The Story So Far...

Power Ewes: Gigamon Action Go! was an action-comedy series produced by Yakonoko Animation, with two seasons released from 1993 through 1995. Read Dr. Lee's first dispatch for details.

Despite the official account of the show’s two-season production, Dr. Lee found a credible source, Middleton Police Chief Harry Thompson, who claims that a third season was privately screened for personnel at the Yokota Air Base in 1996 at the latest. Read Dr. Lee's second dispatch for details.

Upon viewing the last known copy of Power Ewes at the home of an anime archivist named Ataru69, Dr. Lee comes away more convinced than ever that paranormal forces are involved. Read Dr. Lee's third dispatch for details.

A dream suggests the involvement of Cyberlams, leading Dr. Lee back to Ataru69, but too late to save his life. After the archivist's associates speculate on the coincidence of truck-related accidents and Ataru69's affinity for stories in the isekai genre, Dr. Lee finds herself being pursued by an ominous truck. Read Dr. Lee's fourth dispatch for details.

Dr. Lee has a strange encounter and undertakes a dangerous journey with an entity of inhuman origins in a vehicle with metaphysical powers. Read Dr. Lee's fifth dispatch for details.

Dr. Lee backtracks to present some of her prior research into Power Ewes artist/animator Ichika Miura, who died under mysterious circumstances. Read Dr. Lee's sixth dispatch for details.

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Part 7

Dr. Elara Lee, noted expert on the Sleeping Android, writes:

Beyond the edge of Kyoto is a village built around a hot spring, once renowned for its healing properties, but which has since dried up. The resort dates to the 16th Century at least, with any earlier records lost to the chaos of Japan’s Sengoku Era.

Katsuragi Ryōjin Sanitorium is the last remaining vestige of that once-thriving spa destination. At the front desk, I flashed my credentials to an indifferent receptionist.

“We receive very few visitors,” she stated, as if she were reciting an item of trivia.

“Well, you have one today,” I replied.

I was met by a shrug as the receptionist resumed her previous task, which seemed to involve the updating of patient records in calligraphic pen with a series of exaggerated strokes and flourishes.

I settled in with a magazine and made myself a fixture in the lobby until I’d sufficiently impressed upon the receptionist that I was disinclined to leave until I’d spoken to a higher-up in the sanitorium hierarchy. Finally, with a deep sigh, she pressed a button to summon the sanitorium’s director, who kindly offered a tour of the thirty feet of hallway leading from the lobby to his office.

“Thank you for seeing me, Dr. Tanaka,” I said, reading the name off the pocket of his lab coat.

“Just Tanaka. There are no credentialled doctors here,” Tanaka confided.

“No? I’d have thought doctors would have been a requirement for any medical facility.”

“We are a center for the promotion of health and relaxation, but not a hospital in any modern sense.”

“I see. But still, Mr. Tanaka, you must be regulated somehow. Or do you operate outside of the law?”

“Miss…Lee, was it?”

“Dr. Lee,” I corrected him.

“Dr. Lee, for hundreds of years, Katsuragi Ryōjin was a place where royalty came to soak away their aches and maladies. Although the healing waters are long gone, our imperial charter remains intact, along with the eternal gratitude of emperors and shoguns.”

I nodded. “I’m dubious about magical water, but the inertia of tradition holds a power I can definitely understand.”

Tanaka crossed his arms. “Why are you here, Dr. Lee?”

“I’m inquiring after the health of one of your patients. Tomoko Miura?”

“I do not know who you are talking about.”

“This statement says otherwise.” I produced one of the medical bills sent to Yakonoko Animation in care of the world’s largest Starbucks. “This is dated last week, covering the upcoming three months of room and board. You must be pretty sure she won’t get better any time soon if you’re billing this much for that far in advance. What’s wrong with her?”

“I can’t comment on the status of any patient or, in fact, confirm whether any particular patient is in our care at all.”

I pulled out another bill, one I’d pulled from the very bottom of the Yakonoko mail bin. “This was the earliest statement I could find, from over twenty years ago. It had never been opened. As far as I can tell, none of the intervening statements have been opened either, which begs the question, who’s been paying for Tomoko Miura’s rather expensive care for so many years?”

