with a telephoto lens. The house shown on the screen and the place where the reporter was standing were not far from where I was, and they were places I had passed several times while out walking.
My wife was very concerned about the woman and the house, and checked several times to see if there was any new information. The rain was still falling, and I could sense from my wife that she was feeling a strange kind of excitement. Through the news, we learned that there had been landslide damage in several other places as well, not just at that house. The same reports were being broadcast by several different television stations.
That evening, the moon was still not visible, but I could tell that the rain was beginning to stop, as the weather forecast had predicted.
The next morning, when I came out of the bedroom, the house felt brighter than usual. There were still clouds, but sunlight was clearly coming into various parts of the house, following the shapes of the windows.
After breakfast, my wife, our child, and I naturally went outside. My wife wondered whether she should put on her rain boots and asked me. I opened the front door and looked outside, then told her that it would be fine without them.
Most of the roads had been covered in soil that had been washed down from various places and had dried to a pale brown color. We began walking along the road where the fire trucks had passed. Before long, we saw a man in a blue work uniform controlling the road, with a sign saying that passage was prohibited. Behind him was a black truck, and something resembling an excavator was scooping up the soil that had flowed onto the road from the landslide.
We knew that this was not the place where the house shown on the news was located, so we turned onto a side road and headed toward it. Two or three elderly people on scooters were moving around the neighborhood. Seeing cars passing along roads that were not normally used very much, I thought that several places must have been closed to traffic.
The house began to come into view from a distance. The mountain behind it had collapsed, revealing a reddish-brown surface, and I could still see people in blue work uniforms moving around the house.
I stopped walking and pointed toward it, saying, “This is where the reporter was standing.” I was about to walk farther toward the house when my wife said, “Maybe we shouldn't go too close.”
I didn't ask her why. I just replied, “Yeah,” and then added, “Let's go back.”
There was still a road that had not completely dried, and as we passed through it, my wife muttered in a slightly complaining tone, “I should have worn my rain boots.”
After looking at the artwork at a gallery in Roppongi, I stepped outside and chatted with a friend for a bit. I wasn’t feeling particularly bright, so I couldn’t bring myself to smile.
Before heading home, I decided to drop by a kebab shop near the station. I’d been there once before, so I walked in without hesitation. It was past lunchtime and there were no other customers inside.
There were several items on the menu, but I ordered the kebab sandwich right at the top. I couldn’t remember what I had gotten last time, so I picked the slightly spicy option in the middle. Seven hundred yen.
On the table to my right sat a small drink fridge. I pulled out a zero-calorie cola. The label read “LA Cola Zero.” I’d never seen it before, but since there were no other sugar-free options, I decided to give it a try. One hundred yen.
I felt as though the standards or inner boundaries I had held onto were starting to blur. I could distinctly feel it happening.
An Uber Eats driver came and went.
The kebab was spicier than expected and packed with lettuce, making it a bit tricky to eat at first. I went through a lot of tissues wiping sauce from my lips.
As I was finishing up, a man came in and placed an order. I could tell it was for takeout, but I couldn’t catch what he had ordered.
For some reason, I was terribly curious, so I asked him. He apologized, saying he didn’t speak Japanese. I asked him again in English.
He had ordered a kebab bowl.
I wondered why it hadn’t sounded like “kebab bowl” to me when he first said it.
He mentioned that kebabs were familiar food back in his country. We exchanged a subtle smile, said goodbye, and he left. I don’t quite remember if he told me where he was from.
There was only one employee in the shop. Judging by his demeanor, I could tell he wasn’t the owner.
He asked if I was Japanese. I told him I was Korean. For a moment, his previously expressionless face seemed to brighten up a little.
We continued talking in English, though neither of us was particularly fluent. He said he had come to Japan two years ago.
The shop had been open for 24 years.
Surprised to learn it had been there longer than I thought, I reacted a bit more dramatically than I actually felt.
Just then, a young customer in a black hoodie walked in and ordered. His vibe felt as dark as his clothes. The employee and I kept chatting, but a subtle awkwardness lingered in the air.
I stood up and asked to pay. He guided me to the counter. As he took my money, he picked up the conversation where we left off.
His wife had come to Japan before him.
She had found him this job.
Six months later, he joined her in Japan.
Four months after that, she passed away.
He returned to Nepal, his hometown, with his late wife and prayed to the Buddha over and over.
Then, he came back to Japan.
His two children were being cared for by his mother back in Nepal.
His house was about a three-hour drive from where the landslide had hit Nepal the previous month.
He said he would probably return to Nepal soon as well.
Throughout our conversation, he often said, “My life.” Each time he did, he placed his left palm over the center of his chest.