Okutama is the mountain area Fukaéri left when she set out for Tokyo, three days before Tengo was told that she had gone missing. Her departure begins a chain of uncertainty: she did not say where she was headed, later announced a different destination, and never reached it.

Departure from Okutama

On Wednesday morning, Fukaéri left Okutama for Tokyo, accompanied to the station by Professor Ébisuno. She did not tell him where she planned to go. The report of her journey reaches Tengo three days later, as he presses his temples and is asked when she was last heard from.

A destination she never reached

After leaving Okutama, Fukaéri telephoned Professor Ébisuno and said she would not return to the mountains. Instead, she planned to spend the night at the apartment in Shinanomachi. Professor Ébisuno’s daughter was also there that day, but Fukaéri never arrived. Since then, there has been no contact, and nobody knows where she went.

Narrative significance

Okutama matters here as the point of departure from which Fukaéri’s disappearance becomes measurable but not explainable. The expected routes—back to the mountains or onward to Shinanomachi—both fail to account for her; Tengo searches his memory of the preceding three days and recalls nothing. The precise itinerary therefore sharpens the mystery rather than solving it: a station departure, a later phone call, and a promised overnight stay leave her actual destination unknown.