Synopsis: Masayuki continues to research regarding the incidents that happened eleven years ago. Tarou undergoes a new psychotherapeutic approach.

Tarou dreams of a time when he was little. He is waiting for his sister outside her school. She comes out and scolds him. He cannot see her face. The scene changes and her sister is running. The young Tarou is barely able to follow her across some labyrinthine passages. They reach an exit but a giant takes his sister. She struggles in the giant’s hands then becomes still.

Tarou wakes up from that dream. It was a dream he did not want to see. He records it but realizes he’s out of tape.

The following day, as Tarou is about to leave for school, a man visits their house. He says the year’s rice harvest is good but the Suiten dam still lacks water. Tarou’s mother becomes nervous after hearing it. Tarou’s father suggest they continue to discuss some other time. The visitor realizes he said something he shouldn’t have. He apologizes.

At the school library, Tarou researches for something in the Internet. Masayuki comes. He says he heard Tarou’s family brews sake. Masayuki asks if his family were once landowners of the area. Tarou says he doesn’t know. Masayuki tells him it must be why the incident from eleven years ago happened. He then mentions Tarou’s sister, Mizuka. Masayuki finds it amazing that he would befriend a kidnap victim. He tells Tarou that he’s been researching the case over the Net. He says, because of the police’s mistake, the one who kidnapped Tarou and his sister got hit by a truck. The kidnapper demanded for ransom but Masayuki wonders whether he really did it for money.

Tarou is annoyed with Masayuki. He asks him if people from Tokyo ask frank questions to people they aren’t friends with. Masayuki only smiles. Tarou leaves. After he left, Masayuki checks the Internet browser search history. It seems Tarou was researching dreams and out-of-body experiences.

According to Masayuki, on the 22nd of September, 1996, Komori Yoshida, the owner of Suiten’s oldest sake brewery, found his children, eight-year old Mizuka and three-year old Tarou missing. At midnight, he received a call from the kidnapper demanding ransom. He didn’t however explain clearly how it will be delivered. He just ordered that the Komori family stop on the overpass of a toll highway and from there, throw the ransom money down to him.

The kidnapper must have found out the police were on that area because he was nowhere to be seen. The police successfully traced the transmission from the kidnapper’s prepaid cell phone. They also found a suspicious white van parked in front of a closed-down pachinko parlor in the outskirts of Suiten. The man in the building tried to escape by running to the nearby road. He was hit by a passing truck and died instantly.

The police found the prepaid cell phone inside the building and confirmed that he was the kidnapper. The Komori siblings, however, were nowhere to be found. The kidnapper was Sukuai Yachio, a man from southern Tokyo. He did not have any relatives in or near Suiten. He had no prior criminal record and his occupation at the time of the kidnapping was unknown.

Four days after their disappearance, the children were still missing. The local dam lacked water because of the dry season. Because the low water level made access to an old village behind the mountains possible, the police were uneasy about it. They obtained tips from the townspeople and they searched an abandoned hospital. There, they found the siblings but Mizuka, the older sister, had already died. Tarou was in a state of shock. Food and drinks were left but since the children were tied, they couldn’t eat nor drink anything.

In the six-month span during the kidnapping, children all over western Japan went missing. It was only in the Suiten case that a ransom was demanded.

On the 2nd of October, 1996, Ogami Hideo, the second representative of a small religious group in Suiten, the Ogami Worship Assembly, was discovered dead. He was locked inside a room and his eyelids were cut with a dinner knife. It seemed he slit his throat after then died. Nothing more was discovered so the police concluded it was a suicide. Because the kidnapping case occurred only a week before that, the people suspected a connection between the two events. No evidence though was found that could link the two cases.

Tarou went up the stairs leading to the shrine. He looked for the path he saw in his dreams. A man who lives nearby notices that someone is outside. At the same time, Miyako, the girl whom Tarou saw in his dreams, arrives after buying some groceries. Miyako asks the man if someone stopped by since she saw a bike at the bottom of the steps.

Outside, Tarou decides to go into the path. In his dream, it seems to lead to the dam, near the abandoned hospital. Tall trees towered around the path. A low mist begins to envelope the surroundings. Tarou thinks something isn’t right. He looks around and suddenly sees an apparition that looks like his sister. Tarou calls out to it but realizes there’s no way it could be his sister. The apparition slowly changes form, revealing a thin humanoid creature with a long, oval head. Tarou then sees the giant from his dream. He runs away wanting to wake up but it wasn’t any dream. Up ahead, he sees someone watching him the same way he watched Miyako before.

Tarou sees Miyako sweeping the ground. She notices him and tells him that the place isn’t something for playing around. Tarou tells her he knows that. Tarou then asks her what she was looking at. The girl replies it’ a Ryuujin, a sea god in Japanese folklore that can appear as a dragon or as a man. Miyako then leaves but Tarou asks her if she saw him when she was standing at the steps. Miyako’s only reply is “Maybe”. Tarou, however, is sure that Miyako saw here.

During his counseling session the next day, the doctor instructs him to look at his forefinger as he moves it sideways. Tarou does so. He then recounts his dream of waiting for his sister outside the school. Tarou tells Dr. Hirata he doesn’t feel sleepy at all.

The doctor explains to him that he isn’t performing hynoptheraphy but rather EMDR (Eye Motion Desentization and Reprocessing), a treatment used for trauma victims. As one moves the eyes, one imagines tragic events from the past. Dr. Hirata explains further that the mechanism towards it isn’t fully understood but by stimulating the two halves of the brain, memory is activated. EMDR is a known method for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Tarou does not exhibit symptoms of PTSD but he wants to recover lost memories.

Dr. Hirata resumes the treatment. Again, Tarou recalls the dream with his sister and the giant. The doctor tells him that the giant is already gone. In Tarou’s mind, the giant’s face begins to take form — that of Sukuai Yachio.

Meanwhile, at a bridge, the nosy Masahiko is interviewing a schoolmate regarding the kidnapping case. The boy he asked told him that it was Ogami’s grandmother who told the police that the children were in the abandoned hospital. Masayuki thinks that there is some connection between the kidnapping and the suicide. The boy tells him that the people also thought so but it was only a rumor. The boy also says that there were rumors regarding the hospital by the dam. Masayuki asks him about it but a group of boys pass by and the boy he asked has to go. Masayuki hands the boy a game CD (interestingly titled “Ghost Hound”) in exchange for the information the boy gave him.

As the boy left, Masayuki looks below the bridge. He sees something horrible and looks away.

Anyway, details regarding the kidnapping are revealed but a lot of questions are still unanswered. For one, what was the kidnapper’s motivation? Was the Suiten case related to the other kidnapping cases throughout Japan?

Masayuki is deeply interested in what happened eleven years ago. I wonder why. Is he somehow connected to it? Or was he also kidnapped when he was little?

EMDR, by the way, is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Francine Shapiro to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. EMDR works by processing distressing memories. Symptoms are said to arise when events are inadequately processed but it can be resolved when memory is fully processed.

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