Editing Phenomeno:Case 01 (section)

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"Please wait a minute!" As the Ikaigabuchi members scattered into the night streets in small groups, I chased Karasu-san as she flagged down a taxi on the main street. "What about my house? You know, 'The Wish-fulfilling House'?"

Thereupon, the rather useless fortune-teller flapped her hand back and forth with a flushed expression. "It's fine, it's fine. It's that, uh, umm, schema. And what else... I think I was going to tell you something, but — ahaha, I forgot~."

"What do you mean 'forgot'...?"

"Don't worry! You have the sign of a meeting! Well, see ya!" She slapped me on the back and then happily jumped into the stopped taxi.

As I watched the taxi drive off, I stood there dumbfounded for who knows how long.

"...Ugh."

Was it alright if I went back now?

To that house — to "The Wish-fulfilling House."

I began walking down the main street toward the train station, dragging along the mama-cycle I'd bought cheaply online for commuting to school.

Tokyo was filled with people even this late at night. In particular, the area around the train station near my house was close to many universities, so there seemed to be no difference in the number of people milling about from day to night. Around the time the station building came into view, I almost crashed into a couple of girls, then subsequently apologized for it. One of them shot me a ‘What the hell’s wrong with ''you''?’ look, but the other cracked a smile and said, "No, we’re sorry." I apologized again once more. That’s all there was to it, but it filled my heart with hope. Indeed — a fateful meeting was lying in wait for me. And with a girl, no less. This might be it. The bizarre events tormenting me at that house must surely be a catalyst for the happy times to come. In the future, I will look back at this string of events and laugh it off as nothing more than just another funny story.

I felt less burdened when I thought of it like that.

Besides, now I didn't have to move. Moving costs would be painful for me, given that I was receiving no allowance from home.

"The offline meeting was fun in its own way, so it's all good, right?" I muttered to myself, and finally straddled the bike.

I turned around and decided to go back home for the first time in a few days.

“None of the people that came to the offline meeting today said anything about "The Wish-fulfilling House." If you look at it from a different angle, that means it can't possibly be a ghost incident. It's a bit shameful as the original poster, but all's well that ends well, right?”

What would have happened if I'd dragged people over to my house, and it turned out that there were no ghosts or anything at all? I'd be a laughingstock.

Having finished completely arming myself with logic, I felt the pleasant night breeze on my cheeks and pedaled harder. I'd recovered to the point where I even started humming.

However—

I noticed something when I was about to re-enter the main street from the shopping arcade in front of the train station.

For a while now, there's been a strange, uncomfortable feeling on the sole of my left foot. It was like gum was stuck to my shoe, so I stopped my bike and took off my sneaker.

Then, with my left foot raised in the air, I looked at the rubber sole of the sneaker, and froze.

I felt my blood freeze over and the elation I felt, evaporate all at once.

On the bottom of my sneaker—

The number "4" ("四") was etched all over.

   ◯

"Damn it, schema my ass."

The countdown was continuing, wasn't it?

I pushed the mama-cycle along with an almost one-legged step, as everyone passing by threw me strange looks owing to my frenetic expression, but I paid them no heed.

I threw away the sneaker with the '4' etched all over it on the spot. There was no way I could keep wearing such sinisterness. The cold of the concrete and the hard, scattered pebbles pricked my foot through my sock, but I didn't care.

Why and when was '4' carved into the back of my sneaker?

What was going to happen when the countdown ended? And what did I need to do, to escape from this terror?

I had no idea, but I kept on running anyway.

People in fancy clothing stared and laughed, but I didn't care. I just wanted to be somewhere warm.

Where?

Where could that be—?

Eventually, I found a late-night discount shop just past the arcades, and jumped in. A ridiculously cheerful theme song was being played inside. I hummed along to the simple, repetitive melody as I checked out the wide selection of products that were quite cheap. As I leaned against a cosmetics shelf and mumbled to myself, a group of girls dressed flamboyantly avoided me as they passed by. An employee called out to me and asked, "Are you unwell?" and I finally realized that my left foot, covered only with a sock, was throbbing with pain. I looked down and saw that the sock was torn and dripping with blood, perhaps I had stepped on a shard of glass along the way. I bought some bandages, a pair of socks, the cheapest sneakers they had, and went to tend to the wound in the bathroom. I washed the back of my foot, wrapped the bandage, and wore the new socks. The cheap sneaker had a shoddy design and wasn't very comfortable, but it was far better than being barefoot. It was an unnecessary expense for sure, but I felt comforted by it. I was afraid of staying alone in the bathroom for any longer, so I returned to the inside of the store. I wandered aimlessly around the shop as if window shopping and repeatedly took deep breaths.

— ''What should I do now?''

That was all I could think about, and yet, I could not come up with an answer.

