Window 1: A Second Light Procession, and a Mysterious Sound — 'One More Thing We Don't Understand'

During a 72-minute opening from 2:40 to 3:52 a.m. on the 11th, Window 1, "the Lit City," again produced the previously reported "light procession" (Oct. 7). After the 7th, the procession was not confirmed again across three openings on the 8th, 9th, and 10th, and the Dimensional Survey Division had said it could not yet tell whether that night was simply an exception or a matter of watching at the wrong hour. Four days later, the procession returned.

The window keeper on duty wrote in the log that this time the display was shorter and roughly half as many lights as before. According to the division, the procession appeared about 40 minutes into the opening, with lights moving in a line down the hillside of the stone city — this time numbering around 140 as far as could be counted, compared with over 300 on the 7th, when the keeper gave up counting. Where the procession begins or ends, and what occasion it marks, remain unknown.

What was new this time was that the window room's recording equipment picked up, for the first time, a low sound rising and falling at roughly the same interval as the procession's movement. "There have been occasional reports of a faint sound near the window before," the division explained, "but this is the first time it has been captured as a recording that appears to be in sync with the procession's movement."

Toru Yuzuki, 31, the technician handling the analysis, said, "We're starting from zero, including the possibility that it's wind, equipment vibration, or noise from our own side." Yuzuki, who also analyzed the previously reported market-goers raising tablets at Window 5, said, "We can't say anything about how low the frequency is or how regular it is until we examine the waveform closely. Even deciding whether to call this a sound at all is already difficult." Results are not expected for at least several weeks.

The division has not changed its longstanding position on Window 1 — that there is no evidence the other side is aware of this one — even after this observation, maintaining that the October 5 revision concerning Window 5 remains a separate matter. "Light, and now something that resembles sound, have both been captured on record," an official said. "Even so, that is not evidence the other side is doing something directed at us. All we've learned is that we now have one more means of observation."

As previously reported, inquiries have piled up at "Toshimado-Sabo," the café beside the observation rig off Haneda, since the 7th. Owner Miyai told this paper on the morning of the 11th, "The phone was ringing before we even opened this morning, once word got around that it happened again." Window 1's general viewing runs on a lottery basis for 80 slots a day, with applications accepted in a batch at the start of each month, and how far November's applications climb will not be known until next month. The division reconfirmed that its handling of the school social-studies group slots will not change.

The agenda for the outside expert panel (chaired by Etsuko Kajiura), due to hold its first meeting in early November, is now expected to grow from the previously reported five items to six, with today's sound added. "We're gaining material piece by piece, but that doesn't mean we're closer to an answer," the division said. "If anything, we think of it as one more thing we don't understand."

Part of the method used to assess the previously reported Window 5 market-goers raising tablets will be carried over into analyzing today's sound. At Window 5, the division explained, the same motion repeating across multiple openings became the basis for acknowledging a "sign." Window 1's sound, by contrast, has appeared only once, with nothing yet to compare it against. "Window 5 could be cautiously upgraded because there was an accumulation to work from," Yuzuki said. "The sound at Window 1 hasn't even reached the stage of building that foundation. Whether we can capture the same thing again is what matters most." The division said it cannot predict when the procession might next be observed, even accounting for the four-day gap between the 7th and the 11th.

Window keepers work in rotating shifts and have a custom of reading through the log together at handover. As noted in the previously reported Window 5 keeper's column, a culture exists among them of cautioning one another against reading meaning into observations too quickly. One keeper coming off the night shift on the 11th, speaking anonymously, said, "The moment I realized the procession had come back, I honestly gasped out loud. But I told myself right away that gasping and knowing what it means are two different things." Another keeper said, laughing, that "ears will work differently on the next shift, now that a sound has made it into the record," but added, "the more they change, the more mishearings there'll be too. All we can do is be careful."

Window 1's provisional name, "the Lit City," was given by the Survey Division shortly after it entered service in March 2024, for its beautiful stone-city nightscape. It has since drawn the most viewing applicants of the five windows and has generally been treated as the brighter, lighter of the stable windows. New observations piling up like this — a procession, and now a sound — are rare for it. "When we first called it 'the Lit City,' it didn't mean much more than a pretty nightscape," an official said. "Now it feels almost like the name has slowly started telling the truth."

Reporter Rin Toda, who continues to cover the story, said, "A window that used to offer only light now has something that resembles sound added to it. I understand the temptation to say we've 'connected' with the other side, but the people in the Survey Division are the ones who have to put the brakes on that feeling hardest." He added, "Every time something new turns up that we can't explain, the world feels like it's grown just a little bigger — and that's the part of covering this beat I enjoy most." At the same time, Toda said, "The one fact that will stay on record is that it came back after a four-day gap. Whether the next gap is also four days, or shorter, or longer, might eventually tell us something on its own." He showed no sign of abandoning the steady, incremental work of observation.