"What could happen?" Doppo Kunikida tightened his grip on his pen. "Don't tell me it's another disaster?"
"No, it probably isn't anything serious," Akiko Yosano said. "It looks like the disaster on their side hasn't happened yet, or hasn't spread yet."
Osamu Dazai lowered his eyes. Yes, everyone had taken it for granted that they would eventually be destroyed-they couldn't change it, because it was already a foregone conclusion.
How tragic, Brother Yiyi. How have you managed to hold on for so long?
"Officer An, you're finally here!" A crowd had gathered near Grandma Yoshida's house, and someone sharp-eyed spotted An Xinyi.
"Please head home if there's nothing else. I'll handle things here." An Xinyi persuaded everyone to leave. He had gotten a general idea of the situation before coming. Even if the onlookers meant well, their continued presence might put Grandma Yoshida under even greater psychological pressure.
An Xinyi carried some weight in Kaneki Town, and everyone left at his request.
Only then did An Xinyi take Satoru Gojo into Grandma Yoshida's home.
The little house was an old-fashioned wooden structure. Compared with the newer brick-and-stone houses, it looked like something abandoned by society: shabby and cramped.
Yet the house had been kept very clean, with everything neatly organized, though things had slipped a little lately. A glance revealed newspapers and cardboard boxes stacked tidily in a corner. Beside the table sat a basket of bracken and white milkcap mushrooms picked in the mountains, but they had started to yellow. The receipts scattered across the bed also betrayed the old woman's distress.
Akiko Yoshida was fifty-eight that year. She had lived through war and the hardest of times, and none of it had broken her. Yet in just two days, her temples had turned completely white, the lines on