Epilogue: Mister Abe, Masaru: Salaryman

No one could explain why five comatose patients in the hospital all awoke on the same day.

It’s fall now, and the cicadas have ceased their songs. Every day, Masaru takes a quick stroll with Valerie between 5th and 6th, at precisely 8:15 PM.

He finds a young man, shivering in fury, and he sits down and talks with him on the bench at the side of the place. Masaru can now see the spirit’s power over them, The Doppelganger, The Knight, The Stranger, and more.

Now, all he can do is be there for people.

“I know it’s a bit strange, but would you like to go out for some dinner with us? I feel like you need to talk to someone.”

He looks back at the cat, its tail sliding along the bricks of the corner.

“We’ve got it from here,” Masaru says.

The cat smiles in a strange way as it steps off.

“I know you do,” Sakai says in a voice that only Masaru and Valerie can hear, before slipping around the corner of the hospital alleyway.

“The first candle will, of course, burn out in time. But before this happens, the light from it will be passed on to another candle, and then to another, so that though the candles may change, the light will burn forever, like the light on a Buddhist altar. As the candles change, so will the way in which two people love each other; yet their love, like the light, need never go out.”

― Naoya Shiga, A Dark Night's Passing