“I am not allowed to comment,” said Tanaka. “Patient confidentiality, you understand.”

“You’re not a doctor! There are no doctors here, and you say you’re not a hospital, so what’s your basis for claiming any sort of patient confidentiality? When you called Katsuragi Ryōjin a center for the promotion of health and relaxation, was that in the sense of being a fancy hotel or a secret prison? Is Tomoko Miura even here of her own free will?”

“We’re done here.” Tanaka clapped his hands, and two hulking orderlies appeared from the position around the corner from which they’d apparently been listening in on our conversation. “Gentlemen, help Dr. Lee find her way back to the exit.”

“I can find my own way,” I said, although, with one orderly grabbing each of my elbows, I was no longer even able to find my own feet against the floor. They tossed me down the front steps and shuttered the door.

So much for the direct approach.

This, gentle reader, was why I broke into a Japanese sanitorium.

During my investigative career, I’ve developed a useful set of skills. I can bypass security systems, wipe camera footage, hack computers, and incapacitate guards. As it turned out, none of these skills were required for me to access the inner sanctums of Katsuragi Ryōjin. The antique wooden building was stuck in an age before electronics, with doors equipped with locks so simple, they might as well have been welcome mats.

After midnight, with the full moon and my flashlight as the only sources of illumination, I made my return to the lobby, down the hallway, past Tanaka’s office, into the facility beyond.

Above the administrative level, three floors of patient rooms could be accessed by a painfully creaking staircase. Rooms on the first two floors held only flakes of ancient wallpaper scattered over peeling linoleum floors. Rooms on the top floor were additionally furnished with steel bed frames and empty nightstands.

I checked each door methodically: unoccupied, unoccupied, unoccupied, unoccupied, unoccupied, and there she was.

Tomoko Miura was supposed to have died in 1999, predeceased by her husband and their daughter, Ichika. I’d collected several news articles that attested to that fact. Yet here she was, the only patient in a hospital that wasn’t a hospital, hidden behind patient confidentiality by a staff that held no medical credentials.

Or at least, I assumed the woman in the room was Tomoko Miura. It was hard to judge her age or see her features, given that she was skeletally thin and lying in bed with a medical bandage wrapped her head and covering her eyes.

Her breath was shallow and raspy. Was she muttering in her sleep or speaking in response to the sounds I’d made in opening her door?

“Mrs. Miura?” I asked.

She spoke—Not, seemingly, in response to my voice, but in continuation of what she’d been saying before. Not Japanese. Not English. Not any other language I could identify—while her hands clutched and unclutched a composition notebook to her chest.

“Mrs. Miura? I’m here to ask about your daughter. About Ichika.”

There was no change in the tone or content of Tomoko’s mumbling, but from below, I heard multiple voices and a creaking on the stairs.

“Mrs. Mirua,” I hissed. “Please, we don’t have much time.”

The notebook rose and fell on her chest. Flashlight beams flared against the frosted glass in the door. The knob began to turn.

The orderlies burst into the room. They found Mrs. Miura flailing her arms and screaming in incoherence. It must have been a terrifying scene, so I don’t fault the orderlies for failing, at first, to notice the room’s open window.

The screams didn’t stop until after I’d scrambled down to the ground, and a face didn’t peer down from the room until after I’d taken cover behind a dumpster. When the orderly’s snarling visage popped back into the room, I ran away and didn’t look back.

And the notebook? Gentle reader, don’t judge me too harshly for having taken it, for running with it in my bag to the local rail station, and for hiding it under the flagstone walkway of an adjacent Shinto shrine, to keep it safe in case the authorities found me there while I camped out for the rest of the night.

I retrieved the notebook minutes before the morning train back to my hotel and got my first good look at the cover as the countryside rolled past my window.

Surrounded by cute manga-style doodles of girls, robots, and lambs were the words, “Secret Diary of Ichika Miura, Volume 8. DO NOT READ!” From the date on the first page, these entries would have been written during the final months of Ichika Miura’s life.

To be continued...