At some point, I was absentmindedly just standing there in front of the display window, when the employee from earlier approached me again and asked if anything was wrong, so I left the store. I had no choice but to begin heading toward the usual net café, but when I got there, it was already full. I peeked into the nearby karaoke box, but even it had a line spilling out onto the street. I tried a few other places, but it was the same situation everywhere. Come to think of it, it was Saturday night. There would be no vacant places until the first train.

However, I couldn't think of anywhere else to go.

As I wandered around the station dragging my bike around, the police shot me suspicious looks. I almost felt like it would be more comforting to be arrested, but some level of common sense still remained in me, so I turned back to the main street.

The headlights of cars on Itsukaichi-kaido Avenue illuminated me as they passed by. Numerous cars that normally looked like exhaust-emitting devices to me, but today I felt consoled by them. It was reassuring to eye things that could be scientifically explained.

However—

I may have reached my limit.

This was the same as being completely homeless, wasn't it?

I had no one I was intimate with in Tokyo, where the lights never dim. I had no place to go. On top of that, I was running low on funds. Without knowing why, I looked up at the night sky, but even in a cloudless sky, there wasn't a star to be seen. Only a dark space spread out as if it were painted over.

Maybe I could call my sister in the morning and borrow some money. And then I'd go straight back to Shizuoka. Tokyo was too much for me, which was something humiliating to say, but all this was just too unexpected. I'd imagine most people would have trouble with such a case as well. Mother, I'm sorry. You supported me so much in my move to Tokyo.

Then at that very moment—

At the end of the night road, I spotted an intense light.

When I lifted my head, I realized I'd come straight back to the family restaurant.

"I see...this place is also open twenty-four hours."

That was enough to make me feel like I'd found a million allies, and my knees almost buckled.

The drink bar here alone was cheaper than the net café, and it was a Saturday night, so there were plenty of people inside. I should have just stayed here from the beginning.

"Hahaha," With a dry laugh like that, I probably looked pretty unapproachable to any passerby.

However, the moment I left my mama-cycle at the bicycle parking of the family restaurant, and was about to enter, I was startled.

There was someone there even more bizarre that would make anyone stay away.

Outside the restaurant’s large, glass window...

And amidst the thicket of fern bushes planted to cover the restaurant—

Was a girl fully dressed in black.

Even though it was spring, she wore a black long-coat. Her long hair stretched down her back, her skirt and even her boots were all pure black. Yet her complexion alone was abnormally white. And because she was lurking in the darkness, it looked as if something with only a face was floating.

''...Wh-what is she...doing?''

She was just standing there in the middle of the thicket, pressing her forehead against the glass as she stared into the restaurant.

It was so creepy I took one step back, when--

She slowly turned to face me. Her cheeks were shockingly white, and every part of her face was like a dream. She was modeled so perfectly that it made me feel like she was too good to be true, like a life-sized Bisque Doll that had accidentally been left there — that was the impression I got.

''A girl whose color was the night itself.''

Unexpectedly, those words popped into my head.

Those were the colors of the girl's eyes. Maybe it was because of the lighting, but it strangely felt like a large proportion of her eyes were taken by her irises and pupils, and under those long eyelashes, they seemed to glow jet black. Below her straight-cut bangs, they shone a dark color as they gazed upon me.

"...By any chance, are you…" 

Those words naturally came out of my mouth.

"—Yoishi?"

The girl merely nodded in silence.

   ◯

''Yoishi isn't a living person.''

''Those that meet Yoishi die seven days later.''

''Offline meetings that Yoishi attends end in disaster.''

What I'd heard earlier floated around in my head as I stared at the girl in front of me.

Seven glasses were laid out on the table in front of Yoishi, each with a different type of drink, including iced coffee, cola, orange juice and Japanese tea; She’d effectively created her own drink bar.

"Um... Aren't you supposed to take just one at a time?" I asked her in an exasperated tone, but she replied: 

"As long as I drink everything, there should be no problem," she spoke without taking her eyes off the glasses, and took one sip after another.

She drank the orange juice, then the iced coffee, then the warm Japanese tea, and then the cola. She faithfully repeated the order a number of times, sometimes adding Rooibos tea, black tea and melon soda as an accent. I didn't know if there was any meaning to the order, but I found it odd because when she drank them, it looked like some kind of religious ritual passed down through the ages.

I looked again at the girl who went by Yoishi.

She looked to be of high school age. Looking at her sitting directly in front of me under a bright light, I could see that she held immense beauty. But the problem was her eyes. Those eyes, like glass beads, seemed to be looking somewhere, and nowhere. The air she gave off felt as if we did not share the same world, creating a unique barrier around her. Rather than the nobility of a princess, she was closer to that of a witch's apprentice.

"Anyway…" 

I asked the girl dressed in black as she busily rifled through the drinks.

"Why didn't you come to the offline meeting today?"

"I did."

"No, but, you didn't come when everyone else was here earlier."

"I was there. Right there, the whole time." 

She pointed toward the other side of the window, where I'd first found her — in other words, the bushes outside the store.

…Out there? With her forehead pressed up against the glass?

"What does that mean? From eleven o'clock until now, you've been there the whole time?"

"Yes," she nodded. As I stared at her pale face, I began thinking.

This girl—

Is she what you'd call a denpa? <ref>Japanese slang which means psychic receiver of signals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denpa</ref>

Denpa, an internet slang term for a slightly troublesome person who spontaneously spews out random occult delusions into the world, but--

It was already past two o'clock in the morning. To cling to the glass for three hours straight since eleven o’clock, that must have creeped out the employees. I thought that as I quietly turned around, and saw that a different group of waitresses than before were staring at Yoishi and whispering something to each other. Their expressions were contorted in a slightly mean manner, like an air of contempt for someone who was more foolish than they were. I stood up, having felt like I'd seen something detestable. I immediately walked toward them and declared "I’ll take a drink as well," then headed straight for the counter to grab a drink. I didn’t know why I felt so irritated. Maybe it was because I felt like I'd been laughed at myself, being a fellow occult-lover.

I filled my glass to the brim with ice, then pressed the button for coffee.

—Now then, what to do from here on out.

As I watched the hot coffee melt through the ice, I thought.

I can't go back home; The countdown still continued. Furthermore, I've ran into the heresy-class occult girl from Ikaigabuchi. And now, for some reason, the two of us were at a family restaurant late at night. In a way, it's comforting that I wasn’t alone, but given that my companion was the occult girl with strange urban legends attached to her, it was a tricky situation.

"You like bad coffee?" asked Yoishi when I returned to my seat.

"What?"

"I asked if you liked bad coffee. The coffee here is unsavory."

I looked at her seven glasses again and noticed that the iced coffee had hardly been sipped.

"Information that you can gather beforehand should be processed before you act."

Yoishi's neat, logic-filled words annoyed me, so I replied with some nastiness.

"Then allow me to gather information: Why did you come to today's offline meeting?"

"Because I was interested."

"In 'The Wish-fulfilling House'? Why are you interested in that house? The sounds are probably just structural rattles, and the engravings might just be my mistake, right?" I intentionally repeated exactly what Karasu-san had told me in a self-torturing way. 

But Yoishi replied, “That’s true”, without any hint of retorting.

"Then, why—"

"When I read about that house on the forum — I felt a bit of an oddity from it." 

Her low, whispering tone gave me goosebumps for some reason. 

"The internet is overflowing with countless ghost stories, but most of them are fake. Real ones, however, have a scent that cannot be hidden."

And with those words, something hot bubbled forth from somewhere deep in the pit of my stomach.

Having a denpa believe you isn't really something to be pleased about, but I was, to be frank, simply glad to finally meet someone who would listen to the source of my fears. It was true, that place was the real deal. I was already in tears because of the numbers carved on the sole of my shoe a moment ago.

"Hey, what is it? Is it a ghost or something? Are you the type that can see them? What do you mean by the real thing having a scent that cannot be hidden?"

I couldn't stop myself from blurting out questions in succession, and Yoishi replied nonchalantly, while she stared at her glass of orange juice. 

"To answer your first question, it may not be a ghost."

"Huh?"

"Secondly, it’s not that I can see everything. Lastly, A feeling. Real ghost stories have a subtle lack of cohesion."

Yoishi began to speak, a sudden change from her dazed attitude from before. 

"Strange phenomena occur; The people involved become afraid. When you investigate, you find out that someone committed suicide there — and I won't say that such stories with a convenient outcome are all fake. However, the really interesting ghost stories transcend that. There's a sense of discomfort, as if something important has been skipped over. The only thing that can fill in that gap is a theory of the other side."

"S-so basically, what's happening? What are those frightening sounds in my house? Why are the numbers being scrawled, and why are they counting down? When the numbers run out, what's going to happen to—"

Before I’d realized, I had almost stood up as I shouted:

"—What's going to happen to me!?"

The restaurant went deathly silent, and everyone was looking at me.

Embarrassed, I sat back down. However, I didn't even know what was going on anymore. I had no idea what do from here on out. I scratched my head, feeling sorry for myself, when Yoishi quietly muttered, 

"So, you are the one who posted that story."

I looked up, and saw a mysterious glow in Yoishi's cold, dark eyes.

I nodded, and told her everything that had just happened.

That the countdown was already down to "4" ("四"), that it had been carved onto the bottom of the sneaker I had been wearing. I explained all of that as I trembled.

"How does someone even carve that? Is something from that house haunting me all the way here?" I complained, almost in tears — when I gasped.

Yoishi's eyes, which resembled glass beads, were now brimming with life.

Then, she suddenly raised her finger to the tip of my nose and said, "Hey, close your eyes."

"Huh?"

She turned her beautiful white face directly at me, and peered into my eyes. The shape of her facial features took over my field of vision, and to be honest, my heart raced.

"Why do I have to close my eyes?"

"Just do it."

Flustered, I did what she told me to do. As I closed my eyelids tightly, some kind of inappropriate fantasy ran through my head, but I did my best to brush it away.

"Imagine..." 

Her lips moved on the other side of my eyes, and she spoke commandingly. 

"You are now standing at the entrance of your house." 

Her voice, somewhat gentle and commanding, made me stand in front of that house, whether I wanted to or not. 

"Imagine yourself standing in front of the entrance to your house in as much detail as possible."

As if prompted by her words, I recalled the house that stood in the dark.

Black — its pointed, mountain cottage-like shape.

The reddish-brown roof, the mountain cottage style structure, and the atelier built by an architect exclusively for himself. The walls were stained nicely and covered with ivy halfway up to the second floor, and the white paint on the wooden window sills had begun to peel off. The first floor was a garage, and the second and third floors were living quarters. The house that I rented for 30,000 yen, which didn't even have a kitchen. The house where strange sounds would begin to ring out from somewhere at night, and where a number would be engraved somewhere the following morning—

My legs began to tremble, but I clutched my knees tightly with my hands, and managed to hold on.

"Alright. Once you've called it to mind, place your hand on the doorknob."

"...Ok."

"Now please open the door."

I opened it. My shoes were lying scattered in the doorway. They were the leather shoes I'd kicked off when I rushed out in a hurry. But from there, my feet refused to take one step further. I felt someone inside the house, when it should have been empty. The thick, sticky air made me feel that way. No way, I didn’t want to go any further, even if this was just my imagination.

Perhaps sensing my thoughts, Yoishi whispered, "You'll be fine. Please go inside slowly. Then take off your shoes as you always do and enter. Once inside, open all the windows in the house, it doesn’t matter which order you do it in. Open them precisely, one by one, with complete certainty."

''...Windows? Why open the windows?''

I wondered, but obeyed anyway. I approached the living room window, unlocked it and opened it. From there, I moved to the Japanese-style room I was using as a bedroom and unlocked and opened the window there. Then from the Japanese-style room to the bathroom. Opened. Next, the bath. Opened. From there, I proceeded to the third floor. There were two windows there, one by the veranda and one next to my desk. I unlocked and threw the both of them open with precision.

"...I'm finished."

"Then, this time, please close the windows in reverse order."

"...Huh?"

"Close them in order, starting with the last one you opened."

Having no other choice, I did as she said.

The window on the third floor by the desk. Veranda window. Then down to the second floor, and uh, the bath, toilet, Japanese-style room, living room.

I closed them all.

"Alright, you're done. Now open your eyes."

Hearing Yoishi’s voice, I opened my eyes to the blinding fluorescent light. I wasn’t aware of the bright pop music filling the restaurant until now, but suddenly, I could hear it. Right, I was in a family restaurant. As I rubbed my eyes to get used to it, Yoishi asked me:

"How was it?"

"What do you mean how was it, what was the point of that?"

"Was there anyone in the rooms?"

At those words, my hair stood on ends.

...There was.

On the staircase landing linking the second and third floors. I think I saw a middle-aged man wearing ashen-colored clothing. He looked vacant and motionless, yet he stared at me with his eyes, as if he was watching everything I did. I couldn't catch him in the front of my vision, But out of the corner of my eye, I could definitely see his presence—

"...There was, wasn't there?" Yoishi's black eyes shone somewhat delightedly. "Was it someone you know?"

"...I don’t know. Never seen him before."

No... How could that be? How is it possible to recall someone in your imagination that you've never met before? With the house still markedly visible in my mind, Yoishi's joyful voice echoed.

"Scared?" I looked, and saw Yoishi had come close enough that I could feel her breath. "Hey, are you feeling scared right now?"

...I’m scared.

Or perhaps I should say, I'm scared of your eyes that look like they are going to devour every part of me.

"Tell me in more detail. What did they look like?"

Taking a deep breath, I explained while trying to stop myself from trembling.

A gray, worn suit. I don't think he was wearing a tie. The suit seemed a bit big, but that may have been because the man was thin. His hair had streaks of grey, and I couldn't make out his face. His long hair seemed to have grown out in a messy way. The shoes he wore were black.

In response, Yoishi went "Hmm..." as she stroked her well-shaped chin.

After a moment of silently gazing around in mid-air, she turned her gaze toward me once more.

"Hey, how about we go?"

"—Go where?"

"To your house. Right now."